In a disturbing recent development, a leading Australian philosopher of biology, John Wilkins, has published a detailed post on his Evolving Thoughts blog, in which he offers uncritical commentary on the neo-Empedoclean theory of evolution. One might well fear that this gullible attitude to what is still little more than fringe science will be repeated in Wilkins' forthcoming book, Species, to be published later this year by the University of California Press.
Wilkins reports research published by Professor Augustus P. Rillful and his colleagues, purporting to show that evidence of unexpected lateral transmissions of genes between interacting species renders obsolete the more conventional evolutionary mechanisms of natural selection and genetic drift favoured by mainstream biologists. For example, A.P. Rillful argues that Homo sapiens was the first species to develop intelligence, which happened entirely by accident - the theory allows for the sudden development of what were once known as "hopeful monsters", as opposed to the glacially slow processes of change that occur even in Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" when it is correctly understood. Given the unexpected significance of lateral genetic transfer from the interaction of species, A.P. Rillful expects the gene for intelligence to infect other species over the next few thousand years.
But serious questions must be raised about A.P. Rillful's research, since the mechanisms for lateral genetic transfer at the level of highly-complex organisms, such as Homo sapiens, have not been specified in any plausible way. Moreover, there is not even a clear definition of the key term "interaction", and its cognates; importantly, some of the lateral transfers that the theory postulates seem to involve a decidedly spooky action at a distance between widely-separated organisms. Unless more specification is given, this has the potential to render the whole idea of species-species interaction almost meaningless.
In any event, great care should be taken before we accept the overthrow of well-corroborated science - supported, in fact, by mountains of convergent evidence - on the basis of a small number of methodologically-suspect and semantically-unclear studies in relatively obscure journals (for whatever reason, best known to himself, Wilkins chooses to call the lightly-refereed Journal of Evolutionary Diversions (or JED) "the major journal in the field").
Here, alas, we are confonted by the spectre of Wilkins - a philosopher of some international repute - choosing to lend his authority to give resonance to a theory that almost certainly involves a false narrative. To say the least, neo-Empedoclean evolution awaits adequate testing (against the fossil record and through stringent real-time testing by molecular biologists of a more closely-specified lateral transfer mechanism). However, there's more - and worse. Wilkins reports that an account of A.P. Rillful's work will be the leading article in the 1 April issue of British popular science magazine New Scientist. Apparently this will be another story by Graham Lawton, a controversial science journalist who takes more pleasure than most in the lateral transfer of genetic material from one organism to another. Apparently New Scientist has decided that This Sort Of Thing sells, so I suppose we'll have to endure more of it over the coming months and years, while hoping that it doesn't become too much a feature of the intellectual culture.
While there may not be much we can do about such developments - short of boycotting Wilkins' blog and asking reputable scientists to boycott writing for New Scientist - we can at least express our concerns about these developments and ask that they be noted.
All that said, I take some consolation from the fact that A.P. Rillful's work offers no comfort to religious apologists who rely on the diversity of life - with its appearance of functional design - to argue for the existence of a supernatural creative intelligence. According to Wilkins' account:
"Darwin's theory of evolution as a purposive process, in which chance is balanced by the pseudodesign of natural selection, is no longer a necessary hypothesis to explain all of life. And the intelligent design argument is entirely shown to be false. Darwin was wrong, and so was Paley. The consensus is moving even further away from the Design hypothesis than even the modern Darwinians expected. Adaptation is an accident."
That's a relief; at least we can rest in our godless beds at night if (despite my arguments) the neo-Empedoclean theory becomes the dominant biological paradigm. Darwin or no Darwin, it will remain possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Jerry Coyne on Nisbet and framing
On his Why Evolution Is True blog, Jerry Coyne discusses my recent comments about the framing of science and the supposedly unethical behaviour of Richard Dawkins and other atheistic scientists.
Coyne concludes:
"Faith, as it is practiced by many, many people, is simply incompatible with science. It doesn’t solve the problem to tell them to put their beliefs in line with science."
The core of the problem is this. We have a situation where Matt Nisbet defends - indeed, praises - the stance of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, which attempts, for public relations reasons, to paint the picture that science and religion are compatible. At the same time, he attacks those scientists (Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and unnamed others) who see an incompatibility between science and religion. In his most recent post, Nisbet has gone beyond saying that the language of these individuals is politically imprudent and inexpedient, and that they should shut up. That was bad enough, but he's now escalated the debate by accusing these "maverick communicators" of acting unethically.
The claim that Dawkins, Myers, and whoever else Nisbet has in mind, have acted unethically is just ridiculous. I hope that Nisbet will step back from this and realise just how crazy that appears to anyone with a sense of proportion and perspective. He's merely damaging his own credibility by taking such a line.
What I find more interesting, however, is his defence of the ethically suspect behaviour of the NAS in taking a public stance on such a controversial philosophical issue as the compatibility of religion and science. Perhaps the NAS's actions could be defended by saying that its words have been very carefully chosen so that, in some technical sense, they are not incorrect. We could dissect the precise words ad nauseam to decide whether the NAS has tried to avoid stepping over some line that would take it into outright falsehood. But even if it's sought to do that, and even if it's succeeded, its approach is simplistic, misleading, and one-sided.
If we are going to stick to facts, one important fact is that many Americans believe religious doctrines that are plainly incompatible with well-corroborated findings in biology, geology, astrophysics, and other areas of science. Beyond this, there is a serious controversy as to how far it is possible to reconcile the worldview of moderate forms of traditional Abrahamic theism with the image of the world that arises from science. Many scientists are able to accept both, but that may be because of compartmentalisation in their own thinking, or because they are making logical errors, or because they accept one or the other only with qualifications, or because whatever incompatibility exists is indirect (in the sense that it arises only if you also accept certain commonsense intuitions that some religionists actually do reject .. so it appears).
My point here is not that religion and science are definitely incompatible, merely that the alleged compatibility cannot be taken as uncontroversial and it is certainly not established by the observable fact that some scientists, such as Francisco Ayala, are also practising Christians. In Ayala's case, the attempted reconciliation of science and religion is philosophically dubious. As I observed elsewhere:
"Ayala's attempt to defend God's ways has an obvious weakness, one that he never addresses or even acknowledges. It's one thing to blame various natural evils on the clumsy processes of mutation, survival and adaptation, which produce imperfect, often cruel results, rather than attributing the evils to a deity's specific design. Fine. But an all-powerful, all-knowing deity need not use such clumsy methods, and would foresee the dire consequences. If this being were also benevolent, would it not prefer to imagine and create a universe specifically designed to be free of such evils?"
Matt Nisbet's main response, so far, to me and to Jerry Coyne is simply to observe that the NAS has not adopted the stance that science and religion are compatible only recently. That's true, but whenever the NAS first did this does not really matter. It is wrong for it to take a stance on such a controversial issue that would (as is becoming increasingly apparent) divide its constituency. What it has done recently is take a decision to go to greater lengths than ever to emphasise, elaborate, and market its accommodationist stance. That it has now done this, based on the findings of "audience research" severely compounds an existing problem.
I have replied to Nisbet at some length in a comment on my earlier post, and PZ Myers has replied to at still greater length and more thoroughly. Myers' analysis is well worth reading. He hammers the point that the NAS used market research (or whatever Nisbet wants to call it) to make the recent decision to rewrite whole sections of its booklet; steer away from the legitimate points it could make about separation of church and state and the Dover decision on Intelligent Design; and to give a one-sided accommodationist account of the relationship between religion and science. This is exactly what Nisbet has been praising the NAS for, and it is exactly what I was complaining about. It is a large part of my reason for thinking that Nisbet's sense of the ethics of the situation is 180 degrees wrong. If anyone has behaved unethically in all of this, it is certainly not Dawkins or Myers; it is more likely to be the NAS.
But enough already. Jerry Coyne makes the essential point more concisely. In a comment on his own post on the subject - following Nisbet's lame response - Coyne says:
"I’d say that this is a distinction without a difference. Accommodationism is not just a tweak to improve rapport with the audience, it is a PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION that, in fact, is not adhered to by many members of those scientific organizations. To frame this as a 'matter of listening to the audience' is to trivialize what is a very serious debate."
Exactly so.
Coyne concludes:
"Faith, as it is practiced by many, many people, is simply incompatible with science. It doesn’t solve the problem to tell them to put their beliefs in line with science."
The core of the problem is this. We have a situation where Matt Nisbet defends - indeed, praises - the stance of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, which attempts, for public relations reasons, to paint the picture that science and religion are compatible. At the same time, he attacks those scientists (Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and unnamed others) who see an incompatibility between science and religion. In his most recent post, Nisbet has gone beyond saying that the language of these individuals is politically imprudent and inexpedient, and that they should shut up. That was bad enough, but he's now escalated the debate by accusing these "maverick communicators" of acting unethically.
The claim that Dawkins, Myers, and whoever else Nisbet has in mind, have acted unethically is just ridiculous. I hope that Nisbet will step back from this and realise just how crazy that appears to anyone with a sense of proportion and perspective. He's merely damaging his own credibility by taking such a line.
What I find more interesting, however, is his defence of the ethically suspect behaviour of the NAS in taking a public stance on such a controversial philosophical issue as the compatibility of religion and science. Perhaps the NAS's actions could be defended by saying that its words have been very carefully chosen so that, in some technical sense, they are not incorrect. We could dissect the precise words ad nauseam to decide whether the NAS has tried to avoid stepping over some line that would take it into outright falsehood. But even if it's sought to do that, and even if it's succeeded, its approach is simplistic, misleading, and one-sided.
If we are going to stick to facts, one important fact is that many Americans believe religious doctrines that are plainly incompatible with well-corroborated findings in biology, geology, astrophysics, and other areas of science. Beyond this, there is a serious controversy as to how far it is possible to reconcile the worldview of moderate forms of traditional Abrahamic theism with the image of the world that arises from science. Many scientists are able to accept both, but that may be because of compartmentalisation in their own thinking, or because they are making logical errors, or because they accept one or the other only with qualifications, or because whatever incompatibility exists is indirect (in the sense that it arises only if you also accept certain commonsense intuitions that some religionists actually do reject .. so it appears).
My point here is not that religion and science are definitely incompatible, merely that the alleged compatibility cannot be taken as uncontroversial and it is certainly not established by the observable fact that some scientists, such as Francisco Ayala, are also practising Christians. In Ayala's case, the attempted reconciliation of science and religion is philosophically dubious. As I observed elsewhere:
"Ayala's attempt to defend God's ways has an obvious weakness, one that he never addresses or even acknowledges. It's one thing to blame various natural evils on the clumsy processes of mutation, survival and adaptation, which produce imperfect, often cruel results, rather than attributing the evils to a deity's specific design. Fine. But an all-powerful, all-knowing deity need not use such clumsy methods, and would foresee the dire consequences. If this being were also benevolent, would it not prefer to imagine and create a universe specifically designed to be free of such evils?"
Matt Nisbet's main response, so far, to me and to Jerry Coyne is simply to observe that the NAS has not adopted the stance that science and religion are compatible only recently. That's true, but whenever the NAS first did this does not really matter. It is wrong for it to take a stance on such a controversial issue that would (as is becoming increasingly apparent) divide its constituency. What it has done recently is take a decision to go to greater lengths than ever to emphasise, elaborate, and market its accommodationist stance. That it has now done this, based on the findings of "audience research" severely compounds an existing problem.
I have replied to Nisbet at some length in a comment on my earlier post, and PZ Myers has replied to at still greater length and more thoroughly. Myers' analysis is well worth reading. He hammers the point that the NAS used market research (or whatever Nisbet wants to call it) to make the recent decision to rewrite whole sections of its booklet; steer away from the legitimate points it could make about separation of church and state and the Dover decision on Intelligent Design; and to give a one-sided accommodationist account of the relationship between religion and science. This is exactly what Nisbet has been praising the NAS for, and it is exactly what I was complaining about. It is a large part of my reason for thinking that Nisbet's sense of the ethics of the situation is 180 degrees wrong. If anyone has behaved unethically in all of this, it is certainly not Dawkins or Myers; it is more likely to be the NAS.
But enough already. Jerry Coyne makes the essential point more concisely. In a comment on his own post on the subject - following Nisbet's lame response - Coyne says:
"I’d say that this is a distinction without a difference. Accommodationism is not just a tweak to improve rapport with the audience, it is a PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION that, in fact, is not adhered to by many members of those scientific organizations. To frame this as a 'matter of listening to the audience' is to trivialize what is a very serious debate."
Exactly so.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The Nano Song - enjoy!
Thanks to Steve Leiva for drawing this wonderful, catchy tune to my attention.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Praise the Lord for Matt Nisbet
In a new post on his esteemed blog Framing Science, the acclaimed communications expert and general polymath, Matt Nisbet turns his nimble wits to a fiercely burning question. I'm sure we've all been holding our breaths, waiting for an answer.
Has Richard Dawkins breached an ethical boundary in his various attempts to criticise and undermine religion? More specifically, could Dawkins have acted unethically when he's argued that the well-corroborated findings of evolutionary biology undermine religious faith and (as Nisbet puts it with characteristic understatement) undermine "respect for all religious faith"?
It will, of course, be obvious to my readers that religious faith itself is something that must receive "respect"; it's not sufficient that we respect the right of individuals to believe religious doctrines, and to engage in religious rituals and other practices, if they wish.
Nisbet elaborates how the National Academy of Science (NAS) and related bodies in the US used market research to decide what messages to present to the American public. Having researched the issue, with focus groups and a survey of course, the NAS decided to announce that religion and science are compatible.
Clearly, this is how you do it. For example, it would be wrong to check whether any particular religions or sects make claims that are inconsistent with robust, well-corroborated scientific findings. That's obviously irrelevant. Furthermore, it would be quite wrong to consider any more (shall we say?) philosophical issues. For example, might there be an argument that even some of the more moderate versions of Abrahamic monotheism include doctrines that are in tension with the emerging image of the world offered by science? How well does the idea of a loving and providential deity square with the millions of years of suffering produced by the slow processes of biological evolution?
You and I might not expect the NAS to take a stand on questions like that. We might think that the compatibility of science with religion would be a matter of some legitimate controversy. If we thought like that - silly us - we might then think it inappropriate for bodies such as the NAS to adopt a position one way or the other. After all, we'd say, philosophers of religion disagree among themselves on this, as do individual scientists, so why is it appropriate for a professional body to take a stand? But we'd be wrong. Obviously the issue can be settled by sufficiently well-planned market research involving focus groups, surveys, etc. In this case, the research told the NAS that they should present material to the public that included "a prominent three page special color section that features testimonials from religious scientists, religious leaders and official church position statements, all endorsing the view that religion and evolution are compatible." Yay!
This is how to settle a philosophical debate!
By similar reasoning, someone like Dawkins is wrong - morally wrong, that is - when he presents arguments to the public, largely based on science, in an effort to cast doubt on religion.
Again, you and I might think that he has every moral and legal right to do so, while other scientists and philosophers have a right to criticise his arguments, all of which are, of course, controversial. I, for example, find Dawkins' favourite argument, the so-called Ultimate 747 Gambit, somewhat puzzling and inconclusive. It has been criticised by many people, including some prominent philosophers. But it may also have some merit, or at least some interest, depending on how it is interpreted and what assumptions we are prepared to make. In that case, we might have thought - silly us - that the thing to do would be to let people argue about it. You know? Perhaps a worthwhile body of philosophical literature might then grow up, scrutinising the merit of the argument from all angles. Isn't that how it usually works?
But, yet again, we'd be wrong. Nisbet is made of sterner stuff than we are. Rather than studying and debating the cogency of Dawkins' actual arguments, he explains, we can cut through all that like a two-edged sword chopping up a brace of sinners. We can then conclude that Dawkins acted unethically in, for example, writing The God Delusion. In doing so - and of course going somewhat further in his criticism of the rationality of religious belief and the social value of religion - Dawkins does not merely "denigrate various social groups", but, worse (it seems) he "gives resonance to the false narrative of social conservatives that the scientific establishment has an anti-religion agenda".
So there we have it. When the NAS takes a stance on a highly controversial issue in philosophy of religion, based on market research suggesting that this will help make science appear more acceptable to the American public, that is ethical behaviour. It is certainly not, as you and I might have thought, a meretricious exercise in intellectual dishonesty. But when Dawkins presents his sincerely-held views, relying partly (though by no means entirely) on arguments from his own area of scientific expertise, that is an unethical exercise in denigrating social groups and, yes, in Giving Resonance (don't worry too much what that expression might actually mean) to the paranoid fantasy, er narrative, "that the scientific establishment has an anti-religion agenda". Never mind that Dawkins has never made such a claim; one must always be very careful not to go around Giving Resonance.
Now that that's cleared up, I expect that Nisbet will soon turn his skills to whether mathematicians should argue for mathematical platonism or some other philosophical account of the ontological status of mathematical abstracta. A bit of market research should clear it up quick smart. You and I - silly us - probably thought that this little difficulty in the philosophy of mathematics was intractable, but it's certainly not beyond Nisbet's powers.
Next, he could turn his Ozymandian insight to resolving the long-running grudge between the utilitarian and Kantian teams of normative theorists; no doubt, a market survey would establish which view would be better received by the American electorate.
Before we're through and have shuffled off our mortal coils, Nisbet could clear up all the central questions of philosophy, while establishing once and for all that any views contrary to his market research must not be argued for in public. Certainly they must not be presented with any passion. This denigrates groups of right-thinking American people who disagree, and it Gives Resonance to a False Narrative.
Matt Nisbet is now an expert on ethics and everything else. With a little bit of market research, he'll solve all our problems in no time. Why were we so worried about them in the first place? Just silly us, I suppose.
Hallelujah, and praise the Lord for Matt Nisbet!
Has Richard Dawkins breached an ethical boundary in his various attempts to criticise and undermine religion? More specifically, could Dawkins have acted unethically when he's argued that the well-corroborated findings of evolutionary biology undermine religious faith and (as Nisbet puts it with characteristic understatement) undermine "respect for all religious faith"?
It will, of course, be obvious to my readers that religious faith itself is something that must receive "respect"; it's not sufficient that we respect the right of individuals to believe religious doctrines, and to engage in religious rituals and other practices, if they wish.
Nisbet elaborates how the National Academy of Science (NAS) and related bodies in the US used market research to decide what messages to present to the American public. Having researched the issue, with focus groups and a survey of course, the NAS decided to announce that religion and science are compatible.
Clearly, this is how you do it. For example, it would be wrong to check whether any particular religions or sects make claims that are inconsistent with robust, well-corroborated scientific findings. That's obviously irrelevant. Furthermore, it would be quite wrong to consider any more (shall we say?) philosophical issues. For example, might there be an argument that even some of the more moderate versions of Abrahamic monotheism include doctrines that are in tension with the emerging image of the world offered by science? How well does the idea of a loving and providential deity square with the millions of years of suffering produced by the slow processes of biological evolution?
You and I might not expect the NAS to take a stand on questions like that. We might think that the compatibility of science with religion would be a matter of some legitimate controversy. If we thought like that - silly us - we might then think it inappropriate for bodies such as the NAS to adopt a position one way or the other. After all, we'd say, philosophers of religion disagree among themselves on this, as do individual scientists, so why is it appropriate for a professional body to take a stand? But we'd be wrong. Obviously the issue can be settled by sufficiently well-planned market research involving focus groups, surveys, etc. In this case, the research told the NAS that they should present material to the public that included "a prominent three page special color section that features testimonials from religious scientists, religious leaders and official church position statements, all endorsing the view that religion and evolution are compatible." Yay!
This is how to settle a philosophical debate!
By similar reasoning, someone like Dawkins is wrong - morally wrong, that is - when he presents arguments to the public, largely based on science, in an effort to cast doubt on religion.
Again, you and I might think that he has every moral and legal right to do so, while other scientists and philosophers have a right to criticise his arguments, all of which are, of course, controversial. I, for example, find Dawkins' favourite argument, the so-called Ultimate 747 Gambit, somewhat puzzling and inconclusive. It has been criticised by many people, including some prominent philosophers. But it may also have some merit, or at least some interest, depending on how it is interpreted and what assumptions we are prepared to make. In that case, we might have thought - silly us - that the thing to do would be to let people argue about it. You know? Perhaps a worthwhile body of philosophical literature might then grow up, scrutinising the merit of the argument from all angles. Isn't that how it usually works?
But, yet again, we'd be wrong. Nisbet is made of sterner stuff than we are. Rather than studying and debating the cogency of Dawkins' actual arguments, he explains, we can cut through all that like a two-edged sword chopping up a brace of sinners. We can then conclude that Dawkins acted unethically in, for example, writing The God Delusion. In doing so - and of course going somewhat further in his criticism of the rationality of religious belief and the social value of religion - Dawkins does not merely "denigrate various social groups", but, worse (it seems) he "gives resonance to the false narrative of social conservatives that the scientific establishment has an anti-religion agenda".
So there we have it. When the NAS takes a stance on a highly controversial issue in philosophy of religion, based on market research suggesting that this will help make science appear more acceptable to the American public, that is ethical behaviour. It is certainly not, as you and I might have thought, a meretricious exercise in intellectual dishonesty. But when Dawkins presents his sincerely-held views, relying partly (though by no means entirely) on arguments from his own area of scientific expertise, that is an unethical exercise in denigrating social groups and, yes, in Giving Resonance (don't worry too much what that expression might actually mean) to the paranoid fantasy, er narrative, "that the scientific establishment has an anti-religion agenda". Never mind that Dawkins has never made such a claim; one must always be very careful not to go around Giving Resonance.
Now that that's cleared up, I expect that Nisbet will soon turn his skills to whether mathematicians should argue for mathematical platonism or some other philosophical account of the ontological status of mathematical abstracta. A bit of market research should clear it up quick smart. You and I - silly us - probably thought that this little difficulty in the philosophy of mathematics was intractable, but it's certainly not beyond Nisbet's powers.
Next, he could turn his Ozymandian insight to resolving the long-running grudge between the utilitarian and Kantian teams of normative theorists; no doubt, a market survey would establish which view would be better received by the American electorate.
Before we're through and have shuffled off our mortal coils, Nisbet could clear up all the central questions of philosophy, while establishing once and for all that any views contrary to his market research must not be argued for in public. Certainly they must not be presented with any passion. This denigrates groups of right-thinking American people who disagree, and it Gives Resonance to a False Narrative.
Matt Nisbet is now an expert on ethics and everything else. With a little bit of market research, he'll solve all our problems in no time. Why were we so worried about them in the first place? Just silly us, I suppose.
Hallelujah, and praise the Lord for Matt Nisbet!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Stem cell nonsense from Saletan
William Saletan recently published an essay at Slate, in which he compares research on stem cells with torturing accused terrorists, suggesting that there is an important moral line crossed in both cases.
This is infuriating nonsense.
"Embryos are the beginnings of people," Saletan says. "They're not parts of people. They're the whole thing, in very early form. Harvesting them, whether for research or medicine, is different from harvesting other kinds of cells. It's the difference between using an object and using a subject."
Wrong. An embryo is not a subject in any sense.
Unlike accused terrorists, the embryos that we're talking about are not creatures that even have nervous systems, much less nervous systems developed to the point where they can feel terror or pain. Such an embryo cannot fear death, or sickness, or injury. It has no hopes or fears at all, and it certainly cannot lie awake dreading its own destruction. It has no subjectivity, no inner experience. Our sympathies should not be engaged in any way by the plight of an early embryo that is selected for destruction in stem cell research. Not if we're rational about it. Nobody who destroys such an embryo is being callous towards its interests, let alone cruel. You cannot show cruelty to something that can't experience any physical or psychological suffering whatsoever.
Saletan says, "It was a fight between 5-day-olds and 50-year-olds. The 50-year-olds won."
I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a huge difference between a so-called "5-day-old" with no nervous system and the predicament of an adult human being of 50 (or 40, or 60, or any other age) who might be diagnosed with a serious illness. For the 50-year-old, a prognosis of increasing pain and impending death is tragic. The destruction of an early embryo is nothing of the sort.
Even if death were painless, we'd have good reason to treat it as an evil. Once we are old enough to be conscious of ourselves as existing in time, we have many reasons to want to stay alive, at least until life becomes so restricted and painful as to be a burden. Until then, we have powerful forward-looking reasons to want to go on living, immersed in our relationships and projects. Take a man in his early 50s, for example ...
In fact, let's keep this real: take me, for example. I may wish to complete whatever book I'm currently working on, to see progress with political causes that I've taken up, to watch how my loved ones fare in life, and on and on. Speaking of my loved ones ... yes, various people love me, and some would be emotionally shattered by my death. And I care deeply about this because, as it happens, I love them.
No one in my situation could be indifferent to a medical prognosis of imminent death. For me, or anyone at all like me, it would be a terrible evil, snatching away all my hopes while also inflicting great loss on the people I care about most. If it happened to someone else I know, or whose predicament was brought home to me, I'd be moved by pity and a degree of futile anger.
By contrast, an early embryo harvested for stem cells has no plans for the future and cannot imagine the future at all. It cannot commit itself to any projects that give it reasons to want to go on living and developing. Indeed, it has no concepts, or experiences, or wants. There is nothing at all that it is like to be that embryo, and if its destruction is a misfortune for it in some way, it is certainly not in the same way as death is a misfortune for a human adult (or a human child, if it comes to that). When we decide how to conduct ourselves towards it, there is no reason to be motivated by sympathy. That would make no sense. Nor is there anyone else whose interests come into the decision - it has no networks of kin, loved ones, dependents or colleagues. No one will be left behind with a broken heart. Its situation is radically different not only from that of a 50-year-old man or woman but also from that of a child or even a newborn baby.
We have no reason, none at all, to refrain from stem cell research, merely on the basis that it destroys early embryos.
Why the hell shouldn't the 50-year-olds prevail in any supposed "fight" between their interests and whatever bizarre interests can be attributed to the so-called "5-day-olds"? Saletan is not being rational.
This is infuriating nonsense.
"Embryos are the beginnings of people," Saletan says. "They're not parts of people. They're the whole thing, in very early form. Harvesting them, whether for research or medicine, is different from harvesting other kinds of cells. It's the difference between using an object and using a subject."
Wrong. An embryo is not a subject in any sense.
Unlike accused terrorists, the embryos that we're talking about are not creatures that even have nervous systems, much less nervous systems developed to the point where they can feel terror or pain. Such an embryo cannot fear death, or sickness, or injury. It has no hopes or fears at all, and it certainly cannot lie awake dreading its own destruction. It has no subjectivity, no inner experience. Our sympathies should not be engaged in any way by the plight of an early embryo that is selected for destruction in stem cell research. Not if we're rational about it. Nobody who destroys such an embryo is being callous towards its interests, let alone cruel. You cannot show cruelty to something that can't experience any physical or psychological suffering whatsoever.
Saletan says, "It was a fight between 5-day-olds and 50-year-olds. The 50-year-olds won."
I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a huge difference between a so-called "5-day-old" with no nervous system and the predicament of an adult human being of 50 (or 40, or 60, or any other age) who might be diagnosed with a serious illness. For the 50-year-old, a prognosis of increasing pain and impending death is tragic. The destruction of an early embryo is nothing of the sort.
Even if death were painless, we'd have good reason to treat it as an evil. Once we are old enough to be conscious of ourselves as existing in time, we have many reasons to want to stay alive, at least until life becomes so restricted and painful as to be a burden. Until then, we have powerful forward-looking reasons to want to go on living, immersed in our relationships and projects. Take a man in his early 50s, for example ...
In fact, let's keep this real: take me, for example. I may wish to complete whatever book I'm currently working on, to see progress with political causes that I've taken up, to watch how my loved ones fare in life, and on and on. Speaking of my loved ones ... yes, various people love me, and some would be emotionally shattered by my death. And I care deeply about this because, as it happens, I love them.
No one in my situation could be indifferent to a medical prognosis of imminent death. For me, or anyone at all like me, it would be a terrible evil, snatching away all my hopes while also inflicting great loss on the people I care about most. If it happened to someone else I know, or whose predicament was brought home to me, I'd be moved by pity and a degree of futile anger.
By contrast, an early embryo harvested for stem cells has no plans for the future and cannot imagine the future at all. It cannot commit itself to any projects that give it reasons to want to go on living and developing. Indeed, it has no concepts, or experiences, or wants. There is nothing at all that it is like to be that embryo, and if its destruction is a misfortune for it in some way, it is certainly not in the same way as death is a misfortune for a human adult (or a human child, if it comes to that). When we decide how to conduct ourselves towards it, there is no reason to be motivated by sympathy. That would make no sense. Nor is there anyone else whose interests come into the decision - it has no networks of kin, loved ones, dependents or colleagues. No one will be left behind with a broken heart. Its situation is radically different not only from that of a 50-year-old man or woman but also from that of a child or even a newborn baby.
We have no reason, none at all, to refrain from stem cell research, merely on the basis that it destroys early embryos.
Why the hell shouldn't the 50-year-olds prevail in any supposed "fight" between their interests and whatever bizarre interests can be attributed to the so-called "5-day-olds"? Saletan is not being rational.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Stephen Conroy has got to go
I've just watched Stephen Conroy's fatuous, giggling performance on the TV show Q & A, in which he essentially refused to take seriously the fact that he is planning legislation that will endanger our most fundamental right - the right to freedom of speech. We must never let an Australian government gain control of the internet and start blocking sites. Conroy argues that there is no current intention to block political sites, but that is not the point.
Let's leave aside the bizarre stories about Russian gangsters taking over the sites of innocent dentists who then get blacklisted by the government. That was sure a great yarn, but, um, minister, if the government knew what had happened, why didn't it at least think to tell the dentist ... rather than just secretly blacklisting his site? Leave aside, too, that at least one PG-rated site was discovered to be on the blacklist. Forget that none of this would have been known if Wikileaks had not leaked the list, and that the PG-rated site would still be blacklisted for its innocuous Bill Henson nudes. Leave aside the fact that many of the blacklisted sites apparently have nothing to do with child pornography. All this is important and rather sinister, but that's not the main point either.
Let's get it clear: this government, which I voted for, as you probably did, too, if you are Australian, is attempting to use technological means to obtain a power that no government should ever have. Once the mechanism is in place, nothing stops it from blocking whatever sorts of material may be attacked in the future by populist opinion.
I'm sick to death of this communications minister; Conroy is a disgrace to the honourable tradition of the Left in Australia. It comes down to this: sack Conroy. Nothing less will do. Start again with a new communications minister.
Conroy has got to go.
Let's leave aside the bizarre stories about Russian gangsters taking over the sites of innocent dentists who then get blacklisted by the government. That was sure a great yarn, but, um, minister, if the government knew what had happened, why didn't it at least think to tell the dentist ... rather than just secretly blacklisting his site? Leave aside, too, that at least one PG-rated site was discovered to be on the blacklist. Forget that none of this would have been known if Wikileaks had not leaked the list, and that the PG-rated site would still be blacklisted for its innocuous Bill Henson nudes. Leave aside the fact that many of the blacklisted sites apparently have nothing to do with child pornography. All this is important and rather sinister, but that's not the main point either.
Let's get it clear: this government, which I voted for, as you probably did, too, if you are Australian, is attempting to use technological means to obtain a power that no government should ever have. Once the mechanism is in place, nothing stops it from blocking whatever sorts of material may be attacked in the future by populist opinion.
I'm sick to death of this communications minister; Conroy is a disgrace to the honourable tradition of the Left in Australia. It comes down to this: sack Conroy. Nothing less will do. Start again with a new communications minister.
Conroy has got to go.
UN's Human Rights Council condemns "defamation of religion"
On 26 March 2009, the UN's Human Rights Council resolved to adopt a proposal drafted by Pakistan condemning so-called "defamation of religion" and calling for nations to enact new laws against attacks on religious beliefs, organisations, and symbols.
The resolution was adopted by a majority of 23 in favour, with 11 opposed and 13 abstentions. Similar resolutions have been passed for several years by both the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly. They are sponsored by members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), but typically gain support from many developing nations as well as others outside of the Western democracies, such as Russia and China.
The draft text prepared by Pakistan can be found on the UN Watch site.
Among other things, the resolution "Deplores the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination towards any religion, as well as targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons", so my recent republication of a satirical cartoon of the pope in the London Times, clearly makes me guilty of defamation of religion.
Throughout the document, "defamation of religion" is closely associated with hate crimes. Absurdly, the resolution "Stress[es] that defamation of religions is a serious affront to human dignity leading to restriction on the freedom of religion of their adherents and incitement to religious hatred and violence". Let's try to get our heads around that idea: in the name of freedom of religion, of all things, our legal right to subject various religions, and their activities, to criticism is supposed to be taken away from us. Right, gotcha. George Orwell, where are you when we need you?
The resolution is in broad enough terms to condemn almost any satire or criticism of religious beliefs, organisations, activities, or leaders, and it obviously represents a fundamental attack on freedom of speech. The persistence of religion - not to mention its continued power and influence - merits scrutiny, and it is in the public interest that religion not be placed beyond discussion. This includes harsh criticism and satire. I particularly include Islam, which is invariably singled out by UN resolutions as a religion that must be protected from criticism of any kind.
Such resolutions are obtained cheaply. Both the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council are well-stocked with countries that delight in provoking the Western democracies and undermining Western ideas of individual freedom. Those countries are not limited to those making up the OIC. In addition, many others are simply unwilling to take sides, for whatever mix of reasons. Accordingly, they abstain - with the result that the Western nations are invariably outvoted, as in this latest debacle. While nations such as the US, Australia, and the European democracies cannot be forced to enact legislation that protects religion from criticism and satire, such resolutions strengthen the hands of regimes that persecute journalists and others who criticise religion (most notably any who dare criticise Islam). In short, these resolutions give theocrats, demagogues, and tin-pot dictators the high moral ground.
They also strengthen the hands of illiberal academics, lawyers, government officials, and others in Western nations, who place a low priority on freedom of speech and continually push for restrictive laws in the name of social harmony. There is no shortage of Western intellectuals who see the whole idea of freedom of speech as an outdated relic of the much-maligned Enlightenment. According to their way of thinking, the presumption of free speech should be replaced by active government control of what we can say and what we should think - all in the interests of protecting social harmony and shielding the sensibilities of people from religious (especially Muslim) backgrounds.
This highly illiberal position has become almost the dominant paradigm within legal academia and in much of the intellectual culture of the West. Indeed, there is an unstated taboo on criticising it or the fifth columnists for the Taliban who advocate it. No one, it seems, wants to look like a political dinosaur who still defends Enlightenment thought or the views of John Stuart Mill ... or perhaps to look like something worse, such as a xenophobe or a racist.
It's about time for those of us who still consider free speech to be important and relevant to do far more to contest the issue within Western intellectual culture. We'll need to struggle, and we'll suffer slurs on our reputations, but someone has to defend freedom of speech before it's too late.
Meanwhile, Udo Schuklenk observes that our forthcoming book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, might find itself in an official UN Human Rights "report" as defaming religious people, their symbols, etc. But Udo adds that our book would find itself in good company, such as Voltaire's Candide; as he says this would actually be "Kinda cool".
The resolution was adopted by a majority of 23 in favour, with 11 opposed and 13 abstentions. Similar resolutions have been passed for several years by both the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly. They are sponsored by members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), but typically gain support from many developing nations as well as others outside of the Western democracies, such as Russia and China.
The draft text prepared by Pakistan can be found on the UN Watch site.
Among other things, the resolution "Deplores the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination towards any religion, as well as targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons", so my recent republication of a satirical cartoon of the pope in the London Times, clearly makes me guilty of defamation of religion.
Throughout the document, "defamation of religion" is closely associated with hate crimes. Absurdly, the resolution "Stress[es] that defamation of religions is a serious affront to human dignity leading to restriction on the freedom of religion of their adherents and incitement to religious hatred and violence". Let's try to get our heads around that idea: in the name of freedom of religion, of all things, our legal right to subject various religions, and their activities, to criticism is supposed to be taken away from us. Right, gotcha. George Orwell, where are you when we need you?
The resolution is in broad enough terms to condemn almost any satire or criticism of religious beliefs, organisations, activities, or leaders, and it obviously represents a fundamental attack on freedom of speech. The persistence of religion - not to mention its continued power and influence - merits scrutiny, and it is in the public interest that religion not be placed beyond discussion. This includes harsh criticism and satire. I particularly include Islam, which is invariably singled out by UN resolutions as a religion that must be protected from criticism of any kind.
Such resolutions are obtained cheaply. Both the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council are well-stocked with countries that delight in provoking the Western democracies and undermining Western ideas of individual freedom. Those countries are not limited to those making up the OIC. In addition, many others are simply unwilling to take sides, for whatever mix of reasons. Accordingly, they abstain - with the result that the Western nations are invariably outvoted, as in this latest debacle. While nations such as the US, Australia, and the European democracies cannot be forced to enact legislation that protects religion from criticism and satire, such resolutions strengthen the hands of regimes that persecute journalists and others who criticise religion (most notably any who dare criticise Islam). In short, these resolutions give theocrats, demagogues, and tin-pot dictators the high moral ground.
They also strengthen the hands of illiberal academics, lawyers, government officials, and others in Western nations, who place a low priority on freedom of speech and continually push for restrictive laws in the name of social harmony. There is no shortage of Western intellectuals who see the whole idea of freedom of speech as an outdated relic of the much-maligned Enlightenment. According to their way of thinking, the presumption of free speech should be replaced by active government control of what we can say and what we should think - all in the interests of protecting social harmony and shielding the sensibilities of people from religious (especially Muslim) backgrounds.
This highly illiberal position has become almost the dominant paradigm within legal academia and in much of the intellectual culture of the West. Indeed, there is an unstated taboo on criticising it or the fifth columnists for the Taliban who advocate it. No one, it seems, wants to look like a political dinosaur who still defends Enlightenment thought or the views of John Stuart Mill ... or perhaps to look like something worse, such as a xenophobe or a racist.
It's about time for those of us who still consider free speech to be important and relevant to do far more to contest the issue within Western intellectual culture. We'll need to struggle, and we'll suffer slurs on our reputations, but someone has to defend freedom of speech before it's too late.
Meanwhile, Udo Schuklenk observes that our forthcoming book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, might find itself in an official UN Human Rights "report" as defaming religious people, their symbols, etc. But Udo adds that our book would find itself in good company, such as Voltaire's Candide; as he says this would actually be "Kinda cool".
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Big day today - and an open thread
Well, as of today I have PhD number two OFFICIALLY, having now graduated (in absentia). I'm thus finally out of the kind of limbo where the thesis is all approved and everything (since November) and I sort of have the shiny new degree ... but not technically coz I'm waiting to graduate. This life-changing event entails that I can now, with a clear conscience, and without reservations, demand to be addressed as Dr Dr Blackford.
Thursday afternoon is a fairly solid teaching block for me. Once that was over, I gave a talk to the Humanist Society, here in Melbourne, on religious vilification law, notably the notorious Catch The Fire Ministries case and its implications. They treated me very kindly, and the gig itself was enjoyable. I seemed to get the audience pretty fired up (as it were).
Wazzup with everyone else?
Thursday afternoon is a fairly solid teaching block for me. Once that was over, I gave a talk to the Humanist Society, here in Melbourne, on religious vilification law, notably the notorious Catch The Fire Ministries case and its implications. They treated me very kindly, and the gig itself was enjoyable. I seemed to get the audience pretty fired up (as it were).
Wazzup with everyone else?
Bouncing emails
The Polish website Racjonalista has approached me asking for permission to translate and republish a couple of my longer posts. For some reason, my emails are currently bouncing from their address. I'll try replying to them using a different email account, but meanwhile, folks, if you see this, you do have my permission, and I'm grateful for your interest.
EDIT: I see I'm going to be in good company; e.g., the most recent piece they've published in translation is by AC Grayling.
FURTHER EDIT: And now the most recent piece they have there is by Johann Hari.
EDIT: I see I'm going to be in good company; e.g., the most recent piece they've published in translation is by AC Grayling.
FURTHER EDIT: And now the most recent piece they have there is by Johann Hari.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
A very short introduction to non-overlapping magisteria
The theory of non-overlapping magisteria (or NOMA) - the idea that science and religion have authority in entirely separate domains and do not come into conflict - is, in a word, rubbish. However, it's remarkably persistent rubbish. I've written about the issue at length elsewhere, but let's deal with it in a nutshell.
According to NOMA, science tells us about the physical world while religion provides moral guidance. These are different in character, so there can never be a clash between them.
Well, if you believe that you might be prepared to call for a cessation in hostilities between science and religion, which may even sound like an attractive prospect. But the doctrine of NOMA is rotten through and through.
Historically, religions have been encyclopedic systems of belief, offering explanations of a vast range of phenomena ... as well as providing guidance for their adherents' actions. As encyclopedic systems, they inevitably come into conflict with science as the latter provides more and more facts about how the world actually works. Religion can avoid direct conflicts only by retreating into highly abstract and more-or-less unfalsifiable positions. Some modern-day versions of religion may well have retreated so far from falsifiability that they are no longer in direct conflict with science, but that's a fascinating historical development, not an indication that religion and science exercise inherently different and non-overlapping magisteria.
Even when religion avoids direct conflict with good science, and is thus not plainly irrational, it tends not to be believable when its image of the universe is held up against the emerging scientific image. In particular, who, in the light of science, can seriously adopt the orthodox Abrahamic idea of a loving and providential (yet all-powerful and all-knowing) deity? Who can believe - without having been brainwashed, or shall we say "socialised"? - that a loving and providential god is responsible for the emergence of rational beings in its divine image only after the passage of hundreds of millions of years; the extinction of countless species; various planetary catastrophes and mass extinctions; and throughout all this, ever since sentient creatures evolved a few hundred million years ago, the ever-present agony of nature red in tooth and claw?
When it comes to the moral teachings of religion, some of them are uncontroversial because almost any moral system must find a place for them: try to be kind to others; treat people honestly; settle your disputes without violence if you can. Almost any society needs to treat kindness, honesty, and non-violence (except in specific, regulated situations) as virtues rather than vices, and must have some concept of theft, fraud, and unlawful killing. It always seems anomalous - not to mention suspicious - when anthropologists claim to have discovered an isolated tribe with a radically different concept of moral virtue.
But the specifically religious content of religious morality is usually sick and miserable. It typically involves a nasty kind of ascetism; it fossilises moral injunctions from unenlightened and more economically-backward times (injunctions that were of dubious value even then, and are totally disconnected from modern needs); and it is couched in terms of an implausible absolutism that makes no allowance for circumstances, or gains flexibility only by means of bizarre doctrines such as the Catholic principle of double effect.
I was struck again by the nasty ascetism that's a legacy of our society's heritage of hundreds of years of Christian hegemony when I read a recent piece by Roger Scruton. Here, as so often, there is an assumption that asceticism has the high moral ground. Why - from any viewpoint based in reality and reason - is Scruton's word "hedonism", which he plasters over contemporary humanism, a term of shame?
As my readers know I don't deprecate the activities of art, science, and scholarship. Quite the opposite. Nor do I doubt the importance of fighting injustice. By all means let's put much of our energy into those things, in whatever ways suit our individual talents. But nor should we deprecate the pleasures of the body - the joy of dancing, the liquid velvet of good red wine, the caress of sunshine on our skin, the visual delight of beauty in its all forms, the ecstasy of sex ... I'm not going to bullied into shame about those pleasures. They are wonderful things, there to be enjoyed without reservation.
One of the most deplorable aspects of religion, as we've experienced it historically, is its pathological rejection of sexuality, the body, and ordinary physical pleasures, as if we need some excuse to engage in them. As if we thereby lower ourselves.
Religion has never, except as a strategy of retreat, restricted itself to teachings about morality ... and when it does offer its own distinctive moral teachings, the effect is usually a morality that we'd be better off without.
According to NOMA, science tells us about the physical world while religion provides moral guidance. These are different in character, so there can never be a clash between them.
Well, if you believe that you might be prepared to call for a cessation in hostilities between science and religion, which may even sound like an attractive prospect. But the doctrine of NOMA is rotten through and through.
Historically, religions have been encyclopedic systems of belief, offering explanations of a vast range of phenomena ... as well as providing guidance for their adherents' actions. As encyclopedic systems, they inevitably come into conflict with science as the latter provides more and more facts about how the world actually works. Religion can avoid direct conflicts only by retreating into highly abstract and more-or-less unfalsifiable positions. Some modern-day versions of religion may well have retreated so far from falsifiability that they are no longer in direct conflict with science, but that's a fascinating historical development, not an indication that religion and science exercise inherently different and non-overlapping magisteria.
Even when religion avoids direct conflict with good science, and is thus not plainly irrational, it tends not to be believable when its image of the universe is held up against the emerging scientific image. In particular, who, in the light of science, can seriously adopt the orthodox Abrahamic idea of a loving and providential (yet all-powerful and all-knowing) deity? Who can believe - without having been brainwashed, or shall we say "socialised"? - that a loving and providential god is responsible for the emergence of rational beings in its divine image only after the passage of hundreds of millions of years; the extinction of countless species; various planetary catastrophes and mass extinctions; and throughout all this, ever since sentient creatures evolved a few hundred million years ago, the ever-present agony of nature red in tooth and claw?
When it comes to the moral teachings of religion, some of them are uncontroversial because almost any moral system must find a place for them: try to be kind to others; treat people honestly; settle your disputes without violence if you can. Almost any society needs to treat kindness, honesty, and non-violence (except in specific, regulated situations) as virtues rather than vices, and must have some concept of theft, fraud, and unlawful killing. It always seems anomalous - not to mention suspicious - when anthropologists claim to have discovered an isolated tribe with a radically different concept of moral virtue.
But the specifically religious content of religious morality is usually sick and miserable. It typically involves a nasty kind of ascetism; it fossilises moral injunctions from unenlightened and more economically-backward times (injunctions that were of dubious value even then, and are totally disconnected from modern needs); and it is couched in terms of an implausible absolutism that makes no allowance for circumstances, or gains flexibility only by means of bizarre doctrines such as the Catholic principle of double effect.
I was struck again by the nasty ascetism that's a legacy of our society's heritage of hundreds of years of Christian hegemony when I read a recent piece by Roger Scruton. Here, as so often, there is an assumption that asceticism has the high moral ground. Why - from any viewpoint based in reality and reason - is Scruton's word "hedonism", which he plasters over contemporary humanism, a term of shame?
As my readers know I don't deprecate the activities of art, science, and scholarship. Quite the opposite. Nor do I doubt the importance of fighting injustice. By all means let's put much of our energy into those things, in whatever ways suit our individual talents. But nor should we deprecate the pleasures of the body - the joy of dancing, the liquid velvet of good red wine, the caress of sunshine on our skin, the visual delight of beauty in its all forms, the ecstasy of sex ... I'm not going to bullied into shame about those pleasures. They are wonderful things, there to be enjoyed without reservation.
One of the most deplorable aspects of religion, as we've experienced it historically, is its pathological rejection of sexuality, the body, and ordinary physical pleasures, as if we need some excuse to engage in them. As if we thereby lower ourselves.
Religion has never, except as a strategy of retreat, restricted itself to teachings about morality ... and when it does offer its own distinctive moral teachings, the effect is usually a morality that we'd be better off without.
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