Robert M. Sapolsky is one of my favorite science writers — if you haven’t read Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), The Trouble With Testosterone: And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), A Primate’s Memoir(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), or Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), I suggest you get off your butt right now and visit your library or bookstore. He’s a primatologist who studies the endocrinology and behavior of baboons, but he always presents his work in terms of the human condition. We aren’t so different, we primates.
If you don’t feel like getting up right this instant, though, at least click on this link to his speech to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. You’ll get a taste of that Sapolsky humanism that will get you wanting more, and he also has an interesting message: that religion is a kind of controlled psychosis.
It’s also a message that I’m surprised is not getting targeted by the creationists more. They are so hung up on godless evilutionism that they mostly don’t seem to realized that there is another, equally ferocious wolf coming up their flank, the neurosciences. Evolution is shredding their preconceptions about history and their origins, but neuroscience is going to rip out a different, but even more central concept: the soul. Minds are the products of electrochemical and molecular/physiological activity, not spirits or souls or extradimensional magical forces — brains are meat and thoughts are the product of ions and small molecules bubbling about in coordinated patterns. That doesn’t demean us and I think it makes us just as interesting and wonderful, but it is another case where the religious guesswork is proving wrong.
Long-time reader, first-time commenter, because I have to give a hearty ‘amen!*’ to the Sapolsky love. He is perhaps my all-time favorite science essayist.
*as it were
Ah, good to see PZ (and Sapolsky) riding my longstanding hobbyhorse about how the believers- and not just the fundies- will really have a shit fit when the implications of contemporary neuroscience finally dawn on them. (I was always amazed that there wasn’t a much bigger hooha raised over, say, Crick’s “The Astonishing Hypothesis”.)
Larry Moran’s gonna have a field day with the “shaman theory”, though. ;)
They’re Made of Meat!
Are you kidding me? Neuroscience? Heck, creationists are still stuck on the evolution of the eye and other such tripe. Dr. Babuna stopped by here in Florida trying to sell his particular brand of snake oil. It will be a while before these idiots step out of their comfort zones.
Man, I loves me some Sapolsky too.
My vertebrate endocrinology prof is a collaborator of his on some papers. Regarding primate behavior, he told our class of something Sapolsky observed to him once (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand paraphrase from memory, so any errors introduced are mine–sorry about that):
It’s funny because it’s true–that’s primates for you!
Ah, but neuroscience offers us the potential to change major aspects of our lives. Wanna pill for what ails ya?
Ah, but when they finally do (and I agree they’re pretty slow so it may take a while yet), they’re going to have lots of “moderate” allies this time. Evolutionary theory strikes only at dumbass literal readings of ancient scriptures; materialistic theories of the mind- which clearly rule out any idea whatesoever of non-material intelligences- are lethal to ALL forms of religion, be they ever so “sophisticated”.
My major fault with humanism is that it gives too much value to our species. The idea that we are the peak of evolution – or simply the most advanced species on the planet – and somehow deserving of ethical treatment beyond that of other species is just about as faulty as belief in God. The world still revolves around us.
“It’s also a message that I’m surprised is not getting targeted by the creationists more.”
Note that Denyse O’Leary is well aware of this issue, and is currently writing a book “on the neurological EVIDENCE for the spiritual nature of human beings”.
Paul- you’re not alone. I’ve always rather disliked the word “humanism” for precisely that reason. It smacks of worship of the human species- a very unfit object of worship.
“controlled psychosis” ?!!!
Its far worse, its a contagious psychosis. The serious questions, since it is so prevalent, is how to maximize its benign side effects and minimize its harmful side effects.
You could apply what Einstein told Freud about the roots of “collective psychosis”…it applies to the straying of religion into politics as well as anything else I have heard.
After reading that link I’ll have to check our local bookstores, although I might have to resort to Amazon. The English sections tend to be a tad small. I MISS LIBRARIES!
But also, reading that speech reminded me a bit of Vilayanur S. Ramachandran’s Reith lectures, The Emerging Mind. They weren’t specifically about religion, but I doubt they’d make a religious person feel particularly comfortable.
Just looking at them again, I see there was at least one bit about religion:
Since when does humanism equal speciesism?
Drawing that kind of parallel reminds me of the dust-up in the capitol over an aide’s use of the word “niggardly“.
The suffix “ism” nearly always implies a strong and positive focus on the noun that precedes it.
Good Sapolsky article/speech.
…except in the case of humanism, which describes a wide swath of philosophical beliefs. The “human” is there to call attention to shared characteristics of disparate groups of people, and bases morality off of that. It isn’t there to be in opposition to other species.
BadAunt:
Libraries still exist. Did your local library get its funding cut or something?
It is true, however, that when it was coined the word “humanism” meant a return of human beings to a more central role in society, as opposed to the Church being the be-all and end-all of life.
It isn’t the phenomenon of humanism (on the whole) that I object to, it’s precisely that the name gives a misleading impression of it. Which is not to say that I have a better one handy.
Agreed! Here’s to better taxonomy in the philosophies.
It’s not really surprising that the ranks of the vapidly scientifically-illiterate would be unaware of another sciencey threat to their stupidity, is it?
Johnny Vector. Paging Johnny Vector.
Very nice link!
That is all.
I think humanist is a better word than Bright (not that the two are synonymous, or more than roughly linked sociologically). Personally, I think it’s more informative than atheist, which only conveys what I don’t believe in — hi, my hobby is not-stamp-collecting — rather than what I do.
Skeptic refers to the process by which I moderate beliefs, not necessarily to any specific position I hold. “Global warming skeptics” and “9/11 skeptics” adopt the word to make themselves sound streetwise, but we could better describe them as credulous contrarians. So, in looking for a word which describes what I believe, which indicates my general principles — the Big Ideas which motivate me to practice skepticism — I’m led back to humanism, faute de mieux.
To wax unnecessarily metaphorical, humanism is the path, skepticism the walking-stick and truth the destination.
When people insist you can be a theist and still believe in evolution, I now think, “Yes, but can you be a theist and still believe in neuroscience?”
Great speech, thanks for the heads-up.
There is already have enough evidence against the soul to convince any rational person. As far as I know, no major religious group (at least here in the U.S.) still explains insanity as demon possession. But if a person is insane, what about the soul. Is it insane too or is it trapped watching the crazy brain do crazy things. If the soul can exert control, but the brain is malfunctioning at a chemical or physical level, insanity makes no sense.
Neuroscience is just another chunk of reality for the theists to ignore.
Love it! I’ve read lots of Ramachandran and Sacks because the brain is so fascinating, now I have another author to add to my amazon.com wishlist. I even forwarded the link to my 13 year old, who’s reading “The Emerging Mind” and is a budding atheist. Thanks for this, PZ!
For those congenitally disposed to doubt single-factor explanations of anything so complex as human religious urges, it’s helpful to recall Burrhus Skinner (B.F. Skinner) and his observations of “superstitious” behaviors in pigeons. The wikipedia biography includes a pretty full summary of his 1940’s notion and the subsequent interpretive doubts, with references.
(Congenital? Or is it that I’m getting more “frontal” per Sapolsky? And FWIW I’m a happy reader of Sapolsky’s essays.)
I believe that the word humanism implies value in humanity over the interests of other species, and also implies that there is something about humanity that gives us need to state that we have a special place in the discussion of life in general on this planet, from a moral, ethical, or evolutionary point of view, none of which I believe to be true (other than we have the ability to talk, being nothing special because we spend so much time berating eachother).
Now, as for the discussion of the term atheism. I personally don’t see why being theistic is normal, and we are required to post an a- in front of this moniker. Instead, I think that atheists should simply be considered normal, and theists should either obviously be theists, or ab-normal.
Like Steve LaBonne and others here, I’ve also felt that the findings in neuroscience were much more damaging to a top-down religious view of reality than evolutionary biology. After all, if you get to exempt the Mind and all its products from those slowly accumulating mindless processes of nature, both the ghost in the machine and the ghost in the universe stay safely out of the way of science, and reign supreme.
But I suspect that mind/brain physicalism (or its variations) will never stir quite the same passions among the general public. Why? Because it’s not going to be taught in the classroom to kids. That’s what gets people upset. Push the button, mass hysteria.
“They’re coming after our children, and undermining our attempts to tell them about God!”
Every schoolchild is taught that the brain is connected to thinking and feeling, sure, but that doesn’t prevent them — or anyone else — from vaguely visualizing the brain as a sort of tool which the Self uses to do work with. But imagine what happens if high school textbooks ever begin to address the issue of the “soul” directly, in any way other than “of course, none of this brain science stuff has anything to say about whether there are souls or not, that’s a different magisteria.” You’d see the public up in arms again, just like with evolution.
They need to protect their babies, even more than they need to prop up their faith.
Just thought I’d make a slight correction for you. ;)
I think Sapolsky goes over the top when comparing OCD rituals with religious rituals. One might as well say that personal habits such as wiping ones ass with only the left hand are OCD symptoms then. It’s more useful to think of habits as mental subroutines that once programmed are no longer necessary to think explictly about. I always put my car keys and wallet in the same place at night, so that in the morning when I am rushed I automatically pick them back up without having to search the whole damn house for them. Does that make me OCD? Of course not. It makes me a little better organized, that’s all.
Read Primate’s Memoir, loved it. Fantastic writing (I mean in the sense of “good”, not “pertaining to fantasy” ;-), full of excitement and pathos (and bathos) and rage, wonderful descriptions of place, and you learn some science along the way. Good speaker, too — we’re now working our way through his Neurobiology lectures in the “Great Courses” DVD series.
“materialistic theories of the mind- which clearly rule out any idea whatesoever of non-material intelligences- are lethal to ALL forms of religion, be they ever so “sophisticated”. ”
Nope. Doesn’t bother Theravada Buddhists, possibly the other varieties too. The perceived “self”, in classical Buddhist teachings, is the union of five aggregates (khandhas)- form, consciousness, feeling, perception, and mental formulations. Consciousness is the result of contact between a sense organ and an object. Feeling, perception, and mental formulation are the result of the contact of form and consciousness. Pretty materialistic stuff.
are some of us saying “humanism” and meaning “secular humanism”? Just curious.
That’s a historically novel “philosphical” version of Buddhism extracted from the Pali canon by Western interpreters (and in that form I find it quite interesting myself, so I don’t mean that in a pejorative way.) I’m thoroughly unconviced that it’s true of practitioners of any variety of actual religious Buddishm in Buddhist countries, incuding the Theravada Buddhists of Thailand or Sri Lanka.
Evolution is a farce…but it’s your God-given choice whether to be taken by it.
Good to see you recognize Sapolsky and his brilliance. I’ve had him as a lecturer for a couple classes–his “Human Behavioral Biology” is one of the top 5 at Stanford–and his lecture on the biology of religion was so good it would make you cry, PZ. Amazed you haven’t cited that research more often.
Jeremy Stangroom wrote an interesting essay “There is Something Wrong With Humanism“. Definitely worth a read. I’d also recommend Dennett’s book “Elbow Room” for those that are concerned about the issue of free will and determinism.
Nope. Doesn’t bother Theravada Buddhists….
Is that what Sam Harris is into? Should be interesting to see if his non-physicalism survives his dissertation (is he finished yet?)
Agree on the central thesis, that neurology is as big or bigger a threat to traditional Christianity than evolution. However, I suspect liberal Christianity could survive the loss of the non-physical soul. The loss of the non-physical God, though, would be a major problem for all but the most rarified theologies, in which God seems to be a metaphor for bits of our own psyche.
Neuroscience has never been as controversial as evolution and probably never will be.
1. Neurosciences aren’t taught in public secondary schools.
2. Neuroscience is associated in the popular imagination with doctors, not scientists. Doctors are familiar local figures whom everyone has met. Everyone has a friend or relative who is a doctor. Everyone sort of understands what doctors are supposed to do. Scientists live off somewhere else at special departments in universities. No one is quite sure what scientists actually do. (Which is a shame really.)
3. Neuroscientific explanations can be understood piecemeal without adherence to any overarching Old Testament-wrecking theory. And neurological explanations can be very comforting to families. Grandpa Joe did those strange/awful things b/c he had a ‘Syndrome’ or a ‘Condition’ or a ‘Disorder’– something with a name and a predicted manifestation. Something others have had with similar consequences. And who knows, maybe tomorrow they’ll be an operation or a pill to fix it.
Semantics. ‘Humanism’ does not define our morals, our morals define ‘humanism’.
Secular humanists are respectful of all life. Perhaps ‘humanist’ means “being human”, and being human means being a life form with understanding and compassion; and respect and love of our nature and place in it.
Sastra,
I don’t think it would need to be taught to kids in public schools to stir up the religious masses. It would just need to be demonstrated. Presumably, at some point we will understand the brain and the mind well enough to be able to build intelligent machines comparable to human beings. That will surely throw the religious for a loop.
Oh but religions need not worry about a neuroscience threat, there’s already enough evidence for the soul:
1) NDEs
2) OBEs
3) haunted houses
4) reincarnation
5) ESP
6) PK
And you can also add theories of consciousness involving quantum coherence în microtubules and Eccles’ “psychons”, plus defenders of qualia and the “hard” problem. Remember, the last pope had (almost) no problem endorsing evolution, as long as humans kept their soul: presumably he had good evidence for the latter, whereas he had to let go the former.
That was a fantastic read!
mikmik noted:
Semantics. ‘Humanism’ does not define our morals, our morals define ‘humanism’.
Secular humanists are respectful of all life. Perhaps ‘humanist’ means “being human”, and being human means being a life form with understanding and compassion; and respect and love of our nature and place in it.
The last part gets me a little bit. Although I am a vegan, I still consume power, pollute, breed, drive to work, etc., in massive amounts (especially as an American). This is neither respect or love for nature. Thinking about ethical living, most ‘civilized’ humans talk about it, but don’t really live it. However, there are many indigenous tribes that live it, and most of life on earth does as well, however, they don’t waste time discussing it.
I guess I have a lot of self-hate.
Good stuff PZ. I keep rereading the speech. Thanks.
Yeah. Lets list a whole series of completely debunked nonsense that the “also” ignore evidence against to support the idea of souls. lol And its always fun how, much like with ID, its usually some nut that understands engineering or quantum mechanics, but doesn’t know a damn thing about “biology” or “neuroscience” that come up with silly stuff like quantum coherence in microtubules… Its like watching a plumber take apart a light bulb in an attempt to find what **really** produced the light in it, because obviously a bit of metal wire couldn’t possibly be enough to explain where it all comes from…
Jeremy Stangroom wrote an interesting essay “There is Something Wrong With Humanism“. Definitely worth a read. I’d also recommend Dennett’s book “Elbow Room” for those that are concerned about the issue of free will and determinism.
Posted by:
Jeff Alexander |
March 1, 2007 03:33 PM
Hmm, the old “everything is just a form of belief” argument.
Steve Labonne,
Actually, although it may be a form that appeals more to Westerners, what I wrote is pretty orthodox for Theravada (maybe Mahayana and Vajrayana, I am not familiar with their beliefs on the subject). From the Samyutta Nikaya: “When all its constituent parts are there, we use the word ‘cart’. Likewise, where the five aggregates exist, we talk in terms of a ‘living being’.”
mikmik writes
Could you elaborate? The argument that “everything is just a form of belief” doesn’t seem to be one that either Dennett or Stangroom supports. To the contrary it appears that they argue against such a position.
mikmik noted:
Semantics. ‘Humanism’ does not define our morals, our morals define ‘humanism’.
Secular humanists are respectful of all life. Perhaps ‘humanist’ means “being human”, and being human means being a life form with understanding and compassion; and respect and love of our nature and place in it.
The last part gets me a little bit. Although I am a vegan, I still consume power, pollute, breed, drive to work, etc., in massive amounts (especially as an American). This is neither respect or love for nature. Thinking about ethical living, most ‘civilized’ humans talk about it, but don’t really live it. However, there are many indigenous tribes that live it, and most of life on earth does as well, however, they don’t waste time discussing it.
I guess I have a lot of self-hate.
Posted by:
Paul |
March 1, 2007 04:12 PM
Yeah, but ‘respect’, and ‘absolute indidgence of behavior’ mean the same thing?
How could one live in a manner that is completely indulgent of a non technologically enhanced existence. Are you saying that anyone that is using up resources because they were born into our civilization cannot be humanist?
If you want to apply such strict behavioral limitations to a meaning, like secular humanism, then there no (almost) true christian, liberal, or even heterosexual.
Respect does not mean 100% adherence to a certain class of behaviours, it means a strong consideration of a certain morality and ethics as a driving fotce behind decisions, and a striving to adjust your ‘beliefs’ to your situation.
Thinking about ethical living, most ‘civilized’ humans talk about it, but don’t really live it
Actually, that is probably a very accurrate assumption.
Well, perhaps ‘secular naturalist’ is an alternative title the precludes anthrpocentrism, but then it also precludes a known ability for altruism and compassion.
If Theravada Buddhism really is fully consistent with science and reason, in what sense is it a religion, rather than, say, a school of philosophy or a scientific hypothesis? What feature qualifies it as a religion?
Here you go again. Atheists discussing religion.
Why is that? Because they want their shamans to replace
the other shamans.
SETI is religion dressed up in science, faith without a subject, the next big thing in metamagical thinking.
I think Lockean’s #3 is pretty relevant.
The mere fact that in the Neurosciences there’s no singular figure analagous to Darwin, and no single specific theoretical framework analagous to Evolution, makes it more difficult for the nuts to find something to latch onto. They still don’t like it, but it’s tough to rally around.
“I’m against a rejection of the concept of dualism” just doesn’t have the oomph of “I don’t believe in Evolution”.
“brains are meat and thoughts are the product of ions and small molecules bubbling about in coordinated patterns.”
I think my small bubbling molecules resent this but for some reason I want to go grill a steak….
“I’m against a rejection of the concept of dualism” just doesn’t have the oomph of “I don’t believe in Evolution”.
How about “I believe people have souls” or “I don’t believe we are just biological machines” or somesuch? I would say that the theoretical framework underlying neuroscience–that the mind is a product or property of physical processes in the brain–is pretty easy to understand and communicate, as are the superficially-appealing objections to it (that unless we have a soul there is no free will, no moral responsibility, no meaning to life, etc.)
I enjoy Jeremy Stangroom, often read Butterflies & Wheels, and found myself agreeing with his article “There is Something Wrong with Humanism.” And yet I am a secular humanist.
How? He states it himself in the first paragraph: “The problem has to do with the fluid nature of the concept ‘humanism’. It has no single, precise meaning.” Well, yes.
He takes on Kenan Malik’s variation — that human beings are somehow outside nature and reductionist explanations are anti-humanists threats — and makes excellent arguments against that which most secular humanists would agree with. I belong to both Council for Secular Humanism and American Humanist Association. From what I can tell, the former tend to be more hard-nosed materialists than the latter, and more politically diverse. Pick a flavor.
Humanism is more of an approach to life than it is any particular set of conclusions. The “man is the highest of all things” nonsense is either anachronistic or the straw-man version used by traditional Christians to show that humanists “worship man.” On the contrary. It’s more like “we can only know things from the perspective of our humanity, and its limitations.” Science helps correct those tendencies to err.
There are some Sapolsky lectures available on http://itunes.stanford.edu/ for those that are interested.
mikmik writes
Could you elaborate? The argument that “everything is just a form of belief” doesn’t seem to be one that either Dennett or Stangroom supports. To the contrary it appears that they argue against such a position.
Posted by:
Jeff Alexander |
March 1, 2007 04:45 PM
What then is this possible extra ingredient, properly humanist, against which the merits of scientific theories might be judged? The answer is that it is the constellation of ideas which constitutes the human-centred aspect of humanism. These ideas include: that human beings are free, rational agents; that they are, in various ways, the source of morality; that human dignity and flourishing are important; and that there are significant common bonds between people, which unite them across biological, social and geographical boundaries.
and Unfortunately, it may also be that they do not, and to deny this possibility requires a leap of faith. What this means is that it is not rationally justified to assert the truth of the constellation of beliefs which constitutes the human-centred aspect of humanism. Rather, one is forced to concur with Kurtz and Wilson’s more general verdict on humanist affirmations, that they are “but an expression of a living and growing faith.”
“The constellation of beliefs”, and “leap of faith” comments.
You are right, and I agree with you, yet the arguments seem (to me) to be based on an assumption, and that is that it is possible to have an objective perspective, one that is possible only without (my assertation) being a human.
The important point is that Malik is grappling with a tension that lies right at the heart of humanism. If a person is serious about science then they cannot, without fear of contradiction, embrace a doctrine which requires, as humanism might, that human beings have free will or that the stuff of consciousness is non-physical and causally efficacious. To escape the possibility of contradiction by asserting the truth of the kind of science or philosophy which is, in principle, anti-reductionist in its approach to humans is to allow ideology to govern scientific and philosophical commitments.
As humanists might? That is not demonstration of belief, that is conjecture.
Why would free will preclude?
No humanist I know says that conciousness is non physical!
In fact, this is a red herring! Humanists are not concerned with the origin of thought, neither are they concerned with chemistry, nuerochemistry, or anything else to explain their thoughts. They(we), do not count on reductionism, nor argue against it, it is outside the point.
I should have said it comes down to them stating that “everything is a form of belief, except my view”
That was a great read. I must find some of the stuff that he has written. As a health care worker (scut level, but going into nursing) who often works with those with mental illness, I am often amazed at the extreme out of control religiosity of those who suffer from Schizophrenia and/or Bi-polar disorder. Dr. Sapolsky made a lot of sense when he tied that in to religion. I think that we will learn that religiosity as with most everything else in mental processes lies on a continuim of mental functioning. Insofar as OCD. It is only a disorder if it causes a problem in your life. You would not survive as a nurse or an aide if you weren’t somewhat Obsessive-Compulsive.
Ken
Anyways, back to the point:
“Evolution is shredding their preconceptions about history and their origins, but neuroscience is going to rip out a different, but even more central concept: the soul.”
I equate it to genetics validating fossil evidence for evolution.
It is profound, presicely because the secondary technology is (was) unpredicted.
The discovery of the origins of our minds and conciousness seems to be on an inexhorible path to a physical origin.
Then what? Plato? Descartes? Will they be vindicated?
dualism
Substance dualists argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, whereas Property dualists maintain that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance.
Like I said, Michael Lockwood states, “Our mind superveniates” from physical (material) processes.
He says: “special relativity states that if something exists in time, it also exists in space.”
Our minds exist in time.
mikmik writes:
It seems that you may have missed the introductory paragraph. which reads
It is very clear that Stangroom is not arguing that “everything is a form of belief, except my view”, not even close. Your argument appears to be saying exactly what Stangroom complains of in his opening paragraph. When you state that “No humanist I know says that consiousness is non physical!” you are basically claiming that Stangroom is falling into the straw-man fallacy.
If you disagree with his definition of humanism, fine. But to state that he is offering some sort of relative view of truth clearly doesn’t fit with either this article or his other writings. He argues very strongly against the notion that “everything is a form of belief”. See “Why Truth Matters” by Benson and Stangroom for examples.
It is very clear that Stangroom is not arguing that “everything is a form of belief, except my view”, not even close. Your argument appears to be saying exactly what Stangroom complains of in his opening paragraph. When you state that “No humanist I know says that consiousness is non physical!” you are basically claiming that Stangroom is falling into the straw-man fallacy.
Exactly what I am saying
If you disagree with his definition of humanism, fine. But to state that he is offering some sort of relative view of truth clearly doesn’t fit with either this article or his other writings. He argues very strongly against the notion that “everything is a form of belief”. See “Why Truth Matters” by Benson and Stangroom for examples.
Posted by: Jeff Alexander | March 1, 2007 06:13 PM
>>
My choice of words is still bad. I meant that he fails to show how his view is not a form of belief – to show that his view is even fundamentally capable of the objectivity he persues.
Like: It may be that complicated robots have consciousness, free will and agency; that is, that they have the things which are important to many humanists. Unfortunately, it may also be that they do not, and to deny this possibility requires a leap of faith.
Humanists have compassion, understanding and empathy. Robots with sentience are a straw man, ot red herring. They do not exist. They are irrellevant, they have nothing to do with “leap of faith”, nor does acknowledging or denying any posssibility have to do with faith.
I understand the analogy of course, who doesn’t?
But my point is that no one denies any possibility, and saying humanists deny this possibility by using one example, Malik, is anything but an anecdotal diversion.
I still feel to see how using Malik as an example, is in any way representative of humanist thought.
In fact, I see absolutely no way in which this defintion:
Secular humanism describes a world view with the following elements and principles:[2]
* Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
* Reason, evidence, scientific method – Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
* Fulfillment, growth, creativity – A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
* Search for truth – A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
* This life – A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
* Ethics – A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
* Building a better world – A conviction that with reason, an open exchange of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.
precludes an overall view of our world (existance) in which we are only a small part; it only shows that we are aware of the source of our understanding – us!
Any animal is centered on its own existence, every animal is (probably) only concerned with its own place in reality and that place is the most important part of reality to that animal.
In fact, it is the only possible perspective. There is only the proven ability to imagine reality from unself perspectives in one animal.
All thought originates from one point of perspective, the entity possessing the thought. To argue that humanists are ‘human-centric’ is moot.
To show that other philosophies are not, these guys do not show. It is very clear that Stangroom is not arguing that “everything is a form of belief, except my view”, not even close.
I know they aren’t arguing for that, but arguing in that manner.
True, but the logical problem is that reality (whatever that is) can not be separated from your consciousness, since your consciousness filters everything you know and ever will know – even if you’re a genius biologist or physicist. [excuse me, time for a bong hit].
Great post! Makes you wonder even more about the likes of Dr Harrub with his Ph.D. in neurobiology and anatomy from the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee. Someone should send him a link to Sapolsky’s speech. Then again he may be an example of of one of those cousins with a full blown pathology and in need of compassion and medication. Seriously though how does someone like him manage to get a Ph.D. in neurobiology without being able to think his own way out of a wet paper bag?
…wow, talk about publish or perish. I’ve been thinking exactly what Sapolsky just gave a speech on for the longest time. Oh well, he gets priority. ^_^
There are plenty of other neurophysical bases for common religious experiences to add to his list:
There’s a certain area of the brain — alas, I can’t recall the name — that’s responsible for things like body boundaries, distinguishing between “me” and “not-me.” In some of the experiments done on Buddhist meditation under fMRI, that area grew quiet when practitioners reported a sense of “oneness with the universe,” or “unity with all living things,” or the like.
A recent study of proprioception (the internal sense of the body’s position) found that this sense can become off-kilter and lead a person to the sensation that there is someone (their body shadow) behind them, in the same position they are — for example, with arms wrapped around them, when their own arms are wrapped around their knees. More applicably to religion, when laying on their back and looking down at their own torso or feet, they can imagine themselves to their own ventral — i.e., above their body — looking down and seeing what they’re actually seeing.
Sapolsky’s thesis on OCD is also supported by work on “the Lady MacBeth effect”: see a paper in Science by Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie Liljenquist on the connection between bodily cleansing and moral purification. Money line: “[After being asked to think about guilty deeds they had done,] Those who had washed their hands were about 50 percent less likely to volunteer [for a simple charitable project] — suggesting that, newly cleansed, they felt less guilty and thus had less need to absolve themselves.”
There are recent suggestions of a genetically coded “moral grammar” present in mammals, and we know that mirror neurons can generate sympathetic emotional trauma. Dawkins proposes an analogy in answer to the question of why religion is, unlike other psychiatric anomalies, so contagious: he likens religion to a virus, attaching itself to moral codes — evolutionarily productive to disseminate in a population — to reproduce itself.
There is much more that can be collected. I submit an additional hypothesis to the disussion of religion’s contagiousness: when people (mostly young people or others without solid analytical frameworks) hear a religious claim, it rings the same sort of bells as a mathematical axiom. They can remember having thoughts like that. Magical thnking, moral thinking, and mathematical thinking are, in their nuts and bolts, already a part of a child’s mental toolkit; development of personality involves reinforcing some of these tools, neglecting others and erecting countermeasures to others, and only on the rarest of developmental occasions actually adding a new tool that’s not a combination of those previously held. Religion simply tends to reinforce the native magical forms. If these become sufficiently categorized, we might even be able to form a component-level description of religion.
“If Theravada Buddhism really is fully consistent with science and reason, in what sense is it a religion, rather than, say, a school of philosophy or a scientific hypothesis? What feature qualifies it as a religion?”
Well, that would depend on what you use as your definition of a religion. If you define religion as being one that mandates belief in extra-natural features, then Theravada is not a religion, since it does not require any such belief (although, as I think has been pointed out, in practice many do have such beliefs). And if you define religion as requiring some sort of creator god, then none of the Buddhist sects qualifies. On the other hand, if you define religion more as a package of cultural, ethical, and philosophical practices, then it definitely fits as a religion.
True, but the logical problem is that reality (whatever that is) can not be separated from your consciousness, since your consciousness filters everything you know and ever will know – even if you’re a genius biologist or physicist. [excuse me, time for a bong hit].
Posted by:
dave |
March 1, 2007 07:38 PM
[excuse me, just had a bong hit] But, I maintain that our conciousnesses, our brains etc, are a product and participant in that reality (a fundamental one, I think). Therefore, we have access to all the rules of our reality.
In fact, I think that as a product of a certain (ours) reality, we are not only guided by that reality in our understanding, our very ability to exists in that reality means that we already understand it. At least our matter understands it, our atoms and everything, or we wouldn’t be here.
Everything has to obey the laws (of physics, as we call them, or nature, for that matter), for things that don’t obey the laws, do not exist.
Existence is proof that you obey the laws of physics, the laws that dictate ability to exist.
The laws came first, then us.
Therefore, the way we think is shaped by the laws of nature and follows all the laws.
So, the way we think is an expression of the deepest, most fundamental, aspects of our reality.
This is one of “cause and effect”.
It is how all things work, even, and especially, evolution.
Hows this? We are made of inanimate matter
And time. We are made up of matter and time.
David Wilford wrote
Ever see a charismatic congregation speaking in tongues, or the congregation in a full gospel church rocking and swaying?
Catholic Church doing us a favor?
Maybe the Catholic Church is aware of this schizotypal shamanism problem. They might be trying to rid the world of schizotypal shamans by preventing them from breeding! It’s a secret atheist eugenics organization!
I wouldn’t define religion to require either a creator God or anything supernatural, so I don’t think Buddhism is necessarily excluded on those grounds. But if a religion is defined to encompass a mere “package of cultural, ethical, and philosophical practices” (although I’m not sure what “philosophical practise” means) then all sorts of things that are not generally considered to be religions would seem to qualify as religions. I don’t think that’s a very useful definition. I don’t think it helps anyone to conflate religion with culture or ethics or philosophy. They’re related, but they’re not the same thing. It’s like calling Pluto a planet.
I am getting kind of tired of all the wrangling over what we non-believers should call ourselves. Brights.Humanists.Skeptics.Freethinkers. phfft!
It’s all because so many forms have a box on them that asks for our religion. I am an atheist that has just decided I will leave that spot fucking blank from now on. Why is it so important to name the way that we don’t believe!?
A very, very interesting article. Thank you for bringing it to our attention, Pi Zeta.
And, “They’re Made Out of Meat” the short film!
I think neuroscience is going to present a real problem, not just for religion but for society generally. I know most people still cling to something along the lines of a strict identity theory of mind but eliminativism – the idea that our folk psychology is just an incorrect theory – seems far more likely to me.
I don’t think most our everyday ideas about thought, motivation, etc, are going to have convenient material correlates: they’re just going to turn out to be plain wrong. That has a knock-on effect: everything we think we know about society and politics and culture is wrong too. Plus, everything we think we know about each other is wrong. That’s a lot to deal with. And that’s not even getting into the practical aspects of having mature neuroscience in the hands of government, advertisers, politicans, etc.
I don’t think many of us who claim to be materialists really grasp the extent of this. That’s not to say that the notion of science reducing the world to meaninglessness is correct. But I think saying it changes nothing is wrong too. The materialist picture of the world is certainly richer and probably more meaningful than anything that proceeded it, but it’s also radically different.
Quick thoughts:
1) Who decides what constitutes a ‘problem’?
2) That’s absolute garbage. Would we say that a person doesn’t have an infection unless it caused a problem in their life?
You can’t have it both ways, quacks. Mental disorders cannot simultaneously be physical diseases (which have no physical signs, subjective diagnostic criteria, and treatments found by trial-and-error) and social constructions that are applied only when people have ‘problems’ in their lives.
If you’re going to avail yourself of fallacies, pick one and stay with it.
There is also a nice set of lectures by Dr. Sapolsky available through The Teaching Company. The list price is sky-high, but if you catch them when they go on sale the price is more reasonable.
And for those not enamored of capitalism:
http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=Biology+and+Human+Behavior
hey its to see sapolsky getting more popular. i remember back when he was still working in bruce mcewens lab at rockefeller and really entertaining.
Ahem: Sapolsky doesn’t just say that “religion is a kind of controlled psychosis”, he says it’s an adaptive form of psychosis. That supports my general view that all the railing against religion for being false that you see here and in Dawkins is really quite beside the point. If false beliefs are more adaptive than true beliefs, the false ones will predominate, yes? And no amount of yelling about how stupid the believers are will budge them, since the believers may quite reasonably judge that it’s in their interest to believe the false stuff because it makes them feel good.
You can’t have it both ways, quacks. Mental disorders cannot simultaneously be physical diseases (which have no physical signs, subjective diagnostic criteria, and treatments found by trial-and-error) and social constructions that are applied only when people have ‘problems’ in their lives.
If you’re going to avail yourself of fallacies, pick one and stay with it.
Posted by: Caledonian | March 1, 2007 10:59 PM
As should you. Rethink the criteria for ‘disease’, and quit ‘poisoning the well’.
Hey?
Rey, (if you’re still reading – I’m a bit late responding) I’m living in Japan. There are libraries, but they don’t have much in English. According to my Japanese friends, most of them don’t have much up-to-date in Japanese, either. People tend to treat bookstores like libraries. In fact one of the bigger bookstores in Osaka provides desks and chairs.
And Ron, thanks for link to the Sapolsky lectures!
Ahem, Sapolsky is not merely saying that religion is a form of psychosis, he’s saying that it’s an adaptive form of psychosis. Which supports something that I say occasionally around here, namely that to argue against the truth of religious beliefs is to miss the point. People don’t believe in religions because they are thought to be true but because they are perceived to be helpful in some way.
Evolutionists should appreciate that a false but adaptive belief is going to prevail over a true but maladaptive belief, and no amount of argument is going to change that.
try this on for size:
“Abolitionists should appreciate that a false but adaptive belief is going to prevail over a true but maladaptive belief, and no amount of argument is going to change that.”
oops.
or will you try to argue that slavery was maladaptive to the slave owner?
Actually, yes – or rather the fact of it wouldn’t normally be mentioned at all instead of proclaiming a lack of infection.
Eg: all those helpful gut bacteria “infecting” you right now. They aren’t a problem (quite the reverse!) and people don’t generally refer to you as having an infection. They certainly don’t try to “treat” you for the “problem”. On the contrary, were you to have an aggressive course of antibiotics to treat something else which was genuinely a problem, doctors would (should!) then regard it as part of their duty to reinfect you afterwards with what you needed for good digestion.
Eg2: All those skin-based bacteria currently “infecting” you but not causing any serious problem to you. Unless you are performing surgery, no-one expects you to potentially damage yourself by scrubbing them all off with powerful antiseptics. Nor do they generally refer to you as infected with a disease. You are merely one sort of carrier in that respect.
Thanks for linking to Sapolsky’s speech, PZ. Very fascinating. I’m eager to read his books.
mtraven, There’s a difference between a false belief being adaptive and a false belief being perceived as “helpful.” Firstly, adaptive doesn’t necessarily mean “helpful” (i.e., adaptive from our point of view). Secondly, something can be adaptive without us having to perceive it as adaptive. Thirdly, I don’t think many people perceive of their religious beliefs as being “helpful” anyway; they think they’re true.
Not only that, we don’t regard the person as being infected at all.
Being an asymptomatic carrier of a genuine disease organism, though, IS regarded as being having an infection – for example, we can say that a person is infected with HIV even if the virus is causing absolutely no problems.
Why do you think that is?
Being an asymptomatic carrier of a genuine disease organism, though, IS regarded as being having an infection – for example, we can say that a person is infected with HIV even if the virus is causing absolutely no problems.
There are numerous ways for one organism to host another. Of relevance to this discussion:
1) host has an active infection that is harmful to the host organism
2) host is an asymptomatic (eg Typhoid Mary), or pre-symptomatic (eg early AIDS infection) carrier of an agent that is likely to cause disease in the host or the host’s contacts
3) host carries an agent which under normal circumstances is harmless, but can become harmful under certain conditions (eg antibiotics disrupting normal flora)
4) host carries an agent which is generally beneficial
So, given the analogy of “religious tendencies” as the agent, and “humanity” as the host, I pick somewhere around 2-2.5.
Thanks! I literally got off my butt, went to the library, and got two Sapolsky books, and having read his speech, I’m looking forward to them greatly.
Strangely, his speech touched on two issues that influenced my life quite a bit, even though I am in no way a scientist. I remember thinking about Phineas Gage, and realizing it meant there can’t be any such thing as a soul – it was a major milestone on my road to atheism. Later, for a class on myth, legend, and folklore, I wrote a paper linking OCD with superstition. I’m feeling pretty chuffed to read a respected neurologist echo something I figured out for myself!
The point is, it doesn’t matter if people thing their religious beliefs are true or not. Their ultimate reason for existence is being adaptive. If practically all of humanity believes in something false, that’s a very good indication that our brains are oriented towards something other than pure truth.
If our brains and cultures are tuned to be religious, it’s an uphill battle to try to change that. That doesn’t mean that the battle shouldn’t be fought, but it suggests that railing against the stupidity of believers is not a useful tactic.
So – is it opening in the West End? Or are they going to tour the Midwest before hitting Broadway? Where does Sabu the Elephant Boy fit in? Who was the playwright? What other farces has she or he written?
How can I use my God-given choice if I don’t have any details? Is God another name for Ticketmaster? As far as farces go, I much prefer Noises Off! but I am willing to take a look.
Mtraven:
by the same token, epdemiological or sociological data might show that, on the planet as we in our billions have rendered it, that wired in aversion to the truth [your words more or less, though “wired for god” is not quite that idea] or neurological bias toward leaps of faith and intuition have actually become maladaptive.
Then, like the Pima indians having a tendency to develop diabetes because a harsh period in their ancestral past selected for a very different carbohydrate supply than 20th century diets provide, we have a problem. We undertake research to alter the metabolism or patch up the diet. It is only humane to work to prevent miserable and shortened lives that result from maladaptions.
How do we know for sure this logic would not also apply to the putative built-in tendency to get religion?
Mike Haubrich:
Indeed, labeling is the mandatory shortcut to stereotyping. You are already ahead of the crowd … if you have ceased using labels to talk about others as well, you are enlightened by that burden.
mtraven,
We certainly do not know that religion is adaptive. Many evolutionary biologists believe that religion is a byproduct (“spandrel”), not an adaptation. Of course, even if it is adaptive, that would mean only that it was beneficial in our ancestral environment, not that it is beneficial in modern democratic technological societies.
I have no idea how you think the premise “our brains and cultures are tuned to be religious” supports the conclusion that railing against the stupidity of believers is not a useful tactic. As you might expect, I emphatically deny that “railing against the stupidity of believers” is a fair characterization of the work of people like Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Sagan and other prominent critics of religion. But I also think that railing against stupidity is certainly a legitimate and often useful component of the argument against religion. Sometimes, you just need to call a spade a spade, loud and clear.
Poke:
Thirdly, I don’t think many people perceive of their religious beliefs as being “helpful” anyway; they think they’re true.
I’m not so sure. I’m coming to the (cynical) view that, very frequently people do things (and accepting a belief is a kind of deed) first because of some perceived benefit, then rationalize them post facto.
RBH:
Maybe religion (god belief and the stuff that comes with it) might give hope to those that cannot find hope in reality, or maybe provide a refuge for scoundrels that need a refuge while they find their way to goodness, or maybe it can provide social cohesiveness (community) to people in need of such. I mean like every thing has a bright side – right?
But then — anything that oppresses groups, gets intelligent people to kill innocents as they sacrifice themselves, gets good people to worry about (and try to undermine) people experiencing love, gets our youth to fight progress, reason, truth, and liberty for no good reason, etc. etc. is MALIGNANT!!
I’ve seen religion’s underside – its BLOODY UGLY. Don’t be fooled by its charms – they are not its reality. Heck think of it this way – even Hitler and his henchmen were in many respects very charming – and you know what bottom dwellers they were.
Nope religion is an enemy to be fought on the battlefield of ideas and in the Courts VIGOROUSLY and UNCOMPROMISINGLY. It isn’t easy I know because we might actually have to offend loved ones, colleagues, etc. – let alone be cast as a subspecies ourselves. You all have suggestions for tactics for the ordinary person? How do you do your part in the battle?
mtraven, I don’t think our brains are oriented to anything like truth, pure or otherwise, so I agree with you there. But that’s one of the reasons why I don’t think “civilised argument” works. As far as I can tell, the trick is to get people to want to be on our side, and you do that by making being on the other side embarrassing.
In his speech he mentions that Martin Luther confessed wierd things 4 hours a day, washed his hands constantly and documented this in a diary.
Is his diary online somewhere? If not, where can I find it?
Great Sapolsky
But I get a very different conclusion, not that “Minds are the products of electrochemical and molecular/physiological activity, not spirits or souls or extradimensional magical forces — brains are meat and thoughts are the product of ions and small molecules bubbling about in coordinated patterns.”
Shamans are healed madmen, its is controlled pschosis, Sapolsky forgot to mention that the most important therapy for OCD is cognitive, in which victims ‘will’ themselves out of their obsession. There is a level of mind, of human intention that cant be reduces to bubbling ions and electrochemical surges. We can direct those processes through will and intention, as William James observed long ago. We are not just electrochemical machines.
Mike Haubrich wrote: “Why is it so important to name the way that we don’t believe!?”
Indeed. I would say that for you, Mike, it isn’t important because your brand of doubt doesn’t have much in common with a belief system. You don’t need a label to define your beliefs, because you don’t view it as a belief, so much as the absence of belief.
I submit that, regardless of what they say, many who are keen to adobt this or that label have invested something in the term that functions like a belief system. What strikes you as pointless hair-splitting seems more like the front-edge of schism to me, albeit one without a conventional deity. These things can even approach the status of a cult, as Michael Shirmer once pointedly described the followers of Ayn Rand.
False dichotomy- the brain is an electrochemical machine that exhibits will and intention. Only it’s a machine of a complexity and flexibility* that beyond-astronomically exceeeds any human-designed machine, which is why it can do seemingly miraculous things.
*About 100 billion neurons, about 1 quadrillion (at least) synapses among them, the strengths of many of which can be constantly modulated on a time scale measured in milliseconds. Not exactly a toaster or a car.
Ron,
Sapolsky forgot to mention that the most important therapy for OCD is cognitive, in which victims ‘will’ themselves out of their obsession. There is a level of mind, of human intention that cant be reduces to bubbling ions and electrochemical surges. We can direct those processes through will and intention, as William James observed long ago. We are not just electrochemical machines.
If you think “cognitive therapy” is evidence of an immaterial mind or soul or “will and intention” that influences physical matter, you don’t understand it. By what mechanism is this influence transmitted? What particles and forces does it involve?
mtraven: I also agree that our brains aren’t necessarily oriented toward anything like truth, but here’s what Dawkins has said on a parallel track from:
http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/dawk-frame.html
Dawkins: “I could easily believe that religion could enhance health and hence survival, and that therefore there could be indeed be literally Darwinian survival value, Darwinian selection in favor of religion. None of that of course bears at all upon the truth value of the claims made by religions.”
I would go on to add that we must be careful to avoid the naturalistic fallacy: ‘adaptive’ doesn’t mean ‘good.’ After all, aggression can be adaptive. There is selection for infanticide in many taxa. That if might be logical, or increase the relative fitness of some primates, doesn’t make it less grisly.
SH
Sorry, post #100, ‘adobt’ should be ‘adopt.’ Perhaps I was thinking ‘about’ or ‘a doubt’, and my Freudian slip was showing. (sigh) SH
What reason is there to believe our brains are not “oriented toward truth?” I assume “truth” here is understood to mean something like “correspondence with reality.” If you don’t mean that, what do you mean by “truth?”
I would guess that ‘will and intention’ are a level of organization. We can decide to orient our neural processes–or not. In extreme schizophrenia perhaps we are overcome by our unbalanced chemistry. But usually not, we decide. Or we can decide not, it is determined by lower level chemistry.
oops. it -is not- determined by lower level chemistry
Hi, Jason. ‘Truth’, in the sense that I am referring to, would constitute an unbiased and entirely accurate description of reality, ‘Truth’ with a capital ‘T’.
Let me hasten to say that I don’t believe any sort of human activity can meet this standard at the present, and that I am skeptical that it can ever be met. A few choice quotes gives the flavor of what I am trying to say:
(Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain)
“Modern physics teaches us that there is more to truth than meets the eye; or than meets the all too limited human mind, evolved as it was to cope with medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds through medium distances in Africa.”
(J.B.S. Haldane)
“”My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
I’m also impressed by arguments like those of Nagel, who asked what it would be like to be a bat? I think I’m in pretty good company when I remark that there is no reason to think that our particular CPU is optimally configured to detect things, to perceive things, to evaluate things outside of our historical environment. Evolution doesn’t produce perfect adaptation for all populations, in all possible environments; it tinkers with existing modules and selects whatever jury-rigged arrangement that enhances fitness for a given population within a limited range of contemporary environments.
BTW, after speaking with some good friends who are skeptics (over a beer, would you believe it?), I intend to offer you more meat with respect to what I believe. But, at their suggestion, I’m going to do it off-site so I don’t derail the threads here.
Peace…SH
Scott,
A brain that provides a more accurate description of reality is obviously more adaptive than a brain that provides a less accurate one. You’re more likely to survive if you are able to recognize a predator as a predator than if confuse it with something else. You’re more likely to survive if you perceive food as food than if you perceive it as a worthless object. So why do you doubt that our brains are “oriented toward truth?”
Because Scott uses ‘truth’ in the same way C.S. Lewis did.
I intend to offer you more meat with respect to what I believe. But, at their suggestion, I’m going to do it off-site so I don’t derail the threads here.
Shorter Scott: I’ve got an argument so devastating I dare not make it here.
I don’t know about anyone else Scott but that type of derailment is ok here and more than a few of us would like to read it.
The pervasiveness of religion is a good indicator that our brains are not perfect truth-seeking machines, as is our susceptibility to all sorts of perceptual illusions and cognitive biases. This is really basic stuff and I’m not sure why it’s even controversial. Dennett just wrote a whole book about how evolution might have shaped us to be susceptible to religion, and he’s hardly the first.
The more you guys flame, the more you support the view that atheism can be a kind of fundamentalism, prone to generating narrowminded and dogmatic thinking. In this case your dislike of religion seems to prevent you from thinking clearly about it.
mtraven,
The pervasiveness of religion is a good indicator that our brains are not perfect truth-seeking machines, as is our susceptibility to all sorts of perceptual illusions and cognitive biases. This is really basic stuff and I’m not sure why it’s even controversial.
It’s not controversial with me. No one has said the brain is a “perfect” truth-seeking machine. You’re attacking a strawman. The point is that the things you list represent flaws or imperfections or anachronisms in brains that are otherwise “oriented to truth.” An organism whose brain was systematically or pervasively oriented to provide a false description of the world wouldn’t last very long.
The more you guys flame, the more you support the view that atheism can be a kind of fundamentalism, prone to generating narrowminded and dogmatic thinking
See, this is the kind of vague, bizarre accusation that never seems to have any substance behind it. I won’t try to speak for anyone else, but what exactly have I said that you consider “fundamentalist, “narrowminded” or “dogmatic?” Be specific.
An organism whose brain is designed to generate an incorrect and actively false view of the world might still benefit through group and kin selection.
There are also parasites. Ants don’t benefit from trying to move upward when they’re infected with Coreopsis fungus – the fungus does.
Jason beat me to a good response to mtraven.
I don’t have any problem with the first paragraph, but don’t see what the second has to do with the first.
Are you trying to say that atheism is just another expression of our susceptibility to dogmatism and narrowmindedness because we flame?
Why We Flame… Scott has this amazing flame-retardant asbestos suit. He remains good-natured, coming back with more and more combustible material no matter how much concentrated heat we direct his way. Were it not for our suspicion that there’s an outlook we share deep down, were it not for all that dross he’s accumulated by having such execrable taste in apologetic philostophers (“who is making those new brown clouds?”), we would just mock and harrass him. While there is exasperation enough to go around, the fastest way for us to give up on him would be if he were to make a religious conversion to our point of view. Please don’t confuse didactisism with dogmatism.
A vulnerability to false beliefs induced by a parasite is just another example of a flaw. If it were maladaptive the species would presumably evolve some kind of defense against the parasite. It’s an arms race out there.
And yes, an organism with even a grossly false view of the world could certainly benefit from group or kin selection. We care for people in our families and communities who suffer pervasive hallucinations caused by schizophrenia, for example. But schizophrenia is a disorder, and presumably maladaptive. It’s hard to see how a species of schizophrenics could evolve.
Species, even entire orders, can lose that arms race. Look at what’s happening now to amphibians.
It is entirely possible that religions are memetic viruses that exploit weaknesses in our cognitive structure that provide us with absolutely no benefit, not even the benefit that the weaknesses they exploit grant us.
They could be the mental equivalent of wildfires, utterly destructive and not providng for their own future existence, yet persisting through their ability to spread and consume.
It seems to me that atheism or naturalism is competing for the same patch of mental territory as religion — call it the right to say what the ultimate foundations of all being are, as David Alpert put it recently. This doesn’t mean that atheism is equivalent to religion in every respect, but it means that atheism does tend to evolve into a sort of substitute faith, and is prone to some of the same problems as religion, including dogmatism, self-righteousness, and hostility to outsiders.
Maybe you think these aren’t problems since, after all, atheism is the truth while all those other belief systems are false. Of course, that’s exactly the way the others think.
Sorry, I know I’m at the end of an vastly long comment thread that I haven’t even read to get here, *but*…
So I’m reading this article: Sapolsky .. Sapolsky. Damn that rings a bell. Wait a minute — *primate* *endocrinologist*? Worked with *baboons*? I do a quick search: he’s at Stanford? Holy crap.
I went to school in Palo Alto, about 20 minutes from Stanford on a cloudy day. And circa 1975, say, I went on a field trip with the rest of my class to a really well-funded primate research lab — somewhere — say Stanford perhaps — and was given a really awesome tour by the lab’s charismatic and well-spoken leader. Or I guess he was the leader. Sure he was. Must have been. Sapolsky?
Suffice to say for the extremely shy but science nerdy me, it was kind of a huge — thing — I guess. Anyway I worked up the courage to ask a question — something that my non-nerd cohorts didn’t even care to bother to start to try to do. I asked something incredibly awkward and probably confusing, because frankly I just wanted to ask a question — any question — to show that this was really, really interesting and I wanted to show that I was excited to be there and it wasn’t a waste of their time. So it was probably stupid.
Anyway, he tore me a new one. He interpreted my question as a bumbling attempt to make some sort of nature vs nurture argument, which was something of a raging controversy at the time perhaps equivalent to ID today (ah for the old days…!). He riffed about how it didn’t matter about the cause of some type of behavior, just that it helped the animal survive and that was what was important. It frankly felt like a canned response, as if he’d been used to dealing with questions like that and didn’t care to deal with it in depth again.
I felt quashed. I think about it from time to time and wonder how much it made me fear me own desire to interact and be involved. No criticism of Supolsky — if indeed that’s who it was — but in retrospect it’s a lesson. Let’s not attack the ID kids with all the vigor that we’d reserve for adults who should know better. The kids don’t know, and they’re just asking questions. Answer them honestly and politely, and explain. Perhaps they’ll get it. Perhaps they really want to know.
Jason,
I’m a big fan of Michael Shermer, especially his ability to take a simple idea and expand it into a book. How We Believe had the premise (if I may be permitted to mangle it in the retelling) that we are the desendants of pattern seekers, on alert in the savannah for shadows in the tall grass that might be tigers. The ones who took great pains to distinguish between patterns suggestive of tigers and actual tigers did not reproduce as often as the types that responded to the slightest pattern onto which they could map the possibility of a tiger. The ones better at fooling themselves reproduced more often. Science is the game that doesn’t feed our inclination to fool ourselves as much as all the other games do.
The nice thing about science and reason is that they permit us to transcend the endless battles of belief and find out things that, as far as we can determine, are actually true.
Atheism is a substitute religion only in the minds of people who cannot conceive existing without religions.
mtraven
Still waiting for those citations to the alleged “fundamentalist, “narrowminded”and “dogmatic” statements you keep accusing me of making. Apparently, this includes claims about nothing less than “the ultimate foundations of all being.” Back up your accusations or stop making them. Put up or shut up.
Ken,
That book is sitting in my bookcase, unfinished. I’m not sure why, because I like Michael Shermer too. The tiger hypothesis is intriguing. Our apparent propensity to see patterns that aren’t really there must have some cause.
Our brains are evolved to perceive and pay attention to features of our environment that have adaptive relevance. Among those adaptively salient environmental features are those of the social environment, which includes social constructs. One such construct is religion which, Durkheim argued, is the sacralization of the group itself.
Jason, why are you under the impression that my remarks are directed specifically at you? There is plenty of dogmatism on display here, check out PZ’s post on being “meaner, angrier, louder”:
I think it’s fair to call that dogmatic, and perhaps PZ would even embrace that label. He’s got a dogma and he’s not afraid to use it.
As for narrowmindedness, that is even more self-evident. Take Caledonian’s last remark, #123, which was a response to me but managed to completely missed the point I was making, either willfully or through an inability to understand a viewpoint that is not dogmatically pro- or anti- religion. That is a very boring framework.
Surely you don’t deny that scientific materialism makes claims about the foundations of reality? And that these claims are what distinguish it from religion? Did you actually read what was at the end of that link?
poke, mtraven: Jason’s posed a question (#109) which I’m going to answer below, but since you both made a claim similar to the one I made in post #103, perhaps you would like to explain what you meant? It could lead to an interesting exchange for all concerned.
Curiously…SH
Jason: I suppose I would accept your first statement as probable if you added the clause ‘all things being equal.’ If you didn’t, however, I’d be cautious: it’s likely that the processing power of the cerebral cortex could be greatly enhanced through a generous increase in cranial capacity, for example, leading (in principle) to an even more accurate description of reality—but then, there are limits to what the birth canal can support. Travathan (1987) makes a powerful case that there are serious evolutionary trade-offs between the narrow pelvis required for functional bipedalism, cranial capacity and neoteny in human infants, and how this may have contributed to uniquely human paths of socialization, such as midwifing.1
In any case, speaking metaphorically, while the ‘purpose’ of brains could be said to promote survival, to enhance fitness, this typically occurs within the context of the original environment in which the adaptation emerged: thus, fitness is situation-dependent.2 There is some confusion on this, due to different senses in which the term ‘fitness’ has been used 3 and in the use of the technical terms ‘absolute fitness’ and ‘relative fitness’, which do not refer to the question of whether fitness is situation-dependent, but to other issues.4
Even if it turns out that the adaptation in question has general utility (as intelligence, language and culture surely have), it doesn’t mean that it’s optimal for all environments, nor does it follow that it’s identical with the production of reliable algorithms for every sort of problem. As Gould (1983) writes: “We do not inhabit a perfected world where natural selection ruthlessly scrutinizes all organic structures and then molds them for optimal utility.”5 Indeed, it is often argued that there are good reasons to believe that optimization is unlikely, that in fact the entire contingent series of events producing a given adaptation might never occur if the ‘tape of life’ were to be
replayed. 6,7
So, the likelihood of human intelligence’s ‘survival value’ doesn’t strike me as a reliable indicator that it is optimal for every sort of problem that we might encounter in the future. Bacteria have survived for a lot longer than we have, and I doubt very much that their survival depends upon an’accurate description of reality’ like the one available to megafauna with big brains.
Now don’t get me wrong. Is there good reason to believe that there has been selection for big brains, for cognitive ability? Absolutely. Is there good reason to believe that this ability is our best tool for investigating the natural world, through science and the application of reason? That’s my conviction, sure. But does it follow that human intelligence, however applied, is going to be able to characterize, investigate and solve every sort of problem? If we can’t affirm that, then how can we claim that the brain, a product of contingency, is oriented toward ‘truth’? Survival is an outcome, not an algorithm; some forms of self-deception seem rampant, and there is a wicked irony in Dawkins’ remark that it is ‘almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism.’8
1) Travathan, W. Human Birth: An Evolutionary Perspective. 1987. Aldine de Gruyter. New York..
2) Wilkins, J. “Basic Concepts: Fitness”. January 22, 2007.
URL: http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/01/fitness.php
3) Dawkins, R. The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection. 1982. W.H. Freeman & Company. Cambridge.
4) Futuyma, D. Evolutionary Biology, 3rd edition. 1998. Sinauer and Associates. Sunderland, Maryland.
5) Gould, S.J. Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. 1983. W.W. Norton & Co. New York.
6) Gould, S.J. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. 1989. W.W. Norton & Co. New York.
7) Moran, L. “Evolution by Accident.” V. 1.43. February 26, 2007. URL:
http://bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca/Evolution_by_Accident/Evolution_by_Accident.html
8) Dawkins, R. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. 1986. W.W. Norton & Co. New York
Robert Trivers on science, religion, and truth:
http://tinyurl.com/2noxbc
“Despite having provided evolutionary explanations for moral behaviour, Trivers is not an avid defender of scientific ‘truth’ or an enemy of religion a la Richard Dawkins. In fact, he believes religion is a “much deeper topic than Dickie can handle”, and that evolutionary thinking does not necessarily clash with faith. He has, however, nothing against atheistic assertions. A world with and without God are equally implausible to him. “We are so far from reaching truth that there is no point in imagining its absoluteness”, says Trivers, regretting that his home country should be the home of a unique brand of religious fundamentalism and anti-evolutionary thinking.”
Jason: After posting the above, I reread the thread and realized that you made a useful distinction in post #114 between imperfections in signal processing and the brain’s overall orientation. I think our views here are probably closer than I originally realized, and I ask your indulgence. I wasn’t trying to erect a ‘straw man.’
PZ Myers: “he also has an interesting message: that religion is a kind of controlled psychosis.”
Sapolsky: “What is it that one winds up concluding from this? Am I saying you gotta be crazy to be religious? No. [laughter]
Am I saying most people who are religious have to be neuropsychiatrically suspect? Not even saying that, either.” (my emphasis)
More Sapolsky: “What does it say if, in all of history, there was even one religious person whose religiosity was due to some neurotransmitter hiccup, and in all of history there was even one person whose atheism was due to a different type of neurotransmitter hiccup?” (my emphasis)
And even more Sapolsky: “There’s a zillion of these subtle disorders, and none of them existed 30 years ago. … Eventually, every single one of us will have two or three of those labels. [laughter] At some point, that’s going to stop being the biology of “them and their diseases,” and it’s going to be the biology of “what makes us us.””
I think there is a call here for more self-examination than you all have allowed yourselves here.
serious evolutionary trade-offs between the narrow pelvis required for functional bipedalism, cranial capacity and neoteny in human infants, and how this may have contributed to uniquely human paths of socialization, such as midwifing.1
Do dolphins assist births?
Do dolphins assist births?
Yes.
So midwifery isn’t literally unique to humans – but it is uncommon. Dolphin evolution involved slightly differing compromises, perhaps focused on neotony more than bipedality … but the results are similar including their singular encephalization quotient, comparable to humans’.
Your point was – ?
Scott,
Now don’t get me wrong. Is there good reason to believe that there has been selection for big brains, for cognitive ability? Absolutely. Is there good reason to believe that this ability is our best tool for investigating the natural world, through science and the application of reason? That’s my conviction, sure. But does it follow that human intelligence, however applied, is going to be able to characterize, investigate and solve every sort of problem? If we can’t affirm that, then how can we claim that the brain, a product of contingency, is oriented toward ‘truth’?
Because the brain does not need to “be able to characterize, investigate and solve EVERY sort of problem” in order to be “oriented toward truth.” Since you define truth in terms of an accurate description of reality, and you agree that the brain generally provides us with this, I don’t know why you don’t think the brain is “oriented toward anything like truth.” As I said earlier, if the descriptions of reality provided by the brain were generally or pervasively false, like someone in a state of constant hallucination or constant false perception, we wouldn’t survive for very long. We’d starve to death, or be eaten by predators, or walk off the edge of a cliff, or fall victim to any number of other kinds of harm resulting from misunderstanding the world around us.
Jason,
What reason is there to believe our brains are not “oriented toward truth?”
Because that’s what an alethiometer is for.
Scott,
After reading your #129, I’m happy to see you no longer support the position held by Roger Penrose.
Steve LaBonne: That overfocus is why I am always quick to point out that I am describable by many isms: atheism, rationalism, empiricism, socialism, technism, personalism, scientism, pragmatism (sort of), humanism, environmentalism, etc.
Sastra: Don’t be so sure. Neuroscience has the possibility (very likely in my estimation) to erode traditional notions of responsibility, choice, will, etc. Our laws are or are about to become scientifically obsolete, and that will be a disaster for conservatives and a mess for everyone.
Jason: I don’t necessarily disagree, if the word ‘truth’ refers only to the sort of testable claims that science can weigh on. I suspect that’s what you meant and I may have misread you.
Perhaps we need some other term for things that might be true but which, for whatever reason, don’t seem to subject to test. There’s probably somebody out there reading this who knows more about this topic than me: any suggestions?
Scott,
Jason: I don’t necessarily disagree, if the word ‘truth’ refers only to the sort of testable claims that science can weigh on. I suspect that’s what you meant and I may have misread you.
Well, I asked you what you meant by the word and you responded that you mean something like “an accurate description of reality.” If you agree that our brains are oriented to an accurate description of reality (e.g., we tend to recognize tigers as tigers rather than confuse them with rocks or plants), then you’re agreeing that the brain is oriented to truth.
You seem to have in mind, though, some notion of higher truth or absolute truth that goes beyond truth in the ordinary sense in which the word is used. But, as usual when you talk about such things, you don’t seem to be able to articulate any clear idea of what this higher truth is supposed to mean or how it is supposed to differ from truth in the conventional sense. It seems to be another terminally vague concept that you can’t say anything meaningful about. And as Hume said, nothing will do as well as something about which nothing can be said.
Ken: For the record, I’ve never endorsed Hameroff and Penrose’s notion of wave function collapse in microtubules mediating consciousness. 1
I do, however, commend Hameroff (1987) as containing a nice review of a variety of ideas, not just Hameroff, concerning possible microtubule function. 2
Our previous exchange on that wasn’t very fruitful and I felt misread. Microtubule assemblies appear to be able to detect positional information within a gravitational field. This information appears to be essential to proper function in some eukaryotes, as shown by the failure of mictotubules to properly nucleate in microgravity. 3
The paired centrioles, at right angles and configured in the familiar 9 + 2 array, seem to have a geometry that could facilitate this. 4
I’ve wondered if these structures, which constitute an exaptation of earlier structures of cellular motility, could’ve have been similarly exapted for information storage in the brain. Rereading the past thread, I get the impression that you think I was proposing some kind of mystical redoubt for a non-naturalistic explanation of consciousness.
But no. The notion I attempted to float was entirely naturalistic, conceived in fact as a product of natural selection. Imagine my chagrin to learn that the odious Jonathan Wells has seized upon the appearance of design in the centrosome as a test case for how design considerations could inspire scientific research. 5
1) Hameroff, S. and Penrose, R.
“Orchestrated Objective Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules: The “Orch OR” Model for Consciousness” in Toward a Science of Consciousness – The First Tucson Discussions and Debates, eds. Hameroff, et al., pg. 507-540. 1996. MIT Press. Cambridge.
URL: http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/orchOR.html
2) Hameroff, S.
Ultimate Computing: Biomolecular Consciousness and Nanotechnology. 1987. Elsevier Science Publishers. Holland.
URL: http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/pdfs/UltComp_v51.pdf
3) Papaceit, C., Pochon, N. and Tabony, J.
“Microtubule self-organization is gravity-dependent”, in Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science, 97 (15), pg. 8364-8368. 2000.
4) Bornens, M.
“The Centriole as a Gyroscopic Oscillator: Implications for Cell Organization and Some Other Consequences”, in Biological Cellulaire, 35 (11), pg. 115-132. 1979.
5) Wells, J.
“Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?” in Revista di Biologia 98, pg. 71-96. 2005.
Jason, the definition I actually posed for truth in post #109 was a bit different: “an unbiased and entirely accurate description of reality.”
Your subsequent posts, particularly #115, make it clear that this is not what *you* mean by ‘truth’. I think we are in agreement on that, and on the point that the brain is not a perfect truth-seeking machien, which of course means that its description of reality contains bias and inaccuracy.
It seems a small step from that to concede that there are likely many ‘truths’ sensu Jason that the imperfect brain is not particularly “well-designed” (metaphor alert!) to notice, much less characterize, investigate or explain.
If we also concede that the set of all possible true claims includes (but is not exhausted by) the set of testable claims, then it seems to me that there must be things which are true which we will likely never recognize, much less objectively describe.
Now, I want to make it clear that this need not imply a redoubt for supernaturalism or any other sort of privileged metaphysical view: they can be thought of as “other things, entirely natural” rather than “higher things, vaguely referenced.” There may be gaps, insuperable gaps, but that does not mean that we suffer any gap to be filled with God. This was surely the sense of Haldane’s quip that the Universe is “queerer than we CAN suppose”, given Haldane’s own commitments.
I guess I am responsible for the “oriented to truth” phrase. Here’s what I said:
Our brains are oriented towards survival with truth being a useful byproduct. Our models of the world are more true than not, but they are also very selective (obviously, any model has to choose which aspects to include and which to leave out) and contain a variety of distortions, as indicated by belief in the supernatural, all sorts of perceptual illusions, and cognitive bugs like trouble reasoning accurately about risk.
So, let’s not have a silly argument. Our brains produce truth but they don’t do a very good job, and that’s far from all they do.
I’ve wondered if these structures, which constitute an exaptation of earlier structures of cellular motility, could’ve have been similarly exapted for information storage in the brain. Rereading the past thread, I get the impression that you think I was proposing some kind of mystical redoubt for a non-naturalistic explanation of consciousness.
Perish the thought. How could I imagine your citation of Hameroff could have anything to do with the decades of Mondo 2000 style woo with which Hameroff is encrusted? I mean, what possible motivation could you have…
I confess. It must have been all the information stored in the microtubules in my kidneys. Or would it have been the microtubules in my pancreas that led me to listen to a friend who has published a lot of her research on microtubules, Athena Andreadis, who first set me straight on how much disdain most biologists have for Hameroff? What’s next, citations of Sarfatti?
I just can’t separate the part of you that wants to be taken seriously from the part that wants consciousness to be special, that wants to believe that some mythological figure is imbued with some quality you call “divine,” and who apparently needs to believe that whatever the hell divinity is, us mere mortals lack it. Especially when, so often, you write as if you really do know better.
Ken, as I mentioned, I don’t subscribe to Hameroff and Penrose’s flight of fancy. However, the second source in post #140 has nothing to do with that: in fact, it was put together nearly ten years before H and R floated their idea. I commended the second source to you because it has a nice survey on pages 157-181 on various ideas about how the cytoskeleton of MT and other elements might be involved in information processing. Some of the ideas are exotic, but *none* of them invoke quantum effects. It’s available at the URL I’ve provided. You might try looking over the pages I’m referring to before you pass judgement.
If you just can’t bring yourself to do that, then perhaps you might want to check out the third source, which is available for free at the PNAS archives on-line, here:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/15/8364?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Tabony&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
The fourth source, meanwhile, is that of Michel Bornens, a principal investigator for a unit with the Curie Institute, whose web site can be found here:
http://www.curie.fr/recherche/themes/detail_equipe.cfm/lang/_gb/id_equipe/21.htm
I regret that I don’t have a copy of Dr. Bornen’s original 1979 paper, but his ideas are summarized in source #2 and there are interesting references to his and Albrecht-Buehler’s work in this article which summarizes the actual behavior of centrioles etc. through the cell cycle, available here:
http://www.jcb.org/cgi/reprint/93/3/938.pdf
Now, I haven’t a clue what Tabony’s group or Bornens’ group think about the H & P ‘quantum consciousness’ thing, but if I had to place bets on it, I’d hazard that they would be as skeptical as your friend Dr. Andreadis. As am I, but so what? I don’t care about anybody’s private beliefs as long as they remains private, and it really shouldn’t have any relevance to the question of whether or not MT or MT arrays transduce information, or whether this capacity might not be exapted to form nodes within nervous tissue.
It seems to me that you have avoided the ideas as such and instead have consistently implied that your remote intuition of my private beliefs leads you to believe that this well is already poisoned: “Hatfield, dontcha know, he’s just looking for gaps to put God in. Hameroff, he’s a crazy bugger, just look, my authoritative friend who publishes on MT thinks so, too.”
You wouldn’t buy those kinds of arguments from creationists who attempt to impeach the motives from evolutionary biologists. Why employ them here? I don’t mind at all if you think these ideas about MT information processing are batshit, but if so, I think you can give a better argument than ‘the source of those ideas are batshit.’
Looking forward to your reply…SH
(P.S. Is your friend the same person who wrote a book on the biology of Star Trek?)
Scott,
on various ideas about how the cytoskeleton of MT and other elements might be involved in information processing. Some of the ideas are exotic, but *none* of them invoke quantum effects. It’s available at the URL I’ve provided. You might try looking over the pages I’m referring to before you pass judgement.
My BS detectors go off at “information processing” in the microtubules. Microtubules are in every kind of cell, not just the brain. To the extent that they are part of the brain, and may even contribute in some way to its function: gosh, MT as the tape in the universal Turing machine, that would be just spiffy. I’m not an anasthesiologist (the only arguments from authority I make are when I’m speaking as an animator), but the place I’d look for consciousness is not the parts of the brain found in every other cell in the body, the point Athena made to me. (Yes, she knocked out that book on the Biology of Star Trek as a fun way of combining two interests and was surprised to get it done and published and so well received. It was the most sciency of any of the science of Trek books.)
As far as well-poisoning, yes, Hameroff may well be doing some real anesthesiology. He puts me to sleep. The woo circuit loves him. When you cite him, and Nagel, and Chalmers, and other Mysterians, sorry, I’ve tasted that water and it’s bad.
Scott,
Jason, the definition I actually posed for truth in post #109 was a bit different: “an unbiased and entirely accurate description of reality.”
I don’t know what the words “unbiased and entirely” are supposed to add in this context. They sound like another bit of obscurantism and your argument here is starting to sound like what Sastra calls the “Everything is faith” argument–the idea that there is no knowledge, merely belief, and that all belief is ultimately a matter of preference.
If you’re claiming the brain is not “oriented to truth” because truth requires an “unbiased and entire” accuracy that the brain cannot provide, do you therefore deny that we are justified in making any claims of truth? Do you deny that we are justified in claiming, say, that it is TRUE that Jupiter is the largest planet or that the Earth is not flat?
Jason wrote: “If you’re claiming the brain is not “oriented to truth” because truth requires an “unbiased and entire” accuracy that the brain cannot provide, do you therefore deny that we are justified in making any claims of truth?”
No, we can provisionally regard certain claims (often trivial claims) as well-demonstrated, call them ‘facts’ and use them to build other generalizations (hypotheses, theories, models) to attempt to enlarge the sphere of explanation. We just need a little recognition of our own limits, a collective humility about what is possible, as Haldane and others have suggested.
Ken: It’s true that microtubules are found in almost every kind of cell. But they don’t all have the same functions in different cells; for example, respiratory cells have cilia, sperm cells don’t. Nervous tissue that’s no longer involved in the cell cycle still maintains a centrosome. I don’t think it’s that outrageous to suggest that in such cells that these structures could’ve been exapted for another function; in any case, even if that’s a mere fantasy, it’s pretty certain that they do transduce information. What’s missing, at present, is evidence for any particular model as to how that might be done.
BTW, I didn’t know you were an animator! That sounds like a really interesting line of work to me. With regard to Chalmers and the other Mysterians, do you think that brew is bad because it could constitute a ‘science stopper’, or do you have some other reason?
Cheers…>SH
Scott,
No, we can provisionally regard certain claims (often trivial claims) as well-demonstrated, call them ‘facts’ and use them to build other generalizations (hypotheses, theories, models) to attempt to enlarge the sphere of explanation.
So is that a “No, I don’t deny that we are justified in making claims of truth?” Or a “Yes, I do deny it?” Or a “I have no opinion on the question?” Or what? I didn’t ask you if you think we can “provisionally regard certain claims (often trivial claims) as well-demonstrated….[etc.]” I asked you if you think we are justified in believing that some things are TRUE. It’s really quite a simple question.
And if you do think we are justified in believing that some things are true, why don’t you think the brain is oriented to truth?
With regard to Chalmers and the other Mysterians, do you think that brew is bad because it could constitute a ‘science stopper’, or do you have some other reason?
What more reason could you need? Philosophical Zombies in a Chinese Room wondering what it’s like to be a bat are vaudeville routines for the toga and laurel leaf circuit.
Placing an elevated status on “subjectivity” is done in the philosophical janitor’s closet; out where the research is being done, the view that the self is a useful fiction is widely supported.
At the end of the day, those working with models of consciousness and building robots and simulations will have more to show for their work than those building their catch-phrases for “AI Sucks!” night at the comedy club.
(Animating is a useful skill) One of my best experiences on the V.R. team at Imagineering in the early nineties was spending so much time with Marvin Minsky. I was the only team member who’d read his work, so I got to hog his time. When he was introduced to us by R&D as a Disney Fellow, along with Danny Hillis, his opening line at lunch was, “So, consciousness. Do you think it’s linear or parallel?” I was able to respond that animating could not be a linear process…
New York Times had a good article yesterday on the evolution of religion which relates to many points raised on this thread.
Ken: I appreciate your response. I tend to agree that ‘Mysterian’ approach, as with philosophy in general, tends to be unproductive scientifically. The main usefulness of philosophy to science is that it provides us with conceptual frameworks for embedding various claims for consideration, along with tools for evaluating the status of claims, models, etc. But you’re right: real progress depends on doing science, not on holding up this or that framework as a roadbloack to doing science.
I envy the opportunity you had to spend time with Minsky, and I enjoyed discovering examples of your work on-line. The butterfly example was impressive, if all too brief…..Scott
Jason: Your question isn’t as simple as you think. Today’s ‘truth’ is tomorrow’s falsified hypothesis. Scientists are not, in my estimation, in the ‘truth business.’ We’re in the ‘model-making and model-testing’ business.’
The same thing can be said about the brain; any model, however flawed, which gives the brain that holds it survival value over another brain will tend to be selected for, whether or not the other brain has proposed a model for the given phenomena, or no.
Are we justified as regarding some things as being provisionally demonstrated, as a practical matter regarding them as true? Of course. It gives reason far too much credit, though, to describe these claims as products of a organ as ‘oriented’ toward truths, when its central concerns are not even conscious, much less rational. There is a part of our mind that seems useful for exploring our environment, but what of it? As far as I can see, you might as well say that an ant’s brain is oriented towards ‘truth’.
Using the term ‘truth’ to describe this or that finding of science is similarly misleading, in my opinion. Tom Jarrett (JPL, CalTech) has this to say:
“Truth. This is a word best avoided entirely in physics except when placed in quotes, or with careful qualification. Its colloquial use has so many shades of meaning from ‘it seems to be correct’ to the absolute truths claimed by religion, that it’s use causes nothing but misunderstanding. Someone once said “Science seeks proximate (approximate) truths.” Others speak of provisional or tentative truths. Certainly science claims no final or absolute truths.”
Scott,
Are we justified as regarding some things as being provisionally demonstrated, as a practical matter regarding them as true? Of course.
I’ll ignore this latest attempt to rewrite my question (I didn’t say anything about “provisional demonstration” or “as a practical matter”) and assume from the above response that your answer is “No, I do not deny that we are justified in making claims of truth.” So you therefore agree that we are justified in claiming certain propositions to be TRUE. So then why don’t you believe that the brain is “oriented to truth?”
(Again, the word I am VERY DELIBERATELY USING here is TRUTH, not some phrase alluding to scientific models and practical demonstrations).
If I have understood your answer and you do in fact believe that NO claim of truth is justified, then please say so clearly.
(Sorry about all the shouting (bold and upper case), but it seems like the only way of inducing you to actually answer the question I ask instead of substituting your own question and answering that one instead.)
Make that, “If I have MISundertood your answer…” in the penultimate paragraph above.
Jason, this is turning into an exercise of ‘have you stopped beating your wife yet?’ To answer such a question with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ legitimizes the pretext of the question, obviously, even if one doesn’t assent to the implied premise.
To me, the same thing is true with your ‘…justified in making claims of truth?’. I think your question is deeply flawed, because (after Popper) I tend to hold a critical rationalist view of knowledge, which avoids Hume’s problem of induction and uses a falsifiability, rather than a verificationist criteria for knowledge claims. Interestingly enough, one of Popper’s followers has characterized the general point of view that his ideas supplanted as (get this) ‘justificationism’. You might want to ask yourself if this is what you’re getting at.
Going on, since obviously I think the term ‘truths’ is loaded, could we substitute the term ‘facts’? I think we are justified in regarding some claims as facts, things which we regard as true without burdening them with the baggage of being called ‘truths’. And, sure, if that’s what we mean, I have no cavils, no real quibbles about the brain (or at least modules within the brain) being oriented toward exploring the world we inhabit, with fact-finding.
Would your question lose any of its basic meaning if we made this substitution? If so, how? I think, that if you’re going to insist on ‘truth’ or ‘truths’ you need to (ahem) provide a justification why you think it should be so. I’ve already explained why I’m reluctant to use these terms, both in general terms and by specifically referencing my critical rationalist stance, and I’m hoping we could discuss that….SH
BTW, while I haven’t updated this in a while, here’s part of my old class web site that gives a brief primer on the nature of science, Popper-style, for a high school biology class….
http://www.geocities.com/epigene13/topics1
I’m shooting you the link so you can see that is not something I just pulled out of my hat for a talking point.
Scott,
It’s always endless evasion and smokescreens with you. I did not ask you about, and am not interested in, your views on Popper or Hume or “critical rationalism.” I just want you to answer the question.
Do you think we are justified in believing that some things are TRUE, or don’t you?
In fact, I’ll make it even simpler:
Do you believe it’s TRUE that that the Earth is older than 6,000 years?
Do you believe it’s TRUE that Tony Blair is the Prime Minister of Britain?
Do you believe it’s TRUE that the distance from the Earth to the Sun is greater than the distance from the Earth to the Moon?
Answers, please.
I almost forgot:
Do you believe it’s TRUE that Jesus is divine?
Jason:
Failure to answer the question in the way you want is not an evasion, but an attempt to promote dialogue about legitimate epistemological concerns. These in turn are not smokescreens, but bear in a critical way on the kinds of claims that I am willing to make. If you ask a question that I regard as meaningless, misleading or clumsy, it would be cynical, not to mention disingenous, for me to simply respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
With regard to the three challenges at the end of post #156, I do not take these to be statements that require my assent. They are facts, and I accept that they are true, but I don’t have to *believe* that they are true. The term ‘belief’ always implies something like faith, and none of these propositions require faith!
The difference matters: it would be incorrect, for example, to say that you ‘believe’ in global warming, or in evolution! This feeds the impression, much exploited by deniers of same, that global warming or evolution is a belief system, held on faith. We should be keen to deny this, I think.
Now with the renewed challenge on post #157, I’m working on a blog to address that, among other things, at the request and encouragement of others. I’m going to put it out there, and let you folks pummel it if you like. I’m just not going to do it here.
I will say this, however: the question of whether Jesus is divine is clearly of a different logical type than who is the British P.M. at this moment. The latter is a fact and doesn’t require my assent; the former is not a fact, and manifestly requires my assent to give it any meaning whatsoever. It can only be averred by belief, which is to say in the absence of objective evidence. But it may still be true.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the energy I can give someone who, by their own admission, has no real interest in my views. If I exist only to answer one particular question ‘yes’ or ‘no’, then you don’t really need me for this conversation. You can, I think, simply provide the answers you seek and then critique them as you choose.
Sincerely…SH
Scott,
Failure to answer the question in the way you want is not an evasion,
You’re not merely failing to answer the question “in the way I want.” You’re failing to answer the question, period. You’re substituting your own question for the one I asked, and answering your question instead of mine. That is most definitely an evasion, as I’m sure you know.
With regard to the three challenges at the end of post #156, I do not take these to be statements that require my assent. They are facts, and I accept that they are true, but I don’t have to *believe* that they are true.
More evasion. I didn’t ask you if you think you “HAVE TO” believe the propositions are true. I asked you if your DO believe they are true. Do you or don’t you? Answer the question.
Also, I don’t know what “accept that they are true” is supposed to mean, or how is it is supposed to differ from BELIEVING that they are true. What’s the difference between “accepting” that a proposition is true and believing that a proposition is true? You are just throwing up more smokescreens with this kind of linguistic game-playing. Answer the question.
I am a theist and I welcome research which seeks the truth without biases. Yet neuroscience shows that we all (including neuroscientists themselves)have preconceptions and resist change. We all have many beliefs and no real airtight proof for them-we read something, someone told us something, our senses reported something. All fallible. This being true, a little humility is in order.
There is no justification for arrogant dogmatism in any quarter, including among humanists, atheists, or theists. When you start name-calling, you reveal that you run out of
reasoning ability and reverted to the third grade playground level.