Evolution, Science, Ethics, Singer, Church and Lies…

There have been a few things I’ve wanted to comment on over the weekend, but haven’t. All have coincidentally been inter-related, which has made it all the more interesting, but all the same, I’ve had a throbber of a headache the last couple of days.

First cab of the rank is the issue of definitions surrounding the word “evolution”.

“Pelagian7″, in response to an ongoing discussion about Darwinian evolution and ethics, writes…

“I’m started to get the feeling that we are on the same thought process but semantics and terms are preventing some of our understanding.”

(Pelagian7, 2009)

It’s a fair enough statement. I defined my use of some terms in the post in question (“ad hoc“, “altruism” and “egoism”), but I didn’t define my use of the terms “evolution”, “natural selection” and so on. Also, given that when I talk about “evolution”, I can sometimes oscillate between gene-centric biological, and meme-centric cultural, interchangeably, there is room for confusion.

Anyone familiar with neo-Darwinian evolution, and Dawkins’ Selfish Gene, wouldn’t have any problem getting where I’m coming from (I’d hope). But I guess that without declaring my terms, I’m limiting my audience.

So at some point I guess I’ll have to nail my colours to the mast and write a post on my use of these terms. And given the widespread abuse of evolutionary terminology, I guess it wouldn’t be as trivial an exercise as it may seem.

And while on the topic, I’ll ask a couple of questions put to me.

“If some in a species begin birthing many times more than others because they have the cabability, does that not produce resource hardship on the others of the species? Doesn’t hardship then eliminate those who produce less offspring?”

(Pelagian7, 2009)

No, and no. People who use birth control and who have a lowered reproduction rate due to female emancipation and education, tend to do pretty well for themselves as far as quality of life is concerned, and more so in terms of resource allocation. As a species, there isn’t an extinction, even if these types of people never have children, because there are others of their species carrying much the same genes.

Memetically speaking, there may be a kind of tendency towards a cultural extinction if ideas aren’t passed along, said ideas being caught up in some kind of class-reservoir. But even then, this isn’t necessarily a function of suffering, nor even involve suffering. Not all cultural memes that exist amongst the privileged are to the benefit of their hosts, nor are they missed when they’re gone (reality TV anyone?)

At any rate, I think in discussion of evolution, as opposed to any ethical discussion it may inform, the use of extremely subjective terms such as “hardship”, is risky. At least, for those not familiar with the way biologists, ethologists and the like, may use evolutionary terminology. When Dawkins calls something “selfish” or “altruistic”, he’s talking about an empirically observable behaviour, not a psychological disposition. Put in his words…

“When biologists talk about ‘selfishness or ‘altruism’ we are emphatically not talking about emotional nature, whether of human beings, other animals, or genes. We do not even mean the words in a metaphorical sense. We define altruism and selfishness in purely behaviouristic ways: ‘An entity… is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another such entity’s welfare at the expense of its own… It follows from such a behaviouristic definition of altruism and selfishness that ‘calculation’, whether long-term or not, is irrelevant, as is ‘emotional nature’. I assume that an oak tree has no emotions and cannot calculate, yet I might describe an oak tree as altruistic if it grew fewer leaves than its physiological optimum, thereby sparing neighbouring saplings harmful overshadowing.”

(Richard Dawkins, In Defense of Selfish Genes, ‘Philosophy’,1981)

Similarly, I don’t think it right to automatically equate negative selective pressures – constraints upon genes to perpetuate themselves – with hardship. Aside from introducing an unnecessary term into the evolutionary language, and from not equating perfectly (see birth control), it’s risky language open to misinterpretation. Best to call “negative selective pressures”, “negative selective pressures” and be done with it, saving reference to suffering for ethical discussion, if such suffering occurs.

And on that note, I’ll segue to the next topic.

Science and Ethics

I’ve said before, that science can only, and should, inform ethics. That it can’t dictate ethics. It’s always a bit gratifying to have someone with academic stature say the same thing.

Letting science inform morality (4:43)

Back when I was studying Ethics, Education and Critical Inquiry, I was introduced to an acronym: CURF. It stood for…

• Circumstances
• Utilitarian Principle
• Reasoning
• Facts

(Knight & Collins, 2000)

Basically, these were the principles by which a community of ethical inquiry would operate. The idea was geared towards the classroom (either Primary or High School), but was at least formulated with lifelong learning, and hence a life lived with ethical curiosity, in mind.

As I was studying under a science degree at the time, it was immediately obvious that “Facts”, or “Getting the consequences “straight”", as the course literature put it, would in many cases be best served by science. Neither, supernaturalism, ideology nor material speculation are quite up to the task of making predictions when science is able. The consequences of medical procedures upon a patient come to mind – a shaman is no match for a doctor in seeing where options leads (even paths through the shaman’s own domain where science hasn’t taken a look, entails a lot of wild speculation).

Broaden this to human nature, where science is still making early steps in spite of taboo, and you have the possibility that the idea of evolution, and evolutionary knowledge, could help us make predictions for human consequences. Even if only tentatively. (That socio-biologists and evolutionary psychologists have taken such caution, while ideology has tended to make bold assertion about human nature, is to the credit of the evolutionary perspective.)

In pursuit of this kind of thought, I’ve got Singer’s A Darwinian Left on order at Dymocks. Although I’m already expecting to have a few points of difference from the author.

Singer

Aside from the fact that I probably take a more conservative estimation of the point at which to assume a life-form is capable of suffering from their death, I suspect my logic to be the same. It the points of fact where I anticipate divergence.

Daniel Dennett’s more recent Freedom Evolves, reports that in modelling of evolutionary game theory, when accounting for variables such as location, previously excluded due to issues of computational power, altruism (the behaviour) fared better than previously thought. Personally, I suspect that the evolutionary outlook of human nature, as it progresses will continue to throw up surprises like this, more so as it makes its transition from corrigible philosophy to material science.

At a guess, I suspect human nature involves a capacity for kindness that has been previously discounted. Hence, the way evolution informs ethics, if this were true, would be different – especially as Singer dwells on the obstacles our selfish nature pose to ethical venture, not privy to more recent thought at the time of publishing.

More broadly than this, I expect that I’ll be looking into the evolution of culture as possibly informing ethical decision-making. Whereas I suspect that Singer hasn’t looked into this side of things as much as Dennett has. Imagine A Darwinian Left grafted on top of Breaking The Spell, and maybe you can see where I’m going with this (loosely speaking – at the very least I’m not restricting myself to the evolution of religion, but other cultural institutions as well).

Whatever happens, I’m sure I’ll be surprised in one way or another, which is always nice.

Church and Lies

Especially considering that this kind of stuff doesn’t surprise me anymore. Thanks again to Matt Kovach, for finding this little gem. (How do you find these articles, Matt?)

Responding to a New York atheist ad that essentially argues that atheists can and are good people as well, with the cheeky question “are you?” at the end, New York Dominican friar, Gabriel Gillen, comes out with this disingenuous pap.

“If the ad’s claim is true, that an atheist is capable of the same type of heroism as, let’s say, Wesley Autrey – the construction worker with two small children who risked his life to save a stranger who had fallen onto the subway tracks – I would not only agree with this assertion but point to a concrete example from the well-known atheist Peter Singer. When his own mother lay helpless with Alzheimer’s disease, he broke all of his own rules, thus throwing away his credibility as a utilitarian philosopher onto the tracks: He came to her rescue.”

(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)

Because there are no atheists in foxholes for Gillen to come up with an equivalent to Wesley Autrey? But to compound Gillen’s bad humour in bad faith, it gets worse. Apparently Gillen’s education to become a Dominican friar didn’t include the observation that irony doesn’t flow from imaginary contradiction.

Despite what Gillen (wrongly) tells us, Peter Singer’s approach to the disabled is that first, it depends on the disability and how it detracts from quality of life compared to the loss brought about through euthanasia. Second, Singer’s position is that this is a decision for the family. And you know what? Singer has family and they decided they didn’t want euthanasia. There isn’t anything in Singer’s logic that is contradicted by the turn of events surrounding his mother’s unfortunate situation.

I wish I could chalk this opportunism up to his past as a Wall Street stock broker, but Gillen and his religious absolutist ilk, have been pushing this sad, mendacious canard for over ten years now. That the suffering in the Singer’s personal lives could be used as a political football like this, especially considering there isn’t actually a genuine ethical argument to made from it, tells us a lot about the psychology of the Gillen’s of the world.

Don’t think that Gillen is unwilling to go further in his sadistic misanthropy. A pass by Godwin’s law comes next.

“History has shown that a radically rationalist culture becomes radically irrational if it is detached from God. The atheistic ideologies of Nazism and Communism did not produce earthly paradises, but only tragic regimes of terror that trampled human dignity and freedom.”

(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)

Considering that nobody is claiming that the Godless are automatically saints (which Gillen claims is the case for the billboard campaign), that atheists have done bad things (or that the religious have done bad things) is uncontroversial. However, there were problems in Communist Russia which had nothing to do with Godlessness, and Nazism wasn’t a godless ideology anyway. Chalk another one up for The Big Lie – why do so many old-school Catholic opinionists and “academics” repeat pap which is known to be false?

At any rate, Gillen hasn’t shown a causal link between “radically rationalist” and “radically irrational” (much less defined the terms). Moreover, there are godless societies around now that are doing quite well, breaking any notion of a logical necessity between godlessness and “tragic regimes of terror”.

“This is why Pope Benedict reverses the axiom and says: “Even those who are unable to accept God should in any case seek to live and direct their lives as if God exists. This is the same advice that Renée Pascal had given to his nonbelieving friends; it is the advice that we would like to give today as well to our friends who do not believe.”"

(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)

Amazing is Gillen’s hypocrisy. Fresh from bleating that Singer didn’t live up to his ethics, and warning that atheism leads to tyranny and terror, Gillen gives us advice on how to steer clear of this terror from an anti-Semite who once joined the Hitler youth!

And Pascal’s non-argument (nee Pascal’s Roulette, nee Pascal’s Wager), please. When you add all the gods into the wager, the Catholic God, as with all the rest, becomes a bad bet. At least earnest godlessness has the virtue of honesty, which is more than can be said for Pascal’s position – just act like you believe!

Oh well, at least with my intended future reading into ethics, I’ll get a break from this kind of silliness. So much for the Dominican intellectual tradition!

~ Bruce