Brian D. Earp on a fatal retraction (more on the mistreatment of Alice Dreger)

This long contribution by Brian D. Earp to the Quillette site is a superb piece of philosophical writing! Earp discusses the shoddy treatment of Alice Dreger that I commented on a few weeks ago. There is little in Earp's piece that I could disagree with, but even if I were to change my mind about that and identify some areas of serious disagreement, I'd see his article as an important contribution to public debate. In fact, I'd go much further: a piece such as this is exactly the sort of contribution that philosophers should be making to the wider culture.

Earp engages in deep, serious analysis of the issues, and he does so in a way that is intellectually honest and rigorous, rather than merely fishing for the approval of one or another political tribe. He makes clear where he is sceptical about some of Dreger's work but also why Dreger was treated poorly when an article of hers was retracted by its (re)publisher - not because the publisher came to see anything wrong with the article itself but because other writings by Dreger convinced its editors that she was too politically impure for her work to be promoted. As he puts it, this was "a fatal retraction".

This is a form of soft (but not all that soft!) authoritarianism, and we shouldn't hesitate to name it as such. It's an attempt to punish someone and restrict the availability of her work because of her lack of tribal purity. We can do more than find labels for such an action, though. Time, energy, and talent permitting, we can engage with the issues at a deep level, and in a thorough manner, as Earp has done.

One of my current projects is a book under contract to Bloomsbury Academic, The Tyranny of Opinion. I expect to discuss cultural episodes such as this high-handed de-publication of Dreger's article. Indeed, I expect to have more to say about Earp's analysis. Meanwhile, do check out Earp's piece for yourself, both for its merit as a contribution to the substantive topic and as a model for philosophical practice in a world that needs a lot more of this sort of analysis.

Saturday self-promotion - "The Supposed Rights of the Fetus"

This piece, "The Supposed Rights of the Fetus", was first published by Quadrant in 2002. (It received some minor pushback there, since it challenged the views held by many people in the magazine's largely socially conservative audience.) I argued that a human fetus does not have rights - such as a right to life - but please note that the idea was to examine what I took to be the philosophically strongest arguments for a view contrary to mine. In the article, I attempt to represent the opposed arguments fairly and to show in an analytical, rather than polemical, way why they leave me unpersuaded.

"The Supposed Rights of the Fetus" can also be seen as a precursor to my "Stem-cell research on other worlds" article published a few years later by the Journal of Medical Ethics. The overall approaches are consistent, but there is not a lot of overlap. I see the two articles as complementary rather than as one subsuming the other.

Religion under Scrutiny

Religion under Scrutiny

By Russell Blackford
 
(First published by Printasia, 6 January 2012. I’m republishing this post in the spirit of keeping as good a record as I can of past publications – as well as presenting it to a new audience.)
 

Religious teachings seem to promise so much. Think of the great religions of the world – they offer a deeper understanding of reality, more meaningful lives and morally superior conduct, and such extraordinary benefits as rightness with a Supreme Being, liberation from earthly attachments, or a blissful form of personal immortality. All this sounds good, but is any of it actually true?

Many of us doubt it. In 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, Udo Schuklenk and I present essays by atheists and religious skeptics from around the world. All continents except Antarctica are represented.

There’s an overwhelming case to scrutinize religious teachings. Partly it’s the intrinsic importance of religion’s large claims. If any of them are true, let’s find out! In fact, many books have been published arguing for one religious viewpoint or another. Let’s also consider the reasons for disbelief.

The case for scrutinizing religion goes even further. In the 1970s, or even the 1990s, it was possible to think religion had lost its power, and that further challenges to religious doctrines, organizations, and leaders were unnecessary. On this view, all the hard work had been done, and religion was withering away. Against that background, it became almost taboo to criticize religion in the public square; it was widely assumed that religion was retreating, and shouldn’t be fought anymore.

Well, that was premature, and the situation now looks very different, even in the nations of the West. Religious organizations and leaders continue to exert social power. All too often, they seek to control how we plan and run our lives, including choices about how we die. At various times, religious lobbies have opposed a vast range of beneficial, or at least essentially harmless, activities and innovations. Even now, one religion or another opposes abortion rights; most contraceptive technologies; stem-cell and therapeutic cloning research; physician-assisted suicide; and a wide range of sexual conduct involving consenting adults.

We still see intense activism from the religious lobbies of all Western democracies; and even in relatively secular countries, such as the UK and Australia, governments pander blatantly to specifically Christian moral concerns.

In the United States, religious conservatives regrouped with dramatic success during the 1970s and 1980s, establishing well-financed networks, think tanks, and even their own universities. Slick attempts are made to undermine public trust in science where it contradicts the literal Genesis narrative; a rampant dominionist movement wants to establish an American theocracy; the recent Bush administration took the country some considerable way down that path; and the election of a relatively liberal president has produced hysteria on the religious right. American religiosity is real, and there is nothing subtle or liberal-minded about its most popular forms.

When religion claims authority in the public square, it is unsurprising – and totally justifiable – that atheists and skeptics question the source of this authority. If religious organizations or their leaders claim to speak on behalf of a god, it is fair to ask whether the god concerned really makes the claims that are communicated on its behalf. Does this god even exist? Where is the evidence? When such questions are asked publicly, even with a degree of aggression, that’s entirely healthy.

In a different world, the need to scrutinize religion would be still be present, but rather less urgent. There would still be reasons to want to know whether any of it is true, but the debate would have less edge to it.

There are strong arguments that even if some religion or other is true, we should still separate the church (and the mosque, and all the other religious architecture) from the levers of state power, and that public policy should rely entirely on secular principles. It’s important to put those arguments, and I’ve done so in Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, my new book from Wiley-Blackwell.

The arguments should appeal to many, or most religious people, as well to non-believers. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State updates Enlightenment views for the twenty-first century. In particular, it presents a clear, modern, relevant version of the ideas of John Locke, who was a religious believer.

I believe the arguments are powerful, but I can be sure that they won’t persuade all people, irrespective of their starting points. Many religious sects, including some or many mainstream Christian denominations, don’t want to distinguish between guidance on individual salvation and the exercise of political power. Some of these groups look to a time when their (allegedly) righteous views will prevail in the political sphere, and be imposed by law. If that’s your starting point, I might not change your mind.

We should go on putting the strong arguments for secular government – I most certainly will. But religion itself also merits our scrutiny. There are now many people who do not believe in any God or gods, or in the truth of any doctrines involving supernatural entities and forces, and are prepared to say so in public. Many have interesting reasons for their views, and it’s valuable for all of them – for all of us, I should say – to speak up. We should tell our stories and offer our arguments.

This is a good time for atheists and religious skeptics to join the public debates. There’s no time like now to voice our disbelief.

Sunday supervillainy: Thunderbolts - "Justice, like lightning!"

I'm reinstating my regular "Sunday supervillainy" feature, starting with a shout out to the Thunderbolts from Marvel Comics, which is now into a new series (scripted by Jim Zub) with a familiar cast of characters.

The Thunderbolts, recall, were originally the Masters of Evil in disguise, pretending to be superheroes for their own complicated and nefarious purposes at a time when other heroes such as the Avengers were unavailable. Some of the Thunderbolts discovered that they actually enjoyed being heroes, though they were, and remain to varying extents, morally flawed individuals.

The new line-up includes the main stalwart of the team over the years, and one of my favourite Marvel villains: Moonstone (Dr. Karla Sofen). As always, Karla thinks that she should be leader, since she is arguably the most powerful. She is a brilliant psychologist and a (near?) psychopath, whose bonding with a cosmic gemstone gives her a wide range of super powers; these make her a competent and formidable opponent even for the likes of Captain Marvel or the Hulk.

Karla is backed up by Atlas (who was the original Power Man - though that title was usurped by Luke Cage a long time ago - and was known at one stage as Goliath), Mach-X (who was originally the Beetle), and the Fixer.

That's a classic and versatile set of Thunderbolts, though some fans will surely miss Songbird (originally Screaming Mimi).

In the new series, the Thunderbolts are now under the command of the Winter Soldier (a.k.a. James "Bucky" Barnes), who has the difficult job of keeping this villainous, headstrong crew under some semblance of control while leading them on missions for the greater good. He has also picked up the task of looking after (and likewise controlling, if he can) the insanely powerful and unpredictable Kobik - a set of Cosmic Cube fragments that has taken on the appearance and personality of a little girl.

When the Thunderbolts are well written, they're a lot of fun. They'd be worth reading for Moonstone's antics alone ... as she manipulates everyone else (with mixed success), tries to assert her superiority, sometimes does manage to pull off small coups, and occasionally connects with others on the team just enough not to look like a complete psychopath.

In fact, what makes the Thunderbolts likeable is the way this bunch of ex-crooks relate emotionally to each other. All of them originally chose to use their powers (or in the case of the Fixer and Mach-X, their inventive genius) for criminal gain. But none of them is all that evil. The Fixer and Mach-X are fairly decent guys when given a chance; Atlas is more unimaginative (and not terribly bright) than a truly nasty piece of work; and even Moonstone has at least developed some fondness and loyalty toward her teammates.

At this stage, just a couple of issues into the new series, the Thunderbolts have got themselves into a mess (as usual), with Kobik having just ripped out Moonstone's gem - nearly killing her - before being persuaded to put the gem back inside Karla's chest. Moonstone is now wandering around in a dreadful state trying to recover from the ordeal, but she and the others have managed to trash a nest of Inhumans' pods that hatched a whole bunch of giant humanoid ... monsters. Having killed all the "monsters" in an unnecessarily destructive brawl, the Thunderbolts now find themselves confronted by a powerful and angry team of Inhumans, led by Crystal. Grab the popcorn!

I'd love to see the Thunderbolts brought to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How about it, Disney?

Saturday self-promotion - "Stephen Jay Gould on Science and Religion"

For those who haven't already read it, today I'm drawing attention to my article from 2000, "Stephen Jay Gould on Science and Religion" - which you can find on my Academia.edu page or (if that doesn't suit) on my personal website.

When I wrote this piece in response to Gould's book, Rocks of Ages (with its notorious principle of non-overlapping magisteria) I wasn't expecting that years later I would be deeply involved in a public debate about what we now call "accommodationism". At the time, it was just one more article among an infomal series that I was writing for Quadrant, which was then under the editorship of the late Paddy McGuinness. Paddy encouraged my work, so this give me a market to produce articles that might have been too controversial for the more left-leaning literary and political journals in Australia (which tend, for example, to be rather solicitous toward religion). I was writing for a largely conservative readership that would have found many of my views anathema (indeed, there was sometimes a bit of a backlash, especially when I got onto topics relating to bioethics). But in many ways, that was more useful and interesting than preaching (and signalling my moral virtue and political loyalties) to the converted.

I also found Paddy to be a good editor - he had a light hand with my work, but the small tweaks that he did make were invariably improvements.

Over time, it became apparent that Gould's views, though deeply flawed in my opinion, were very influential. Indeed, similar views - insisting on a total compatibility of science and religion - have a long history in the US, and they are almost an orthodoxy with many official science bodies. Opposition to such views requires more than a single article picking apart what is wrong with a particular book. Still, this article does say much of what needs to be said, and I'll go on trying to get people to look at it and consider my arguments.

I've also recently discussed the issues at some length in a piece published at The Conversation: "Against Accommodationism: How science undermines religion." This has a different emphasis - not surprisingly since it was written some 15 years later and after further reading and thought - but the  arguments are overlapping and complementary. Check it out if you haven't done so, though I assume that most readers of this blog will have already done so, as this particular piece attracted a fair bit of controversy earlier this year.

A note on freedom of speech and its enemies

The following is based on something that I wrote on my Facebook wall a couple of years ago - and still seems pretty much right to me.

I'm sick of people who think that freedom of speech is only about freedom from state censorship. That is a very narrow and legalistic view of it (often distorted by thinking that freedom of speech is just what is in the First Amendment to the US Constitution). Yes, resistance to state censorship is at the core of the concept, and perhaps it's the only part that can, in practice, be protected by constitutional arrangements, legal provisions, etc. But the deeper foundations for the idea also apply to attempts to suppress/deter/punish unwanted views through the power of popular opinion and feeling. If you are trying to deter/suppress certain views by organising with others to punish people for expressing them - even if you're trying to do this in informal ways that do not involve the exercise of government power - then you have not grasped the essence of what the concept is all about. If you attempt, e.g. through collective boycott action, to pressure a body such as an employer to enforce restrictions on what can be said on topics of general interest, then you don't get the essential idea of free speech.

On one hand, it's the ability to speak our minds and express ourselves relatively fearlessly, subject only to the risk being criticised (or of losing the friendship of individuals who deeply disagree, since no one has to engage socially with people with whom they are deeply out of sympathy), and even if what we end up saying is abhorrent, ugly, or plain wrong.

It's also about the availability of unpopular views for consideration, even if they are abhorrent, ugly, or wrong.

Please go back and re-read Mill's On Liberty if you think the liberal concern with freedom of speech and individual liberty is only about restricting the coercive power of the state. If you're motivated to use whatever power you can collectively organise to punish, deter, or suppress certain disliked viewpoints, you can't legitimately claim to be a free speech advocate merely because you're not supporting state censorship.

A Tale of Two Tribes (on tribalism, morality, the role of philosophy, the meaning of liberalism, and the problem of free will)

Hey folks, I did a long interview with Steven Gonder from the Mediasplainers podcast. We talked about moral-political tribalism, the role of philsophy as an academic discipline or profession, left-wing authoritarians (and the cultural Left's retreat from values that it once prized such as science and reason, freedom of thought and discussion, and sexual liberation); the meaning of liberalism (and why I think left-wing authoritarians should not be referred to as liberals); the concept of "objective morality" (which led to some debate and confusion about the meaning of the word "objective"); and the ongoing issue of whether human beings have free will (whatever "free will" even means!).

A recurrent theme was the slipperiness of language, and I emphasized toward the end the way that ordinary language can be complex in its literal semantic content but even more so in what it pragmatically, non-literally conveys. Tiresome and alienating as it may be for some, philosophers are rightly committed to analysing the vagueness, ambiguity, and frequent incoherence of the language of ordinary people when they talk about large issues that cause them anxiety: issues such as whether or not human beings have free will.

I can never bear to listen to the sound of my own voice in these sorts of recorded discussions, but there's no reason why you can't check it out.

Jenny Blackford and Russell Blackford - power couple!

Okay, my title for this post is a bit facetious, but a couple of nice photos.

Jenny Blackford reading at a recent Poetry at the Pub gig in Newcastle, NSW (reading "Sweet Intertidal Flesh", which won first place in the poetry contest held by the 2016 Connemara Mussel Festival in Ireland). Photo by Martin Kent.

And Russell Blackford, speaking at TAM, in Las Vegas, back in 2013. A great convention that I treasure in my memory. Photo by Jerry Coyne.

Saturday self-promotion - "Who's Afraid of the Brave New World?"

This article, "Who's Afraid of the Brave New World", was originally published in Quadrant magazine, back in 2003, and it was something of a milestone for me. Let me explain...

The previous year I'd completed a Masters degree in bioethics at Monash University, but my default plan at the time was to return to legal practice as a barrister (a specialist trial lawyer, for US readers). The good feedback that I received for some of the articles that I published around that time - and for "Who's Afraid of the Brave New World?", in particular - influenced my eventual decision to commence a doctoral program in philosophy at Monash. This emphasized philosophical bioethics, but also the issues in legal and political philosophy surrounding regulation of emerging biotechnologies.

During this whole period I was also chipping away at completing a philosophy major through Open Learning, which I did at the end of 2003 with an unbroken run of High Distinction results. I'd studied some philosophy here and there at earlier phases in my academic career, with good results, but it had not previously been my main focus.

So this was the time, around 2002-2004 that set me on my current direction - rather than the one I'd been assuming, tied to professsional legal practice - and "Who's Afraid of the Brave New World?" was a big part of the change.

Check out the article for yourself, if you're interested and haven't already read it. I argue against what I see as the facile view that permitting, say, human cloning would set us on a slippery slope to some sort of horrible society, a sort of Huxleyan Brave New World. I concede that there may be some legitimate, rational concerns surrounding these technologies, especially concerns relating to distributive justice. However, I argue that much of the opposition is irrational, and that these irrational elements should not drive public policy with regulation of biotech. Overall, the argument still seems good to me, although I've delved into the issues far more deeply in subsequent publications, especially my 2014 book Humanity Enhanced (which is, itself, a slightly expanded and considerably modified version of my doctoral dissertation).

I expect to keep returning to these issues.

An interview on philosophy of religion (at The Philotoric, from a couple of years ago)

This interview was conducted with Matt Marasco for his "The Philotoric" blog.

Sample:

The Philotoric: You were on the brink of becoming an evangelical leader and now you write books on atheism – what happened?

Russell Blackford: I suppose I was already an evangelical leader in a small way, in that I was the Vice-President of the Evangelical Union at my university (the University of Newcastle, here in Australia). Who knows what might have beckoned beyond that? I wouldn’t necessarily have ended up in the priesthood or anything like that, but still… The trouble at the time was that I “had doubts” – as we used to say – and they ultimately defeated my attempts to put them to rest. I could not make any Christian account of the world add up, and by the time my tenure as EU Vice-President was over I’d eventually abandoned any Christian belief. I didn’t make a fuss about it, but I dropped out of evangelical activities and concentrated on other aspects of my life. I had no ill-feeling toward my Christian friends, who were kind and good people; it was just that I, personally, could no longer honestly believe in the Abrahamic God, the Incarnation, the doctrine of sacrificial atonement, or any other Christian doctrines, including specifically Christian moral ideals. This makes it all sound simple, but it most certainly wasn’t. I was going through months of doubt and worry about the truth of my religion, it was a psychologically agonising period.

Those events were many years ago now, back in the 1970s when I was an undergraduate student. It wasn’t until 2009 that I co-edited a book about atheism (with Udo Schuklenk) – 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. Much had happened in my life and in the wider world during those 30+ years, and many things converged to encourage me to address the issue of atheism – and the pretensions of religion – in a more formal, public way. One aspect was my sense of the growing political influence of religion, even in Western countries where traditional religious belief is steadily declining. Worse, much of that influence comes from especially reactionary and authoritarian varieties of religious faith.