Do I need to know about Quine? — flaco

I was going to say this is wildly off-topic, but in a way it's not because Quine was a major force for naturalism in analytic philosophy and he pretty explicitly thought of philosophy as a kind of helper discipline for real sciences.

I'd always recommend the essays in Ontological Relativity and From a Logical Point of View as the place to start. He writes well, and he was probably the most influential American philosopher throughout the mid-century explosion of science and academic philosophy (coinciding with the spectacular growth of the American research university).

I can not think of a solution. But I am hopeful.

Is consciousness the key? It certainly seems to be at the forefront when we consider philosophy. But a lot of cognitive research seems to support the ancient notion that we are actually ruled by our emotions. So maybe emotions are the key. Meanwhile, perhaps we can take as a temporary purpose that we not destroy ourselves or our earth. — flaco

Consciousness is the central problem. It forms around and preserves the self. It is a process of self organisation. It is worth noting what the self is: the physical self operates through a belief system that exists in and evolves in a collective consciousness or culture. So what the self is, is to some extent drawn from the information surrounding the self. So self interest is not necessarily in conflict with the interest of one's family or community, or perhaps the world. Having said this, it is still centrally self interested, as it could not form around a central self disinterest. This would be a P.zombie, and they could indeed make dispassionate and rational choices as they are indifferent as to how the choices effect them, however in the process they forfeit consciousness and life, but a consciousness is never indifferent. Every instance of consciousness is an experience, and, as you say, ruled by emotion, which is either painful or pleasurable or something in between. Thus affected, it makes self interested choices, and Mary's article is a prime example.

I cannot see a solution within the materialistic paradigm either, as any solution requires messing with consciousness itself, which apparently dose not exist. It requires a paradigm shift to idealism, and then there may be more options.

But I think it is also important to consider how important it is for scientists to be wrong — flaco

Yes, very true. All scientists have been wrong so far, one way or another. But the dispute here is not really about genetics. It has ideological undertone. Three examples:

1. Research into the possible genetic basis of altruism was represented by Dawkins under a title referring to selfishness, against all logic. Why? Probably because this way it could sell better in the zeitgeist, and incidentally served to justify rightist policies, whereas the idea that evolution rewards altruism would presumably have had the opposite political effect.

2. The reason Midgley was furious about Gene the Shellfish was that it described human beings as slaves to their genes. Such full biological determinism is eminently ideological -- it tells people that they are not free -- and it's an ideology with dark history (eugenism, racism, slavery, nazism, etc.).

3. The reason Kenosha Kid here is willing to die on Dawkins hill is purely religious: Dawkins was an aggressive atheist, while his chief contradictor Gould was a benevolent agnostic who did not fancy attacking religion. And since the Kid is also an atheist, he sees Gould as a "bad guy" who dared to criticize his Atheist hero Dawkins. So he busies himself painting Gould as religious. He called him a "Creationist" and an "Orthodox Jew", against all evidence to the contrary.

All the posturing, spite and confusion on this thread are ideological in nature.

The reason Kenosha Kid here is willing to die on Dawkins hill is purely religious: Dawkins was an aggressive atheist, while his chief contradictor Gould was a benevolent agnostic who did not fancy attacking religion. And since the Kid is also an atheist, he sees Gould as a "bad guy" who dared to criticize his Atheist hero Dawkins. So he busies himself painting Gould as religious. A " Creationist", he called him, against all evidence. — Olivier5

The irony of course is that if one takes Dawkins' seriously, one would have to subscribe to what amounts to a theological conception of evolutionary theory. From Evan Thompson's Mind in Life:

"Despite its modern scientific garb, the informational dualism expressed in these passages [of Dawkins and Daniel Dennett] is philosophically less sophisticated than the ancient form of dualism. In the ancient dualism of soul and body—as expressed, for example, in Plato's Phaedo—the soul (psyche) and the body (soma) interpenetrate and influence each other in the life led by the self. An impure body corrupts the soul; a pure one frees the soul. In contrast, in the new dualism [Dawkins writes], "information passes through bodies and affects them, but it is not affected by them on its way through." This notion of information as something that preexists its own expression in the cell, and that is not affected by the developmental matrix of the organism and environment, is a reification that has no explanatory value. It is informational idolatry and superstition, not science".

Dawkins is on the side of theology, not science.

Very true. And yet, metaphysically speaking the greatest advantage of the theory of evolution is that it does not require a central all powerful 'big boss' deciding everything. Evolution can be messy, undirected and random, and yet work over the long term.

But then, messy, undirected and random does not work for everybody. Some people, to this day, are still afraid about the idea that evolution has no direction, no predictability. It gives them vertigo. And I think this is why they are replacing "God the Creator" by "Gene the Selfish". Because you see, they need a boss.

The reason Midgley was furious about Gene the Shellfish was that it described human beings as slaves to their genes. Such full biological determinism is eminently ideological -- it tells people that they are not free -- and it's an ideology with dark history (eugenism, racism, slavery, nazism, etc.). — Olivier5

Apparently you've never read it.

The reason Kenosha Kid here is willing to die on Dawkins hill is purely religious: Dawkins was an aggressive atheist, while his chief contradictor Gould was a benevolent agnostic who did not fancy attacking religion. — Olivier5

Science should not be religion-friendly. Religion-blind, sure. But Gould was a terrible scientist who appealed to non-scientists because he was more compatible with magical ideas of humans. His reputation within biology is appalling, and, while misrepresenting theory, he recast his pariah status as a martyr status, which appeals to paranoid lay people as the guy outside the institution telling the only truth is a greater religion than Christianity. But science is communal knowledge, not one voice.

He really did set the popular literature of the field back, misrepresenting it as in absolute chaos then plagiarising George Williams to appear to set it right again. Unfortunately he was no George Williams, never really got Darwin or comprehended the timescales he was dealing with, resulting in a theory in which organisms pretty much just appeared at random. This will never be respectable work in the evolutionary biology field, not explicitly because it matches how creationists like to characterise evolutionary theory, but because it's just flat-out wrong.

Decades later, Gould's idea still has no standing. Not that it matters. There was a New Yorker article by a biologist surveying the devastation Gould's bad science wrought on the field. I read a Comment article on it by a non-scientific Gould fan which can be summarised as : "Yeah, maybe. I'm still going to read him, though." At the end of the day, what's true is far less important that what feels right, and what feels right is always magical humans.

Case in point, actually... Midgley wrote A LOT against genetics, and in the above article alone there are several instances of her objection to the idea that human behaviour is influenced by human physical nature. Question: has anyone ever seen Midgley object to an evolutionary biologist description of bacterial behaviour? Of worm behaviour? Of mollusc behaviour? Of guppy behaviour? Of lizard behaviour? Of sparrow behaviour? Of squirrel behaviour?

I have not and I doubt it exists. I think that Midgley really doesn't have an offensive position on evolutionary biology at all. She has a defensive position on magical humans.

I read Midgley’s Evolution as a Religion in about 2009 when I first encountered philosophy forums, and found it a pretty clear exposition, albeit written in a very schoolmarmly style. Haven’t read another book of hers but overall I’m in her corner.

Apparently you've never read it. — Kenosha Kid

Don't confuse me with a sucker. I could already spot a fake philosopher when the book came out. I remember it took me about 2 seconds of analysis, as the thesis was relayed to me by a friend, to conclude it was scientifically absurd and morally jaundiced.

Religion-blind, sure. — Kenosha Kid

And yet you're not. The issue here is that Darwin can be weaponized against religion, and that Gould has blunt this weapon a tiny little bit. That's the only reason you are pissed off about him, and so blatantly unfair. Your passion about this is unhealthy; it comes from a dark place and it makes you do seriously objectionable shit.

He really did set the popular literature of the field back, misrepresenting it as in absolute chaos then plagiarising George Williams to appear to set it right again. — Kenosha Kid

No less a figure than John Maynard Smith:

Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory. — John Maynard Smith

As another leading evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr said:

He quite conspicuously misrepresents the views of biology's leading spokesmen. — Ernst Mayr

As evolutionary psychologist John Tooby attests:

nearly every major evolutionary biologist of our era has weighed in in a vain attempt to correct the tangle of confusions that the higher profile Gould has inundated the intellectual world with.[2] The point is not that Gould is the object of some criticism -- so properly are we all -- it is that his reputation as a credible and balanced authority about evolutionary biology is non-existent among those who are in a professional position to know.
...
For biologists, the central problem is that Gould's own exposition of evolutionary biology is so radically and extravagantly at variance with both the actual consensus state of the field and the plain meaning of the primary literature that there is no easy way to communicate the magnitude of the discrepancy in a way that could be believed by those who have not experienced the evidence for themselves. — John Tooby

His citations [2]:

(2) These include Ernst Mayr, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Bill Hamilton, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Tim Clutton-Brock, Paul Harvey, Brian Charlesworth, Jerry Coyne, Robert Trivers, John Alcock, Randy Thornhill, and many others. — John Tooby

I could go on. But this guy has already collated a good selection of biologists' views on SJG.

I grew up in the 60’s in Australia, a thoroughly secular culture in a non-religious family, raised on the Time Life books in nature and evolution. Never doubted it. Didn’t even hear of ‘creationism’ until well into my 30’s, and thought it absurd. (That crank who started the Creation Museum started off in Sydney but had to relocate to Kentucky to find an audience.) But Dawkins’ entire shtick is based on ‘refuting creationism’ as if this exhausts the entire content of Christianity. Kind of like a ‘reverse fundamentalism’.

Augustine, whom I read recently is the third-most influential figure in the history of Christianity (behind Paul) had this to say:

Often, a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, … and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant person is laughed at, but rather that people outside the faith believe that we hold such opinions, and thus our teachings are rejected as ignorant and unlearned. If they find a Christian mistaken in a subject that they know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions as based on our teachings, how are they going to believe these teachings in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think these teachings are filled with fallacies about facts which they have learnt from experience and reason.

Reckless and presumptuous expounders of Scripture bring about much harm when they are caught in their mischievous false opinions by those not bound by our sacred texts. And even more so when they then try to defend their rash and obviously untrue statements by quoting a shower of words from Scripture and even recite from memory passages which they think will support their case ‘without understanding either what they are saying or what they assert with such assurance.’ (1 Timothy 1:7)

in 430 AD! I wonder how Augustine would be received in the Bible Belt.

. I could already spot a fake philosopher when the book came out. I remember it took me about 2 seconds of analysis, — Olivier5

That explains all, thanks.

Gould has blunt this weapon a tiny little bit. That's the only reason you are pissed off about him, and so blatantly unfair. — Olivier5

Anyone who blunts human curiosity, from the Holy Inquisition to the ID brigade, including SJG, will earn some measure of my contempt, sure.

All the posturing, spite and confusion on this thread are ideological in nature. — Olivier5

I think this is about right, but it applies to both sides. Very disappointing.

The reason Midgley was furious about Gene the Shellfish was that it described human beings as slaves to their genes. Such full biological determinism is eminently ideological -- it tells people that they are not free -- and it's an ideology with dark history (eugenism, racism, slavery, nazism, etc.). — Olivier5

It's true that The Selfish Gene is partly ideological—I think that all popular biology is inescapably ideological—but it's in the realm of Hobbes rather than Hitler, and with a certain liberal and "scientific rationalist" understanding of the Enlightenment. It has little in common with Nazism.

Because what you miss in the passage above is that Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free—precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators. — The Selfish Gene

what you miss in the passage above is that Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free—precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying. — jamalrob

That's true - I was impressed by a TV appearance of Dawkins, in which he said:

I very much hope that we don't revert to the idea of survival of the fittest in planning our politics and our values and our way of life. I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist. It's undoubtedly the reason why we're here and why all living things are here. But to live our lives in a Darwinian way, to make a society a Darwinian society, that would be a very unpleasant sort of society in which to live. It would be a sort of Thatcherite society and we want to - I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives. — Richard Dawkins

However, very shortly afterwards, and in the same interview, he says:

Why we exist, you're playing with the word "why" there. Science is working on the problem of the antecedent factors that lead to our existence. Now, "why" in any further sense than that, why in the sense of purpose is, in my opinion, not a meaningful question. You cannot ask a question like "Why down mountains exist?" as though mountains have some kind of purpose. What you can say is what are the causal factors that lead to the existence of mountains and the same with life and the same with the universe. — Richard Dawkins

Which I think clearly, if inadvertently, highlights the basic philosophical contradiction within Dawkins' view, which is that what an Aristotelian would call 'efficient and material causes' are the only real causes. It is precisely the idea of 'final cause' - 'the reason that something exists' - that has been eliminated, in Dawkins' understanding, in keeping with modern philosophical naturalism generally. And so effectively, that he can't even understand why someone would ask such a question as 'why are we here?'

So, had I been an audience member, I would have posed the question: given that you agree that Darwinian reasoning is an insufficient basis for morality, what kind of alternative would you consider, given that you have also devoted the whole later part of your career to arguing against the religious rationale for morality?

Which I think clearly, if inadvertently, highlights the basic philosophical contradiction within Dawkins' view, which is that what an Aristotelian would call 'efficient and material causes' are the only real causes. It is precisely the idea of 'final cause' - 'the reason that something exists' - that has been eliminated, in Dawkins' understanding. And so effectively, that he can't even understand why someone would ask such a question. — Wayfarer

That's fair. Or he might be saying that there is no use looking for a "why" in the way that we look for causes in science (or even religion), and that we have to use our own intelligence and our eminently reasonable liberal values to decide on our own existential purpose. In which case, he might not be entirely rejecting final causes, but merely separating them from science.

If that was all he did, this thread would never have gotten started.

It's true that The Selfish Gene is partly ideological--I think that all popular biology is inescapably ideological--but it's in the realm of Hobbes rather than Hitler, and with a certain liberal and "scientific rationalist" understanding of the Enlightenment. It has little in common with Nazism. — jamalrob

I'm not saying Dawkins was a nazi. I am saying that the reason Widgley was furious is that she spotted (or believed she did spot) an echo of social Darwinism in his book.

Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free--precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying. — jamalrob

How can machines be free, though? By science? So science tells them human machines that it's rational to be altruistic with other human machines who are related to them, and not with, say, human machines that are very different from them genetically. And therefore??? science tells them human machines to fight their natural racist tendencies? Like, why? If being racist is rational and natural, why should it be avoided?

That explains all, thanks. — Kenosha Kid

Of course it does. You're a sucker for snake oil salesmen of fake certainties, when I'm not.

Because what you miss in the passage above is that Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free—precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying. — jamalrob

:up:

And so effectively, that he can't even understand why someone would ask such a question as 'why are we here?' — Wayfarer

Not shown. Knowing that it's not a meaningful question does not imply not understanding the question. Everyone, even the most level-headed atheist, has to deal with the same feelings of feeling special, destined, more than a bunch of chemicals hewn from death and catastrophe. The trick is to not mistake this with knowledge.

Everyone, even the most level-headed atheist, has to deal with the same feelings of feeling special, destined, more than a bunch of chemicals hewn from death and catastrophe. The trick is to not mistake this with knowledge. — Kenosha Kid

Saying it is 'nothing more than feelings' begs the question - it presumes that the notion of final cause can only be a matter of feeing, but that presumption is itself part of what is at issue in this debate.

What I'm pointing out is that Dawkins quite reasonably rejects Darwinian thinking as a basis for social or individual morality. And yet the latter part of his career mainly comprises dissolving the traditional basis for morality in what his colleague Dennett calls 'the acid of Darwin's dangerous idea'. So - how to avoid nihilism? If the universe really is purposeless, and we just blind robots enacting the program of selfish genes, what is the philosophical basis for a humane culture?

Saying it is 'nothing more than feelings' begs the question - it presumes that the notion of final cause can only be a matter of feeing, but that presumption is itself part of what is at issue in this debate. — Wayfarer

And I think that is an extremely well-worded description of the problem. And any explanation is going to seem like it's about something else, not 'I'. This is why Midgley and the like never criticise evolutionary genetics descriptions of ants or beavers. No one has a subjective experience of being either that, taken at face value, will appear different to the science. But for humans it's different. Any scientific explanation for, say, why humans love spending time by the water is always going to be compared to the feeling of being by the water, and qualitatively they do not correlate. We can acknowledge the survival benefit of living near water, but that's an intellectual experience, not an emotional one.

What I'm pointing out is that Dawkins quite reasonably rejects Darwinian thinking as a basis for social or individual morality — Wayfarer

Well let's be clear... He does not reject Darwinian explanations for moral instincts. He rejects the idea that how genes behave has anything to do with how people do or should behave. The Selfish Gene itself takes the view that humans are altruistic, not circumstantially but genetically. That those genes behave as metaphorically srlf-interested parties cannot yield the conclusion that our genes make us inherently selfish, although we are that too.

And yet the latter part of his career mainly comprises dissolving the traditional basis for morality in what his colleague Dennett calls 'the acid of Darwin's dangerous idea'. So - how to avoid nihilism? If the universe really is purposeless, and we just blind robots enacting the program of selfish genes, what is the philosophical basis for a humane culture? — Wayfarer

If we accept the genetic basis of evolution and accept evolution (if), are we really robots behaving according to instruction? Mostly, perhaps. Most of the things you do you are not aware of, and most of your decisions aren't really rational. You've largely had the problem of survival taken out of your hands, so most of the things you would, in hunter-gatherer times, have had to be aware of are no longer in your world. As a result we have a lot of spare capacity for thought and the freedom to do with that as we choose.

This question of non-essential meaning is best answered by existentialism, a point I touched on in my natural morality thread. Like morality, the question of what meaning we should find for ourselves arises precisely because we are living in an environment starkly different from anything that had any bearing on our evolution, thus evolution cannot answer the question. Hunter-gatherers likely did not have these profound questions.

Hunter-gatherers likely did not have these profound questions. — Kenosha Kid

Hunter-gatherers still exist, and they may ask themselves more profound questions than you think, thank you very much.

Hunter-gatherers still exist, and they may ask themselves more profound questions than you think, thank you very much. — Olivier5

By all means, offer a counter-example.

Because what you miss in the passage above is that Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free—precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
— The Selfish Gene — jamalrob

That's great that he had a positive message. Unfortunately, his approach has been shown by evolutionary biology to be wrong. We don't have to daydream that science can help us escape from becoming Nazis. There is no basis for believing that our nature is something we need to turn against.

So it could be that Nazism is a disease that we haven't learned to cure yet, and that loving, caring, critters are down there inside us waiting for that day.

"If today I had a young mind to direct, to start on the journey of life, and I was faced with the duty of choosing between the natural way of my forefathers and that of the... present way of civilization, I would, for its welfare, unhesitatingly set that child's feet in the path of my forefathers. I would raise him to be an Indian!"

"The old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man's heart away from Nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon lead to a lack of respect for humans too."

"The animals had rights -- the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man's indebtedness -- and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing. For the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them."

"This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all."

"No one was quick with a question, no matter how important, and no one was pressed for an answer. A pause giving time for thought was the truly courteous way of beginning and conducting a conversation." — Luther Standing Bear

This notion of information as something that preexists its own expression in the cell, and that is not affected by the developmental matrix of the organism and environment, is a reification that has no explanatory value. It is informational idolatry and superstition, not science
-- Evan Thompson — StreetlightX

Isn't this just the central dogma? Just because we call it a "dogma" doesn't mean there's any idolatry or superstition here.



Here's something that if I were educated I would have already known:

Comparison with the Weismann barrier

The Weismann barrier, proposed by August Weismann in 1892, distinguishes between the "immortal" germ cell lineages (the germ plasm) which produce gametes and the "disposable" somatic cells. Hereditary information moves only from germline cells to somatic cells (that is, somatic mutations are not inherited). This, before the discovery of the role or structure of DNA, does not predict the central dogma, but does anticipate its gene-centric view of life, albeit in non-molecular terms. — Wikipedia

Dawkins has said he should really have called it "The Immortal Gene". Just a tiny bit more evidence that while Dawkins may be narrow-minded about biology, he was trying to represent what seemed to him forty years ago to be quite mainstream views distilled in memorable and understandable form.

I'm looking for where he's worrying about the meaning of his life or what is morally right. He seems to know what is right and regrets the incursion of the world.

But there's an interesting existential element here, arising from the fact that non-hunter-gatherer lifestyles were thrust upon his people.

Another that occurred to me was when I went hunting with a tribe in Tanzania. It was a show, really. Sure, they did live that way to an extent. They lived in mud huts and killed birds with sharpened sticks. But what we were seeing was how they negotiated with a non-hunter-gatherer world. It was, in reality, capitalism: they took their way of life and turned it into money to buy things from traders.

You should read people like Levi Strauss, who lived with hunter-gatherer tribes still living as hunter gatherers. Obviously there's still going to be some effect of dealing with a European, but it's not as stark or tragic.

Maybe whatever you are looking for is not what they were looking for.

I've read quite a lot of Levi Strauss, and he too speaks of complex knowledge systems and forms of science among hunter-gatherers. In fact, those guys need to be far smarter and knowledgeable than we need to be to survive. Don't underestimate them.

One of the wisest things ever said on the topic of natural selfishness and altruism was said more than 2000 years ago by a Rabbi who had no idea of genetics. He said:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?

-- Hillel

Don't underestimate them. — Olivier5

Oh, I don't. The problem is, once again, you didn't read what I wrote.

The problem is you keep forgetting what your thesis is.