What if they had a debate about evolution, and didn’t bother to invite any scientists? It would be unhinged and divorced from reality, and all the wheels would be spinning wildly, and they could come up with any ol’ crazy crap they wanted. This must be why the American Enterprise Institute sponsored a debate on Darwin and conservatives moderated by Ronald Reagan’s biographer, Steven Hayward, with John Derbyshire and Larry Arnhart defending evolution, and George Gilder and John West, two cranks from the Discovery Institute, criticizing it. Not one scientist in sight, and the account of the proceedings reflects that. The entire debate was about whether reality conflicts with the conservative point of view, and whether they can reinterpret evolution to conform to Wingnuttia.
Unbelievable, I know. Read Brad’s response for a point-by-point takedown.
Just for an example, though, here’s the kind of idea being advanced by evolution’s defenders at that meeting:
It’s a nice idea, but it too might have ended the discussion right then and there, except that Darwinism is once again being used by partisans of a particular political philosophy. This time the lucky philosophy is contemporary American conservatism, and the foremost proponent of the conservative-Darwinian dalliance is Arnhart. He offered a quick summary of his position, which has become popular among right-wingers of a libertarian stripe and has found its fullest expression in Arnhart’s book Darwinian Conservatism.
“Conservatives need Darwin,” he said. Without the scientific evidence Darwinian theory offers, conservative views would be swamped by liberal sentimentality. The left-wing view of human nature as unfixed and endlessly manipulable has led to countless disastrous Utopian schemes. Hard-headed Darwinians, on the other hand, see human nature as settled and enduring and stubbornly unchangeable, and conservatives can wield the findings of Darwin to rebut the scheming, ambitious busybodies of the left and their subversion of custom and tradition. (I’m paraphrasing, by the way.)
The only guy who said anything sensible was Derbyshire.
So Darwinism, viewed one way, can easily be considered morally disastrous. But, responded pro-Darwin Derbyshire, Is it true? “The truth value of Darwinism is essential,” he said. “The truth value always comes first.” If Darwinism is true-and its undeniable success in explaining the world suggests that it is-and if Darwinism undermines conservatism, as West had claimed, “then so much the worse for conservatism.”
And likewise, so much the worse for liberalism if it doesn’t fit reality. The way we ought to be managing our culture is by changing those bits of it that don’t jibe well with nature, rather than allowing ideology to run roughshod over the evidence.
In any context in which Derb is the only beacon of sanity, you know you’re in deep deep trouble…
More “wisdom” from the gaggle of narcissistic
know-nothings that got us stuck in Iraq.
There’s a nice reflecting pool in DC with their
name on it, too bad it’s not deep enough to
get the job done….
The only guy who said anything sensible was Derbyshire.
Now there’s a statement you don’t see every day! Have I woken up in an alternate universe or something?
Expecting anything of value from AEI is like asking for etiquette tips from Bill O’Reilly.
Those copycats; the Pope already did that.
PZ, I don’t think you’re being quite fair in your evaluation. The debate wasn’t about evolution per se, but rather whether evolution is consonant with (or even actually supports) a moral philosophy that is in turn consonant with conservatism. That’s a rather different question than whether evolution is true and one for which no scientists are needed. It’s also, contrary to Brad’s “takedown”, an important corollary to an interesting question in moral philosophy: where do morals “come from” and how are they justified? Prof. Arnhart (and, I suspect others as well) posit that moral values arise from human nature which, in his thesis, is formed by the evolutionary process. He goes a step further in asserting that the natural law, as derived from human nature formed by evolution, supports a conservative ideology. You may well disagree with that, but exactly how does such a position qualify as “delusional”?
Steve LaBonne:
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with National Review.
PZ, I have a huge amount of respect for you, but that comment is just insane, unless you are also advocating giving up vaccinations, eyeglasses, treatements for any form of genetic or congenital defect, etc. etc. etc., and support tribalism, racism, slavery, etc. etc. etc. The whole point of civilization is largely to oppose the Hobbsian “natural” condition. I certainly didn’t expect someone of your intellect to endorse the naturalistic fallacy, and I hope that you will reconsider, or at least elaborate on this comment.
If CNN can have a discussion of atheism without any atheists, why can’t AEI have a discussion of evolution without any scientists?
I agree with Bill Sneddon. I think all they were attempting was to map out the sort of ground Steven Pinker has covered in “Blank Slate”
After all, if *no* account of human nature grounds your politics – your view of how people do and should live in a state and what institutions mediate their interactions – you very probably don’t have a particularly deep political theory. Darwin clearly has at least *something* to say about the nature of the human animal. Apply the standard American Projection Operator – Red State, Blue State – and you’re left with the natural question of whether Darwinian accounts of human biology / psychology / sociology fit better into conservative or liberal worldviews.
Perfectly good liberals have considered the question as well, like Peter Singer with “A Darwinian Left” or James Rachels with “Created from Animals”
I do agree they should have invited a scientist – and a philosopher!
There it is again: the idea that human beings need to oppose and dominate nature.
That kind of thinking is what’s led to massive overpopulation, pollution, global warming, and loss of species. Not to mention that by going against the flow and resisting mankind’s nature instead of going with the flow and structuring society to acknowledge and exploit our nature, your society is eventually doomed.
Interesting. What other scientific facts did they debate? Is heliocentrism consonant with conservatism? Does gravity have disturbingly egalitarian implications?
If a conservative moral philosophy was found to be “not consonant” with evolution, I suppose the attendees were all set to abandon the former?
Brad’s paraphrase:
Ouch. How can a “human nature” which evolved from earlier forms be “settled and enduring and stubbornly unchangeable”? Methinks the presence of, say, a divinely injected dose of eternal soul juice would be a better argument for enduring changelessness.
Bill Snedden:
Hmmm. I disagree on that last part. Given the sheer quantity of misinformation about evolution and science in general, I wouldn’t expect a political junkie or even a philosophy buff to know what the facts really are.
This whole area bugs me. Evolution is the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators, right? Most of the people whom I’ve heard trumpet the assertion “Darwin supports the free market” or the like don’t identify what the replicating units are, how their hereditary information is passed on to their offspring, what the causes of mutation are, or what the selection pressure is. What’s replicating? Is it companies, inventions, memes?
On top of that, evolutionary biology is chock-full of mechanisms which go beyond the naive “red in tooth and claw, survival of the fittest” type of “Darwinian” struggle. Just consider the selfish gene model, kin selection, the weird and fluid kind of group selection which happens in a spatially extended predator/prey model, and so forth. Now, not all of these may show up in the biological world, and perhaps some models are implicated in the history of more species than other models are. That’s fine; it’s a big world, with plenty of room for multiple phenomena to play. However, even if you rule out a model in biology, it still might hold sway in economics, where the replicators, the causes of variation and the selection pressures are different!
Add in a big scoop of Naturalistic Fallacy, and you can appreciate not only why “Darwinian conservatism” gets on my nerves, but also why actual scientists might be a good thing to have in a debate.
Well to be fair gravity and helicentrism don’t have a lot to say about resource use or altruism (for example) while evolution and politics do. It is not that there is no intersection, it is simply that this collective wank didn’t really attempt to address (or even acknowledge the existence of) any of the interesting questions that arise out of that intersection.
Perhaps the AEI could have saved a lot of time and effort if someone at the Institute had simply read Steve Gould essay “Nonmoral Nature” (Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes). All of what follows is excerpted from that essay:
“Nature simply is as we find it. Our failure to discern a universal good does not record any lack of insight or ingenuity, but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms. Morality is a subject for philosophers, theologians, students of the humanities, indeed for all thinking people. The answers will not be read passively from nature; they do not, and cannot, arise from the data of science. The factual state of the world does not teach us how we, with our powers for good and evil, should alter or preserve it in the most ethical manner.
…
The answer to the ancient dilemma of why cruelty (in our terms) exists in nature can only be that there isn’t any answer — and that framing the question “in our terms” is thoroughly inappropriate in a natural world neither made for us nor ruled by us. It just plain happens.
…
If nature is nonmoral, then evolution cannot teach any ethical theory at all. The assumption that it can has abetted a panoply of social evils that ideologues falsely read into nature from their beliefs — eugenics and (misnamed) social Darwinism prominently among them. Not only did Darwin eschew any attempt to discover an antireligious ethic in nature, he also expressly stated his personal bewilderment about such deep issues as the problem of evil. Just a few sentences after invoking the ichneumons, and in words that express both the modesty of this splendid man and the compatibility, through lack of contact, between science and true religion, Darwin wrote to Asa Gray,
“I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.””
That’s a deft rhetorical move there, Caladonian, conflating “human nature” with “the natural world”.
Evidence? Have vaccinations doomed our society? Have treatments for sickle-cell anemia doomed our society? Has the outlawing of slavery doomed society? Has the creation of laws that say the physically strongest cannot beat up the weakest doomed our society? Has the advent of a system of government where all citizens have, in principle, equal say in representative selection doomed our society? What tosh!
(You’ll note that societies like Sparta aren’t around any more.)
Let’s take eyeglasses for an example. Scientists study optics, and as a side effect come to understand the causes of poor vision and how to make corrective lenses. What about this process is unnatural?
PZ is not arguing the merits of natural vs. artificial, but the merits of natural vs. metaphysical reasoning.
Historically, dominating other human minds and dominating the natural world have always been linked.
Besides, human nature is part of the natural world, and while I frequently see people citing the naturalistic fallacy, I rarely see anyone here acknowledging that things in nature usually are the way they are for very good reasons. Messing with equilibrium states is not usually wise, and ignoring the actual disposition of forces by resorting to crude models that inevitably leave most things out is equally unwise.
I’m going to have to pile on with Caledonian on this one, and cry foul. The problem is that the “Hobbsian” idea of nature (and human nature) is the “war of all against all”, which is hardly what the evidence shows about our human and proto-human ancestors, who were certainly cooperative creatures even before the great cultural leap we took about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. The Hobbesian state of nature is a fallacy derived from the older idea of natural law (though in opposition to the way it had been formulated) which is also not supported by evidence from nature itself.
You need to remember that the whole point of Hobbes’s analysis of the state of nature was to justify his own political philosophy, that of an ascending model of absolutism, itself modeled on rather incomplete and mostly wrong ideas about how humans themselves function as biological units. Advocating any reference to Hobbes in modern political discourse is like referencing alchemy in a modern chemistry lab. It can serve only as an example of how not to think about the systems in question.
Sorry for the rant, but that’s what happens when you bring up 17thc. political philosophy in the presence of a historian who began his career as a specialist in 17thc. political and military history. We’re bound to jump all over it, after all…it’s our nature.
I’m sure the esteemed PZ will explain what he said himself, but I read “The way we ought to be managing our culture is by changing those bits of it that don’t jibe well with nature” sure sounds like the naturalistic fallacy to me.
And Caledonian writes:
“Reasons”? First off, the mere use of that term implies a teleology that is no different from that of religious wingnuts, a weird complacent panglossianism that somehow “Mother Nature and/or God knows best”.
Second, whatever “reasons” there may be do not have to coincide with the genuine reasons (and reasoning) that individual humand possess. While it might be comfort to you that there is a “reason” that sickle-cell anemia is the byproduct of an overall fitness-enhancing genetic strategy, does that mean that we shouldn’t fight to cure it? Some have argued that psychopathy is an evolutionary stable strategy, does that mean we shouldn’t work to eradicate it? While you may be willing to sacrifice humanity on the altar of some Hobbisan Nature diety, and deny the autonomy of human reason as separable from its genetic heritage, I’m sure not.
I think the conservatives definitely live on another paradigm that is rooted in religious special creation. What I mean is that religion has for thousands of years repeated the claim that things are the way they are because that is the way God wants them to be, implying that natural order defines morality. Their arguments would be that since the natural order of things says that x% of population will die, then that is “God’s will” and we shouldn’t mess with it. I do recognize that on the left with the desire to “live in harmony” with nature, but I’d like to think that “living in harmony” with the nature simply means recognizing it and realizing how our actions will impact it, and not simply giving into to the natural order of things.
By the way, since we’re on the subject of delusions, here’s a tasty tidbit for everyone that I ran across on DailyKos today. It seems that ars technica has taken a little fieldtrip to Ken Ham’s monument to delusion and they brought back pictures so that the rest of us don’t have to give Ken money in order to ridicule him.
Of course, looking at these pics and the descriptions of the exhibits, it’s almost too easy even for a non-scientist like myself to tear this nonsense apart, but don’t let that stop you. Maybe PZ can post a thread just for the purpose, so we can all get our frustrations out for the day.
Bill Sneddon:
I would say all natural law philosophy is delusional, an execution of the naturalistic fallacy, without recognizing why it is a fallacy. Despite not agreeing with much of Bentham, he was right to recognize natural law as “nonsense on stilts.”
I don’t agree with you at all. To successfully oppose “nature” (which, as Dawkins often points out, we do every time we decline opportunities to reproduce- and I certainly am also happy to oppose, for example,, pathogens) you have to understand it; basing your strategy on fantasies that happen to fit your ideology will get you nowhere.
I forgot to mention the other reason why “Darwinian conservatism” talk makes me all frothy. It smoothly elides the fact that conservatism, in modern parlance, has little to do with Adam Smith, and is in fact a byword for authoritarianism.
Tulse, I think PZ was conflating “nature” with evidence and reason, that there’s no reason to keep any part of our culture that dismisses evidence and rationality outright.
I could be wrong though.
PZ is a humanist who has often expressed the importance of helping the less fortunate, Hobbes be damned. As a regular reader and commenter here, you could (and should) have said that he expressed himself poorly rather than claiming that he believes something you ought to know he does not.
“The way we ought to be managing our culture is by changing those bits of it that don’t jibe well with nature”
We are part of nature, as is our intelligence and technology. It came about “naturally”. Whatever is, is “natural”. Almost a meaningless word, actually.
Steve writes:
I don’t think we are in disagreement. Of course one needs to understand nature in order to “oppose” it (I’d prefer “adjust it to one’s preferences”). My objection was to what seemed to be a claim that mere opposition was problematic, and that our culture should conform to nature. As xebec correctly points out, I was likely overinterpreting PZ’s comment.
xebecs writes:
You are absolutely correct — I should not have not used the language that I did. I was overly forceful precisely because I am familiar with our esteemed host’s other expressed opinions, including his warm albeit cranky humanity, and the bald statement that was made greatly surprised me as seeming very out of character. I should have simply asked for clarification, rather than leapt into full rhetorical dudgeon. Mea culpa.
“The entire debate was about whether reality conflicts with the conservative point of view”
That seems to me to be the big problem with people generally and the current “conservative Authoritarians” specifically, including the religious of all kinds.
Belief trumps reality!
It has got us into a complete mess in the middle east, and is a big part if not the root of all the major problems we are facing. global climate, urban crime, international relations, population movement
instead of actually looking and trying to find out what is actually going on and then deciding what to do we decide to do what to do based on what we believe it is not on any evidence or despite evidence to the contrary.
To expect a debate on any aspect of Evolution by politicians to make sense or come out any differently is naive. I would say that it was an exercise in rationalization, who can rationalize the “question” from there side the best wins,
completely divorced from any objective reality.
Let’s face it — this whole fascination some conservatives have with Darwinism is just a cover for their deepseated fantasies of a world where the men go out and kill each other and hunt animals and subjugate women and there are no laws or government to stop them from doing whatever they want. :)
What these “debates” do is conflate biological evolution and human cultural evolution. As several people have pointed out, the science of biological evolution should be a culturally-neutral conversation based on evidence. On the other hand, conversations regarding human culture (history, politics, philosophy, religion, economics) are inherently subjective.
(Thank you Blake Stacey #13 for using my favorite Alan Sokal quote — I use that one all the time too.)
That’s a weird misinterpretation of my final comment.
Yes, I’m saying that we ought to change culture to better accommodate reality. For example, religious objections to blood transfusions are examples of a flawed perception that has real world consequences — the death of believers — and we can either privilege the belief that god hates transfusions, or we can recognize that transfusions seem to do a pretty good job of keeping people alive, and modify the culture to diminish the value placed on beliefs about a deity’s preferences.
Rather than saying we ought to give up vaccinations because they are “unnatural”, I’m saying the opposite: vaccinations are wholly natural, testable, and functional. Instead, we ought to give up irrational traditions that are obstacles to adopting real-world solutions.
Tulse:
Congratulations. You are a reasonable person. A great many people could learn from the humility you have displayed in this exchange.
I am honored that you chose to respond thusly to my criticism.
Arnhart sounds a bit like a 19th century “social darwinist,” I mean he comes just short of saying “poor people are poor because they suck!”
It looks like he is trying to use a pseudo-scientific argument to justify the current gross inequities in our society. “It’s just the way nature made us, and if those goody goody liberals would leave it alone it’ll turn out just fine.”
Total crock of shyte, peel back a layer and it fits right in there with the religious idea of “living a good, quiet, humble life and waiting for your reward in the next life.” In other words, don’t rock the boat. Peel back a layer from that one and you get “God made noble people to be your betters.” One more layer and you get “God gave me the divine right to rule.” Yet another layer and you get “God King.”
I’m not sure how that follows unless you endorse the naturalistic fallacy yourself. Without it, the only parts of our culture which could jibe well or poorly with nature are our factual beliefs, and the policies which assume their truth. Is there any reason to think that’s not what PZ’s talking about?
Just look at the part of the “debate” summary he quoted. Note that they were discussing competing views of human nature–not just what humans ought to be, but what they in fact are. It’s perfectly reasonable to say such views ought to conform to empirical reality.
PZ writes:
I understand your specific point, PZ, and I have no doubt as to your humanist bona fides. But the quoted general claim is precisely the same made in precisely the same language by whack-job sociobiologists and loony social conservatives who talk about what “nature” tells us about women’s place, or the superiority of certain races, or how rape is inborn. I know that’s not how you mean it, but it is how that language gets used.
My rephrasing of your statement would be that “We will most effectively change culture through understanding reality.” I don’t think that humans should be bound to permanently “accommodate” the current reality, but instead should understand it in order to shape it and our culture to realize our own goals and desires.
I hope this clarifies things.
So much for libertarians, fascism for one.
That’s because it’s a reasonable claim, and endorsing it makes them sound less like loony whack-jobs. Likewise, IDers like to talk about how biological theories should be based on evidence, not ideology. Does that mean we should disagree with that? Of course not. It’s a great idea; the problem is that they’re not living up to it.
If people want to make cultural policy based on absurd empirical claims, we should counter by encouraging culture to accommodate reality. How else can we get people to compare those claims to reality and discover their absurdity?
There is a difference between social evolution and physical evolution. Any and all political ideologies deal with social structures not physical ones. These types of structures can be changed by society and the people that create it. Darwin’s original ideas have very little to do this type of concept. Sure, many of his ideas can be used for social change but only loosely. We create the type of society that we live in not our DNA.
Anton writes:
The claim “All men are created equal” is in many senses empircally false. Does that mean that sentiment this statement expresses should not be an aspiration, and that the US system of government should not be based on it? Sure, we should understand what aspects of reality might work to prevent the realization of that sentiment, and should recognize the limits that nature may place on the degree it can be accomplished, but that doesn’t mean that we give up that basis for governance.
Yes, we should understand how nature (small “n”) works, and our social policy and culture should recognize this. But this does not mean that we should be constrained by what nature (small “n”) provides — instead, we should use our understanding to determine the best way to mold nature to achieve our cultural aspirations.
I should point out that this does not mean that a biologist is not needed in the aforementioned discussion. However, physical evolution and the knowledge required for understanding it is only one aspect of what affects social evolution not the only one. Physical evolution does not give a rat’s ass whether or not a society is conservative or liberal.
One final point and I will shut my pie hole. To all of you who use the term “reality”, please define. This is a very subjective word.
I think we need a debate about ID, with Richard Dawkins on the “pro” and Christopher Hitchens on the “con”
mjr.
My creationist theory explains the existence of conservatives.
On the Seventh Day, god needed to finally take a dump and it thus shat conservatives.
As dutiful undergrads many of us were forced to genuflect and worship while drinking every drop of the mandatory intellectual cocktail; “YOU CAN’T GET AN OUGHT FROM AN IS.” No exceptions! If you do, you are committing, “the naturalistic fallacy.”
PZ’s statement that “the way we ought to manage our culture is by changing those bits of it that don’t jibe well with nature…” appears to do just what he ain’t posta do. At least, according to syllogistic scripture.
Is PZ a hopeless and unsophisticated philistine? Are there no possible prescriptions for human behavior? Moreover, PZ will surely be accused and convicted of “scientism.” Scientism, of course, is either a horrible mental disease or an unsurpassed method for dealing with the world. Scientism advocates looking to the best confirmed scientific evidence in order to make a probablistic prescription for future behavior. No absolute guarantees here, either!
Nobody disputes that there are at least several billion oughts, musts, and foul offenses worthy of pee-pee whacking “You ought to go to Harvard or Yale, if you want to make the right connections. You ought to believe in an after life, just in case. You mustn’t do that, or you will go blind. You ought to study art, or science, or business, or crotches, if…”
Nature’s laws ought to become our own, if we wish to survive. Where else ought we to look for the best course of action, if we wish to survive? Why, even a hard scientist such as PZ uses the word “ought.” Indeed, this very blog is all about using science to make the best of our world.
There are goals, and then there are means. The “culture” that we are asked to manage could be considered to include both. Thus there is the interpretation that “managing our culture” to fit nature means changing our goals so as to reinforce what everything’s already doing. However, if you believe that the natural world, whatever that is (is it everything outside oneself?), is already the best of all possible worlds, why bother getting up to do anything at all? Interpreting nature into “natural law” about what we should be trying to do seems more a reflection of the interpreter’s beliefs than reality.
However, “managing our culture” to change the means we advocate to achieve these goals makes some sense. If we wish, for example, to provide universal health care, but decide that we can best accomplish this through universal access to faith healers, we’re unlikely to be of real help. Similarly, replacing sex education by the promotion of abstinence, having faith that youth won’t have sex if we’re careful not to talk about it, is a dubious public health strategy. (On the other hand, if we care nothing about public health but only about saving a few more from sin, that policy might not conflict with evidence. See also the opposition to HPV.)
I suppose that the remark to which we’re responding doesn’t explicitly mention or exclude either our ideals or the ways we pursue them as elements of culture to adjust. However, I’d rather give it the benefit of the doubt to assume that it’s about methods. I can’t see how science is going to tell us what we should want, anyway.
Oops! Of course, I meant to mention the opposition to HPV vaccination, as an example suggesting that the supposed champions of Morality don’t really care at all about public health. I can’t see that long-term consequences from HPV are going to help the antisex crusade that much, but nonetheless I’ve heard the “morality” argument advanced against vaccination. It’s from either contempt for human life or willful ignorance of reality.
Gerald Spezio exclaims:
Let us know when you manage to violate one of nature’s laws. It should make for an interesting demonstration.
In the meantime, consider that normative statements are prescriptive, and require imagining alternate possibilities. Descriptive theories limit possibilities. So while one might build an ethical theory that idealizes faster-than-light travel, it would be a bit futile. That doesn’t mean there is a way to get prescriptive statements solely from descriptive ones. Hume was right about that. It does mean that there can be some interaction between them, assuming realizability is one of your prescriptive goals.
Well, the sentiment you mean is something along the lines of “all men should be given an equal opportunity by society.” In order to make that a reality, it’s rather important to know that all people are not created equal in most senses.
The US system of government isn’t based on the factual assumption of universal human equality; it’s based on the moral principle that all people have similar intrinsic worth and deserve an equal chance in life. We try to make our government a meritocracy, precisely because we know people aren’t equal in many ways that impact their ability to govern.
But empirical reality includes more than small “n” nature; it includes our social policies and cultures, and the determines the possible ways in which we can effectively mold nature. One still needs to accommodate that reality, no matter what.