MacNeill: Is Religion Adaptive?
by JoyCornell lecturer in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Allen MacNeill has announced another summer course, this one entitled Evolution and Religion: Is Religion Adaptive? It looks to be fairly interesting, and of course has PZ all atither. Because the idea has been explored a little bit here in the thread Hard-Wired for God: Take 2, let me list below the 6 requirements for qualification as an evolutionary adaptation that MacNeill offers:
1. The trait should be found in most (but not necessarily all) of the individual members of a particular species.
2. The trait should also exhibit what Darwin and R.A. Fisher called "continuous variation" – that is, it should exhibit a range of expression approximating a normal distribution (the good ol' bell curve).
3. It should be possible to identify specific anatomical/biochemical/physiological structures that produce the specified function.
4. It should be possible to identify a specific genetic basis for the characteristic.
5. Since adaptations are the result of natural (and/or sexual) selection, then it should also be possible to show that individuals having the characteristic have relatively higher reproductive success, compared to individuals who do not.
6. It should in principle be amenable to "functional analysis" – it should be possible to answer the question "what is it for?"
Some of these questions have no clear answer at this point in time, but asking them is a good first step. I do note that criteria #5 asserts a preconceived notion, though it merely reflects the ideology from which MacNeill plans to approach the subject. And on this particular qualification I'd hope at least one student in the class brings up the issue of how well these Darwinian-colored glasses actually apply to human beings.
MacNeill does point to Amish and Catholic birth rates to support his position that religious beliefs lead to reproductive advantage, while completely ignoring both Catholicism's celibate elements (more than just priests) and the commitment to complete non-reproduction of various sects (Shakers, for instance) as well as non-religious reproductive practices of societies for whom war itself serves as the impetus (Sparta, for instance). Not to mention the fact that even well before civilization began with powerful city-states and most humans lived in manageable tribal societies, birth control was one of the most regularly dispensed services of those 'religious' functionaries known as "healers." And that the practice of infanticide is as ancient as humanity, and the fact that it's a notable proclivity in civilization for the wealthiest, 'fittest' members of society to produce the fewest offspring. And…
At any rate, it should be a fun class for Cornell students, so I look forward to reports on it in MacNeill's blog and perhaps some of the students.
March 26th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I think #3 will be the difficult requirement to fulfill, unless McNeill simply stops at saying that "the brain" is the "anatomical/biochemical/physiological" structure that produces religion. Attempts to reduce mind/consciousness phenomenon to biochemical reactions ultimately fail.
Of course that didn't stop Darwin from thinking that his dog had a rudimentary form of religion. I suppose his hypothesis would have been that modern religion is just highly evolved "barking at the wind".
Comment by chunkdz — March 26, 2007 @ 11:55 am
March 26th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I like the way that Allen offers courses like this one and the one offered last summer. What I like even more is that it appears he allows students to explore their own thoughts about these matters and to draw their own conclusions, rather than trying to coerce them with the prof's ideology.
Comment by bj — March 26, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Hi, chunkdz. I think only requirements #1 and #2 are 'easy', while all the others are arguable to a serious degree. Which will no doubt make for some charged back and forth. MacNeill is obviously approaching the subject from within the materialistic, NDS paradigm. Which he no doubt has to do to salvage his credentials from his erstwhile 'peers' expected savage attacks, while still maintaining the appearance of an open mind.
#3 does have some support (as mentioned in the Hard-Wired thread) from neuroscience (as neurosurgery) findings that both the brow and crown 'chakras' do represent specific areas of the brain which when stimulated result in experiences of ESP and OOB. And while the neuros claim that this 'hard-wiring' somehow proves that the experiences their stimulation elicits in the individual don't really exist, sooner or later they're bound to figure out that this ridiculous assertion negates everything they think they know about brains and their hard-wiring.
#4 is potentially demonstrable, if one assumes that brain hard-wiring is genetically determined. I've mentioned my problems with #5, and #6 looks to be an appeal to Evo-Psych, that much-maligned branch of biology that sees monsters under every bed and in all closets. There should be as many opinions on this one as there are students in the class.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Hello Joy,
I am confused! Title of the course vs his 6 points.
Comment by inunison — March 26, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
…and looking at the required texts, this doesn't look like fair overview of "…historical perspective, controversies about the cultural, philosophical, and scientific implications of evolutionary biology." Seems to me like a one sided approach.
Comment by inunison — March 26, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
inunison:
Not surprising, considering MacNeill's title. Judging from last summer's course, though, he will allow some lively discussion. He must of course approach the subject from an NDS perspective. I'll be interested to see how many of his students buy it wholesale.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Religion might well be adaptive.
Perhaps humans were intelligently designed to host religious belief both as a biologically advantageous trait, and as a conducive-to-understanding-truth trait (these are logically distinct—-see below).
Plantinga and others have developed this idea in a philosophically rigorous way, indeed arguing that theistic belief counts as an epistemologically basic belief—a default state of human belief systems. Which would explain, for example, why atheism has generally been a minority belief-system that has had to work hard to overcome the default state.
However, MacNeill's proposed view has in this context, I suspect, the subtext that if one can show that religion is adaptive, then we can dismiss religion's claims to truth. And of course this is as silly as, for example, sugggesting that if we can show that holding the belief that 2+2=4 is adaptive, then we can dismiss claims by people holding that belief that it is a true belief.
All such natural selection arguments for the origin of religion are, in other words, irrelevant to the truth status of religion.
Any claims to the contrary commit the genetic fallacy.
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Here's an interview with Plantinga on the subject of theism as a properly basic belief.
Here's the formal argument.
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Besides being BS, this one is creepy. I remember in the 80's when the gay community got all euphoric when a team of scientists declared that they had identified the "Gay" gene. Wow, was the collective response…so it's not a choice, there's nothing wrong with us. Not long after, another team found findings that disavowed the first team's findings. And research stopped, or at least vanished from the public spectrum.
And for good reason. Can you imagine what would have happened to the gay community if doctors had warned prospective parents that their incubating offspring was likely to be a homosexual?
I know that this is a little off topic, but if I were a student in his class, I'd be on him like a vise over number 3, and call him out, demanding him to explain what such knowledge would be good for, and how would it be made useful.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I don't know the MacNeill is stating that he believes that all these qualifications have been met or demonstated. He's setting criteria. I think a few are jumping their metaphysical guns.
Comment by bj — March 26, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
#3 is a problem because the criteria requires a "belief" to be quantified in biochemical terms. This is way different than quantifying a sensory experience (out-of-body), or a sexual tendency.
Is there a region of the brain that can be stimulated to "turn on" religion? Is there a drug that stimulates/inhibits belief in God?
Comment by chunkdz — March 26, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
stunney:
I'd take issue with the semantic sleight-of-mind per "religious belief," by acknowledging the sociological (and political) functions of religion. They served as relational cement, tribal identity, educational institution, health care provider and ritual passage sanction for individuals. These functions expanded as civilization expanded – becoming corrupt and fomenting divisions along the way. I think religion is the sociological artifact of the natural faculty.
This is a situation MacNeill doesn't specify in qualification #6, but suggests. Perhaps he plans to invoke Evo-Psych Anazi tales to explain the sociopolitical construct we call "religion" *as* the supposed genetic capacity for "religious experience" (formalized to "religious beliefs").
Thanks for the links!
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Joy, do you not think arithemetical beliefs serve social functions too—such as promoting the development of education, commerce, and technology?
Nobody in their right might mind would say arithmetical beliefs are 'really' false because they help with, say, banking.
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I can't resist posting this quote from Plantinga's formal argument to which I linked earlier. Just substitute 'MacNeill' for 'Marx' or 'Freud':
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
AnaxagorasRules:
This issue is already out in the larger world for all 'abnormal' people. Note the debates that bubble up when a deaf couple chooses to have a deaf child, or a dwarf couple chooses to have a dwarf child. This is all in line with the aims of the 'New Eugenics', but I don't know that society's got any legitimate interest in a trait such as sexual preference. It's not like there's a shortage of people, and quite a few heterosexual couples don't have children for reasons of their own. If control of population growth is social policy, then the existence of non-reproducing citizens (any sex, any reason) is a non-issue.
stunney:
I'm not saying religious beliefs are false because religions serve social functions. Religious beliefs are formalized usually by exceptional human beings translating their strong personal experience of the divine into more general understandings of the divine (often through the device of stories). Usually the experience is related in terms of the relationship between the human and the divine.
Religions are groups of believers-in the formal stories who gain adherents and power in their respective societies, and exercise it just like other sociopolitical power is exercised. Until it loses its grip on governments (the people get fed up with corruptions and abuses), at which point it tends to splinter and regroup toward something closer to its original tribal functions.
I don't know how MacNeill is going to address qualification #6. If he plans Anazi tales, students will be exposed to the fallacy you mention. I wonder how many of them will call him on it?
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I think I have to agree that #3 specifically shows a Neo-Darwinian Theory bias. On the other hand, however, my first impression of Mc Neill, from what I read concerning the course that he taught last year, is that while he has a strong personal bias, he also is open minded to discussion of alternative viewpoints. In this day and age that should be considered commendable.
The problem that I have with any kind of psychology based on NDT is that it presumes that consciousness, which of course would, include religious consciousness, has been almost completely explained by physiology and neurology. I think that kind of crass reductionism has been almost completely refuted by David Chalmers in his book, The Conscious Mind, which I read again over the weekend. I wonder if Allen Mc Neill is familiar with Chalmers work. I know he has stopped by a TT before. Maybe he'll pay us another visit.
Because, my own still-being-developed model is an integrative one (our mental experience is a combination brain function + consciousness, with consciousness having a distinct irreducible ontology) in theory I have no problem with the concept that at least some of our religious, moral and spiritual tendencies are hardwired. The problem I have is with those who think that because we have correlated some experience "˜x' with some brain function "˜y' that somehow that explains everything that needs to be explained about human consciousness or religious experience. Those people, including no doubt Allen Mc Neill, IMO have yet to make their case.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — March 26, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Excuse me, but wouldn't religion just have to have a difference in procreation rate in order to be adaptive? Let's avoid rigidly fixing it to one evolutionary context, when the idea of directionless adaptation is a feature is judged advantageous or not by application to its environment. It is the environment that gives it function.
But it really doesn't matter, if there is no God and no guiding Spirit and even so much as no abstract Lawgiver, then religious expression is either a result of adaptation or something that has not hindered the survival of the human beast (we *have* survived) or a seemingly useless form not tested against the environment yet…or even more an adaptive form that the subject does not even know how it is aided by it. Just as the eye-bud creatures did not need to think "Hey, it's a great thing we have eyebuds, I can sense light that way!" in order for eyebuds to be advantageous.
Thus, it is not necessary for any aspect of human behavior to be proven effective in order to lend advantage to the species. Eyebuds have pretty much kept their functions, and not become, say storage pods, only increased in their ability to analyze light. So the eyes are not particularly adaptive, but are so useful that they retain a rather fixed form. Eyes weren't deemed effective by the evolutionary subject before they fixed their relative form, thus religion does not have to show an adaptive behavior in order to be an adaptation.
We so often like to break from the box of ourselves as a subject of evolution, even while trying to consider ourselves as a subject of evolution. An anti-teleological stance should have it that one particular adaptation, ie the brain, does not have the final authority on what is adaptation. It is the survival of the species which does, not the contents of that adaptation. However we believe certain things about the brain.
Comment by Axeman — March 26, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Hi, Joy,
Control of population growth as social policy wasn't what I had in mind, which is another creepy subject in and of itself. The implications I see here were not only with regard to sexual preferences. What raised my hackles was the implications for diversity in general.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 5:10 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
AR:
And that is the issue for all members of what would – or just might – be considered eradicable minorities by virtue of their very existence. And while I have no problem with the availability of genetic testing to find out if your baby has Downs or cystic fibrosis or anencephaly or any one of lots of other conditions a couple may choose to avoid for serious considerations that are none of our business, the New Eugenics is all about "Designer Babies." Where one group's aesthetics about what sex, height, body type, hair texture and color, skin color, musical or athletic talent, etc. get to determine who gets born and who doesn't.
There are (they tell us) genes for obesity, cancer, various talents and abilities, bad teeth, male pattern baldness, eczema, psoriasis, ulcers, ADD and bedwetting (et al.). This can get very ridiculous very fast, so I don't see much real-life danger around the corner. Especially not in a country where tens of millions of citizens (including children and pregnant women) have no access to health care at all.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 5:28 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Hi, Joy,
Yes, they're just baby bugs right now. Better to use the Raid on the immediate threats.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 5:41 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
AR:
There is a significant difference between reproductive choice and imposed eugenic policies. I don't think people with homosexual tendencies are in any serious danger of being "bred-out" of humanity at the present time or in the present sociopolitical reality.
Thus I do not consider the possibility that homosexuality may be genetically influenced to be a good reason to restrict any woman's reproductive choices or to restrict scientific study of the human genome. As I said, late-term abortion and infanticide are legitimate social/governmental interests (the protection of children).
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 6:31 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Could someone explain how an adaptive response affecting one species yields to a variety of religions that are radically different from each other? If the answer is the differences correlate to differing environmental pressures then what is the evidence?
Comment by Bradford — March 26, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Hi, Joy,
And as I said, they're just little baby bugs right now anway. Little creatures trying to crack out of their eggs, with no guarantee of success.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 8:19 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Regarding number 3, maybe the problem is with the word
religion. Religion is way too detailed and broad. Finding areas of the brain that contribute to spiritual experience seems like a real possibility to me, and far from negating the reality behind those experiences, it seems if anything confirmatory. I would assume that we have evolved to perceive reality, not to misperceive it.
Comment by onething — March 26, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Given you recognise this, it's interesting that you keep equating the New Eugenics movement with the latter, when in fact almost all of the people falling under that umbrella are actually advocating the former.
Comment by Mesk — March 26, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Mesk:
I am automatically highly suspicious of anything deliberately self-styled as "Eugenics." I think you'd find that most people are, for the simple fact that it got such a bad name during the first half of the 20th century (and into the '80s in this state). The temptation is to become coercive. Anything that tempting in the hands of politicians is a danger – and one elite's targets will tend to change when a different elite gains power. This is the way of things human.
A woman's choices are between her and her insurance company, or her and her doctor if she can pay out-of-pocket. Up to the issue of child protection, which is a legitimate social interest. If I want a test for Down's Syndrome or CF or take birth control pills or get sterilized, it's nobody's business. Certainly not the business of some self-styled 'New Eugenics' buff.
The passing reproductive fads of a handful of elites have never been known to much affect humanity's gene pool. Most humans don't need wealth and clever doctors or even Viagra to accomplish reproduction, and most of 'em don't have access to a doctor before or after. I'm not worried, but I am vigilant.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Greetings, folks:
First, let me thank you all for your comments. In general, I have found you folks considerably more tolerant (and a lot less vituperative) than some of the potty-mouths over at PT. I got into academics because I admired the Socratic ideal, in which we treat each other as a community of scholars with a common goal: following the logic of argument and evidence to wherever it leads. That's what I'm hoping will happen this summer.
As to some of the reservations expressed above, let me say right off that we will NOT be arguing about whether any particular religion is "true" or not. I believe very strongly that the answer to this question is not in any way within the province of the empirical sciences, and will therefore try as hard as I can to steer our in-class discussion away from this particular line of inquiry.
Furthermore, and in line with the spirit of the previous ground-rule, what we will be considering is the evolution of the capacity for religious experience (including, but not limited to, religious beliefs), and once again not any particular religion per se. I intend to present the class with this analogy: that the capacity for religious experience is like the capacity for language. That is, the capacity is innate, but the actual language one learns is exactly that: learned.
Indeed, this analogy goes deeper, because as evolutionary linguists have discovered (following Chompsky's lead) is that all languages share a "universal grammar," the structure of which is apparently wired into the human central nervous system. If this were not the case, it would probably be impossible to actually translate from one language to another. Since we can do this, there must be some deep commonalities between them, which go beyond surface differences (and also probably constrain them to some degree).
The same appears to be the case for religions; although they vary widely from culture to culture (and indeed, from person to person), they all have some commonalities, which comparative anthropologists have taken some pains to delineate. Pascal Boyer's book, Religion Explained is probably the best introduction to these concepts, and so we will probably begin by reading his book and discussing the criteria that he uses to identify and analyze religious experiences and practices.
As to my biases, I am the first to admit that I have them. I think everyone does, and that to not lay them on the table right in the beginning is not only disingenuous, it is downright dishonest. Ernst Mayr expressed this idea best: he said that he always made his arguments as clearly and as forcefully as possible, with as few qualifications and amendments as honesty allowed, so that both the people who agreed with him and (especially) those who disagreed with him would know exactly where he stood and what to agree with and what to attack. That's my goal as well.
And so, as I have explained at my blog and on others, I am strongly leaning toward the "capacity for religion as direct adaptation" hypothesis. The other two hypotheses are the "epiphenomenon" and "mind virus" hypotheses, as exemplified by the writings of Pascal Boyer and Richard Dawkins, respectively. Having argued about the distinctions between these three hypotheses elsewhere, let me say now that it may be that all three play a part in producing the human capacity for religious experience (which includes belief and practice). Scott Atran has already argued for combining the "adaptation" and "epiphenomenon" hypotheses, and I think that a reasonably strong argument can also be made for the "brain modules that predispose us toward particular kinds of mind viruses" hypothesis, which of course combines #2 and #3.
Finally, to those who just can't stop arguing for the "my religion is TRUE and therefore any other explanation is FALSE by definition" position, let me say that taking that position in my class this summer would get you massively ignored. As I have repeatedly stressed to my students in both my introductory biology courses and my evolution courses, the natural sciences are not about TRUTH, especially TRUTH BY DEFINITION. Science is about our best guess as to how the universe works, based on the evidence we have so far, and that a scientific theory is simply an hypothesis that has not yet been shown to be false based on empirical evidence.
Yes, there are other ways to argue about aspects of reality, such as whether 2 + 2 = 4, but mathematics (and ethics, logic, metaphysics, and a lot of other topics of dispute among academics) are NOT empirical sciences (indeed, I refer to them as non-empirical sciences in my courses) and therefore outside the scope of my course.
I hope this helps clarify what we will be doing this summer (and, more importantly to some people, what we will NOT be doing). I welcome any comments, suggestions, and especially criticisms, as long as they are presented in the spirit of collegiality with which I run my courses. If you want to cuss and call people names and avoid making arguments, especially on the basis of evidence and reason, there are lots of other places (such as Panda's thumb and Uncommon Descent) where you can do that. If you do so, I will not respond to you in any way, and hope that the rest of those who still respect the principles of free and open inquiry will do the same.
In other words, people who use the F word and people who use fart noises in an attempt to make logical arguments are wasting everyone's time…especially mine.
–Allen
*********************************
Allen D. MacNeill, Senior Lecturer
The Biology Learning Skills Center
G-24 Stimson Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
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phone: 607-255-3357 (Allen's office)
email: adm6@cornell.edu
website: http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/
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"I had at last got a theory by which to work"
-The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
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Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
stunney:
I don't think MacNeill or anyone else would argue that the adaptivity of religion affects its claims to truth directly. But it does work against arguments like the one you made the other day to the effect that "six billion believers can't be wrong". Yes, they can, if that's how their brains are structured.
Here's a radical idea to try on for size: truth is determined by the survival of ideas more than any predetermined objective reality. Our brains produce a representation of the universe that is oriented towards the survival of ourselves and our ideas. The ones that survive winnowing are the true ones.
The implications of this are that in the long run, religion might be true by virtue of it being adaptive. Maybe atheistic cultures all die off because they don't have good models for sin or free will, and it drives them mad. Maybe their science gets too powerful and they kill themselves off, while the more religious cultures don't get to the point of inventing thermonuclear weapons. (Imagine this natural selection happening over the space of all possible civilizations, or over many different planets, lets say). This is sort of the theist version of anthropic cosmology — all surviving cultures will be theistic.
Comment by mtraven — March 26, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Alan Mac_Neill:
In earlier years I spent some time professionally translating and interpreting different languages into English. I also familiarized myself with specific aptitudes needed to excel in that field as well as cognitive function associated with specific brain location. I'm not convinced you have an analogous phenomenon to a "religious capacity." The latter appears to be a function of our capacity to logically reason which runs counter to a current popular meme associating religion with more irrational emotional responses.
Our capacity to learn languages is linked to aptitides corresponding to two senses- hearing and sight. The ability to retain sensory data is an indicator of linguistic aptitude. Nothing really surprising but it contrasts with the way we learn religious precepts. Religious precepts are conceptually different. What one really needs in order to provide convincing data for an adaptive response paradigm is show how cognitive functions related to abstract conceptualization are particular to religious concepts and not part of a more general capacity for abstract reason.
Comment by Bradford — March 26, 2007 @ 10:17 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Bradford wrote:
"What one really needs in order to provide convincing data for an adaptive response paradigm is show how cognitive functions related to abstract conceptualization are particular to religious concepts and not part of a more general capacity for abstract reason."
Thank you for a very concise and constructive suggestion. I think that Boyer has shown precisely that religious beliefs and practices are, indeed, at least partially specific to relgion and not simply the result of a concatenation of other general capacities. That's why we'll be reading his book first. Scott Atran and David Sloan Wilson have proposed an alternative hypothesis: that the mental and sensory/motor processes that constitute religious behavior and cognition are themselves adaptive, rather than simply epiphenomena/pleiotropies of other adaptations.
Personally, I side with Atran and Wilson, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. Maybe that will happen this summer…
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Greetings, Joy:
Let me just say that, having just finished reading "Hard-Wired for God, Take 2" (and having read and agreed with most of your comments on environmentalism in general and global warming in particular), I find your viewpoint both refreshing and intriguing. Coming from my own tradition in the natural sciences, I would say that what the Hindu/Yogic traditions have discovered as "chakras" are essentially the same things that cognitive and evolutionary psychologists have discovered as "modules" and "evolved psychological mechanisms." Indeed, if such things exist (and, on the basis of my reading of the literature, they do), then we should not be surprised if two independent traditions find chakras/modules doing essentially the same things and located in the same places in the CNS.
And so, I will go out on a limb and suggest that you, like me, believe that we are indeed "hard-wired" for religious experiences. I think that this hard-wiring is the result of the expression of genes via sensory/nervous/motor systems and modified by interactions with the environment, all of which have the effect of increasing our relative reproductive success over time – they are adaptation, in other words. You may express these ideas in different ways, but I think we are talking about the same underlying tendencies.
Where we may differ is where we think the underlying tendencies come from. I think they have evolved by natural selection, primarily in the context of intra-group cohesion versus inter-group competition, in which chronic/episodic warfare has had the single largest effect on differential reproductive success. But that's just one hypothesis, and I'm willing to entertain others (that's what my summer seminar will be all about).
–Allen
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 11:07 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Allen,
I'm a little suprised by the question. Since over 70% of the world population is religious and offers such a powerful cultural force it would seem that from the Darwinian perspective the survival benefits should be obvious. Of course, as you say, this does not mean religioius sentiment is true, but how could it have found such a prominent place if it was not selected?
Comment by Steve Petermann — March 26, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Steve:
My sentiments exactly. I think it would actually be harder to find evidence against the hypothesis that the capacity for religion is an evolutionary adaptation, rather than for it, especially if you conflate the "direct adaptation" and "epiphenomenon" hypotheses (which are, after all, both evolutionary arguments).
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Allen,
Of course, this is coming from a Darwinian perspective. Another perspective is that religious sentiment comes from a universal existential issue that all sentient beings face. While religious sentiment may have adaptive advantages, that may be because hominids intuit a deeper level to reality that they want to tap into which provides an ultimate sense of meaing and purpose for their lives. Darwinian theory only provides, at most, a proximate meaing.
If it is so obvious from the Darwinian perspective, why the course?
Comment by Steve Petermann — March 26, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Alan_MacNeil,
Concerning the analogy between the capacity for language and the capacity for religious beliefs: Our capacity for language involves physical components. Since we do have vocal chords and hearing apparatus, it doesn't take a great leap of faith to think that we were supposed to have a capacity for language. For what other reason would we have evolved these physical parts?
Regarding the capacity for religious beliefs, are you saying that we evolved in such a way that we are supposed to have religious beliefs? By comparing our capacity for language to a capacity for religious belief, aren't you implying that religious belief itself is non-trivial and necessary?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 11:54 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
The main reason for the course is to get together with a small group of people and try to figure out which of the three hypotheses has the most support, both in terms of logical construction and empirical evidence. I think it's still an open question whether the capacity for religious experience is itself adaptive, or whether it simply "piggybacks" on some other adaptation(s), as suggested by Boyer.
I find that the process of arguing these things out with a group of committed people who disagree passionately (but politely) is the best way to come to clarity on questions like this one.
I guess I read too many Socratic dialogs when I was of an impressionable age…
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 11:57 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Hmm, I don't see how this follows. Suppose there are aliens. Are you saying that it would be flat-out impossible to translate their language into ours, or vice versa, even if they were referring to the same things we were? Such a conclusion seems outright absurd. Surely we could in principle, with enough work, infer the meanings of their symbols based on how they used them.
This isn't to deny that languages have some degree of similar underlying structure, but it seems fairly obvious that the principle reason one language can be translated into another is that even though the words are different in different languages, and usually the language structure too, the meanings – the things being referred to and described – are the same. Isn't it just obvious that the reason we can find out, for instance, that "sakana" translates to "fish" because both actually refer to fish?
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it seems like your assumptions are leading you to an untenable position of having to deny the distinction between words with their meanings, or perhaps even of denying that there really are any meanings.
Comment by Deuce — March 26, 2007 @ 11:58 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Is my last post (addressed to Joy) in the moderation queue, or has it been lost? Please let me know so I can re-post it if necessary.
Comment by Mesk — March 26, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Deuce:
Chomsky's "deep grammar" hypothesis is based on the observation that all human languages share certain characteristics, which makes translation between them possible. While it is the case that, for example, an alien race that communicated using binary code might be possible, I am not convinced that all possible languages would work this way. For example, in Orson Scott Card's Xenocide, an alien race that communicates entirely via pheromones is postulated. I honestly don't think that we could translate such a language directly into any human language, since the latter all include nouns and verbs (or clumps of phonemes that function as nouns and verbs), but pheromones don't (indeed, can't).
So yes, words do indeed have meanings, and that's what are interconvertable when one translates from one language into another. However, some meanings are so different that they aren't mappable onto each other, and hence aren't translatable.
In the same way, I think Atran and Boyer have made a strong argument for the same kind of underlying "grammar" of religious experience, including such things as supernatural entities with the characteristics of desembodied intentionality, omniscience (of a sort), ability to read thoughts, etc. Indeed, if there were no "universals" in religions, they would be totally unintelligible to non-believers, and hence proselytizing would be literally impossible.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 27, 2007 @ 12:09 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:19 am
It's worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of religious people throughout history and around the world adopted their beliefs for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with logic or reason. There were religious beliefs long before there was theology; and even today, most religious people have never heard of Augustine, Aquinas or their non-Christian equivalents. Instead, the vast majority of believers adopt their religion because it is the religion of their parents and of their society, and because engaging in religious activities provide a variety of psychological and social benefits.
There's a common fallacy that runs that the sophisticated logic of modern theology falsifies the notion that religion has an irrational basis. It's easy to imagine this when you are one of the minority of believers who have attempted to justify your beliefs through logic and reason. But this does not explain the vast majority of believers who have never contemplated the notion that their beliefs might be wrong or their rituals pointless; they simply believe. The bulk of religious belief across time and space has nothing to do with "our capacity to logically reason".
Philosophers like Atran and Boyer aren't interested in debating theological fineries with the tiny nub of theologians and thinkers that hangs off the side of the unreflective mass of believers. Quite reasonably, they're interested in what motivates the religious majority; and this motivation is rarely rational.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 12:19 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Alan_MacNeill:
The underlying grammer concept appears equivalent to a description of an underlying order linking common denominators that can be true of many fields. For example, the capcity to generate and grasp differing forms of music has underlying grammer in the form of pitch, timbre, rhythm and tonal memory. There is great variation in them but collectively they form universals common to widely different forms of music. A case can be made for many other fields of study. If there are identifiable underlying universals and varied logical linkings constituting varietal forms you then have what- the basis for an adaptation concept?
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 12:26 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Mesk:
I do not think your description is historically accurate. Logic and reason permeate most religious concepts. That does not mean they are correct. Most are incorrect IMO. However they are not irrational. For example, origin stories are a religious universal. There is causality intrinsic to origins. Animals do not dwell on abstract notions of causality but humans do. Morality is another religious universal. What could be more abstract and intellectual than the justification of moral behavioral codes? Sure you can reply that something as simple as an emotional response to having one's club taken away and a consequent rule against stealing are not great intellectual achievements but underlying issues of right and wrong are inherently rational and their exposition and justification entails generous use of logic. You do not have to read Aquinas to have a grasp for these things.
Having spent much time with devout believers and those who were raised in a religious culture but are not religious I say that very few people have not given thought to beliefs. Many reject beliefs because they have analyzed them or their implications. Others are religious in form only because of similar analysis and rejection. Among believers doubts and thoughts about religious precepts are very common. Rationality pervades attention to religion- both positive and negative.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 12:46 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Bradford asked:
"If there are identifiable underlying universals and varied logical linkings constituting varietal forms you then have what- the basis for an adaptation concept?"
Yes, indeed! I have just finished preparing the outlines for a series of 36 lectures on evolutionary psychology for The Teaching Company, and this is indeed one of the main arguments I make in the lecture series. Included in that series is a lecture entitled "Toward and Evolutionary Aesthetics" in which I discuss art, dance, literature/story-telling, and music (among other human activities) as being the visible expressions of a set of underlying pan-specific evolutionary adaptations. If you would like to read the outline, I'd be happy to forward you a copy; just send me an email: adm6{atsign}cornell{dot}edu.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 27, 2007 @ 12:48 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Alan_MacNeill:
I need details specific to answering my concern of how we correlate human activities to adaptations. I do not see (nor would I expect to in a forum like this) the layering and linkage of physical and intellectual aptitudes to adaptations. One commenter brought up an interesting point in mentioning vocal chords. We use them to communicate language and to sing. A primary adaptation can confer secondary utility. The secondary advantage would not necessarily be a product of adaptation even if it was derived from a primary event that was.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 12:58 am
March 27th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Western Christianity has a long tradition of theological reasoning, such that almost all concepts in Christianity come with much intellectual baggage attached – if you are cognisant of that baggage. But most people aren't. Most people accept their religious concepts for two major reasons: (1) they make sense at some intuitive level; and (2) that's just what they've been taught.
When you see a religious concept, it is indeed permeated with logic, at least to some extent. But that's not true for most believers.
In this conversation, I want you to bear in mind that when I talk about the average believer, I'm not talking about the average white American Christian who frequents internet forums devoted to archaic topics. I'm talking about the average human being. At this point in time, I guess the average human being is probably a dirt-poor farmer plowing a field in China or India. In a broader historical sense, the average human being is probably a hunter-gatherer living a semi-nomadic existence in a small group of 50 to 100 people. I'm talking about the religious beliefs of this person. That said, the same basic concepts – that is, generally unreflective acceptance of the religious beliefs of those around you – apply even to many (if not most) people in "enlightened" modern churches as well.
Thank you – morality is a perfect analogy. As Socrates found, asking people on the street to justify their moral beliefs can lead to unpleasant consequences, and not a whole lot of rational response. Most people simply know what is right or wrong "in their gut". That feeling can shift if sufficient numbers of their otherwise like-minded neighbours express contrary opinions, but at its core most people's moral beliefs are profoundly emotive and non-rational.
Don't believe me? Stop someone on the street and ask whether they believe that abortion is wrong. Then ask them why they believe that. Nine times out of ten, the answer will not be a coherent, rational statement justifying their beliefs; it will be a simple, visceral, emotive answer.
Most people think with their gut, not their head, most of the time. That's true for morality, and it's true for religion.
You're making the enormous mistake of assuming that the religious people you mingle with represent "typical" believers. They don't, I can assure you. They almost certainly represent a tiny slice of humanity, a miniscule and abnormally highly educated and privileged proportion of religious believers. Go talk to a yak herder on the Tibetan steppes, or a !Kung hunter-gatherer in the Kalahari, about their religious beliefs, and tell me how much time they've spent contemplating the theological minutiae of their religious beliefs.
But even among your enlightened friends and church-mates, I can guarantee that most beliefs are not rationally justified. It's no coincidence that people who go to the same church tend to hold similar beliefs on all sorts of matters that are quite different from those of the people from the church down the road. The difference isn't that one church attracts more logical people than the other; it's that most beliefs are adopted due to group-think and internalised biases rather than reflective thought.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 1:20 am
March 27th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Hi, Bradford,
To be consistent, I think that any long standing tradition that was derived from language would also have to be considered as adaptive. In the Darwinian theory, there should not be any gaps or discontinuity. The problem, taking singing as an example, is that singing is not only a targeted use of language. It also uses other, lateral derivations that themselves were derived from language…counting for one thing, and religion itself. Song in antiquity, in Western culture, has it roots in the chorus that sang to the god during the greek festivals.
In society, there is very little that cannot be shown to have language at its generative base. And there are many disciplines that are interdependent…to the point where it is getting difficult to not see the interweavings.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 27, 2007 @ 1:48 am
March 27th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Me:
What I really meant to say was something along the lines of "any long standing tradition that had language in the sequence that led to its development would also have to be considered as adaptive".
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 27, 2007 @ 2:09 am
March 27th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Hi Mesk,
I've gone through the moderation queue, but there was no comments from either you or any other posters. So if someone else hasn't already approved it, I'm afraid you'll have to re-type it.
Comment by Krauze — March 27, 2007 @ 2:58 am
March 27th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Krauze,
That's interesting… I've now tried to post the same text twice, and both times it's made all the right noises, but the comment simply hasn't appeared. Fortunately I've got the comment saved off-line, so I can post it again later – but I think stunney has had the same thing happen recently, and for anyone who doesn't routinely save their posts this would be pretty annoying. Maybe Guts could track down the issue?
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 3:14 am
March 27th, 2007 at 3:45 am
mtraven wrote:
I made no such argument.
What you're referring to was basically a statement of sociological fact—most people do find theism more intuitively plausible than atheistic materialism——-followed by, not an argument, but merely a suggestion that regarding that many people as being stupid when it comes to religious belief may indicate that atheists are maybe missing something, rather than being smarter than most. Notice the word 'may'. It's hardly an apodictic claim that theism is true because billions of people are theists. Which is how you mis-characterized it.
So, why the blatant mis-characterization?
On the other hand, if billions of people tell me there's such a thing as electricity, and I adamantly believe there's no such thing and that it can all be explained by a combination of phlogiston, tiny, tiny fairies, and the ghosts of the dead, you'd be the first to point to the overwhelming number of electricity believers as being a prima facie reason for me to seriously consider whether I may be missing something, and am possibly not as smart as I think am.
Btw, I don't know if you saw this post or not. Or this one
I have been convalescing, which gave me lots of free time to participate, but I will soon have less of that, and I was away from my computer for much of today. I'd also like to catch up on reading the posts in certain threads and digesting them All this to say that I expect to be posting less frequently.
Btw2, I don't understand how the moderation system at TT works. How does it work?
Comment by stunney — March 27, 2007 @ 3:45 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Mesk wrote:
You say more of the same in a subsequent post.
Forget religion for a moment.
How many people holding a given scientific belief are able to rationally justify it?
I accost a young Valley Girl, who's, like, totally, you know, a believer in the existence of, like, electricity. I ask her, "Hey, do you believe in electricity? And she's like, I guess, like totally. Why? Define electricity and recite Maxwell's equations. And she goes—huh? Who's Maxwell—like, is he on TV or something?.
Ask an Indian villager if he believes that the bags of fertilizer which he's received from an international aid agency will help to produce higher crop yields. He says he does, though he's never used them before. Why do you believe that, you ask—explain the relevant biochemistry. He has never heard of biochemistry. He has no idea how the fertilizer works. He just takes it on faith, because he thinks the aid folks are kind, though he'd never encountered them before–this is their first visit to that particular village.
Ask a cab driver in Joizey to justify his belief, which he has just alluded to using the sentences, "Man, am I glad to see you. I've been waiting for a fare since the friggin Big Bang!", that there really was a Big Bang. "I saw a guy on TV once—wossisname, Sagan, I think. He explained it all, but there'll be another Big Bang before I'm able to explain it to you, mister." You get in the cab and ask him to take you to Christchurch. He actually takes you to St Patrick's. You say, "Hey, this isn't Christchurch—this is St Patrick's!" The cabbie replies, "Listen mister, if He's in town, this is where He'll be.":wink:
How many people believe in the existence of atoms? What percentage of them could rationally justify that belief?
Go to Target, or Wal-mart, or the mall, and ask Mexican immigrants if they believe that the sun is more than a million miles away and, if so, what justifies that belief. See how far you get.
Ask a cheese merchant in Sicily if he believes in radioactive substances. Ask him to explain what makes them radioactive, or to justify his belief.
Ask an Australian surfer to explain or justify the ideas of common descent and evolution.
Very few people know any philosophy of science. Very few know the science behind basic microphysical or astronomical concepts.
"Scientists Say So, and Look At My Cellphone, Isn't It Cool What It Can Do?" doesn't cut it as a rational justification of scientific beliefs.
The vast majority believe in science because it works, meaning it meets their needs and goals.
The vast majority believe in religion because it works, meaning it meets their needs and goals. The two main ones being ethics and spirituality, in my opinion.
Religion has long been, and still is, essentially the belief that we live in an objectively morally significant world whose moral character cannot be reduced to or explained away by matter, and which has ultimate importance for our existence as persons.
So it is very tied up with the strong sense that the vast majority of people feel regarding morality, that it is irreducible and objective. More on this idea here.
Now this is key: people do not believe that morality is an illusion. They view it as normative for their lives. Furthermore, they find it very intuitively the case that morality has a transcendent source which, because it's morality—interpersonal norms—that's so sourced, must itself be a personal rather than an impersonal reality. Only thus, they reason, can life have ultimate meaning and purpose.
Would they use words like 'metaphysical', 'transcendent', 'objective', or 'the non-naturalizability of moral and rational normativity'? No, for the most part. But, as a wise man once said, so what?
They wouldn't use words like, 'Chomskyan linguistics', 'recessive gene', 'empirical'or 'methodological paradigm' either.
But it's clear that many are intuiting Kant's argument from morality for God's existence (or similar). Like Kant, they're moved by 'the starry skies above, and the moral law within'.
How on earth can you call that 'irrational', when the same idea, suitably dressed up, was rationally defended by one of the most rational men who ever lived?
This is how people reason:
Mind, Reason, Consciousness, Moral Awareness, the Beautiful Order of Nature Can Best Be Explained By A Mighty Mind Who (Maybe) Cares About Us.
(I throw the 'maybe' in there to cater to believers in deism, which I critique in the second essay—on Flew—here.
Comment by stunney — March 27, 2007 @ 7:02 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Third attempt to post this (yay, it works – bizarrely, I had to post one small part of it and then add the rest in editing, if I tried to post the whole thing it just didn't appear):
I think you'll find that essentially no-one advocating increased reproductive choice self-styles themselves under the banner of eugenics. The "New Eugenics" moniker was coined by their opponents.
This is a silly argument: one could just as easily argue that no birth control should be allowed, lest the government take control of it and start chemically sterilising poor people.
No-one that I know of is advocating that we hand over control of our uteri to the government, and the people labelled by their opponents as the "New Eugenicists" are almost all arguing the exact opposite: that people should be given the freedom to make decisions about their own children's future.
Erm, yes. That's the whole point of the movement towards increased reproductive freedom, including PGD for any genetically-determined trait that parents wish to favour. The idea is that parents should be able to make the decisions about their children, not their neighbours or their government.
I agree. PGD for non-disease traits is a process that will be limited to those who can afford it and are willing to suffer the uncertainties and indignities of IVF, and will have limited impact on the gene pool of the population as a whole. As technologies become cheaper and less invasive they will no doubt be more widely adopted, but it's pretty clear that the vast majority of humans will continue to have babies the good old-fashioned way.
I suspect you'll find that it isn't a "passing fad", however. Once society's elites see the promise of selection for alleles known to increase height, attractiveness and IQ – all traits considerably affected by genetics, and all of which are substantially correlated with financial success – they're unlikely to be in a hurry to relinquish it.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 7:09 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Mesk:
I'm taking a snippet from what you wrote to illustrtate a point. Mac_Neill's goal is to investigate claims of religion as an adaptive response. The two examples I gave- origin accounts and moral codes- are intended to address the adaptive response within a sub-question related to rationality. It was the formulation of moral codes and origin accounts that was "religious" in nature and needing explanation by MacNeill's group. That formulation is the result of our reasoning capacity and requires the application of logic- even if the outcoming precepts are erroneous.
What you have done is analyze, not the evidence of religious formulations themselves, but rather the reactions of people to them centuries later. Their non-receptivity to the relevant religious concepts may be an indicator of a lack of "religiosity" on their part. The mindless "going along with the rituals without underlying convictions" reaction may indicate a healthy fear of societal reactions to them if they do otherwise. That is a very rational response that may be confusd with an irrational attachment to religion. As you pointed out people tend to do and believe that which they are taught. But that is not the measure of irrationality. After all most people also believe that which they are taught in science classes.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 7:12 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:21 am
AnaxagorasRules:
This accounts for my skepticism of an ability to correlate adaptation to specific functions. Music and language are two distinct aptitudes that are expressed with vocal chords. It is easy enough to construct reasons why vocal chords have adaptive advantages but not so easy to explain them in relation to music without assuming their generation as a result of a prior, unrelated adaptive response. If we can cite inherent ambiguity in this instance, why not in others?
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 7:21 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Allen:
I agree that some meanings are not translatable. Jokes are often difficult to translate from one language to another (obvious when one regularly watches subtitled TV shows, as I do), for example because understanding a joke requires some historical knowledge (e.g. about a country's royal family).
However, I don't think the pheromone argument is very compelling. In a sense we, too, have a chemical/electrical language which we use inside our brains. It seems to me there must be a mapping from acoustic words into chemical/electrical signals that are then somehow analyzed by the neural networks in our brains.
Comment by Raevmo — March 27, 2007 @ 7:56 am
March 27th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Mesk suggests that religious belief is irrational in the case of most people. I think he implies a contrast with scientific belief.
I would point out that this stance appears to ignore three important philosophical rejoinders.
The first I've already mentioned above, and that is Plantinga's argument that religious belief may be properly basic for any given person. A small taste excerpted from the linked interview with Varghese:
.
In other words, not all of our beliefs are or even can be the result of rational inference; some beliefs must be epistemically basic or foundational. How does one justify a belief in the reliability of our cognitive equipment? You can't, non-circularly. Memory, sense-perception, belief in other minds, belief in one's own continuing personal identity, belief in the past, belief in the reality of the external world, belief in the reliability of reason itself are foundational. Plantinga goes on to argue that if all these beliefs are rational to hold even though they're basic rather than inferred, why can't belief in God be basic or foundational also, and also not irrational. And he develops a positive case for theistic belief as properly basic for some people in some circumstances.
The two other rejoinders are famous and both stem from Hume. They call into question the rationality of induction, and of belief in causation, both of which are, of course, central to science, and it's a problem that continues to bedevil the best, most rational minds in the world.
Hume is often cited in debates about religion, morality, and personal identity. He is less often cited in debates about science; but he was in fact an equal opportunity skeptic who undermined (and continues to undermine) any simplistic faith in the rationality of science.
Comment by stunney — March 27, 2007 @ 8:31 am
March 27th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I don't see why this is unless language is being conflated with the things represented by language. Why couldn't some pheremones be used to symbolize objects (nouns), actions (verbs), and properties (adjectives), etc? And if they can't, then in what sense is it even a language?
It seems to me that the most coherent reason for why our languages all share a grammar is that reality consists of things, with properties, that do stuff in various ways, and our language takes the form it does necessarily, by virtue of the reality we're describing. When we refer to objects we have nouns, we get adjectives by referring to their properties, verbs by referring to the stuff they do, and adverbs by referring to the way they do it, and so forth. It seems to be that the alternative, attributing these things to our nervous system or what have you, forces one into a radical sort of post-modernist constructivism, where we're making up reality with our language rather than discovering it.
Comment by Deuce — March 27, 2007 @ 8:40 am
March 27th, 2007 at 9:53 am
I agree with much of this. In fact I've long argued that most people accept scientific statements for precisely analogous reasons to why they hold religious beliefs: such statements provide apparent explanations of otherwise inexplicable phenomena, are handed down from sources of authority who seem credible, and are accepted by pretty much everyone else around them. The fact that most people don't really understand what scientists (or theologians) are talking about seems to provide no real barrier to acceptance, so long as acceptance is socially acceptable.
The truth of this is nicely illustrated by young-Earth creationism. YECs contentedly agree with scientists in most fields of science; but as soon as science clashes with their strongly-held and socially reinforced religious beliefs they are more than happy to discard it. Their acceptance of science is not based on evidence, but is in fact contingent on the consistency of that science with their social and psychological environment. The same is true for most people, although of course the precise beliefs that will need to be discarded are dependent on their precise social environment.
I think this is another wonderful example of an educated, intelligent religious person inferring semi-sophisticated theology where none exists. It's simply not true that most (or even many) religious people adopt their beliefs due to an intuitive notion that morality entails the existence of God. Rather, they adopt their beliefs in a particular deity, as children, because that is the deity that their parents, friends and extended social group worship. Later, they maintain their belief largely because of the profound social benefits of doing so, and sometimes also because they have had one or two experiences (coincidences, lucky escapes, or even, perversely, tragedies) that seem to them best explained by the existence of a supernatural entity.
Of course we can go back and forth on this all night, since we're both really just stating opinions. I'd like to bring some actual data into this – hopefully tomorrow, if I have time.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 9:53 am
March 27th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Hopefully it's clear that there was no contrast implied – I see the two situations as quite analogous, with most people accepting both scientific and religious statements based for the same non-rational reasons. Professional scientists and theologians are another matter entirely.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 9:58 am
March 27th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Comment by inunison — March 27, 2007 @ 10:34 am
March 27th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I think you may be falling into the trap of thinking that humans came up with reason and logic somewhere around the time that Newton kicked off modern science (or to be more charitable, during the time of the ancient Greeks, when formalizing logic became big). Okay, I'm being a bit sarcastic, but you get the idea.
The point is, people believed lots of stuff before the Greeks, before Aquinas, and before modern science. That doesn't mean that their beliefs had "nothing to do with logic or reason". Logic and reason were already around, and if they hadn't been, there wouldn't have been anything for the Greeks to work with.
It's not just religious beliefs that your typical man on the street cannot give you a precise rational formulation for. This is true of beliefs in general, including scientific ones. This doesn't demonstrate anything, however. It's quite possible that even though people may hold a belief (a scientific one, for instance) without being able to provide good reasons, that the belief originated for good reasons from someone else. It may be that they hold the belief because they consider the people they got it from to be trustworthy, which may be a good reason itself. It's also possible (nay, likely) that people may hold a belief for good reasons, but not be able to articulate their reasons on the spot when pressed. To give an example, Yogi Berra, in replying to being asked what time it was, said "You mean now?". Most people would regard this as funny, as do you, most likely. But can you tell me why you find it funny? Do you think most people could, if asked? (Hint: it has something to do with logic)
Finally, nobody can give a complete list of reasons for why they believe anything if pressed enough, because all our beliefs eventually terminate in our basic intuitions about reality. Why, for instance, do you believe that reason is a guide to truth? Of course, it's impossible to give a non question-begging response to that question, because trying to give a reason to believe that it's true that reason is a guide to truth assumes that reason is a guide to truth. But every single belief we have relies on that assumption.
Another example is the belief that people besides yourself are conscious. This is an undoubtedly ancient belief that far predates modern philosophy and science. If you were to ask the typical person why they believe that other people have minds, you'd probably get a similar reaction as you would if you asked them about religion. There are reasons to believe in other minds that can be formalized, but very few people could articulate such formalizations. Does that mean that the belief, for billions of people, is irrational? Wouldn't it be absurd to try to account for the belief that others are conscious, without even putting on the table the possibility that it originates because other people are, in fact, conscious?
Now, this doesn't prove that religious belief is rational, but it does mean that it's irrational to assume from the get-go that religious belief is irrational. There's no easy out that goes "Most people in history can't give rational reasons for their religion, and I'm not religious, therefore religion must be explained by irrational causes". Besides, following the logic of this approach to its conclusion would force us to accept that all our beliefs were irrational. Any honest, reasonable attempt to account for religion must at least have on the table the possibility that it comes about because there's something to it.
Comment by Deuce — March 27, 2007 @ 11:04 am
March 27th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Allen MacNeill:
Thank you, Dr. MacNeill. I claim no special insight into what is or is not big-t 'Truth' per religious traditions or even formalized beliefs. It's just that I've got a rather strong connection ("blended sensation" is what synesthesia means), so I'm guessing maybe I get some crossovers from the more esoteric sensory processing modules too. A way of seeing, in Don Juan's characterization of 'Seeing' as describing all-sense.
Yes, I do think we are hard-wired, and the physical evidence tends to confirm this. But I do think you should be wary of attributions to standard NDS theory when talking exclusively about human beings, because a lot of it simply doesn't apply to human beings. Who have been practicing birth control to limit the size of their families/tribes to something manageable.
Though it is semi-interesting that general population increase has only recently (within the last century and a half or so) come to present extremely serious threats both to our own species' survivability and to the earth itself through our "rape of the environment" to grow enough food and produce enough energy to keep us going. Almost as if we let go of some innately understood restriction. Or maybe because the "religification" of the world – complete with sectarian notions of Divine Right that look more Darwinian than Divine – included the denigration and in many cases the purging of traditional healing practices that included birth control.
Limiting one's family size to something one can provide attention and ample resources for is a way that human beings have controlled their own evolution. Almost as if we innately understand the Malthusian formulae, and chose to circumvent it. My 'neck of the woods' has been continually inhabited (in season) by native tribes for a thousand years (and probably more), until the white guys took it over. These abundant, ancient mountains host some of the world's most tenacious biodiversity. There is a field a couple of ridges over that I call "The Women's Meadow" along a seldom-used trail to the high country. It's one of those natural balds that are scattered here and there, supporting a cornucopia of herbs but just a few skinny trees that don't grow big.
Growing in that bald are 4 different herbs (that I could identify and trace) that are traditionally used to regulate menstruation, treat cramps and menopause, and regulate fertility. With names like "Maidenhair" and "Lady Slipper" and "Squaw Root" and such. And I have found a general truism in herbal lore to be mostly true – that for every useful plant that grows and is indicated for a certain condition, its equal-and-opposite antidote grows within eyesight. So where there's an estrogen precursor (promotes fertility), there's an antidote nearby (diminishes fertility). When the white guys killed off all the "witches" quite a lot of useful pharmacological knowledge was hidden.
Anyway, humans do seem to defy evolution's mandates quite regularly (and naturally). So I'd advise treading carefully in that minefield.
I see historical and anthropological evidence that the capacity to experience so-called "mystical states" pre-existed civilization by a long-shot. But I also see evidence (like in the ancient writings OF civilization) that understanding that the capacity was internal rather than external (a projection) was progressive and took some time. Where at first only a few 'special' humans had strong capacity, the formalizations (specific beliefs and sociopolitical constructs) used the authority of those 'special' people to awaken the capacity in followers by means of their origin mythologies and songs (oral traditions).
At some point the capacities must become so internalized – and civilization so inclusive – that it must speak directly to the experiencer. This is sort of the ultimate personalization of the god-concept. Christianity's history hasn't been all that great for its authoritarian corruptions either, but it does lead toward a certain direction that speaks directly to the personalization of the god-concept. I think this is evident in its notable splintering into so many sub-sects and congregations when it lost secular power. That's a good thing, IMO, thus a natural progression favorable to evolutionary survival.
What we end up doing with it – making ourselves extinct because we can, or learning to deal with one another as if we really are all the same species – will again be a brash defiance of NDS's simplistic formula. We dominate this planet strongly. All of evolution – and survival – is in our hands.
I'm glad you are offering what looks to be a fascinating course this summer. It looks to me like a pretty good start on getting past the F-words and farts from the angry juvenile delinquents, and on to some better understandings of ourselves.
Comment by Joy — March 27, 2007 @ 11:21 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Mesk:
It appears that the title comes primarily from the press, though the promoters don't seem to mind. Even Dawkins embraces the title when publicly arguing for dialogue on the matter. Which seems to me to be an attempt to rehabilitate the title from its bad reputation. Since I've seen several critics say in the past week or so that ID supporters who aren't DI clones should pick a different name for it, I'd make the same suggestion to the 'New Eugenicists'.
Oh, this one isn't difficult at all. Now that we're actually engineering and deploying both instant-replays of staple food crops as well as pharma-crops (corn and such that produce pharmaceutical products and/or industrial chemicals) Monsanto alone could sterilize everybody in a single growing season – then charge megabucks for rich people to access the antidote so they could produce children.
Of course, that's probably not the real reason Monsanto executives forbade GMO foods in their own corporate cafeterias… Probably had more to do with those 'extra' large proteins that turned up in their soybeans and doubled soy allergies wherever they turned up in food. Food (wheat, soy, corn, rice) as WMD – now, THAT is scary! Of course, mega-gigacorps aren't governments. Are they?
Of course they should. And that's nobody's business but their own. A nobler enterprise would be to assure that all humans have access to the products of science and technology that allow for such dreams. But I don't see any 'New Eugenicists' – or any governments – arguing for that.
Height isn't necessarily an advantage unless you play basketball. Attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder. IQ is an imprecise measurement that is culturally biased, and California's abundant crop of naturally-produced Barbie and Ken valley-people doesn't give me any confidence that IQ is related to Barbie/Ken-ness. Or that humans in the midrange aren't happier than geniuses, who seem to struggle all their lives with big, unanswerable questions regular folks don't bother with.
My concerns (like Nicholas Kristof's) are for the already-existing "less-than perfect" people in the world. Once it becomes popular to select against them artificially, how will that translate to how we treat the 'defectives' that DO exist? It's too big a temptation, IMO. I'd just as soon gub'ment never became involved beyond regulation, and that society stay vigilant for the rights of minorities.
Comment by Joy — March 27, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Hi, Bradford,
Plus what form would song have taken if we had never developed reading and literature, which are also language based accomplishments? And is there a singer worth his/her salt today that does not know about the mathematical based musical scale? A classification hierarchy similar to Aristotles's classification of things that exist, with respect to language and the subjects that ultimately sprang from it, would probably be helpful to show general associations, black box relationships. But I would be very skeptical toward the thought that it is possible to accurately portray the sequence or even to know accurately what is inside the black boxes. I just say it's all connected somehow, and language is at the root of it.
I think it is just too difficult to try to extract from the mind that which is Religious Belief from that which is not, because the interrelationships occuring in the mind are too subtle and too subjective. There's a very good liklihood of misdiagnosing supposed factors, and then going off, metaphorically, like a shaman witch doctor with a scalpel. "Whooie, what can I do with this thing! Religious gene, I'm coming to find yooooo!"
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 27, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
AR:
And at the root of language is a universal substrate that may be a language itself. And if there is a language – definitely a high-level function intimately connected with mathematics – in our language-capacity's physical understrate, it's not so surprising that there's a computer language in our life-coding to build the physical machine 'unit'. We just don't have it broken down to 'machine language' yet, so we don't understand how either the CPU or the applied software works.
I wholeheartedly agree. 'Mind' is a high-level, top-down experiential and volitional control consciousness. Its expression depends very strongly upon its physical understrate to function in this world, and each person's physical understrate is unique in its wholistic cross-connections by virtue of… experience! I don't think it's really possible from reading genes (we're still deciphering letters of the alphabet, we don't know how to read whole words, sentences and contexts yet) to understand what's actually going on. For that, we'll need our minds, so messing with their necessary physical understrate before we know how they work is foolish in the extreme.
Comment by Joy — March 27, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Also, item number 3 in the course seems to discount, or even worse, dismiss, or EVEN worse, is unaware that the conscious mind is but the tip of the activity taking place inside the brain…the bare minimum that our brains deign to disclose to us.
I'm sure that Allen-MacNeil is well-educated, he's written books, given courses. But number 3 is a little like the case of a 5-year old child attempting to masterbate, and fully expecting to experience an ejaculation. First learn about the totality of the mind…fully explore and map out the unconscious, so that when people, when they hear and see, can exactly explain the processes that are taking place, to the point of explaining the equivalent mathematics involved (without a lick of math education) that the mind is capable of performing from birth onward. Why doesn't the brain let us know these things? Obviously it knows them. It seems very logical to think that there are unconscious processes affecting not only our religious beliefs, but all our capabilities and accomplishments.
It is good that Allen_MacNeil is getting flack for this. One day we may be able to do what he thinks is possible. Until then, and until there are objective results that are not immersed in sophistic mumbo jumbo, abstractive words like empty suits, then he best keep wearing his flack jacket and knee-high hip boots.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 27, 2007 @ 1:45 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Someone (mesk?):
Deuce:
There is a confusion here between the reasoning of everyday life and formalized, rigorous, institutionalized reasoning. That's not surprising as these things tend to get blended all the time. Roughly speaking, humanity has always had the ability to think about the environment and draw logical conclusions about it, based on adaptive but very non-logical and specialized mental hardware. They've also applied the same tools of thought to gods and the supernatural. What the Greeks did, what insititutionalised religion did, and what modern science did is turn this everyday facility into a formalized, institutionalized, more extreme version of itself. These cultural innovations produce new capabilities.
There's an argument in the philosophy of science about whether science is just applied common sense, or if it's sufficiently different that it is "uncommon sense". Either way, it's sufficiently different from everyday thinking that it deserves (and gets) its own name.
If you push the everyday ability to deal with counting and measuring to an extreme, and include logic, you get mathematics.
If you push ordinary everyday causal and empirical knowledge to an extreme, and mathematize it, you get science.
If you institutionalize people's native intuitions about spirits, you get formal religion.
If you take some everyday concept like agency or will, formalize it, abstract it, and take it to an extreme, you get philosophy and/or theology.
I think it's terribly important to understand how this process works, especially in the context of a course like this.
One interesting bit is that since people don't naturally think in the extreme mode, you need some sort of social institution to permit and reinforce this un-natural behavior (hence churches and universities). Such institutions also have a political side, and a good part of the battle here and elsewhere seems to be about which institution (science, religion, or philosophy) controls the mental territory corresponding to the bottommost turtle.
Comment by mtraven — March 27, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Think about the pure moral difficulties scientists face in the whole quest to understand the Mind-Brain Problem. I think this is what causes the quest to go in such fits and starts, then descend into terminal quandry in the Great Zombie Debates. Henry Stapp predicts it will be 200 years before we even have an agreeable definition of the term "Consciousness," so as to know what the heck it is they're researching.
Moral issues that won't even begin until long after my grandchildren die of old age really don't concern me too much. Unless humanity does something really stupid, people 200 years down the line will have to argue about the morality involved in messing with human minds on the genetic level.
First they'd have to establish what genes, in what combinations, form the basic brain modules for the god-experience. This would entail deliberately cloning human babies who lack a test batch of of about 300 unique human genes, so as to discover which ones contribute to the hardwiring. Just like they do now with microbes and fruit flies and mice. But far as we can tell, no other life form on earth has this hardwiring – these morally questionable tests would have to be on humans, and so long as there is hard-wiring for a sense of absolute morality, I don't think humans will allow it.
At least, not in the so-called 'first world'. What happens at corporate laboratories in third world countries isn't something anyone here could stomach. I got literally sick when I first heard about it from researchers involved in consciousness/neuro research. Maybe in 200 years the whole world will be the first world. Wouldn't that be nice?
We are nowhere close to a definition of the phenomenon at issue. It would be hundreds of years beyond that before we had established anything we can work with, and then only by abandoning all our innate sense of morality. I just don't think it'll ever happen. Really, I think homo sapien sapiens will be extinct before then, if there is a then.
We may make ourselves extinct someday (I'm not looking to kiss a WMD in my lifetime, but I could be wrong). We can do that on purpose (WMDs) or by accident and hubris (killing ourselves with pollution, making ourselves sterile with GMOs, lots of things can go wrong), or God can do it for us with yet another of His notorious cosmic billiard balls. If we don't, I figure our telic evolution (purposeful, for US) will eventually get us past our own evil proclivities and suicidal tendencies. Or not. I don't figure it'll matter to me when I'm long gone.
I like too keep concerns that compete for my attention focused on those I can possibly do something about, one way or another. §;o)
Comment by Joy — March 27, 2007 @ 2:14 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
mtraven:
Very well said, mtraven!
Comment by Joy — March 27, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Recommended: 10 Important Differences Between Brains and Computers by Chris Chatham at the blog 'Developing Intelligence'.
Comment by Joy — March 27, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Hi, mtraven:
You're onto something here, and the logic you've sketched out only needs to be followed to its logical conclusion to see why reductivist accounts of belief (and not just religious beliefs) are incoherent across the board.
The material reductivist, of course, is going to have to use a notion of truth similar to the one you sketched out above, in order to account for our ability to discern truth. Probably they will want to say that natural selection is likely to lead us to beliefs that are true, rather than saying that true beliefs are true simply by virtue of being advantageous for survival, in an attempt to rescue the idea, which is necessary for science, that the truth is predetermined by objective reality.
However, even if they do this, they will still have to accept that our idea of truth is determined by natural selection. So, even if there is truth that is not defined by survival, we can have no knowledge of it or connection to it. What we call the truth, and believe to be true, must be defined by survival, in the reductivist's ontology. We can't take our survival-caused beliefs, and compare them to the actual truth, because we do not have any access to such a thing, only to the idea of "truth" constructed by natural selection.
It follows that, regardless of objective reality, what we refer to as "truth" is, as you put it, determined by the survival of ideas rather than any predetermined objective reality.
But, then, as has been pointed out here, beliefs in the transcendent, and our connection to it, must be true, because they survive and most people have them. But belief in the transcendent entails that a reductivist account, where our beliefs in the transcendent are caused irrationally by natural selection rather than by the existence of the transcendent, is false. So the reductivist account results in a reducto absurdium of itself (if it's true, then it's false) when the logic is teased out.
At this point, the reductivist is probably going to try to make use of the concept of objective truth. They will want to say that even though religious belief, and the corresponding rejection of materialist reductivism, is amenable to survival, it isn't objectively true, and that in actuality, these beliefs are caused irrationally by natural selection. However, this is an illegitimate move, because by the reductivist's own ontology, as mentioned previously, we cannot have any real concept of objective truth to refer to, and what we refer to as truth is defined by that which is amenable to natural selection. If the reductivist dismisses any belief caused by natural selection as false or irrational, then they must say that all our beliefs are irrational and unjustified, because that's the only standard of "truth" they've got to work with.
Going sort of off-topic, this is something that I'd like to see Allen's course focus on, as opposed to yet another narrow deconstruction of religion, which are a dime a dozen in evo psych. Instead of just assuming that religious belief is irrational, and then asking what sort of reductivist evo psych explanation there is for it, the class should explore evolutionary reductionism of beliefs in general. Some good questions would be, what does it mean to say that natural selection causes any belief? What does such a claim imply about the rationality of that belief? What does it imply about the nature of beliefs, rationality, and truth in general? Can any consistent, coherent definition of truth be salvaged from this? Are there any beliefs that are not caused by natural selection? If so, what causes them, and does this make them more or less rational than beliefs which are caused by natural selection? Are my beliefs caused by natural selection, and what does that say about them? How can we tell the difference?
Another reason I think a broader course would be better is that there is no clear definition of which beliefs qualify as "religious" beliefs and are in need of an evo psych takedown. The working definition for most EP deconstructionists seems to be "beliefs in silly things that the stupid masses labour under, but which I, being far more enlightened than they, find to be highly irrational and annoying, and which therefore need an explanation in terms of irrational causes". A rigorous, dispassionate approach, that was taken with a genuine interest in understanding the truth about what beliefs are and how they form, would take a balanced look at beliefs in general, and would try to come up with coherent hypotheses about them, and the scientist would scrutinize their own beliefs under the hypotheses just as much as other people's in trying to decide if the hypotheses made sense.
One of the big problems with evo psych, as it stands now, is that it's so much a product of the West's culture war, rather than a rigorous and unbiased study of nature, and the targets that are chosen are typically the same things that are at the heart of our cultural fights. I think a lot of EPers make claims that they would never dream of making, and would find absurd themselves, if they were a bit more reflective and introspective, and dispassionately considered the ramifications for beliefs in general, including their own beliefs, instead of being narrowly focused on particular beliefs that other people have that they want explained away.
Comment by Deuce — March 27, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Mesk replied to this comment of mine:
as follows:
Here's why I disagree with you, just as a matter of sociology of religion—and I want to qualify that geographically, as my knowledge of African and Asian religious sociology is rather limited…
Maybe it's because I'm a Catholic (though I doubt it's a peculiarity of Catholicism), but from the age of 5 the ideas of God and Morality, God and Goodness, and related concepts were inextricably linked for me, and, I'm sure for literally scores of millions of Catholics in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Australia.
And that was with a childhood that straddled the 'liberal' Vatican II years, though I knew nothing about that and cared less. I experienced anything but harshness in my Catholic schooling or from my practising but not unusually devout Catholic parents and relatives. I wasn't wrapped over the knuckles with rulers, I wasn't told I was going to hell if I misbehaved, I wasn't molested by a priest (I became an altar server when the Mass was still in Latin). I have very fond memories of priests, nuns, Catholic lay teachers, my 1st Holy Communion, etc. Everything kind of oozed goodness, love, care, virtue, etc. I loved to talk to the priests after Mass was over—asking questions about this or that and being impressed by what I already but vaguely had sensed from their answers–which is that their education level significantly exceeded that of my parents or the parents of my school friends.
Except for one elderly priest! He maintained, against what I had already been taught in Catholic school, that Adam and Eve were real individual humans. At age 11, I precociously explained to him Genesis was not meant to be taken literally. I may even have mentioned that St Augustine taught my view, not his. I suppose I was inquisitive and argumentative even then.
So as I was socialized into Catholicism and 'God thoughts', moral values came with it as part of the whole conceptually and practically inseparable package.
Even though Glasgow still had simmering sectarian tensions in the 1960s, we were taught to love and respect 'the Proddies', never to insult or misbehave towards them, but to set a good example in all that we did. And in my case I believe I did, on the whole, (even when I was spat at in the street for wearing a Catholic high school uniform.) Catholics were the minority, and on average suffered all the negative socioeconomic consequences associated with their historical immigrant status (from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Lithuania). So it was important that we show up well as a community in everything we did.
We really were taught the ethic of universal love. We'd send our pennies for the poor in Africa or South America. In fact, the young priest who heard my First Confession soon afterwards went to work for the poorest of the poor among the indigenous tribes of the Peruvian highlands, and died before his 40th birthday, due to the harsh conditions of life and his intense, exhausting service to the people. "No greater love…."
I can honestly say it very soon became literally impossible for me to think of God or Jesus or Mary or the Catholic saints, and not, at the same time think of moral values (I wouldn't have used that term as a child, natch), and not think of goodness, and not understand the importance of loving your neighbor, of the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy, assisting the elderly, the infirm, the very poor.
Looking back, my own family was anything but well-off—-my parents, my sister, and I lived with my maternal grandparents, sharing a small two-room tenement apartment (we say 'flat') for years because we couldn't afford anything better at the time, even with both my parents working full-time . We never had a car. My best friend in elementary school (we say 'primary school') came from a family of five children; with the parents, that's seven in a very cramped flat…. …………with no indoor toilet. Ah yes, the Good Old Days. But I digress.
My point is, my Catholic upbringing story was in my estimation typical, indeed 'standard' for that place and time. And it was literally mentally impossible for us to separate the idea of God from the idea of exigencies of human moral goodness. And it would make no sense for us–not just my family, but the vast majority of my contemporary co-religionists at that time—–to separate moral ideas from conscious personhood, or what we still called then, 'the soul'.
I vividly remember the moments just after receiving Holy Communion for the first time at age 7, and we all sang our little hearts out:
Soul of my Savior, sanctify my breast,
Body of Christ, be thou my saving guest,
Blood of my Savior, bathe me in thy tide,
Wash me with waters gushing from thy side.
Soul of my Savior, making my soul holy—-means what?
What is the human Soul, if it is not Mind, Reason, Consciousness, Moral Awareness; something inherently capable of understanding and appreciating the Beautiful Order of Nature That Can Best Be Explained By A Mighty Mind Who Cares About Us?
So your skepticism that this is just the highly educated sophisticates reading of their own sophistication into a romanticized vision of the masses strikes me as wrongheaded altogether—because as small kids from families on the lower end of the economic scale, making our First Confession and First Communion, we already were well under way to connecting the 'state of our soul' to morality (good deeds, sins, virtues, bad habits, etc); and simultaneously connecting both to God.
And I must say that it was all done in an atmophere that prized what we called holiness—and if that term that doesn't connect to both God and morality, then I don't know of any term or concept that would.
The language of soul, holiness, examining one's conscience to discriminate venial and mortal sins, doing good deeds for the love of God etc was a language I heard all the time, pretty much from the moment I started my formal schooling. And especially among my more devout aunties, but even from my father, older (male) altar servers, church ushers, et cetera—-, only two of whom had any higher education (two maiden aunts).
So that whole linguistic and conceptual framework was ever-present. I remember reading my mother's old high school catechism when I was a little older. My mother left school at 15. The philosophical concepts used in that catechism were pretty darn sophisticated for a 14- or 15- year-old in the early 1940s, let me tell you.
Sorry to come over on you so personally about myself and anecdotally in this post, Mesk; but I honestly think you have it all wrong on this one. And I'm sure there are many, many religious Jews and Muslims and Protestants and Easterrn Orthodox adults of my generation, or younger, or older, who would have essentally similar stories to mine, pari passu.
One more thing—medieval logicians were remarkably sophisticated by the standards of today's logic, and many of the medievals' subtleties, in modal logic in particular, have been re-discovered and incorporated into contemporary philosophical logic.
"Introibo ad altare Dei
Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum"
Comment by stunney — March 27, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Here's another publication of interest. Not about religion per se, but relevant to the notions floating around about linguistically-structured beliefs.
Reviving Rawls' Linguistic Analogy:
Operative principles and the causal structure of moral actions
The thesis we develop in this essay is that all humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions. As an empirical research program, we follow the framework of modern linguistics. The spirit of the argument dates back at least to the economist Adam Smith (1759/1976) who argued for something akin to a moral grammar, and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls (1971). The logic of the argument, however, comes from Noam Chomsky's thinking on language specifically and the nature of knowledge more generally (1986; 1988; 2000; Saporta, 1978).
Comment by mtraven — March 27, 2007 @ 6:11 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Hi, Joy,
Voyage of the Beagle was quite an eye-opener for me, the paragraphs of meticulous description detailing an animal's defensive behavior when it was attacked. I think I would have literally gone crazy if part of my work involved clubbing animals to death.
I'm curious. What methods did you learn about involving neuro research?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 27, 2007 @ 7:48 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Deuce wrote:
"Some good questions would be, what does it mean to say that natural selection causes any belief? What does such a claim imply about the rationality of that belief? What does it imply about the nature of beliefs, rationality, and truth in general? Can any consistent, coherent definition of truth be salvaged from this? Are there any beliefs that are not caused by natural selection? If so, what causes them, and does this make them more or less rational than beliefs which are caused by natural selection? Are my beliefs caused by natural selection, and what does that say about them? How can we tell the difference?"
These are, indeed, excellent questions, and many thanks to you for suggesting them. Among the topics I want to discuss this summer (in addition to the main ones already mentioned) are:
1) What is "rationality?"
2) What does it mean to say you believe something, versus believe in something?
3) What is "objectivity" and what does it mean to say that one is being "objective" versus "subjective?"
4) How are all of these ideas related to religion, and to the empirical natural sciences?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 27, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
A lot of stuff to respond to, but not much time.
A couple of posters (including Deuce) pointed out that my argument regarding the irrationality of religious belief could also be applied to other beliefs, including scientific ones, in the minds of most people. I'd encourage these posters to read back over my most recent comments: I explicitly agree that this is the case. Most humans cannot rationally justify most of the beliefs they hold. The commenters here at TT constitute a select minority of humans who can rationally justify many of their beliefs, but let's not fall into the trap of believing that we are typical.
Recall that I am simply addressing Bradford's original claim that "[religious capacity] appears to be a function of our capacity to logically reason". I argue that for most people across history this is not in fact the case; and since social scientists and philosophers are interested in addressing why religion arose and why it has persisted in most humans, it is these types of non-rational beliefs (rather than the logical constructions of theologians) that they want to understand.
It's important to remember that the Greek philosophers were a minority, and that the remainder of the Greek citizenry were far more interested in trade, war, sex, or just staying alive than in the free exchange of ideas. Recall that Socrates was forced to drink poison to some extent simply because he tried to get people to think, rather than merely accept what they were told.
The writings of the Greek philosophers were as inscrutable to the average Greek plowing his field as modern quantum mechanics are to your average secretary in a law firm.
Truth is actually irrelevant here, precisely because most religious beliefs are adopted for non-rational reasons regardless of whether they are true or not. The same is true for most scientific beliefs accepted by the lay community: sure, they're often true, but this isn't really why they are accepted. In both cases the beliefs are adopted because they fit with a person's social context and psychological biases, and because they come from sources deemed reliable.
And of course, there's another piece of evidence supporting the notion that most religious beliefs are adopted for reasons unrelated to truth: it seems likely that (at most) only a minority of religions can actually be true, since most religions conflict in various ways with all of the others. Thus even if one or a few religions are actually correct, most of them must be wrong. So the vast majority of humans must be adopting beliefs that are false; and given the reasoning above, even the adherents of the "true" religions likely believe in them primarily for non-rational reasons. So why do they adopt these beliefs? The basic social and psychological biases outlined by Atran and Boyer provide some potential explanations.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Mesk:
There should be a clear distinction between a rational belief system and the rationality of one's belief in such a system. A rational belief system is not dependent on the ability of its followers to logically articulate reasons for believing in it. Most people tend to be shallow, lazy thinkers more concerned about what is a part of their everyday life than broader philosophical concerns.
A religious capacity indicates potential, not realization of religious impulses. As such it is accurate to link it to reason for reason is what is required to understand its precepts; the number of people ignoring such precepts notwithstanding. Mesk, where you and others have to guard against your biases, is in focusing on religion to the exclusion of all the many other beliefs humans hold. If it is true that most people are unable to explain their allegiance to many beliefs, among which religion is but one, (and there seems to be some consensus as to that at least in this little TT world) then there appears to be a broader explanation possible that can encompass religion as a subset of a group of beliefs. Irrational is a politically loaded word. Label something irrational and things become possible that are not otherwise doable.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I couldn't agree more. How about "Extreme Pro-Choice" It has all the rhetorical goodness of the "pro-choice" label, and the "Extreme" (which should be pronounced with a California surfer accent) label makes it sound all hip and exciting to the youngsters.
I've actually advocated precisely that, right here on TT, a few months back. I based my argument on an article I'd read recently suggesting that parents should be provided with government subsidies for pre-natal genetic screening for any trait, so that this process is available to all parents regardless of their socioeconomic status. I believe this argument is not uncommon among Extreme Pro-Choice advocates, since it allows for embryo selection without enhancing the divide between haves and have-nots – contrary to your belief that "New Eugenicists" would not advocate such a concept.
At the time I was lambasted by Krauze and Mike Gene, and in hindsight I see their points as quite valid and have abandoned this position. The idea of a government funding wide-scale PGD when it can barely provide basic health-care to its citizens is absurd; and since PGD is only available in combination with IVF, the government would need to fund that too. Basically, until the price and invasiveness of these technologies go down, they will remain the play-thing of the upper-middle to upper class elites.
Height is positively correlated with lifetime earnings. Attractiveness does of course have a subjective component, but there are high inter-observer correlations in terms of how they rank people's attractiveness, suggesting that there are in fact widely-shared concepts of physical beauty. When facial attractiveness is measured using scores from a mixed panel of observers, it correlates substantially with income. IQ is somewhat imprecise, but it correlates quite well with both academic success and eventual income (for a conservative review of this, see this report from the APA). IQ and height are both substantially determined by heritable factors, with attractiveness less so but still partially genetic.
For the sorts of people likely to be using this technology, high adult income is probably one of the most desirable outcomes for their children.
Sheesh, Joy, could you try to be consistent? Make up your mind: should governments be "assur[ing] that all humans have access to the products of science and technology that allow for such dreams", or should they "never become involved beyond regulation"
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
MacNeill:
This is a distinction which goes back to Augustine, as you may know. "Fides quae creditur" refers to the objective content of faith–that which is believed. "Fides qua creditur" refers to subjective component–the faith by which we believe. The first is "believing that…" while the second is "believing in…"
Comment by Lutepisc — March 27, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Prof. MacNeill,
Do you intend to explore the Dawkins/Harris scientific hypothesis of religion as a delusion? Will there be a discussion on the evolvability of mind viruses?
Comment by chunkdz — March 27, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
No, that makes no sense at all. You agree elsewhere in your post that many people adopt religious beliefs (and other beliefs) for reasons that are not logical. Here you define "religious capacity" as the potential for adopting religious beliefs. Since religious beliefs can be adopted for reasons that are not rational, there is no necessary link between reason and "religious capacity", period. Certainly there's no justification for the claim that "[religious capacity] appears to be a function of our capacity to logically reason".
Erm, yes. This will be the fourth time in this thread alone that I have explicitly stated that I see the non-rationality of religious beliefs as being analogous to most of the other beliefs that people hold. Admittedly religious beliefs are unusually specific and tenacious, but that's probably because they are more strongly socially enforced than other beliefs.
I'm switching to "non-rational" from now on – is that better?
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
stunney,
Your description of your childhood was very interesting – thank you. It may or may not surprise you to learn that I do regard religious people as generally more moral than non-religious people, where morality is defined as the tendency to adopt the set of behaviours that best holds a large, mixed society together. The data on this are pretty clear: on average, religious people are less likely to be arrested, and substantially more likely to donate to or volunteer for charity. Since I believe that the purpose of religion is to provide metaphysical enforcement for the beliefs required for a stable society, this comes as no great surprise to me; nonetheless, as an atheist, it makes for a dismaying realisation. It's also why I think that Dawkins and his ilk's desire for the abolition of religion is both futile and ultimately counter-productive.
I appreciate that your experience suggests some logical sophistication in your upbringing within the Catholic church. However, with respect, I suggest that you (as an intelligent young person) almost certainly took in more of this sophistication that the average young church-goer. I would also suggest that visiting a Catholic church in Africa (which I have done) or South America would change your views somewhat. In these churches the appeal is shamelessly emotive and non-rational. Educated people in Western countries demand more sophistication from their religions, and religion is forced to provide – but for most of history, and in much of the world today, the bulk of the population is poor, illiterate and almost completely uneducated.
Finally,
I certainly don't deny this. What I argue against is the notion that the typical medieval peasant relied on logic and reason to justify his religious beliefs.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
A religious capacity indicates potential, not realization of religious impulses. As such it is accurate to link it to reason for reason is what is required to understand its precepts; the number of people ignoring such precepts notwithstanding.
Substitute a capacity to absorb scientific beliefs for a capacity to absorb religious ones and you get a feel for how difficult it is to attempt to define rationality by the reaction of people to something. I gave examples of people whose reasons for following religion were logical indeed. In many societies there are social pressures to do or at least render it lip service. Self-survival is a strong and worthy impulse. There are inconsistencies between religious precepts and behavioral practices of "adherents" to religion. So what? I find the same to be true in politics- the office version as well as the governmental one. People are not very ideological in a personal level yet ideologues seem to dictate the tempo of our debates over everything.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 10:37 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Mesk:
But what is the broader point you are making?
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 10:39 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Bradford,
I now see how we're talking past each other.
My broader point is not that religion itself must be irrational because most people adopt it for non-rational reasons. I gather this is the point you are arguing against, so you can breathe easy – this is not my claim.
Rather, my argument is this: most religious people throughout human history and across cultures have adopted religious beliefs for non-rational reasons. Therefore, the fine logical points made by theologists about the fundamental rationality of religion are irrelevant to the motivations of most religious people for adopting their beliefs. Instead, the vast bulk of religious belief must be explained with reference to non-rational phenomena: mainly social pressures and innate psychological biases.
This argument was made in response to your claim that "[religious capacity] appears to be a function of our capacity to logically reason". I think it's very clear that this isn't the case, and that in fact most humans adopt religion for reasons that have nothing to do with their capacity to logically reason.
In essence, my argument is a general defence of the notion that the reasons people adopt religious beliefs can be understood best by exploring human cognitive biases, largely derived from their evolutionary past. The "truth" of one or more religious claims out there is irrelevant to this argument, since it is clear that this truth-value is irrelevant to the motivations most people have for adopting specific religious beliefs.
And for the fifth time, I'm not singling out religion as the sole non-rational facet of human belief. I have consistently argued that the scientific beliefs of most lay-people (and even those of many scientists) are adopted for similar non-rational reasons. This doesn't make those scientific claims false, any more than the non-rational motivations of most religious people necessarily makes any specific religious claim false.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 6:47 am
.
OK, but do you think as Alan_MacNeill does, that belief in religion is an adaptive response in itself or do you believe the adaptive response was one that enabled humans to believe in concepts superficially (which can have advantages) and that religion is but one of many manifestations of this?
Comment by Bradford — March 28, 2007 @ 6:47 am
March 28th, 2007 at 8:20 am
This is besides my point though, which was that the Greek philosophers didn't invent or prove the existence of reason and logic. Indeed, they couldn't have, because such an endeavor would require reason and logic. They simply formalized what was already there, and applied it more rigorously than the average citizen. What that means is, the average citizen was already in possession of logic, and capable of rational inference, even if they weren't as rigorous as the philosopher.
The point of the Yogi Berra joke, btw, was this. When Yogi says, "You mean now?" we laugh, because his question implies that the time could be something other than now, which is incoherent. Your typical Joe, if pressed, probably wouldn't be able to articulate the point of logical incoherence, but the fact that he laughs shows that he understands it and is rational. People grasp a lot more logic than you might be inclined to give them credit for, and it's a very uncharitable form of "chronological snobbery" to make the blanket assumption that because a lot of people believe something without the benefit of a professional philosopher, and without being able to formally justify it, their beliefs are therefore rationally unfounded. And it's more uncharitable still to say that because their beliefs are not perfectly justified, therefore they can be accounted for by blind, irrational causes. Remember, the professionals don't invent reason, they just formalize the rules of reason that everyone already possesses, so attempting to deconstruct the average person's belief-forming apparatus undermines the professionals as well.
Of course, there are also some common underlying threads between religions, as pointed out by several people above. It's true that at most one religion can be completely right. But a similar problem arises with just about every other area of thought. Most scientific theories have needed replacement or revision, and no doubt most or all of the ones we have now will continue to. We still have theories that contradict each other, which we can't resolve. If we were thinking in uncharitable, binary terms, we'd say that Newtonian physics, for instance, was flat-out wrong, because it wasn't completely right. We'd say that at most one scientific picture can be true, and that therefore most of science must be irrational. But we don't say that. We say that Newton was partly right, but didn't have a complete picture. And we don't say that Newton was being irrational about the wrong parts either. They were perfectly reasonable conclusions for his time and place.
Comment by Deuce — March 28, 2007 @ 8:20 am
March 28th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Mesk:
Perhaps that was so unclear that no one could hope to see anything but inconsistency. Sorry to be so obscure about my opinions. The "products" I had in mind were things like basic health care, food security (because the Bushies got rid of the hunger problem by renaming it "food insecurity"), honest work that will actually provide for a family, heat in the winter, a way to get from here to there… things like that. Few of the great miracles of modern science get distributed to the people who pay scientists to create them – why, there are still people in this country who don't have steady food or adequate shelter, some are still without electricity or indoor plumbing. A lot of 'em live along the Gulf Coast near New Orleans…
Government should regulate medical practice, pharmaceutical profiteering, human experimentation and any practice of science that offends the public mores. It should not get into the business of engineering sterility (as USDA did when it helped develop Monsanto's outrageous "Terminator" technology for food supplies – still holds half the patent and was only persuaded NOT to deploy because the citizenry raised hell) or owning patents on anybody's genes.
People who don't have jobs that pay enough to eat or have a roof over their heads or have heat in the winter don't do much dreaming. And they don't buy very many computers and IPods.
Comment by Joy — March 28, 2007 @ 9:23 am
March 28th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Chunkdz asked:
"Do you intend to explore the Dawkins/Harris scientific hypothesis of religion as a delusion? Will there be a discussion on the evolvability of mind viruses?"
Yes, Dawkins's book, The God Delusion, is one of the required texts, and Harris's book, The End of Faith is on the "Recommended References" list. Personally, I disagree with Dawkins on almost everything, and especially his assertion that religion in general and belief in God in particular are "mind viruses." I think he comes to this conclusion at least partly as a way of reifying his concept of memes, which I also have great problems with.
My main difficulty with this idea is that it radically separates the "mind" from the nervous system in a very Platonic/Cartesian way, which to me simply ignores a century and more of empirical evidence to the contrary. In particular, it is now clear that "ideas" (i.e. Dawkinsian "memes") can and do have direct effects on the fine structure of the nervous system itself; indeed, the only way "memes" can be propagated in the CNS is by modifying the synapses and extra-cellular neurochemistry of the CNS.
By the same argument, it is also clear that the fine structure of the CNS strongly influences which "memes" will be formulated and/or perceived, and which will be propagated. In this sense, at least, memes are strongly analagous to animal viruses, which infect specific cells because those cells have surface features (binding proteins, etc.) to which the virus binds and which it then uses to enter and infect the cell. This is why we generally don't get Herpes Simplex Type I viral infections in our upper respiratory tract nor cold viruses in the cells forming the vermillion border of the lip, nor any viruses at all in muscle cells.
Viruses are adapted to infecting specific cell populations on the basis of the surface features of those cells. In the same way, memes can be more or less easily propagated from CNS to CNS on the basis of the sensory"“>nervous"“>motor pathways within which such memes are transmitted. Some memes fit extremely well in already existing pathways, while others do not. Furthermore, when memes are propagated through such pathways, they make repeated propagations of analogous memes more likely in the future; that is, certain memes exploit the plasticity of the neural structure that sustains the mind in such a way as to enhance their own propagation and diffusion from mind to mind.
Under such conditions, it seems nonsensical to me to make the kinds of radical distinctions between memes and their host CNSs that Dawkins seems to be making. If the human mind is adapted to hosting certain memes as a result of the positive effects such memes have had on reproductive success in the past, then it is quite legitimate IMO to say that the human CNS/mind is adapted for such hosting.
Another way of looking at this is to think of memes and nervous systems as coadapted complexes. If particular memes are easy for the CNS to host, but such memes result in a decrease in the probability of survival/reproduction of the host, then such memes will eventually die out as their hosts go extinct (as happened to the Shakers, for example). In the same way, if particular memes are difficult for the CNS to host, but such memes result in a significant increase in the
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 28, 2007 @ 10:12 am
March 28th, 2007 at 10:17 am
[sorry; hit the RETURN key by mistake]
…probability of survival/reproduction of the host, then such memes will eventually become easier to host (as has happened to the idea of restraint in warfare, for example). By the same line of argument, memes that are easy to host and cause an increase in relative reproductive success will be massively reinforced and spread like wildfire in a population, whereas memes that are difficult to host and cause a decrease in relative reproductive success will just as rapidly disappear.
Furthermore, these processes depend fundamentally on the ecological circumstances in which both the memes (i.e. Bateson's "ecology of mind") and their hosts (i.e. human ecology) live…or die. It's all a huge, interactive, feedback-regulated system, IOW, and separating out one facet of it the way Dawkins does ignores reality and biases one toward solutions that are so simplistic as to be essentially false.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 28, 2007 @ 10:17 am
March 28th, 2007 at 10:18 am
I don't know, but I hope to be able to provide a reasonably informed answer to that question in a couple of months – I'm currently reading books by Boyer and Atran and delving where I can through the relevant scientific literature. I'm very interested in the topic, but I don't feel I know enough yet to have an informed opinion about many aspects of it.
Deuce,
I've spent quite a bit of time talking to lay-people about their beliefs recently, for various reasons. I don't want to give the impression that I think most people are stupid, or incapable of rational thought. I just find that most people I speak to have never really expended any cognitive resources on metaphysical questions – they're too busy just thinking about paying bills and raising children. And I'm talking here about reasonably educated lower- to middle-class folks – if you start talking to the real poor, the situation is far worse.
Well, I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings.
But perhaps I should back down a bit: there's obviously a spectrum here, between people who expend no thought whatsoever on their own beliefs to people (like most of the commenters here at TT) who do their best to subject their beliefs to logical scrutiny. In the middle lie the majority of humans, who think about some things but accept many other beliefs without serious consideration. Blind, non-rational processes don't explain everything these people think, but they are nonetheless crucial in determining their beliefs. So these processes certainly need to be taken into account when exploring the origins of beliefs such as religion.
I also believe that non-rational processes are crucial factors in generating the beliefs of even the most determinedly rational humans. I certainly accept that many of my own beliefs derive from non-rational biases rather than some Vulcan objectivity.
Hmmm… I'm not so sure about this. I genuinely don't believe that the typical human state is rationality. I think this is precisely why philosophers and scientists have to formalise the rules of their respective fields – because humans just aren't naturally inclined to be objective seekers of truth.
Yes, that's a perfectly valid point, and indeed I'm very interested in these universalities. These either represent genuine truths or fundamental human cognitive biases, depending on your viewpoint – and either way, they're fascinating. I hope to be able to discuss these in more depth after I've done some more reading on this topic.
Nonetheless, it remains clear that there are also many differences between religions, and that these differences are regarded as fundamental by most adherents of most religions (frequently to the point of violent disagreement). Since they can't all be right, it seems clear that most if not all religions are wrong about topics that their followers see as fundamental. It follows from this that humans are perfectly capable of constructing elaborate religious beliefs that are in fact completely wrong. In other words, as I said in my comment, it is evident that many religious beliefs "are adopted for reasons unrelated to truth".
Comment by Mesk — March 28, 2007 @ 10:18 am
March 28th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Mesk,
"What is Truth" Yes, the phrase has a somewhat distasteful etymology, but I think it addresses the question pretty clearly.
Let's assume for a moment that the fundamentalist Christians and the fundamentalist Muslims and the fundamentalists are all right, at the same time. What would that mean?
It might mean that to a fundamentalist Christian, when they die they might perceive going to a fundamentalist interpretation of heaven, where only other fundamentalist Christians are around.
A fundamentalist Muslim might die and experience the muslim variation of heaven, and see only other fundamentalist muslims.
A fundamentalist atheist might experience a cold black nothingness, and think "I am annihilated" over and over, until (eventually, maybe after a couple of centuries) the thought occurs "I can't really be annihillated, since I am still thinking". . .
An openminded person of any faith (or no faith) might see all these other people at the same time and interact with them all (while appearing as a Muslim to the Muslim fundamentalists, a Christian to the Christian fundamentalists, a black speck of nothingness to the atheist fundamentalists, etc.
This kind of model where our own beliefs shape what happens when we die is related by most near-death experiencers.
While here experiencing earthly life, there are a million different interpretations of life and what it means. Why do we assume that when the body dies, assuming consciousness continues, everyone will suddenly agree on exactly what is reality? Which brings it back around to my question: "what is truth, really"
Comment by mcromer — March 28, 2007 @ 11:30 am
March 28th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Mesk to Deuce:
Maybe people aren't as dumb as you'd like to believe. Perhaps you aren't asking the right questions, or perhaps the people you're talking to understand that your grilling comes from an insufferably elitist mindset and they don't care to engage deeply.
Or maybe – just maybe – the people you talk to don't spend much time or energy criticizing their own belief systems because they don't feel it necessary to do so. Because their belief systems serve them fine just the way they are.
In my experience, unless there's something organically or experientially very wrong, human beings are the smartest critters on the planet. Their areas of particular expertise may not strike you as particularly 'important', but to those people these things are important and they can spend years and lifetimes perfecting their expertise. Which is a little like science.
I have a neighbor who never got past the sixth grade, who is a regular genius at things horticultural and who knows everything there is to know about growing grapes (and other edible things) in this region. He earned his knowledge the hard way, and I rely on him a lot more than on the extension service if I've got a problem with nutrients, pests, pruning and/or yield.
There are wildcrafters here who can put any botanist or plant physiologist to shame on identifying plants and telling you what they're good for. They could survive on their own in the deep woods for years without ever having to plant a field or go to the grocery store. There are hunters who know their prey animals so well they can tell you how they've spent the afternoon, how old they are, how many offspring they've produced, and whether or not they'll be a good meal just by looking through the scope of their rifle.
And if civilization falls off the end of the earth any time soon and millions in the cities die of starvation or violence, survivors will be found out in the so-redneck countryside where we "lesser humans" live. Suddenly they won't seem quite so igner'nt anymore to people like you. If you're still around, that is.
Comment by Joy — March 28, 2007 @ 11:44 am
March 28th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Recently I saw the movie "Amazing Grace" which is very good dramatization (4 star IMO) of the life and work of William Wilberforce, who, in the late 1700's, as a member of the British parliament led a very determined and heroic effort to end the slave trade in the British Empire. The movie gets its title from the story of another man, John Newton, who Wilberforce, as the movie accurately portrays, did in fact turn to for counsel and advice. As a captain of a slave ship Newton had been a very hard and cruel man who, for some reason, became overwhelmed by his own moral decadence and cruelty. Newton repented of his sins, left the sea and eventually became a member of the Anglican clergy. He is the author of the hymn "Amazing Grace." For most people, I think, the opening verse of the hymn takes on a much fuller meaning once they learn about Newton's story.
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see."
He truly had been a wretch.
Wilberforce struggled for almost two decades to end the slave trade. He endured years of scorn, ridicule and ostracism, as well as, his personal struggle against his own poor health. But then, in 1807, largely as a result of Wilberforce's unwavering will and determination, his bill to end the slave trade was passed overwhelmingly in the House of Commons. He continued the struggle till 1833 when parliament passed a law completely abolishing slavery in Great Britain. A few days later, Wilberforce, then in his 70's, died.
In the United States, on the other hand, about 600,00 soldiers, on both sides, died fighting a civil war to end slavery. In Great Britain no soldiers died. Their Civil war was fought, largely by one man, in Parliament. Yet, historically William Wilberforce remains an obscure person. Why is that?
This is one histories great stories of altruism. It generates several questions relevant to our present discussion: How do you account for this kind of altruism and self sacrifice on the basis of neo-Darwinism? How does one account for the dramatic conversion of someone like John Newton? Where does our sense of sin and guilt come from? On the dark side, how does NDT account for man's inhumanity to man? And for those who think religion is irremediably irrational, what, if any thing, was irrational about the beliefs or actions of Newton or Wilberforce? Was their morality better and more rational than the morality of the society in which they lived? Why or why not?
IMO neo-Darwinism's "˜nothing but' reductionism falls way short. Personally, that leads me to both think and believe that there is "˜something more' out there.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — March 28, 2007 @ 11:52 am
March 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
You are assuming that memories are stored physically in the brain. That has been the assumption of most scientists for the past century, but is also an assumption on shaky philosophical ground and one that ignores a lot of empirical evidence.
See chapter 4 of the academic publication Irreducible Mind for more details. . .
Comment by mcromer — March 28, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Allen_Macneil:
OK…I have some problems with the meme idea as well, but I'm not sure that the objections you list above are anything that Dawkins would disagree with (I haven't read The God Delusion so I'm not up on his latest thinking, but have read his earlier works on memes). For instance, it's obvious that memes have to be embodied somehow, in the CNS or in external memory sources. Certainly a materialist like Dawkins would say so, and I doubt he'd have any objection to the idea that minds are adapted to hosting memes, some of which are beneficial.
Judging from what you wrote, you don't seem to actually be objecting to the concept of memes, but rather Dawkins' view of religious memes as having wholly negative effects. You are saying, in effect, that they are co-evolved symbionts rather that parasites. But that's a different argument than whether the meme concept is coherent.
One real problem with memes is that they are way too fluid and squishy to form robust theories. Genes turn out to have a very specific mechanism and coding, and when they reproduce you can measure the differences between parent and child and see what the mutation rate is, etc. Memes are not so well-defined. You can't line up, say, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Church and get a numeric value for how far they have diverged from a common ancestor.
This and other problems leave meme theory as a tantalizing metaphor rather than an actual science.
Comment by mtraven — March 28, 2007 @ 12:21 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Mesk:
There's a press release today at ScienceDaily entitled Why Some People Are More Attractive Than Others that throws a bit of a monkey-wrench here. Apparently the "expectations" according to the NDS paradigm is that mate selection – the choices women make (and it's always women who decide, here in the first world) – should lead to a lot less 'individuality' than we actually see in our species. According to the release, leading "…to the point where sexual selection could no longer take place."
So if it's not regularity of features, height, physique or other Barbie/Ken criteria at work, what is it? According to the cited research, it's not physical appearance but genetic resistance to disease (healthy DNA repair mechanisms) that drives this diversity. How the selecting agents determine who's got a healthy DNA repair system isn't provided, so they could as easily have entitled this release "Why The Ugly Guy Gets The Girl."
No answers provided, just another observation from within the NDS paradigm that doesn't match expectations of that paradigm. If it's not physical beauty, it must be the value of diversity itself that accounts for diversity. And sexual selection itself is on the chopping block, even here in a society so superficially vain that Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise can dominate the news ahead of all serious civilizational concerns, teenage girls starve themselves to death seeking sex appeal, and teenage boys kill each other for shoes or jackets.
Comment by Joy — March 28, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
I mostly agree with this, and I think we're getting close to resolution.
This is where I think the remaining point of disagreement lies. Just because a person's belief may be false, or even irrational, does not entail that it is correctly accounted for by blind, not-rational processes. As Bradford argued above, people can adopt beliefs for reasons unrelated to the truth of those beliefs, but still be acting based on reason. Perhaps they want to remain part of a community, or they have reason to believe that the person who told them the belief is trustworthy, etc. Heck, since Newton's account of physics contains things that are false, he must have adopted it for reasons that are, technically, "unrelated to the truth" of those things, since there is no such truth to be related to. But I'd be hard pressed to say that his conclusions were based on "blind, non-rational processes" instead of reasons.
My problem with these reductivist accounts of belief isn't so much that they presume that those beliefs are false, but that they undermine the very basis of belief, logic, and rationality, and are thus fundamentally attacks on everything that derives from them, including philosophy, theology, and science. As I mentioned above, I think a lot of this evo psych deconstructionism would be quickly recognized for its incoherence by its own practitioneers, if they were to approach things more scientifically, and take a balanced look at implications for beliefs in general, including their own, instead of zooming in on particular Western cultural "hot topic" beliefs that upset them in other people (religion, morals) and trying to deconstruct them in a vacuum.
Comment by Deuce — March 28, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
This is an old and not-very-good argument. I believe that Plantinga's arguments against naturalism are similar. The assumption is that because thought has a natural and mechanistic basis, then it can't be rational. But this is false. The naturalist position is that cognition, from animal to everyday human to science, has evolved towards first towards adaptiveness and later towards rationality and objectivity.
The interesting thing is that ev-psych and research like the Hauser work on morality I cited is that you can probe how people think and see just in what ways they are irrational. This doesn't mean people are incapable of rationality, it means they have to work at it.
Comment by mtraven — March 28, 2007 @ 2:54 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
That doesn't help much. I could just as easily say "My position is that there is a way that squares can be circles." Just asserting something doesn't make it coherent or legitimate.
What you need to do is show conceptually why the idea isn't incoherent, ie how blind and mechanistic causes can account for rationality (the ability to find truth using information and our sense of logic) in principle. If the solution is anything like an above post of yours, where it was suggested that truth can simply be defined as those beliefs that survive, then I don't think I'll spend my time debating it, but I'll reiterate my view that it's an attack on rationality in general.
Comment by Deuce — March 28, 2007 @ 3:23 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Mesk wrote:
Well, your argument rests on an oxymoron.
If you had said 'non-rational motives', and asserted that all human religious beliefs are caused by non-rational motives, and that all non-rational motives for religious beliefs are physical states of religious believers, then the point you're trying to make would be clearer and significant. But it would then be open to severe attack for the following reasons:
1. Your thesis assumes rather than demonstrates the truth of physicalism with respect to religious beliefs; in other words, the thesis that all religious belief states are simply physical states caused by other physical states. When was this thesis proved?
2. You provide no reason for restricting physicalism to religious beliefs. If physicalism is true across the board, then every belief state is a physical state caused by another physical state. So the beliefs you have expressed in this thread would be 'irrational' in precisely the same sense of that word that you are using to characterize the belief states of religious believers.
The other criticism I'd make is that you are assuming that if someone can't articulate 'rational' reasons for a belief, then they must be holding the belief for 'non-rational' reasons. That's a logically invalid inference. For example, someone may have a mystical experience which they either can't, or don't wish to articulate. It would not follow from their inarticulateness that a subsequent belief in God was irrationally held.
But as always, the main issue here is really whether the attempt to naturalize reason, intentionality, and consciousness is even coherent, let alone leads to truth (truth itself, of course, being one of the things whose naturalizability is in question).
Comment by stunney — March 28, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Is science adaptive?
Comment by Rock — March 28, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
stunney wrote:
Stunney has a point Mesk. Non-rational reasons is a tough position to defend. Not believing that all religions and religious precepts are created equal, I would find common ground with an atheist who argues that non-rational motives account for some religious doctrines.
Comment by Bradford — March 28, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Deuce writes:
Deuce has nailed what bothers some of us about the approach to adaptive responses. It is not the concept itself but rather the selectivity of the process with a bent toward the hot topics suggested by Deuce. There appears to be an unhealthy cutural influence on research choices and corresponding hypotheses. Imagine if a researcher instead were to focus on racism or homosexuality and make some very unPC assumptions as the basis for a hypothesis.
Comment by Bradford — March 28, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Btw, here's an example of the type of explanation that I don't think is objectionable, or undermines rational discourse in general:
In the ancient Norse pantheon, the malicious gods were called jotuns, ie "frost giants" or "frost demons", who lived in a city of frost. My explanation for the Nordic belief in jotuns is that the Norse lived in a very cold climate, where the greatest threats they had to deal with were related to the cold.
Now, notice a few things about this explanation. First, blind irrational forces, namely the frosty weather that the Norse had to deal with, are a factor in accounting for their belief. If it weren't for the cold weather, they wouldn't believe in jotuns. But I'm not saying that their belief is caused by blind, irrational forces. I don't claim that the frost affected their brain chemistry, producing jotun-belief, or that the jotun meme was highly prolific, or any such silliness. If you look closely, you'll see that I'm actually appealing to the reasoning faculties of the Norse to account for their belief. Given that they believed in malicious supernatural entities, and given that in the world they knew about, the greatest threat to human safety was deadly cold weather, you can how it would be reasonable for them to conclude that the malicious entities were associated with frost.
Another thing to note about my account is that it doesn't directly presume that their belief was false or non-rational. With our broader view of the world, we can conclude from the account that their belief was false. That's because we can see that their reasons are unfounded, since other parts of the world where people live are not cold, among other things. However, this sort of account doesn't necessarily imply the falsehood or irrationality of all beliefs held by ancient peoples. We can reconstruct reasons for why the ancient Greek philosophers held various beliefs, for instance, and many of those things are still accepted, or are being debated, in the modern day.
If you really want to understand beliefs, you need to try to understand why people held those beliefs. It will give more actual insight, with the added upshot of not deconstructing logic in the process.
Comment by Deuce — March 28, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Ditto Bradford and Deuce.
This is all about pissing on the ground in order to mark territory for the ingroup (the rational scientists and other atheists like the researchers) and look down at the outgroup (those irrational people who are not reductionistic materialists) by "explaining away" why they are "irrational" in terms of scientific models.
It's just a little bit more subtle way to denigrate the rubes than books like "God: the failed hypothesis", "The God Delusion", "The End of Faith", etc. In the end, not different at all than those bible study classes where fundamentalist Christians come up with their own "explanations" for why some reject the saving message of Jesus, all ultimately pointing the finger of blame on some moral failing or another such as lust, pride, and the like. . .
That ingroup – outgroup racket gets old after a while and becomes easier and easier to recognize. . .
Comment by mcromer — March 28, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Not sure why the burden of proof is on me. My picture fits in with science and doesn't require positing deities. The incoherence arguments are deeply flawed and don't convince me for a minute. If you want some philosopher's responses, see here.
The quick answer is — we already know how blind mechanism can generate adaptivity. Cognition is an adaptation. Real brains, having evolved, are imperfectly rational, so cultural evolution has stepped in and developed further adaptations that improve our ability to model the world (ie, science).
Now, you may find that as implausible as I find the theist story. If so, we'll just have to agree to disagree, and you can go back and reread the recent exchanges between stunney and me that went over the same well-trodden ground.
Comment by mtraven — March 28, 2007 @ 4:13 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Hi, Deuce,
And the measuring stick for the above abstractions are arrived at by consensus, no less. Or I should say measuring sticks, as there will be a healthy dose of people who will think no less strongly that this is the group that is off its rocker.
Let's suppose that there are two groups (there are many more than only two, but for simplification's sake, suppose two). Each group thinks the other is illogical and irrational. One group is content, secure in its belief without reason. The other group is seething with questions (I'm projecting here), using reason and logic and empirical evidence to try to understand his/her existence and the world and the universe, and are discontent because they do not know the answer.
Which group is really the logical group?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 28, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
A more clearcut way to express my meaning, with regard to my last comment, is that there is a distinction, subtle as it is, between acting logically and being logical. In other words, the method is not the same as the conclusion.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 28, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Do you seriously think that the idea that the truth is simply those ideas that survive fits with science?
Comment by Deuce — March 28, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
That is not something I subscribe to very seriously, it was a half-assed idea I was throwing out to try to give some support to religious belief.
But I think it is a point of view worth pursuing.
The trick is, survivability is not arbitrary. Evolution seems to have invented similar structures multiple times (such as eyes), which suggests that there is a sort of platonic eye-form that evolution converges to. There may also be a transcendent truth that evolved minds and evolved truths converge to. To me, this makes the most sense for mathematics, but maybe it applies to other thoughts and ideas as well.
I'm just wildly speculating here…and actually trying hard to incorporate ideas from the Other Side into my worldview.
Sniping between theism and materialism isn't really that interesting; trying to turn these antithetical viewpoints into a synthesis is.
Comment by mtraven — March 28, 2007 @ 5:28 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Joy,
There's no question that human beings in general are extremely good at a lot of things: for instance, categorising the living world, and developing sophisticated manual skills. Hunter-gatherers live on what is essentially a camping trip that never ends, and it takes tremendous skill and knowledge for them to stay alive and feed their family. These hunter-gatherers or your "wildcrafters" would certainly come in handy should civilisation burn to the ground any time soon.
What they tend not to be particularly good at is thinking about thinking. Why is that? Well, you explain it yourself:
Thanks, Joy – this is precisely my argument. The fact is, people generally don't need to interrogate their own deepest metaphysical beliefs. Those beliefs work just fine in terms of answering their basic questions about how the world operates and binding their society together, and that's what matters. And this, rather than some deep internal search for truth, is why people adopt those beliefs. Which has been my point all along, and it now starts to look as though you're just disagreeing for the sake of it.
Comment by Mesk — March 28, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
stunney (and, later, Bradford) – it's disappointing that the best you can do is make a trivial semantic argument, especially such a lame one. Of course, had you bothered to consult a dictionary you'd be aware that there are several accepted definitions of "reason" that fit quite neatly into that sentence. In fact, the very first definition in that link is essentially a synonym for "motive".
On to (slightly) more substantive arguments:
Of course I do in fact believe that; but at no stage is it assumed in my argument. As I said earlier to Bradford, I'm not arguing that all religions are false because their believers adopt them for non-rational reasons. I'm simply pointing out that most religious belief is not based on deep reflective analysis of metaphysical concepts, and instead has a primarily non-rational basis. This is true regardless of whether cognition is based on physical states or invisible mind-pixies.
My argument for non-rationality isn't about the physical basis of beliefs. It's about the logical process by which such beliefs are formed. Logic and illogic can both readily take place within physical brains.
I'll come back to this point (and Deuce's eminently reasonable criticisms) in a comment later today, when I have a bit more time.
Comment by Mesk — March 28, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Oh, by the way, stunney – before you start manufacturing the usual outrage about the "invisible mind-pixies" comment, I hereby formally proclaim that there are other non-physical explanations for mind that don't boil down to patently imaginary magical entities.
Comment by Mesk — March 28, 2007 @ 6:29 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Mesk and mtraven, the belief that humans are "hardwired" to believe in God is not inconsistent with Christianity. There is a scriptural passage indicating this to be the case albeit with different wording. I believe it is from the OT which would make it a Judeo-Christian concept. Mtraven, your synthesis attempts will likely meet little resistence if they go this far. I also believe Christian beliefs afford practical utility in keeping with Mesk's idea.
Here is where we part company. It centers around Deuce's point about truth. I believe Christ lived and died as recorded. That does not take a strong commitment because he was written about not only by NT authors but by first and second century secular historians as well. I believe he rose from the dead on the third day following his crucifixion and that he is God. That is a specific claim to truth. If the event occured as I indicated then Christ's identity and his teachings are validated and my belief is not only rational it is quintessentially rational. If not it is very irrational. The truth of an event cannot evolve. It either happened as described or it did not. Rationality and truth are tied to the reality or falseness of a specific event. Adaptation is useless in evaluating this.
Comment by Bradford — March 28, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
I have various things to say, so if you don't see your name right away, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not further down thos post.
Rock wrote:
Precisely.
And succinctly expressed.
Bradford wrote:
Also spot on.
mtraven wrote:
Do you see why the highlighted phrase points precisely to the incoherence of your position?
You are employing a normative standard of rationality to evaluate how rational brains are. But if your thesis is true, then it's impossible to do this, because the brain-process that constitutes 'mtraven employing a normative standard of rationality' is itself something that ex hypothesi is rationally imperfect (unless evolution made mtraven's brain perfectly rational–which prima facie, and even secunda facie, is extremely implausible.)
However, that's ok because I see from other remarks of yours that you are moving toward what in my view is a more rationally defensible position than strict materialism; namely, Platonism-cum-Physicalism, which is a more expansive form of Naturalism than straight materialism.
NB. 'physicalism' in my book is itself a broader term than 'materialism; something can be physical without beings simply material–for example, me, or Mtraven. This on Aristotelian grounds in the first instance–where there is matter, there's always form, and form in this sense, say, a giraffe's form, is not reducible to the material stuff of which the giraffe is made; I make this distnction in order to block the eliminative materialist program of the Churchlands, and Dennett when he's being provocative, ditto Dawkins sometimes. That is to say, I take the term 'materialism' to refer to highly reductive scientific/philosophical theories of reality, and 'physicalism' to refer to both highly reductive and
to theories that are non-highly-reductive but-still-monist.
For illustrative examples, I would count Colin McGinn in that last mentioned category, but probably not Chalmers. Moving on…
Mesk, it's very disappointing that you consult a dictionary about the term 'reason' when you know fine well that its real meaning, i.e. what reason really is, is the central issue here along with the question of why such a thing as reason exists at all. It's ludicrous to think that reason's real meaning can be settled by giving dictionary meanings for the word 'reason'.
You wrote:
Suppose 10-year old Gabriella's belief that there is such a thing as gravity is not based on deep reflective analysis of Newtonian/Einsteinian theories of gravity, but rather on her NASA engineer dad's assuring her that science has shown that there really is such a thing, that it is a property of all matter, and its strength varies with the distance between different material bodies, and that when she's older, he'll teach her a lot more about what gravity is, and how it works.
For the next three years, Gabriella believes there is such a thing as gravity but hardly gives it a thought, focusing her mental life instead on clothes, how big her breasts are going to be, the yuckiness of menstruation, how nasty her classmate Natasha is, how boring mathematics lessons are, on how she desperately needs to have a horse, and, increasingly, on boys.
In my opinion, Gabriella's belief (i.e. the relevant propositional attitude–her mental attitude towards the proposition, 'There is such a thing as gravity' and towards propositional contents that are semantically equivalent or nearly so)—-during these three years that there's such a thing as gravity, is quite rational. She knows her dad is a highly trained engineer; she rationally believes that he is generally trustworthy, and that he has no motive to deceive her about gravity, etc.
Her belief is rational, but not based on her acquaintance with any detailed scientific reasoning about gravity (she essentially has none), but rather a conversation about gravity with her dad when she was 10.
Occasionally during these three years, she wonders why she can't see 'the curvature of space', which her dad mentioned at one point in the conversation as being what gravity 'really amounted to'. But then some boy comes along, and she quickly ceases to ruminate about the invisibility of curved space.
Thus, during this period she believes there is an invisible something which people call 'gravity' essentially because her dad told her about it when she was 10.
I maintain that Gabriella's belief in gravity is rational in these circumstances.
I further maintain that an essentially similar narrative is easily constructed substituting Anastasia for Gabriella, a Russian Orthodox priest-cum-theologian dad for the NASA engineer dad, and God for gravity; with a similar conclusion about the rational status of Anastasia's relevant belief.
That's true but quite irrelevant. What's needed for your argument is to account for why some physical states qualify as being logical and others qualify as being illogical. And the thing is, figuring that out is going to require not just reasoning or cognitive ability, but a grasp of the normativity by which we evaluate different belief states. But normativity doesn't look like a physical property of brains. It doesn't look like a physical property at all.
Suppose you can constantly observe the brain of the world's best mathematician for ten years. At what point does the logical validity of the proofs he develops during those ten years 'appear' on your brain-monitoring device?
Another example: what's the relevant physical difference in the physical world that makes, say, 15-year-olld Abdul Muhammad al-Karim's belief in Allah 'illogical', and Mesk's belief that Abdul's belief is illogical, logical? See, I think you need a mind to decide what is 'the relevant physical difference. You might say OK–but deciding the relevant difference is itself a brain process.
And then I say: what in that last-mentioned brain-process is relevant? And then you give your neuroscientific answer to that question.
And then I say: how do we know your answer is correct; how do we know it's the right answer?
And then I take you for a walk towards Infinite Regress Nature Park.
In other words, to know what's correct, or what's right, or what's true, or what's valuable, or what's rational, or what's adaptive, or what's relevant, or whether something represents or is about something else, etcalways presupposes rational mindhood ; and hence the natutre of rational mindhood can't be fully and adequately explained in terms of something that doesn't already
I don't know if any on The Other Side are familiar with Victor Reppert's recent book, C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason.
Reppert has a website, Dangerous Idea.
Btw, mtraven (and raevmo), will you be responding to
this post?
There's no rush, of course.
Comment by stunney — March 28, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
I have various things to say, so if you don't see your name right away, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not further down this post.
Rock wrote:
Precisely. And succinctly expressed.
Bradford wrote:
Also spot on.
mtraven wrote:
Do you see why the highlighted phrase points precisely to the incoherence of your position?
You are employing a normative standard of rationality to evaluate how rational brains are. But if your thesis is true, then it's impossible to do this, because the brain-process that constitutes 'mtraven employing a normative standard of rationality' is itself something that ex hypothesi is necessarily rationally imperfect (unless evolution made mtraven's brain perfectly rational–which prima facie, and even secunda facie, is extremely implausible.)
Your evaluation of brain-processes, on your own view, can't but fail to be adequate. I.e., you'll never know which brain-processes are the best with respect to rationality, just by examining them, including your own. You always end up having to consciously consult 'reason itself', in order to decide which brain processes are rationally speaking better than other brain processes. Just examining the entire physical world, including all brains, including your brain won't give you the answer. You have to think about rational norms to get the answer. And sure, you have to have a brain to do so. But just observing your brain in relation to the entire universe won't tell you if your brain is being rational or not unless you've already established by rational thought-processes what those criteria are.
All brain exams, in other words, presuppose, and do not discover, rational norms.
On my view, however, there's always the possibility that anyone's particular thought about something is perfectly adequate by rational criteria, because reason is, as Putnam said, something that cannot be naturalized, but transcends physical processes.
However, that's ok because I see from other remarks of yours that you are moving toward what in my view is a more rationally defensible position than strict materialism; namely, Platonism-cum-Physicalism, which is a more expansive form of Naturalism than straight materialism.
NB. 'physicalism' in my book is itself a broader term than 'materialism'; something can be physical without beings simply material–for example, me, or mtraven. This on Aristotelian grounds in the first instance–where there is matter, there's always form, and form in this sense, say, a giraffe's form, is not reducible to the material stuff of which the giraffe is made; I also make this distinction in order to block, or put to one side, what I regard as the only true or genuine materialism, namely the eliminative materialist program of the Churchlands, and of Dennett when he's being provocative, ditto Dawkins sometimes. That is to say, I take the term 'materialism' to refer to highly reductive scientific/philosophical theories of reality, and 'physicalism' to refer to both highly reductive theories and
to theories that are non-highly-reductive but-still-monist.
For illustrative examples, I would count Colin McGinn in that last mentioned category, but probably not Chalmers. Moving on…
Mesk, it's very disappointing that you consult a dictionary about the term 'reason' when you know fine well that its real meaning, i.e. what reason really is, is the central issue here along with the question of why such a thing as reason exists at all. It's ludicrous to think that reason's real meaning can be settled by giving dictionary meanings for the word 'reason'.
You wrote:
Suppose 10-year old Gabriella's belief that there is such a thing as gravity is not based on deep reflective analysis of Newtonian/Einsteinian theories of gravity, but rather on her NASA engineer dad's assuring her that science has shown that there really is such a thing, that it is a property of all matter, and its strength varies with the distance between different material bodies, and that when she's older, he'll teach her a lot more about what gravity is, and how it works.
For the next three years, Gabriella believes there is such a thing as gravity but hardly gives it a thought, focusing her mental life instead on clothes, how big her breasts are going to be, the yuckiness of menstruation, how nasty her classmate Natasha is, how boring mathematics lessons are, on how she desperately needs to have a horse, and, increasingly, on boys.
In my opinion, Gabriella's belief—i.e. the relevant propositional attitude–her mental attitude towards the proposition, 'There is such a thing as gravity' and towards propositional contents that are semantically equivalent or nearly so—-during these three years that there's such a thing as gravity, is quite rational. She knows her dad is a highly trained engineer; she rationally believes that he is generally trustworthy, and that he has no motive to deceive her about gravity, etc.
Her belief is thus rational, but not based on her acquaintance with any detailed scientific reasoning about gravity (she essentially has none), but rather a conversation about gravity with her dad when she was 10.
Occasionally during these three years, she wonders why she can't see 'the curvature of space', which her dad mentioned at one point in the conversation as being what gravity 'really amounted to'. But then some boy comes along, and she quickly ceases to ruminate about the invisibility of curved space.
Thus, during this period she believes there is an invisible something which people call 'gravity' essentially because her dad told her about it when she was 10.
I maintain that Gabriella's belief in gravity is rational in these circumstances.
I further maintain that an essentially similar narrative is easily constructed substituting Anastasia for Gabriella, a Russian Orthodox priest-cum-theologian dad for the NASA engineer dad, and God for gravity; with a similar conclusion about the rational status of Anastasia's relevant belief.
That's true but quite irrelevant. What's needed for your argument is to account for why some physical states qualify as being logical and others qualify as being illogical. And the thing is, figuring that out is going to require not just reasoning or cognitive ability, but a grasp of the normativity by which we evaluate different belief states. But normativity doesn't look like a physical property of brains. It doesn't look like a physical property at all.
Suppose you can constantly observe the brain of the world's best mathematician for ten years. At what point does the logical validity of the proofs he develops during those ten years 'appear' on your brain-monitoring device?
Another example: what's the relevant physical difference in the physical world that makes, say, 15-year-old Saudi Arabian, Abdul Muhammad al-Karim's belief in Allah 'illogical', and Mesk's belief that Abdul's belief is illogical, logical?
See, I think you need a mind to decide what is 'the relevant physical difference'. You might say, "OK–but deciding the relevant difference is itself a brain process."
And then I say: what in that last-mentioned brain-process is relevant? And then you give your neuroscientific answer to that question.
And then I say: how do we know your neuroscientific answer is correct; how do we know it's the right answer?
And then I take you for a walk towards Infinite Regress Nature Park.
In other words, to know what's correct, or what's right, or what's true, or what's valuable, or what's rational, or what's adaptive, or what's best, or what's relevant, or whether something represents or is about something else, etcalways presupposes rational mindhood ; and hence the nature of rational mindhood can't be fully and adequately explained in terms of something that doesn't already partake of its nature.
There's no outrage involved. I know perfectly it's just a rhetorical ploy that creates false dichotomies, such that if This Side denies the truth or adequacy of some philosophical analysis of your side concerning X, your side then portrays my side as harboring obviously intellectually disreputable ideas–when it's just as obvious that our ideas aren't even close to being intellectually disreputable. So I see the use of this rhetorical device as indicative of the rational weakness of your side's position when subjected to cogent criticisms. And this, far from outraging me, gladdens my heart.
The criteria of intellectual respectability cannot be determined solely by one party to an intellectual controversy. So, for example, if a very large number of extremely intelligent, eminently rational people throughout history up to the present day seriously maintained and rationally argued that pixies existed, ipso facto belief in pixies would be intellectually respectable.
The other thing is, two can play at that game.
I don't know if any on The Other Side are familiar with Victor Reppert's recent book, C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason.
Reppert has a website, Dangerous Idea.
Btw, mtraven (and raevmo), will you be responding to
this post?
There's no rush, or necessity to do so, of course.
Comment by stunney — March 28, 2007 @ 9:30 pm
March 28th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Uh-oh, how did that happen? MS-jittery fingers, perhaps.
Please use only the later, 9.30pm version of the post if you wish to reply.
Comment by stunney — March 28, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 1:24 am
me:
Cognition is an adaptation. Real brains, having evolved, are imperfectly rational.
stunney:
No, it's not incoherent at all. I'm sorry I used that phrase since it seems to have set you off, and I'm not sure there is such a thing as perfect rationality.
Here's what I mean: Brains have evolved to make and use representations of the world, but in a highly selective and imperfect way. A photograph is a selective and imperfect representation of the real world — it's two dimensional, it has limited resolution, etc. And if I close my eyes and try to reconstruct the scene around me, I'm going to include some features (the ones that are perceptually salient) and leave others out, and impose biases and distortions based on my all-too-imperfect brain. Any real, embodied cognitive system will have this property, since there is no such thing as a perfect representation. We also have built-in biases that prevent us from achieving an objective view of reality. Our moral reasoning has peculiar inconsistencies (see that Hauser paper). Our ability to estimate risk is poor.
This is our native cognitive apparatus. BUT we have also evolved the ability to think in more accurate ways by using sociocultural apparatuses like science. Science (and mathematics, and maybe philosophy) have evolved techniques that support more rigorous and consistent mental operations. These help us get pictures of reality that are "better" than what we can come up with unaided. I put quotes around "better" since I acknowledge that science, in amplfying our ability to do empirical observation and reasoning, may leave out other things. So I consider science a supplement to native human cognition, rather than a replacement.
As it happens, we can use also our cultural tools to evaluate our native cognition. That's how we can tell that we are imperfect. Cognitive psychologists do this for a living..
Well, thanks I guess. I'm not sure that anybody actually holds to the kind of strict materialism you disapprove of. I've known some pretty hardcore ones in my day and all of them acknowledge that patterns exist, and that the important thing about nature is not lumps of stuff but the patterns the stuff arranges itself into.
I thought 'naturalism' is the prefered term these days, but whatever.
You seem to view rational mindhood as an all-or-nothing thing, which is part of the reason you seem to think that is has to be foundational. But as I've described above and in other posts on this thread, real cognition is imperfect in many ways, and our particular form of thinking is part of an ongoing process of evolution and adaptation.
We know what's adaptive because that's what survives over the long term. We know when something represents something else by learning correlations between things and their representations. We learn what's rational by checking our native intuitions for consistency using more formal forms of reasoning. What's valuable depends on how things relate to our goals, some of which are innate and some of which are learned. Etc. It's a big messy process.
That is not a "fully and adequately explanation" of rational mindhood, but I never claimed to have such a thing (nor has any one who knows what they're talking about). I'm sure it won't satisfy you. But neither I nor the universe guarantees you a satisfactory explanation of everything.
Comment by mtraven — March 29, 2007 @ 1:24 am
March 29th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Here's a very Thought-Provocative excerpt from sometime Wykeham Professor of Logic at my alma mater, Oxford University, and my co-religionist, Michael Dummett, in his latest book, _Thought and Reality_, which gets at the heart of the matter of whether mind or matter has ontological priority. This is from the book's last chapter. 'God and the World':
Ibid., pp 97-99, 101-102. Emphases in the original text.
Comment by stunney — March 29, 2007 @ 1:40 am
March 29th, 2007 at 2:25 am
mtraven wrote:
The Churchlands do. They raise their kids as far as they can without using any mental concept vocabulary, replacing it with a purely materialist vocabulary. Folk psychological concepts like 'believing' or 'wanting' are banished from their home.
More on eliminative materialism here.
The Dummett excerpt I posted above is highly relevant to your post especially for the following reason: you speak of representations of the world as being capable of greater or lesser representational accuracy. As soon as you allow the idea of a represention being more, or less, accurate or 'true', you are presupposing that there's A Way The World Really Is In Itself, against which representations of it can be judged for accuracy.
Dummett argues that this notion of the world as it is in itself independently of mind is logically incoherent. For there to be a way the world really is, it must be a world that is completely apprehended by mind. Otra vez mas:
[emphasis added]
Given that Dummett is one of the top logicians in the world, and one of the most influential philosophers of recent decades, it may be worth your while to read and think about his book (it's just 109 pages of text), if only to acquaint yourself with his position and the arguments he gives for it. His view is that there is no such thing as Reality completely independent of Thought. Hence the title of the book. But it's his arguments that are the real meat and that perhaps you should dig into.
Comment by stunney — March 29, 2007 @ 2:25 am
March 29th, 2007 at 5:09 am
mtraven wrote:
Piers Strawson wrote:
Comment by stunney — March 29, 2007 @ 5:09 am
March 29th, 2007 at 7:45 am
stunney wrote:
stunney,
As I pointed out to you two threads ago (see the final third of this comment), the doubts you raise about physically-based reason would apply equally to non-physical reason.
All of us, dualist and naturalist, theist and atheist, face exactly the same problem of trying to establish reason's reliability from the inside.
Comment by keiths — March 29, 2007 @ 7:45 am
March 29th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Keiths, I think you've misconstrued things here. The arguments from reason that stunney and others make is not that physicalism prevents us from establishing reason's reliability from the inside. Of course it's impossible to establish reason's reliability from the inside, because that would require reason, making any such attempt circular.
The reliability of reason is a given, not something that needs to be established. It's something that we simply know, which provides the grounds for all our other knowledge.
However, given that reason exists and is a reliable guide to truth, we must only consider accounts which are combatible with its existence and reliability, and reject ones that aren't, because they are the definition of irrational.
It's a similar in principle to explaining anything else, such as the Grand Canyon. When we reject a theory that doesn't adequetely account for the Grand Canyon, it's not because that theory doesn't allow us to establish that the Grand Canyon exists. We already know that the Grand Canyon exists, because we can see that it exists. We require a theory that provides a rational underpinning for the Grand Canyon's existence (an account that implies that the Grand Canyon is impossible or leaves it to chance won't do), but not because we're trying to establish its existence.
Comment by Deuce — March 29, 2007 @ 10:01 am
March 29th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
mtraven wrote:
I'm not sure that anybody actually holds to the kind of strict materialism you disapprove of
stunney wrote:
Well, that's just dumb. And didn't B.F. Skinner pull the same stuff 50 years ago?
Re Dummett, for "one of the most influential philosophers of recent decades", I've never heard of him before now and his books aren't in any of the local libraries, so it's unlikely that I'll be reading him soon. The passage you quoted is interesting, it sounds like he is at least aware of modern metacosmological physics like Max Tegmark, even thought he doesn't buy his theories. But the summary I get from him is this:
1) When we try to apply concepts like "exist" and "like" to the cosmos as a whole, we get very confused.
2) I don't see how this could work.
3) So let's introduce God because by definition that solves all of my conceptual problems.
Comment by mtraven — March 29, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
mtraven:
Materialism is quite simply the belief that matter (and interactions) are all that exist in reality, and all forms and interactions are governed by the laws of physics. It embraces empiricism as well as rationalism in its baseline assumption that both sensory experience and cognitive functions are reducible to matter/ interaction/ law, thus are reliable for the purpose of gaining knowledge about the world [reality].
Eliminative materialists (like Skinner and the Churchlands) are the right wing fundamentalists, reductive materialists are the left wing fundamentalists.
One does not need to be a dualist of any kind to apprehend the irrational basis of both these wing positions. On the right they've eliminated themselves from the equation and embraced proud zombie-hood. On the left they've embraced a form of predestination positively Calvinistic in scope. Neither wing has an effective logical argument against any other position humans may hold, about any question of existential merit. This is because the actual physics of matter/ interaction/ law informs us that sensory experience does *not* give us an accurate picture of things as they are in reality. And the very fact that different, critically thinking people can hold a range of diametrically oppositional positions means our cognitive faculties aren't all that reliable a truth-discerner either.
The Churchlands are just doing an experiment with their children as subjects. My husband and I did one of those, to see how important parental influence is in the formation of beliefs, and to teach a valuable lesson about influence. We chose something obscure – the definitions of "airplane" and "airport." We reversed those definitions. An "airport" is a winged thing with engines that flies, an "airplane" is where you park it when it's not flying.
It only lasted less than 2 years before they started questioning us about it. When they had tried to argue the definitions with their friends, they were meeting with universal resistance. So we explained to them our experiment and the truth about the definitions. They never trusted authority blindly again.
The subject of air travel doesn't come up much in regular conversation and we didn't think the lesson about authority was one they shouldn't learn young. They also learned something about words and definitions, and how these are agreed-upon by common consensus even though you could define them for yourself some other way and get by just fine as long as everyone around you agrees with (or can translate) YOUR definitions.
I expect the Churchlands (if this story of their experiment with their own kids is true) will find themselves teaching the very same sort of lessons even if they don't intend to. The kids are going to earn beliefs. They are going to harbor wants. These things come so naturally to human beings that they can't be banished by edict or omission or by redefining the terms.
It's just semantics. What is expressed is the same, no matter what you call it. That's what my husband and I learned from our experiment, which was a lot less radical than the one the Churchlands are (or were, I'd predict it wouldn't survive the terrible twos) performing. If a zombie couple can produce human children, that is, as opposed to junior zombies.
Comment by Joy — March 29, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Very good.
This exactly the same argument I have made many times on this blog, and never any responses from the materialists.
What does it mean for a universe to "exist" without any consciousness aware of it? How could a "real" universe that exists without any observation be distinguished from an imaginary universe?
What is our criteria for real things versus unreal ones? Observation — which requires consciousness, of course.
I have yet to hear a single good response from the materialists to this.
Comment by mcromer — March 29, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
mcromer:
They don't really have a good response. Any more than they've a good response to how sensory experience and cognitive process can give anyone an accurate representation of what's real. The very fact that they spend immense amounts of time and energy trying to convince people – whose beliefs they believe are just as predetermined as their own – that their beliefs are better or more accurate.
I just never figured out that aspect of the dynamics of these debates, given that one side of it has no business arguing in the first place because there's nothing to argue about. They're not shy of invective and insults to those who can't think in any other way (by materialist definition), which just has to raise some moral/ ethical issues for the 'other' side.
It's *not* unethical to attempt to sway opinions if one believes that the opinions of human beings are amenable to logic and capable of change.
It *is* unethical to insult and demean the holders of opinions one does not believe to be freely chosen or capable of change. That's just mocking the afflicted, something frowned upon by human consensus on morality/ethics. Is it then any real surprise to find that metaphysical materialists [a.k.a. Atheists] are so distrusted by the majority who see both the logical and the ethical issues with their approach?
Comment by Joy — March 29, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
mtraven:
Why confused?
Any human being could make that statement. Noone knows all the answers.
This is where the BS seeps in. God offers a logical first cause solution to a causal problem. The alternative is an infinite regress of causes. This is not pointed out by anti-theists who instead engage in attacking a strawman to try and make their opponents look silly. In the end the strategy backfires.
Comment by Bradford — March 29, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Hi, Bradford,
I don't think that a first cause can be defended on the basis of logic. Where is the analog for it? Where in your experience did you ever encounter a first cause?
P.S. I should add that I am not an athiest.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 29, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Joy wrote:
Joy,
You seem to be under the impression that if materialism is true, then people's minds cannot change, and they cannot freely choose their beliefs.
I know of no materialists who believe that beliefs cannot change, and there are plenty of materialists (compatibilists) who believe that beliefs can be freely chosen, even if determinism is true.
In any case, you don't need to believe in free will to try to sway opinions.
Comment by keiths — March 29, 2007 @ 3:02 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
keiths:
Please explain how freedom of choice (what one will believe, from among a range of options) is not equivalent to freedom of will (the ability to choose from among a range of options).
Comment by Joy — March 29, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
keiths , mesk and mtraven (as well as any other "materialists" or "physicalists" reading the thread),
I'd be very gratified if each of you would take a crack at my two-part question. It goes right to the heart of whether consciousness is primary or secondary (although this may not be seen immediately).
What is the difference between a hypothetical universe that exists for real, and doesn't have any observer(s), and a hypothetical universe that is entirely imagined?
What do we mean when we say that something "exists"
Comment by mcromer — March 29, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
That is a weird typology, how/why do you match up these philosophical positions with political positions?
I spoze I am a reductive materialist. But the Calvinism you speak of is not a function of philosophy, but of physics. Spacetime is what it is, the flow of time is an illusion generated by the laws of thermodynamics and information entropy.
In other words, it's even worse than you think. The future is not just predetermined, it already exists, we just can't see it.
Yet our nature as survival-machines requires us to make what seem like choices. Paradoxical, but that's the nature of existence.
Actually I'm not sure how this view is any different from theism. If God is eternal and sees the whole of spacetime, then he already knows what's going to happen, including our choices. If that's the source of reality, you have the same problem as in ultramaterialist determinism.
Actually the ultramaterialist stance seems very tightly coupled to the theist stance, in that both insist on a firm foundation to reality, whether God or equations. Both are single-vision realist positions, and the true opposing position is some form of postmodernist antifoundationalism.
Comment by mtraven — March 29, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I wrote:
Joy wrote:
My point was that even if free will doesn't exist, a person's beliefs are still subject to being changed by what they read or hear.
Comment by keiths — March 29, 2007 @ 3:32 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
mtraven:
"Firm foundation" in whose definition of reallity? Not mine, obviously. Now, I was raised mostly in the Calvinist tradition after Dad retired from the service, but I honestly didn't pay the least bit of attention to details until the issue of infant baptism raised its ugly head. At which point I rejected it firmly on the spot, and that objection actually did end up at General Assembly a few years later and was determined 'officially' not to be a salvation issue. By then I was long gone from the assembly. Though I'm glad they finally took a real look at the issue for what it implied.
Not being a Calvinist, I guess my rejection of ultramaterialism isn't so surprising either. I think I've got a reasonably firm foundation for my views of reality. I've experienced a pretty broad range of it. You don't have to agree, but claiming predestination as a 'given' isn't likely to sway my opinion. Since you believe it's all predestined, you'd have no excuse to try and change my opinion. It is what it is because I am who I am. All you or anyone else need do is grant me the freedom to be. So long as I cause you no harm.
So. If I cannot be neatly compartmentalized by you into your nifty labeled boxes, what am I? And what in the world are you to do with me?
keiths:
How so?
Comment by Joy — March 29, 2007 @ 4:02 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
It appears I am predestined to do so.
I have no idea, I haven't read enough of your posts to know what you believe in. Recently you've been carping at other people's views.
I don't like to be compartmentalized either. So what?
Comment by mtraven — March 29, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Some people argue that whatever philosophical difficulties that may attach to physicalist accounts of reason would apply equally to non-physicalist accounts of reason.
But what if, as theists believe, non-physical, conscious reason is ontologically basic and not reducible to, or explainable in terms of, anything else, in just same way that materialists have held that matter is ontologically basic and not reducible to, or explainable in terms of anything else?
This is indeed what theists have always held.
Then, of course, it would be quite silly to demand of the theist a further explanation of conscious reason, just as it would be silly to demand of a materialist a further explanation of matter.
IOW, conscious reason and matter are proposed as two competing candidates for ontological and explanatory ultimacy.
I've already posted a good number of reasons which I believe make conscious reason preferable, or at least no worse than, matter (or Platonic objects) as a candidate for this role of ultimacy in a general theory of reality.
Comment by stunney — March 29, 2007 @ 4:40 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
mtraven:
Going back, in response to my saying:
You said:
Come on, now think seriously about this. Let's tease the idea that truth is simply defined as what survives out a bit. Prior to a few hundred years ago, nobody believed that that sun was a ball of hot gas. So, if we take this idea seriously, it means that the sun wasn't a ball of hot gas until people thought it was.
Or, how about this? Most people believe that truth is determined by objective reality, rather than merely whatever beliefs survive. Thus, if it is true that the truth is merely those beliefs that survive, then it is false that the truth is those beliefs that survive.
Or this. Any belief that anyone has is a belief that has survived. Therefore, if two people have contradictory beliefs, then neither belief is objectively false. Every person's belief is "true for them".
Now, it should be clear. This turns out to be exactly the cartoonish, relativist, wholesale rejection of logic that most people think of when they hear of post-modernism. Do you seriously think that this view is compatible with science and "worth pursuing" I'll just say, if you consider this to be worthy of serious consideration, but teleology to be simply out of bounds from the get-go, you've got some rather inside-out priorities.
Comment by Deuce — March 29, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
mtraven:
How sad for you. I sympathize, and would probably be motivated to rebel against the whole notion of predestination if I were confronted with an asserted "necessity" of such belief. Since I'm not, I can cheerfully go about my business unconcerned (beyond pity) for the futility of your life mission.
Now I am supposed to assume responsibility for your own neglect of my views (not that I actually care, my views are mostly dismissible I admit)? Sorry, mtraven, but I'm not fond of rotten fish.*
I can (and do) challenge other people's views because I believe it's entirely possible to change people's hearts and minds about things. I believe humans have both rational capacities and freedom of will. Thus I am not restricted to playing the poor tramp-clown who can't win. I believe there can be winners.
You've offered your opinions for compartmentalization. You can fight against that just as I can, if you choose to – or if you believe you have a choice. Then you'll have to confront the contradictions with a position that denies choice/will. I sure don't have a problem with you reaching that level of self-criticism! §;o)
[* Buddhist view of the blame game. The person with doing the blaming offers the 'other' a platter of rotten fish (blame). It's entirely up to the recipient to take it or leave it. I left yours.]
Comment by Joy — March 29, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
mtraven:
Going back, in response to my saying:
You said:
You said:
Um, no. I was talking epistemology, you are talking ontology. That is, the idea I was talking about is perfectly compatibile with an objective reality. The problem is not reality but our imperfect knowledge of it.
In fact science is pretty close to this survivability model. People propose hypotheses and theories all the time. The ones that survive are those that are found to be empirically true and/or useful by other scientists.
Religion is also a system of propagating and reproducing ideas, but the survivability criteria differ. Religious ideas survive because they are comforting and/or flattering to the human ego, or because they produce stronger group cohesion, or something like that. I believe this is what the original subject of this thread was about.
Now, all I am saying is that, since the claims of religion are not objectively verifiable, then I might be willing to grant them the status of "truth" simply based on their survivablity and adaptiveness. I think that's mighty magnanimous of me, personally.
See above.
Well, it is "true for them", if they can't argue the other person out of it, because there is no higher authority to appeal to. If they have both have access to an objective truth, then they ought to be able to converge, if they are sincere and intelligent. If they don't have such acess, then they are stuck.
Most people don't know a damn thing about postmodernism except what they read about in cartoon versions of it, so their opinions aren't interesting.
Anyway, like I said at the start, I am not interested in debating this point of view, I'm interested in exploring it. If you don't like it, then that's OK, but it's clear you don't even understand what I'm talking about.
[[I need to check out of this thread for awhile and get some work done, so please have fun without me.]]
Comment by mtraven — March 29, 2007 @ 5:56 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
AnaxagorasRules writes:
Encountering God is a claim that has been made by many though it is not one subject to experimental verification. I'm not concerned with whether I have or have not, for philosophical purposes. After all, I could just as easily ask when was the last time anyone encountered an infinite chain of causes.
Comment by Bradford — March 29, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
mtraven wrote:
Let's say 'the curvability of space in the presence of matter' suitably defined by a mathematical construct, solves all of Einstein's conceptual problems. Would that be a reason for rejecting the notion of 'the curvability of space in the presence of matter', or a reason for affirming it?
Deuce, the position that I hold, in good company with Dummett, is that Reality As It Really Is In Itself only exists or is real if there is a transcendent mind. One might call this view, using an older terminology deriving from Kant, Transcendental Idealism, or using a modern term, Global Idealism. (I interpret the later Wittgenstein as holding a version of this view.)
Transcendental or Global Idealism in this sense, is not merely compatible with, but actually makes it possible, for Local (or non-transcendent) Realism, to be true .
A Kantian-style distinction can be drawn between the empirical world, the world as it is for us, with the transcendental world-as-it-in-itself, which is unknowable to us, but is the idea of the world in God's mind.
So you get empirical realism only because transcendental idealism (= ontological mind-dependence) is true at the transcendent level, or in the transcendent dimension, or in the transcendent 'point of view'—'sub specie aeternitate'.
Here are some very relevant and important passages from Dummett that bring out this idea very strongly:
(_Thought and Reality_ pp. 99-102. Emphases in original.)
So, there you have it.
The holder of the immensely prestigious Wykeham Chair of Logic at Oxford University, now emeritus, the world's foremost scholar on Frege (=the founder of modern logic and of modern philosophy of mathematics), the world's leading philosopher regarding, and introducer of, the logic of realism versus antirealism debates —(for this purpose these terms mean, truth as mind independent versus truth as mind dependent for any given domain of objects over which there is a dispute as to whether existential quantifiers should be asserted and judged true or false)——yes, him, Dummett, says the other side is wrong and my side is right.
Of course, the fact that he says so does not prove it so. Still, it would be interesting to see if one of the other side managed to publish an article in a refereed journal not devoted to the atheist worldview, accusing Dummett of magical thinking.
Comment by stunney — March 29, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
mtraven wrote:
If this is true, is it also true that atheist ideas survive because they are comforting and/or flattering to the ego of atheists (since atheism posits that there is no omniscient moral judge—a concept which subconsciously the typical atheist has a childish fear of); and/or because atheist ideas produce a stronger-to-the-point-of-hubris-and ultimately pathological, desire to master, dominate and control the physical environment and even conscious human experience, despite clear evidence that an overweening desire of this kind is leading industrial civilization to global catastrophe if unchecked by religiously motivated moral ideas and spiritual ideals?
Since I see you're taking a break, I'll merely leave you with that thought….
Comment by stunney — March 29, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Hi, Bradford,
A very valid counter-question. As a math hobbyist, I encounter the concept of infinite regression in calculus, which is central to the idea of limits.
In arithmetic and geometric sequences, there is an analog to a pseudo first cause. It would be the case where, in the sequence of causes, with n representing the nth cause in the sequence, there would necessarily be an nth cause for which n = 1, which would be analog to a first cause. The sequence could extend infinitely, but it would have started somewhere. To be consistent, the universe itself would have to be viewed as a cause in the sequence of causes.
Unfortunately, this is an example of a psuedo first cause, because the series itself did not spring up out of nowhere. The equation itself had a cause – a human mind. This is the best logical argument I can make for a first cause, and in the end I have to discard it as being self-defeating and contradictory.
Infinite regression is a better analog to use if you believe in the law of cause and effect. And there is an analog to it in mathematics that does not contradict itself.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 29, 2007 @ 9:33 pm
March 29th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
mtraven wrote:
If I'm having breakfast with you at a Denny's, and you order blueberry pancakes from the menu, then I know you ordered blueberry pancakes, since I'm sitting there with you at the time you order them, I hear and see you ordering them, etc.
How does my knowledge of this fact about you entail that you're not ordering them freely?
Now, suppose you order those same blueberry pancakes, and I'm not present, but God is, and consequently knows you ordered blueberry pancakes.
How does God's knowledge of this fact about you entail that you're not ordering them freely?
Now suppose God is present whenever anyone performs any action, and consequently knows what all those actions are, regardless of which date they were performed. For example, God knows that on March 18, 2017, Bart Simpson jumps into a lake to save Eliza Doolittle from drowning. Et cetera.
How does God's knowledge of this fact about Simpson entail that Simpson did not perform that action freely?
We can state a relevant counterfactual proposition: if B. Simpson had not jumped into the lake to save E. Doolittle, then God would have known that he didn't. Or, to put it another way, God would know the proposition, "On March 18, 2017, Bart Simpson jumps into a lake to save Eliza Doolittle from drowning" is false.
I'm a bit of an unrepentant Molinist.
mcromer wrote:
mcromer, I seem to remember some on The Other Side characterizing your views as being silly, mystical, irrational nonsense, more or less.
It must feel good to know that one of the world's pre-eminent logicians agrees with you that it's their view which is, in fact, silly, mystical, irrational nonsense, more or less; and that yours is basically sound, and in keeping with the requirements of logic.
Comment by stunney — March 29, 2007 @ 9:45 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 6:49 am
AnaxagorasRules, I know two individuals with PhDs in mathematics and my son is heading in that direction although he is still a student. One of the three reminded me that because we can construct a mathematical model of a physical event is no reason to assume it describes the actual event. In this case it is not a model but an applicable mathematical device to which we are referring. In any case the concept that there could exist an entity outside the universe not bound by our time constraints has some theoretical support. I wonder what entity or actual physical construct would be represented by a mathematical symbol representing the nth cause. I acknowledge all the alternatives are difficult to grasp let alone describe. The purpose of my initial comment was to address the arrogance accompanying the belief that one side opts for a knee-jerk, mindless response to problems when the actual alternatives imply a choice between two extremely abstract philosophical positions.
Comment by Bradford — March 30, 2007 @ 6:49 am
March 30th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Joy wrote:
Joy,
It sounds like you're confusing determinism with fatalism. Agents are still efficacious in a deterministic world; not so in a fatalistic world (at least with respect to fated events).
I wrote:
Joy asked:
You believe A. You read several reports from credible sources that A is not the case. You now no longer believe A. Your beliefs have changed as a result of something you read. What part of that process requires free will?
Comment by keiths — March 30, 2007 @ 7:57 am
March 30th, 2007 at 8:32 am
stunney wrote:
It doesn't matter. Even if reason is ontologically basic, that doesn't establish its reliability.
I'm not asking the theist to explain reason. I'm pointing out that the theist faces the same challenge as the materialist in justifying her trust in reason. The difference is that the materialist has an evolutionary explanation to offer for the trustworthiness of reason, while the theist assumes the existence of God, assumes that God is the source of reason, and assumes that the reason God granted us is reliable.
Comment by keiths — March 30, 2007 @ 8:32 am
March 30th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Anaxagoras wrote:
Suppose there's a railroad train with an infinite number of cars. Pointing out that fact about the number of cars it has doesn't explain why there's a train at all, rather than no train.
The number of books or turtles in a pile being 100 does not explain why there should be any books or turtles rather than none. Increasing that number to infinity still won't explain why there is any pile, rather than none.
Comment by stunney — March 30, 2007 @ 8:34 am
March 30th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Why is anything pleasurable?
It is perfectly possible to conceive of a world in which all the pleasure-causing behavior observed in the actual world occurs in exactly the same way but without the attendant pleasure sensation occurring. The behavior might all have been 'hardwired' in that world, or be otherwise determined by the physical laws obtaining in that world.
Ex hypothesi, all reproductive behavior in that 'zombie' world would be at least as successful as the reproductive behavior observed in the actual world; and indeed, it is easy to conceive of behavioral patterns that would be more successful in alternative worlds, but without any concomitant pleasurable experiences.
It is, in fact, an astonishing fluke from a naturalistic evolutionary perspective, that the actual world happens to be one containing pleasure. As long as all the atoms do what they need to do and get where they need to get to, pleasure is irrelevant to evolution.
Pleasure, like pain, and indeed all conscious experience, including conscious rational thought, is not physically observable. Behavior we associate with pleasure is observable, but pleasurable feelings are not. Same with pain, emotions, rational thought, and so on. Conscious experience in general is not a physically observable material object.
Given the exclusively behavioral, functionalist and physicalist scope of contemporary evolutionary science, it strikes me as extremely unlikely that it could ever explain why anything, such as drinking a glass of good wine, is pleasurable. It could only explain what the physical processes associated with that type of experience are and how they evolved. But it couldn't explain why the taste of the wine is pleasurable, for the simple reason that evolution can't explain the existence of consciousness at all.
In this respect, evolution is in the same boat as the rest of science.
Comment by stunney — March 30, 2007 @ 9:11 am
March 30th, 2007 at 9:16 am
stunney writes:
Or to state the case a little differently, if there ever was a point where there was nothing, nothing should have remained the condition. Existence calls for an explanation. Eternity seems an inevitable descriptive device for any paradigm.
Comment by Bradford — March 30, 2007 @ 9:16 am
March 30th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Science presupposes the reliabilty of reason.
This presupposition is more warranted on the hypothesis that theism is true than on the hypothesis that evolutionary naturalism is true.
Evolutionary science assumes the reliability of its own reason in presenting a hypothesis which, if true, must reduce confidence in that assumption, as even Darwin recognized.
On edit: A bunch of relevant articles.
Comment by stunney — March 30, 2007 @ 9:35 am
March 30th, 2007 at 9:49 am
IMO evolutionary theory has no problem at all in explaining things pleasurable. The sensation of pleasure encourages the individual to repeat the behavior that caused the sensation. Displeasure causes the individual to avoid repeating the actions that led to displeasure. This is why poisonous substances that our ancestors were likely to encounter often have a very bitter and unpleasant taste, which clearly has survival value. Wine is produced from fruit which has positive survival value, hence the pleasurable sensation. Orgasms, anyone?
In other words, the sensation of (dis)pleasure is a neurological mechanism that helps us behave in a way that enhances survival.
I recently read an interesting example in Nature (sorry, too lazy to look up the exact ref) of evolution by natural selection making sure that poisonous food is avoided. In Australia the poisonous Cane toad is wreaking havoc among the local wildlife, ever since it was introduced decades ago to control cane-eating insects. One of the toad's predators, a black snake IIRC, has in the mean time evolved smaller jaws, making it impossible for the snake to swallow the big toads. Whether the snakes find the toads also unpleasant to the taste is anyon's guess.
Comment by Raevmo — March 30, 2007 @ 9:49 am
March 30th, 2007 at 9:57 am
raevmowrote:
I don't think you understand the problem. Yeah, given pleasure/pain sensations, one can easily see how they are adaptive things to have.
The problem is that they're not given.
That's why the philosophical mind-body problem is still ongoing 150 years after Darwin.:roll:
Comment by stunney — March 30, 2007 @ 9:57 am
March 30th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Stunney,
Yes it is indeed quite gratifying that a famous professional philosopher is asking basically the same question about what we mean by something
"existing" as I have been.
I must admit some degree of disappointment that none of the materialists / physicalists have picked up the gauntlet. Not very surprised though, since I've never gotten any satisfactory answer after more than a year of posing these questions.
Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias did respond once, basically, that we could certainly imagine a universe that exists without observer(s) — which of course misses the mark completely! Now Robin is a very sharp fellow, and the poverty of his answer is entirely due to the fogginess of thought that unquestioned materialism has cast upon the large majority of modern academics.
Here are the questions again:
1) What is the difference between a hypothetical universe that exists for real, and doesn't have any observer(s), and a hypothetical universe that is entirely imaginary?
2) What do we mean when we say that something "exists" In other words, what is our definition of "real" versus "imaginary" And then describe how a universe can be "real" or "exist" without observers.
Comment by mcromer — March 30, 2007 @ 10:08 am
March 30th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Even more mysterious, the same sensations can be interpreted in different ways, for example, people who enjoy eating very hot spicy food, versus people for whom it is tortureous.
For a more prurient example, people who enjoy S & M activities versus the majority who find them repellent.
And there are ways to manage pain through consciousness practice so that physical pain does not cause suffering, or at least reduces it mightily.
The "pleasure" / "pain" dichotomy is much more complex than it might appear at first glance. . .
Comment by mcromer — March 30, 2007 @ 10:17 am
March 30th, 2007 at 10:55 am
keiths:
Determinism opposes itself on purpose to the notion of free will by claiming that ALL my volitional actions are determined by pre-existing circumstances. From here:
Thus all that I am and everything I do has been predetermined by my sum of physical and psychic histories. Perhaps in your sum of histories you've "saved" many individuals from a lifetime of contemplation about existential questions by being there to persuade them that none of it counts and none of it's real and they don't have the freedom to choose anyway. I'd suspect, given the determinist view, those people were already headed in that direction anyway, and "fate" is what put you in their path (intersection of present with past histories) neither you nor any of them could have avoided.
One could argue about the definition of "fate" all day and get nowhere. To me it all looks to be the same thing approached from different angles. If I have no freedom to choose or will to do so, then it's a complete waste of time for you or any other free will denier to try and change me.
This is certainly true of all opinions held provisionally from the outset. As should all scientific opinions/beliefs be held, given the intelligently designed provisional nature of scientific knowledge. Knowledge/belief that has been invested with a large dose of emotion (faith) is pretty much immune from subversion by outside agents.
So while my mind could be changed from BB to M-Branes by actual physical evidence and sound reasoning, my mind could not be changed from belief that there is More than just matter, to belief that matter is all there is. I would expect any true materialist/ determinist to know this already about invested beliefs.
So while I spend quite a lot of time and energy trying to convince invested materialists that science isn't about absolutes and that new evidence could demolish their theoretics at any time, I do not bother trying to convince them that Jesus loves them. Even though I actually do believe they have the freedom to choose.
Comment by Joy — March 30, 2007 @ 10:55 am
March 30th, 2007 at 11:04 am
mcromer, you wrote:
This reminded me of a comment elsewhere in response to atheists:
Comment by stunney — March 30, 2007 @ 11:04 am
March 30th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Very nice elaboration there Stunney.
Comment by mcromer — March 30, 2007 @ 11:13 am
March 30th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
stunney wrote:
"If this is true, is it also true that atheist ideas survive because they are comforting and/or flattering to the ego of atheists (since atheism posits that there is no omniscient moral judge"”a concept which subconsciously the typical atheist has a childish fear of); and/or because atheist ideas produce a stronger-to-the-point-of-hubris-and ultimately pathological, desire to master, dominate and control the physical environment and even conscious human experience, despite clear evidence that an overweening desire of this kind is leading industrial civilization to global catastrophe if unchecked by religiously motivated moral ideas and spiritual ideals?"
This description of atheists is not only extremely insulting, as it imputes both motivations and thoughts that are clearly not characteristic of atheists as a group, it also ignores the fact that some "religions" "“ most notable Buddhism "“ are literally atheistic. That is, they do not include a deity, but in all other ways are clearly "religious".
Having been a practicing Zen Buddhist for over thirty years, I am not so much insulted by your comments as disappointed that a person who appeared at first to be relatively well educated would have so little understanding of belief systems with which he is neither acquainted nor seems to have any desire to become acquainted.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 30, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I am not an atheist, BTW.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 30, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Allen MacNeill wrote:
Precisely! That was my point! I was responding to mtraven who had posted this comment:
Comment by stunney — March 30, 2007 @ 12:13 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
mtraven, you are deeply confused on the subject of truth. In particular, you keep conflating what is true with what individuals think is true:
No, you were talking about truth, and therefore about ontology. When we claim that something is true, we are making a statement about ontology – a statement that is false if the ontology doesn't match. Hence, when you talk about what truth is, you are talking about the ontology of truth, as well as the ontology of everything else by extension. If you had talked about what people think is true, as opposed to truth itself, then you'd be talking about epistemology as well as ontology – namely the ontology of people and their beliefs (including yourself).
This is not the same as the claim that truth is just those beliefs that survive, but rather the opposite of it. If our knowledge of reality is imperfect, then some of our beliefs are false, regardless of how well they've survived, not "true for us".
This is circular. If the truth is defined by those beliefs that survive, then it is vacuous to say that "the ones that survive are those that are found to be empirically true". You can't say that they survive because they're found to be true, because you've already defined truth as simply what survives. What's more, this circularity obliterates any distinction you attempt to make between the criteria for scientific ideas and the criteria for religious ideas:
See directly above. By defining truth as those ideas that survive, you obliterate any attempt to distinguish science from religion on the basis that science is finding truth, or is more objective, or anything of the sort. It all comes down to the beliefs being true by virtue of surviving, and surviving by virtue of being psychologically pleasing, in both cases. Relativism is an attack on science and philosophy for the atheist too.
I can't help but notice the scare quotes around "truth" here, which shows that you know full well that there is a difference between truth and those ideas that survive, which means that you know that you know by reason that the theory is incoherent, which means that you need a theory that provides a rational foundation for our ability to use reason to find (objective) truth.
Also, is it actually true that "the idea [you were] talking about is perfectly compatibile with an objective reality" or is it just "true for you" Is it objectively true that "the problem is not reality but our imperfect knowledge of it" or just true for you?
Now you are making reference to objective truth, as distinct from what people think is true, which is illegitimate from the paradigm that truth is simply those beliefs that survive. You can have no such concept. By even speaking in objective terms, you show that you know the view is false, and so you might as well just use the normal terminology – you know, that archaic terminology where "true" means that something is actually true, and if someone's view isn't true, then it's false.
Btw, is is true that "if they have both have access to an objective truth, then they ought to be able to converge, if they are sincere and intelligent" or just true for you?
Yes, not all (or necessarily even most) post-modernists claim that the truth is relative, or that reason isn't a guide to objective truth. But some do, or occasionally do, put forward that cartoonish view, which is how it became known for that among the general population. The claim that the truth is simply those ideas that survive is certainly an instance of the cartoon version.
Are you interested in exploring whether the view is actually true, or just "true for you" The very question shows how nonsensical it is. You can't explore the possibility of a position being true when that position is an attempt to redefine "truth" by conflating it with something else. Are you interested in exploring the "possibility" that 1+1 is 3 if enough people think it is too?
Comment by Deuce — March 30, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Deuce,
I am not a materialist, but sometimes I play one on TV.
On the other hand, I do not believe in any such thing as the "objective truth" that you keep referencing.
The "objective truth" is a conceptual model of reality. It is a model perceived and experienced by consciousness (another word for subjectivity). In other words, it is a thought concept, much like other thought concepts (and ultimately made of subjective mindstuff).
It might be a really useful model in many respects. But you will notice that everyone's model of the "objective truth" is slightly different. In that way "objective truth" is a word much like "God" — lots of people think they have a grasp of it, but they disagree with lots of other people on what it is.
You will also notice that there is no good definition for objective truth. Basically everyone treats it like that famous definition of pornography "I know it when I see it". In this case, people use synonyms for objective truth like "reality", "actual" and the like. But that's just defining a term in terms of itself, which is unhelpful.
My own definition of "objective truth" is "a commonly shared conceptual model of reality". Which only raises the questions of "does everyone share that model?" and "what amount of agreement is required before something becomes objectively true?"
So what is the actual truth? I would say:
That we perceive. That we exist. The reality of consciousness. The substrate of subjectivity upon which play out all things, including concepts of "objective truth".
The contents of that consciousness vary, and differing models exist in different people (and sometimes at different times in the same people, and sometimes at the same time in a single person). But the foundation, the cornerstone of it all is our essential nature as consciousness, for without the light of our awareness, no perceptual objects such as concepts, thoughts, emotions, or sensations could be perceived.
Comment by mcromer — March 30, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Hi, Bradford,
Somewhere in these past threads, I wrote that a working model is only as good as it is useful. No analogy will ever exactly describe what it is analogous to. The only thing that can exactly be a thing under investigation is that thing. Analogies are only useful to the degree that they allow the item being studied to be represented by something else that is understood. Then the analogy is put away, and the item under investigation can be studied in the new light that the analogy shone on it.
I understand all this…in fact, this awareness is an important factor in my thinking processes. The infinite regression analogy does not perfectly describe the cause of the universe. It is afterall an analogy. But it does show that, in mathematics at least, that the concepte of infinite regression proved very useful. An analog for an infinite regression of causes does exist
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 30, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Deuce,
You should lighten up. As I said, I am exploring a point of view, not rigorously arguing for it, so your trying to poke it full of holes is wasted energy. I know it's questionable.
Anyway, here's what I'm trying to express:
- there is an "objective" natural reality out there, independent of our minds. Maybe God is watching it, maybe it just is.
- any knowledge we have of this reality is necessarily limited, imperfect, and distorted.
- thus while there may be an absolute Truth with a capital T, we don't have access to it.
- ideas evolve, mutate, reproduce and survive in a way loosely similar to biological organisms (this is the meme idea).
- there is memetic diversity — people believe different things, for whatever reasons. Emotional appeal is a big part of it. So is the utility of the idea for biological and cultural survival. Ie, people may hold to religion because of its comforting features, because it appears to be a stable institution in an unstable world, etc.
- There is no actual accesible objective truth, but we do have cultural institutions that enable us to build notions of truth that are more objective than an individual is capable of arriving at on their own.
- science is an evolved social process for evaluating the utility of certain kinds of ideas — those that are empirically verifiable, let's say, although it's more complicated than that.
- There are possibly useful ideas that are beyond the grasp of science.
- People, faced with a world of competing ideas, insofar as they have a choice about what to believe choose those ideas which seem useful to them.
So, the conclusion that I am trying to reach here (and I'm trying hard, because it goes AGAINST my natural instincts) is that religion might actually be "true", not in the sense of being empircally verifiable but by virtue of being a long-lasting, stable cultural institution that produces and nurtures useful ideas that are outside of the realm of science.
Furthermore, as stunney suggested somewhere up the line, and I've suggested elsewhere, the evolutionary survivability of a science-based worldview is not settled. It may be the case that societies that invent science also invariably invent technology that leads to their own destruction. If that's the case, then maybe science isn't that "true", in the sense of being a stable set of ideas that can survive for the long term. Modern science is only a few centuries old, so the jury is still out on that one.
Comment by mtraven — March 30, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Hi, Bradford,
I don't know. Right now I'm immersed in self-educating myself in the hard sciences…biology, chemistry, physics, and I am extending my math knowledge. The goal is to understand quantum mechanics. So for now I just allow that there is a possibility of infinite regression being involved somehow with the origin of the universe.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 30, 2007 @ 1:50 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Hi, stunney,
I can't assume this without qualifcation. What I could assume is that I am in a railroad car (analog to the universe), a very big one, in which I can't see out of it. Based on all my experiences, I can say that there might be a car ahead, but there must be a car behind, and therefor a car behind that one, and so on.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 30, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Don't worry, I'm not mad. I am pretty blunt about saying so if I think an idea is just blatantly nonsensical and indefensible, though. Am I to assume that your latest post does communicate your basic views, however?
There's an internal contradiction here. If there is no objective truth, then there can be no views that are more or less objective than other views. For to claim that some views are more objective than others is to compare them to a standard of objectivity, a standard that must therefore exist.
Not only must there be objective truth in order to make this claim, you must have some form of access to it. Otherwise, the notion that some beliefs are more objective than others is entirely without referent, as is any other reference to objectivity. You can't even legitimately recognize a distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, unless you recognize that your mind has some form of access and guide to objective truth. Traditionally, this guide that we possess is what we call "reason".
Finally, even though some people may claim that we have no access to actual truth, nobody really means it or believes it, because even such claims as "there is an "objective" natural reality out there, independent of our minds" and "any knowledge we have of this reality is necessarily limited, imperfect, and distorted" and "there is no actual accesible objective truth" are all objective truth claims about how reality is.
Unfortunately, if we have no guide, by reason, to that which is objectively true, then talk of verifiability is meaningless, because to verify something is to make sure that it is true, or accurate – that it matches the truth about objective reality, something that is not possible unless you have reliable access to such.
If we have no access to objective truth, then empiricism is a useless notion as well. To study something empirically means to gather knowledge about it using the five physical senses, by observation. The idea is that by gaining empirical information, and combining it with reason (our access and guide to objective truth) we can learn more objective truth. However, if we don't have access to objective truth, this is all null and void. In that case, someone who sees a candy wrapper, and concludes from it that the earth is flat, is being just as empirical and objective as Pythagorus concluding that the earth is round based on astronomical observations.
If you hold that we don't have access to objective truth, then any attempt you make to distinguish the way science gains knowledge as more objective, more verifiable, more empirical, etc, than anything else is meaningless and illegitimate from within that paradigm.
That's also the biggest thing that's wrong with the meme idea. Notice what's left out of the story: any reference to reason, a guide to objective truth, in forming beliefs. According to NDT, mutations don't happen for reasons, they just happen, and they don't survive for reasons either – it's all luck, depending on what the environment happens to be like. Dawkins likes to enjoin people to use reason (presumably because it's supposed to be a guide to truth) when trying to persuade them, but if such a thing is possible, then memes don't really exist, and if memes exist, there is no guide to truth. It follows that you can never have a valid reason to believe in memes, which is why the whole idea is only useful in a colloquial sense.
As above, if we have no access to objective truth (meaning, no reason), then religion is just as empirically verifiable as science, which is to say not at all, since then there is no such thing as empirical verifiability.
Comment by Deuce — March 30, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
mtraven:
Why is there no objective truth? If something happened, stating that it did is truthful. Denying it is untruthful. Why would a collective viewpoint be any more truthful? If anything it would be influenced by politicking- not a good resource for truth.
Comment by Bradford — March 30, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
bradford:
I didn't say there was no objective truth, I said that there is but we don't have (direct or very reliable) access to it. Big difference.
Social collectives have proven to be very useful in arriving at better forms of some of the truth. That's what science does, it's a social invention that harnesses individual minds in collective institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth. That's how we know the universe is some billions of years old, rather than a few thousand (which is the collective truth of a different and less reliable institution).
Take a simple example: the precession of the equinoxes, which involves the rotation of the earth's axis about a different axis that's perpendicular to the ecliptic. A cycle takes about 26000 years, and the effect is pretty much unobservable within a single lifetime (without modern technology, that is).
However, the Egyptians and other ancient people were aware of this phenomenon, because they had priests carefully recording sunrise and sunset information for astrological purposes. No individual in this culture could have observed this, but as a collective they could.
Hm, that was pretty digressive, wasn't it?
Please. How do you know it happened? What if Joe says it happened but Jane says it didn't, and both are sincerely convinced they are right? What if the "happening" is inherently unobservable? And we are talking here about things like the existence of God, not whether the cat is on the mat.
Comment by mtraven — March 30, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
March 30th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
What science does is experimentally test. Social collectives went out of fashion with the demise the iron curtain.
If something happened, stating that it did is truthful. Denying it is untruthful.
What happended to your faith in science?
Comment by Bradford — March 30, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
March 31st, 2007 at 1:53 am
me:
bradford:
I guess that big AAAS meeting a month ago in San Francisco was a figment of my imagination then.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? I sure hope so.
Comment by mtraven — March 31, 2007 @ 1:53 am
March 31st, 2007 at 8:58 am
stunney wrote:
stunney,
In a previous thread, you wrote:
You're "quite hopeful", eh? Since when has hope been a sufficient warrant for belief?
The evolutionary naturalist has an explanation for the basic reliability of reason. You, on the other hand, are merely "quite hopeful" that reason was "well-designed for a good purpose."
By the way, evolution explains some interesting anomalies of human reason. Here's one of my favorites, from Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, pp. 336-337:
If reason were an ability bestowed upon us by a benevolent Creator, you'd expect us to use the same logical faculty for reasoning about the D's and 3's as we do for reasoning about the drinkers. After all, the situations are exactly equivalent in terms of logic.
Instead, we use different faculties of reason depending on the problem domain, and we get different answers. This is the kind of thing you would expect to see with a system that was not designed, but evolved.
Comment by keiths — March 31, 2007 @ 8:58 am
March 31st, 2007 at 10:16 am
What science does is experimentally test. Social collectives went out of fashion with the demise the iron curtain.
Yeah, those meetings are good occasions for socializing. How are SCs helpful as a means of ascertaining truth?
Comment by Bradford — March 31, 2007 @ 10:16 am
March 31st, 2007 at 11:04 am
A famous example of the objectivity and normativity of reason is pointed out by Steven Pinker in his book How the Mind Works, pp. 336-337:
"If a card has a D on one side, it has a 3 on the other, a simple P-implies-Q statement. The subjects were shown four cards and asked which ones they would have to turn over to see if the rule was true….:
[D] [F] [3] [7]
The correct answer is D and 7. "P implies Q" is false only if P is true and Q is false. The 3 card is irrelevant;"
(Emphases added)
I elaborate on this theme here.
Materialism tries to reduce reason to psychology and pyschology to the physical. Both attempts at reduction are hopelessly wrongheaded.
Comment by stunney — March 31, 2007 @ 11:04 am
March 31st, 2007 at 11:24 am
Scientific meetings are more than just places to 'socialize'. They are good places to see and hear about ongoing work in one's discipline in different labs around the world. They are opportuniuties to learn about new techniques or results which can enhance one's own research, or prevent one from pursuing unproductive avenues. They are a chance to hear ideas and opinions outside of the often insular environment of one's own lab or university. They are places where graduate students can learn to present and discuss their research to colleagues.
If one gains information that improves one's own research and knowledge at such meetings, then the 'socializing' goes a long way towards 'ascertaining truth'.
Comment by KC — March 31, 2007 @ 11:24 am
March 31st, 2007 at 11:25 am
Science operates by collective efforts and institutions. Meetings, peer review, grants, citations, university hiring practices are all part of this. This is as you noted (and deleted) perhaps a banal observation, but it's true just the same. This social process is not incidental to science, it's crucial to it. And without it, science wouldn't be capable of revealing as much truth as it does. That's all.
Comment by mtraven — March 31, 2007 @ 11:25 am
March 31st, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I see more days have transpired and still no materialists / physicalists have answered my challenge.
How very interesting. . .
Comment by mcromer — March 31, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
March 31st, 2007 at 9:23 pm
mcromer demands answers to:
I suppose the answers could be any combination of
- I don't know
- It depends on how you define your terms
- Your questions aren't meaningful
- Your questions don't admit of a simple answer.
- I'm not sure why you think materialists owe you answers — what do YOU think?
For instance, people mean all sorts of things by "exist". I assume that even a theist doesn't believe that God exists in the same sense that the chair I'm sitting on exists. Or maybe they do, it's hard to say. Certainly if we start with stunney's view of God as transcendent Reason, then I don't know what it means to say "transcendent Reason exists", any more than I know what it means to say "pi exists".
If we are talking about universes, then the answers to your question tend to run into the anthropic cosmology/multiple universe model. In this model, all unverses exist but only the ones with observers in them will be observed.
I'm partial to Max Tegmark's version of this that equates physical existence with mathematical existence, if only because it is elegant and extreme, but I can't say I believe in it.
I don't have any problem admitting that I might not know the answers to questions like the ones you pose. Unlike some of the theists here, I don't claim to have figured out the One True Metaphysics.
Comment by mtraven — March 31, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
March 31st, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Thanks mtraven for your response.
Because people who claim to be the guardians of rationality and truth ought to address questions from people who claim to be showing them a hole in their belief system.
Everything that is thought, perceived, or felt is an object that is perceived by consciousness.
So even a materialist who is thinking about a materialistic model in which there is nothing but matter and physical forces — those thoughts are being perceived. Perception, awareness is happening, at that moment it is perception of thoughts about materialism. A moment later it might be perception of an upset stomach from too much rumination!
I'm not sure if I fit the definition of "theist" or not. You might not think what I see as "God" fits the mark.
But to me, "God" is another word for the universal Awareness in which all phenomena manifest themselves. This awareness perceives everything, including the seemingness of being a person typing these words as well as the seemingness of being a person reading them.
One can talk all you want about all universes being real, but we have definitions for reality, and they all require, sooner or later, that perception occurs.
That's a mighty problem when postulating real universes existing without consciousness, since reality is always defined in terms of something that can be perceived.
Materialists don't like that, they can see the implicit trap, and so that thought systems subconsciously refuse to answer the question. And of course you didn't really answer the question, did you? (But I do very much appreciate you giving it your best shot ).
I don't care much for the idea of the "One True Metaphysics". Metaphysics and philosophy are so often about getting lost in thought constructs.
What I am after is much simpler. What is the foundation of our humanness?
I am not after something esoteric or abstruse either. Something very basic, something very simple and obvious.
Go look at a newborn infant, and then at a six month old baby.
The youngest humans, and many animals, clearly and obviously perceive. Awareness is present, there are sensations of light and sound and touch. But there is no conceptual thought. So being a baby is very much like being an adult, just with the absense of thoughts (especially abstract ideas like the "me"). Baby and adult both feel sensations and experience moods (althouth the adult repertoire is obviously more extensive). Therefore the foundation of all beingness is perception since that is where we come from, both from evolutionary and a personal perspective.
Conceptual thought gradually develops, and it is illuminated by the same perception that experiences being a baby, that is seen within higher animals, and (I would say) within all objects in the universe. Perception (or awareness if you prefer) is the foundational reality within which appear all disparate phenomena.
People say "my awareness" or "my consciousness" but this is precisely backwards. The awareness existed prior to any of the ideas which appear within it (which is clearly seen by looking at any infant child). In reality "I", "me" and "my" are all concepts which arise within awareness, so the thought "my awareness" is an object which imagines itself as a subject. Much the same way that a character in a dream believes itself to be you, even though it was born a few minutes ago and is immediately "seen through" upon awakening.
Comment by mcromer — March 31, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
March 31st, 2007 at 11:33 pm
There has been a lot of discussion about "truth" in this thread, both in some ultimate sense and as it applies to science. This makes me uncomfortable, as one of the things I tell my students is that science isn't about "truth", at least not in the way most people use that word.
Science is about confidence: that is, it is about how confident one can be that one's explanations of what one has observed will apply again if the same conditions are repeated. Indeed, the term "confidence" is an integral part of the vocabulary of statistical analysis, and as such is an integral part of the process of hypothesis validation/falsification as it is currently practiced in the natural sciences.
Much of the problem with the theory of evolution is that it deals with processes the dynamics of which can only be inferred. We cannot possibly directly observe objects that no longer exist (such as living Tyranosaurids) nor processes that have happened in the distant past. This means that we must either say nothing about them, or we must be satisfied with explanations that infer non-observable events on the basis of observable ones.
This is where "consensus" comes in. No single person can possibly carry out sufficient numbers of direct observations to make the kinds of inferences that characterize modern science. Instead, we all depend on the diligence and honesty of the other members of the scientific community to collectively make enough observations to allow us to be reasonably confident that our explanations have been empirically verified.
Does this mean that such explanations are 'true?" No, it simply means that they are the best we have. Scientific theories are not "true," they are simply our best guess given the empirical observations we have so far. Appeals to authority are only useful insofar as those authorities are clearly committed to the same standards of verification, and are applying the accepted concensus rules pertaining to such verification (such as the 95% rule in statistical verification).
This is why science is continuously changing, whereas non-empirical beliefs generally tend not to do so. It has, is, and will always be "true" that 2 +2 = 4, but the same is clearly not the case for any explanation in the natural sciences.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 31, 2007 @ 11:33 pm
April 1st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
mtraven:
Reason is an attribute of mind; and pi is an object or content of rational thought, which is an activity of mind.
So maybe that's a clue as to what it means…
Comment by stunney — April 1, 2007 @ 2:46 pm