Richard Dawkins as 'Anti-Philosopher'

[Grendel]

The idea that humans are no different to animals is another myth, and a very curious one. I often wonder what the utility of this idea is, because I have learned that challenges to it are treated scornfully. I *think* the appeal is that it actually solves what Erich Fromm called 'the fear of freedom'. Humans are moral agents, who are responsible for their actions, and must choose their values. So the idea that we are 'really just animals' absolves us of that responsibility.

I tend to think the idea humans aren't animals is a very curious myth. People come up with all kinds of self delusion to avoid it and the strongest advocate is Christianity, people made in God's image can't be animals.If you say people are animals in a Buddhist country they don't get offended. It's mostly a Christian hang up.

watch this vid from 9:15

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xemnvt ... ggard_news

[Notvacka]

Still, the fact that science can't answer a question doesn't make the question a lie.

Are you saying there's something more than the purely material in reason we are here?

I'm saying that there are different perspectives. You can't understand everything from a purely material perspective. I'm talking about the human experience here. Reducing our existence to physical processes gives us one type of understanding, which is fine. But on the whole, our lives are more illusory than real, and some things can only be understood from within the illusion. The notion of free will is a good example. Exposing it as an illusion does not make the illusion go away.

[chaz wyman]

It is a far cry from a just-so story. It is based on the assembled knowledge of thousands of years of study and thought.

When answers are not available, and can never be available it is wise to use the most probable hypothesis to see if it works.

The hypothesis that Life was the design of an intelligent creator is without merit for several reasons.

There are two different kinds of explanation being confused here. You don't have to dispute the scientific account of the origins of life, to question the interpretation of the meaning of evolution, how the phenomenon of life can be interpreted as a whole. I have always understood the evolutionary account of life to be factually correct. But I don't think that the idea that the development of life is purely fortuitous, as proposed by evolutionary materialism, is actually part of that evidence. That is a cultural belief based on the perceived antagonism between religion and science.

Materialists generally subscribe to the idea of abiogenesis. A-bio means 'non-living', so 'abiogenesis' literally means ' the origin of life from non life'. This is often associated with Darwin's musings on the idea of the 'warm little pond'. Research into abiogenesis consists largely of speculation and recreations of the kinds of environments that might have produced the types of complex molecules that characterize living cells.

But I think there is a contradiction in this idea. If you believe there is no kind of 'reason' or 'purpose' underlying the development of life, then the search for abiogenesis is looking for an explanation, in the absence of a reason. It is asking a question very much like this: 'why did life develop - for no reason'?

There are scientists who have written on this topic without any kind of ID bias. See for example Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life by Robert Rosen; Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life Hubert Yockey; and Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe.

Yes, I 've already said the matter is confused. You are the one that is confused.
"Why did life begin." only has a material causal answer; it is the same question; " How did life begin." There is nothing outside that; no grand purpose. Everything points to that being a human delusion.

The more shocking fact is that even when we have a purpose such as " I go to work to feed my family", the ultimate answer to this is also answerable in material terms; whilst we think that our purposes are somehow free, they also have material causes; are determined by forces set into motion long before we were born.

[chaz wyman]

I have said nothing in this thread about 'God' or an intelligent designer. What I have said is that the assumption that life is something that originates fortuitously and evolves without any kind of purpose, save for those understood by the biological sciences, does not amount to any kind of explanation of the nature of human existence. And it doesn't. I think that the role that evolutionary philosophy plays in modern secular society is descended from the religious account that preceded it, for historical reasons. It has assumed many of the same roles, but it cannot fulfil them in the same way, because it lacks any kind of moral dimension or any sense of purpose, other than 'purpose' in the instrumental sense that the natural sciences can understand. It has become a kind of secular faith, but with some of the attributes of the Christianity from which it descended, inverted.

In the quote I gave from Dawkins, he agrees that the Darwinian view of life is a very poor basis for philosophy or social policy, or anything of the kind. But if you examine Dawkins books, or ask him what he believes in, he has nothing to offer except for popular science, or what amounts to scientism. He goes on about 'the wonder of life', from the viewpoint of being a kind of naturalist. There's nothing the matter with that, but it doesn't provide the basis for for ethical principles or a way of life. And he demonstrates no comprehension of the poverty of his own philosophical views, something which has been remarked upon by many commentators. That is why I have called him an anti-philosopher.

Just because he rejects the notion of a universal purpose does not make him an anti-philospher.
Believing in a universal purpose is not a necessary requirement for being philosophical.

[Jonathan.s]

If you say people are animals in a Buddhist country they don't get offended.

Certainly Buddhists have a reputation for being compassionate to animals, but attaining a 'precious human birth' is said to be a unique opportunity for realizing Enlightenment. Being reborn into the animal realm is regarded as a very bad fate, because animals are dumb, and cannot make merit or understand the teaching.

"Why did life begin." only has a material causal answer

Life is not a solely material process. At the point of death, a living organism is exactly the same as a dead one, in material terms. All the same substances are present, but at that instant, everything about the organism changes. It is no longer a being, but a corpse.

Just because [Dawkins] rejects the notion of a universal purpose does not make him an anti-philospher.
Believing in a universal purpose is not a necessary requirement for being philosophical.

Not necessarily a universal purpose - simply purpose in any sense, other than the instrumental. There is certainly no provision for anything like a natural moral principle in Dawkin's scheme. Moral principles are simply products of the requirements of survival. The fundamental reality is the selfish gene and the survival of the species. Everything else about humans - art, music, literature, philosophy, and so on - are derived from that. This is why such an approach is called often criticized as 'scientism'. He says, on the one hand, that the Darwinian view is a terrible basis on which to live your life - but on the other hand, he has no positive philosophy or vision to offer, other than a kind of naturalist awe for nature.

But all of this is directly implied by Dawkins Darwinian belief-system. The key phrase is the famous passage from the Origin of Species

from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Dawkins waxes poetic about this passage; he says that, not only is that only view of life that makes sense, but that it renders any other views, and certainly all previous views, obsolete, and not even worth understanding. (He also notes that the first edition - a copy of which he owns - does not include the phrase 'breathed by the Creator', but that this was added subsequently to assuage the religious.)

[Bernard]

I don't get why some people think that life had a beginning.

Well, the only life we know of is life here on earth, an the earth itself has a finite history. How do you suppose life exists here now, unless it began at some point? Or are you talking about life in some other sense?

Well I for one cannot be included in those who believe that what we have here is the only life we know of. The earth for one is alive, and far more aware than we are. It's an awareness that we can only glimpse with our own awareness, and not with our reason at all. The sun, all those planets, stars and galaxies are beings in possession of, what is to us, extreme forms of consciousness and awareness that are unspeakably different from our own, yet which have all the same markers as our own: experience of self, mortality, wellbeing, etcetera - but not as we experience those things at all. The universe - whatever it is - is itself, I believe, a conscious being

As for the rise of organic life on earth, I think there was a certain point for sure from which it began historically on earth. But I also believe in the recycling of consciousness via the phenomena of death and conception. I don't believe that consciousness can just kick start from nothing; it has been forever, and will be forever, through the infinite replacement of living forms. To extrapolate: when a being dies the form it was in discards and being becomes pure, timeless. The very instant this occurs it gets a new form. Because the nature of conciousness/being is to evolve and grow, the new form will be of more a capacity to house consciousness, therefore the old form will not be repeated. Also, when being is freed from form via death it is not bound by time, so it re-enters form without the dictates of time interfering, so it could be in the past or future of its previous form. I don't believe in devolution.

If one then imagines that one can take the whole of all the organic beings that have lived, are living, or are yet to live on earth and can lay them all out [call this layout 1]. Then, starting, for arguments sake, with viruses, you lay them out in perfect order in terms of capacity for consciousness right through to the most evolved specimen of homo-sapiens. By doing this you would have a different view of evolution than were you to lay them out [call this layout 2] in perfect order according to when they historically occurred on earth (you would have to break this down into many chronological zillionths of a second if you consider how quickly things like bacteria on earth are coming into being in any given second... but I think its still theoretically possible). Layout one is, in my view, what evolution most truly is, whereas Layout 2, which is still truly evolution, is more like a consequence or, at worse, a reflection of layout 1.

If you have been bothered to follow the idea this far, from all that I've said, layout 1 of organic life on earth can be seen as one of many, many similar layout 1's right across the cosmos, so that when layout 1 is exhausted here it begins again somewhere also in space and time on some other sort of earth dictated by its evolutionary mandate, just as layout 1 here is the result of a previous layout 1.

Clear as mud? Call in the whitecoats if you please, but that's sort of how I see it.

[Jonathan.s]

great stuff, Bernard, love it.

One of my favourite books, quite obscure now, was by astronomer Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, in which he proposed that the universe was full of organic matter, some of which arrived on earth via comets and meteorites, and took root, so to speak. This is a theory, delightfully called 'Panspermia', which proposes that comets are rather like celestial sperm, and planets like eggs, and this is one way that life develops throughout the Universe. Panspermia doesn't claim to acount for the origin of life, and in fact I am inclined to agree with your view that is it, in a real sense, 'beginningless', although that is probably something we can never know for sure. But I love the idea.

[Bernard]

Thanks - someone that likes the idea after 30 years of silent responses! We will never rationally know for sure the answers to such questions because rationality is a once removed process from any real perceptions we have of infinity or the raw nature of life. We have the perceptions and the moment we try and analyse them they are is if non-existant. We can know entirely though with only ourselves as the instruments.

[chaz wyman]

great stuff, Bernard, love it.

One of my favourite books, quite obscure now, was by astronomer Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, in which he proposed that the universe was full of organic matter, some of which arrived on earth via comets and meteorites, and took root, so to speak. This is a theory, delightfully called 'Panspermia', which proposes that comets are rather like celestial sperm, and planets like eggs, and this is one way that life develops throughout the Universe. Panspermia doesn't claim to acount for the origin of life, and in fact I am inclined to agree with your view that is it, in a real sense, 'beginningless', although that is probably something we can never know for sure. But I love the idea.

Interesting speculation but it asks more questions than it answers.
In fact it answers none, as far as I can see.

Thankfully science does not tend to adopt ideas because people like them - they leave that behaviour to religion.

[chaz wyman]

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Just because [Dawkins] rejects the notion of a universal purpose does not make him an anti-philospher.
Believing in a universal purpose is not a necessary requirement for being philosophical.

Not necessarily a universal purpose - simply purpose in any sense, other than the instrumental. There is certainly no provision for anything like a natural moral principle in Dawkin's scheme. Moral principles are simply products of the requirements of survival. The fundamental reality is the selfish gene and the survival of the species. Everything else about humans - art, music, literature, philosophy, and so on - are derived from that. This is why such an approach is called often criticized as 'scientism'. He says, on the one hand, that the Darwinian view is a terrible basis on which to live your life - but on the other hand, he has no positive philosophy or vision to offer, other than a kind of naturalist awe for nature.

But all of this is directly implied by Dawkins Darwinian belief-system. The key phrase is the famous passage from the Origin of Species

from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Dawkins waxes poetic about this passage; he says that, not only is that only view of life that makes sense, but that it renders any other views, and certainly all previous views, obsolete, and not even worth understanding. (He also notes that the first edition - a copy of which he owns - does not include the phrase 'breathed by the Creator', but that this was added subsequently to assuage the religious.)

You are simply wrong about Dawkins. He agrees that humans do in fact have purposes.
Because you misunderstand evolution you also misunderstand Dawkins.
All he is saying, correctly, that purpose cannot be directly derived from evolution, and is not the basis from which to guide human society.
I'm puzzled why you continue to pursue this fallacy of yours.
You are railing against the facts of evolution by shooting one of its messengers.

[Bernard]

Yes, thanks Chaz for bringing that up. These ideas work for me as 99.9999999% subjective resolves to personal objective questions that I was incapable of resolving sufficiently for myself in objective ways. I don't mind, and would probably preferred, if pressed, to keep this sort of thing to myself, but we are social/sharing creatures after all. It was only as I rejected and pulled away from my conditional religious upbringing that I was able to formulate ideas that could form something of a personal philosophy to live by. I am under no illusions that I may well be subconsciously only formulating replacement personal ideology to fill the hole left by religion. I am someone who is careful about scanning the effects on myself, and others, of whatever newly formulated ideas I may be entertaining. I am also quizzical as to whether philosophy should remain defined by objective and logical questions. Having studied other cultures and distant epochs that are unfamiliar to the Western ethos I was born into, it seems a Western bias to me. So I prefer to include subjective notions as being elemental, indeed essential, to how I like to define philosophy. I know this may be grating to some, and I do sincerely apologise if this is the case with you.

[Jonathan.s]

All he is saying, correctly, that purpose cannot be directly derived from evolution, and is not the basis from which to guide human society.

Indeed, this is what he says:

I very much hope that we don't revert to the idea of survival of the fittest in planning our politics and our values and our way of life. I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist. It’s undoubtedly the reason why we're here and why all living things are here. But to live our lives in a Darwinian way, to make a society a Darwinian society, that would be a very unpleasant sort of society in which to live.

Yet, without any kind of purpose, which he denies, what alternatives remain? If you dissolve all kinds of philosophy and ethical thought in the 'acid bath' of Darwinian materialism, as Dennett describes it, what principles remain on which to build 'a pleasant society'? Sure, people can have 'their own' purposes, but you have already declared that these purpose don't really mean anything. They are either purely individual, or social - they have no correspondence with anything in reality. They might be 'pleasant' but you can bet they will not be meaningful - because there is really no ground for meaning in this picture.

f you cannot make the distinction between how and why, I suggest that you look into this a bit more deeply.

Why don't you follow your own advice?

[chaz wyman]

Yes, thanks Chaz for bringing that up. These ideas work for me as 99.9999999% subjective resolves to personal objective questions that I was incapable of resolving sufficiently for myself in objective ways. I don't mind, and would probably preferred, if pressed, to keep this sort of thing to myself, but we are social/sharing creatures after all. It was only as I rejected and pulled away from my conditional religious upbringing that I was able to formulate ideas that could form something of a personal philosophy to live by. I am under no illusions that I may well be subconsciously only formulating replacement personal ideology to fill the hole left by religion. I am someone who is careful about scanning the effects on myself, and others, of whatever newly formulated ideas I may be entertaining. I am also quizzical as to whether philosophy should remain defined by objective and logical questions. Having studied other cultures and distant epochs that are unfamiliar to the Western ethos I was born into, it seems a Western bias to me. So I prefer to include subjective notions as being elemental, indeed essential, to how I like to define philosophy. I know this may be grating to some, and I do sincerely apologise if this is the case with you.

One of the many arrows in the quiver of Philosophy is the ability to define, undermine, unpack and reveal what are the differences between the objective and the subjective.

The first thing we learn is that objective is not the same as 'true', OR 'unbiased'.
The second is that there is rarely (maybe never) a completely subjective point of view, as we all derive our thinking and knowledge from the world around us.

The objective is not a line to the ultimate truth, it is more to do with the agreement of your peers - an objective criterion is nothing more than a standard that is agreed upon by the experts in the particular field we are looking at. These standards change over time. In a meaningful sense all objective claims are intersubjective - or as I prefer to call them collectively subjective; they are based on the agreement within a language community.

I'm not sure how you get to the formulation; philosophy is defined by objective and logical questions. I don't think it is. Its more to do with using rational means to understand the universe and how we are to live our lives in that knowledge. Whilst this might include logic and consideration of objective claims, it is not defined by them.

[chaz wyman]

All he is saying, correctly, that purpose cannot be directly derived from evolution, and is not the basis from which to guide human society.

Indeed, this is what he says:

I very much hope that we don't revert to the idea of survival of the fittest in planning our politics and our values and our way of life. I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist. It’s undoubtedly the reason why we're here and why all living things are here. But to live our lives in a Darwinian way, to make a society a Darwinian society, that would be a very unpleasant sort of society in which to live.

Yet, without any kind of purpose, which he denies, what alternatives remain? If you dissolve all kinds of philosophy and ethical thought in the 'acid bath' of Darwinian materialism, as Dennett describes it, what principles remain on which to build 'a pleasant society'? Sure, people can have 'their own' purposes, but you have already declared that these purpose don't really mean anything. They are either purely individual, or social - they have no correspondence with anything in reality. They might be 'pleasant' but you can bet they will not be meaningful - because there is really no ground for meaning in this picture.

f you cannot make the distinction between how and why, I suggest that you look into this a bit more deeply.

Why don't you follow your own advice?

Ignoring the final comment. The problem remains with your conception of Dawkins, who is a natural philosopher in the tradition sense of the word, except that he goes one batter than most in rejecting for humans a normative lesson FROM nature which has been the bane of naturalism for centuries before Darwin, and continued tragically after him with eugenics and Naziism.
Your position [rejecting D as philosopher] is still confused.

You ask what remains? You lack imagination! What remains is your confusion based on a false assumption that the human race is not capable of finding its own pathways. The fact that there has never been a guiding and over riding purpose to life has never before stopped humans from deciding upon their own.
The beauty of what Dawkins amongst many many other is saying is that knowing that we are making it up as we go along is the best possible position from which to proceed as we no longer have to believe the the purpose is from a divine source. His moral position is clear enough - he is concerned to make that point clear! By making the point that we are now free to reject the divine purpose hypothesis as utterly false we will be better placed to forge ahead with our own purposes. There is still much work to do in this.

[Bernard]

It would seem I am under a misapprehension then. I will look into it further. Thanks.

Yes, thanks Chaz for bringing that up. These ideas work for me as 99.9999999% subjective resolves to personal objective questions that I was incapable of resolving sufficiently for myself in objective ways. I don't mind, and would probably preferred, if pressed, to keep this sort of thing to myself, but we are social/sharing creatures after all. It was only as I rejected and pulled away from my conditional religious upbringing that I was able to formulate ideas that could form something of a personal philosophy to live by. I am under no illusions that I may well be subconsciously only formulating replacement personal ideology to fill the hole left by religion. I am someone who is careful about scanning the effects on myself, and others, of whatever newly formulated ideas I may be entertaining. I am also quizzical as to whether philosophy should remain defined by objective and logical questions. Having studied other cultures and distant epochs that are unfamiliar to the Western ethos I was born into, it seems a Western bias to me. So I prefer to include subjective notions as being elemental, indeed essential, to how I like to define philosophy. I know this may be grating to some, and I do sincerely apologise if this is the case with you.

One of the many arrows in the quiver of Philosophy is the ability to define, undermine, unpack and reveal what are the differences between the objective and the subjective.

The first thing we learn is that objective is not the same as 'true', OR 'unbiased'.
The second is that there is rarely (maybe never) a completely subjective point of view, as we all derive our thinking and knowledge from the world around us.

The objective is not a line to the ultimate truth, it is more to do with the agreement of your peers - an objective criterion is nothing more than a standard that is agreed upon by the experts in the particular field we are looking at. These standards change over time. In a meaningful sense all objective claims are intersubjective - or as I prefer to call them collectively subjective; they are based on the agreement within a language community.

I'm not sure how you get to the formulation; philosophy is defined by objective and logical questions. I don't think it is. Its more to do with using rational means to understand the universe and how we are to live our lives in that knowledge. Whilst this might include logic and consideration of objective claims, it is not defined by them.