Richard Dawkins doesn’t usually strike me as being naive, but one has to wonder when Dawkins abandons himself to the following sort of writing about his favorite topic these days, the incompatibility between science and religion, on his web site:
“If they’ve [the creationists] been told that there’s an incompatibility between religion and evolution, well, let’s convince them of evolution, and we’re there! Because after all, we’ve got the evidence. ... I suspect that most of our regular readers here would agree that ridicule, of a humorous nature, is likely to be more effective than the sort of snuggling-up and head-patting that Jerry [Coyne] is attacking. I lately started to think that we need to go further: go beyond humorous ridicule, sharpen our barbs to a point where they really hurt. ...You might say that two can play at that game. Suppose the religious start treating us with naked contempt, how would we like it? I think the answer is that there is a real asymmetry here. We have so much more to be contemptuous about! And we are so much better at it. We have scathingly witty spokesmen of the calibre of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Who have the faith-heads got, by comparison? Ann Coulter is about as good as it gets. We can’t lose!”
Oh, really? There is so much wrong with these few sentences that a whole book could be written about them, but since I am no Stephen Gould (who was famous for being able to magically turn a short essay into a book length manuscript, provided the right economic incentives), a blog post will have to do. First, though, some background. Dawkins is commenting on a recent essay by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who in turn was criticizing Eugenie Scott and her National Center for Science Education. While both Dawkins and Coyne profess admiration and respect for Scott and her organization (and so do I, for the record), they are upset by what they see as an “accommodationist” stance on the question of science and religion.
Scott — who is an atheist — has repeatedly said that one cannot claim that science requires atheism because atheism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one. She leverages the standard distinction between philosophical and methodological naturalism: if you are a scientist you have to be a methodological naturalist (i.e., assume for operative purposes that nature and natural laws are all that there is); but this doesn’t commit you to the stronger position of philosophical naturalism (i.e., to the claim that there really isn’t anything outside of nature and its laws). Years ago, when I first met Genie Scott, I had a Dawkins-like problem with this. I saw the distinction as sophistic hair splitting, and told her so (she was my guest for one of the annual Darwin Day events at the University of Tennessee). Then I started taking philosophy courses, understood what she was saying, and found it irrefutable. I sent her an email apologizing for my earlier obtusity.
That said, both Genie and I do recognize that science is one of the strongest arguments for philosophical naturalism, and I suspect that in her case, as in mine, a pretty big reason for why we are atheists is because of our understanding of science. Still, the philosophical/methodological distinction is both philosophically valid and pragmatically useful, since it doesn’t serve the purposes of either science or education to fuel an antagonism between a small minority of atheistic scientists and 90% of the world's population (those taxpayers, on whose good will the existence of science and the stipends of most of said scientists depend).
Jerry Coyne, however (with whom I often disagree, especially on scientific matters), does have a point that Scott and the NCSE should address: if the National Center for Science Education claims neutrality with respect to the relationship between science and religion, then why — as Coyne observes — do they list on their web site (under “recommended books”) a plethora of obviously biased books on the subject? Why does the NCSE feel ok to endorse the vacuous writings (as it pertains to the alleged compatibility between science and religion) by pro-religion scientists like Francis Collins, Ken Miller, and Simon Conway Morris, to name a few? Either these books should be ignored, or the NCSE should also recommend the (equally questionable) works of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and so on. Either science can neither prove or disprove gods, or it can, the philosophical/methodological distinction cuts both ways. Genie, what’s up?
Now back to Dawkins. As we have seen, he claims that we would be better off being on the offensive against religionists, because we’ve got the evidence. Oh yes, and because Christopher Hitchens is a better rhetorician than Ann Coulter (though he doesn’t look half as good, unfortunately). The latter is certainly true, but to pick on Coulter is to stack the deck much too obviously on one’s side. The real problem is that, pace Dawkins, evidence has nothing to do with it, because this isn’t a scientific debate. Look, even the most outrageous version of young earth creationism cannot be scientifically falsified. Wanna try? Consider the following: if there is any obvious evidence of the fact that evolution has occurred, it ought to be the impressive and worldwide consistent fossil record. Moreover, using the geological column as a way to date events during the history of the earth predates Darwin (i.e., it was invented by creationists), and we keep discovering new intermediate fossils further documenting evolution every year.
But a staunch creationist will argue (I know this from personal experience) that god simply orchestrated the whole appearance of fossils and intermediate forms to test our faith. As stunning and nonsensical as this “theory” may be, it makes the creationist completely and utterly impervious to evidence: the more evidence you bring up, the more he feels validated in his faith, because faith is belief regardless or despite the evidence. Now Dawkins will say that these people are irrational ignoramuses, and they certainly are. But that misses the point entirely: the lowly creationist has just given the mighty evolutionist a humbling (if unconscious) lesson in philosophy by showing that evidence simply does not enter the debate. If evidence is out, then we are left with sheer rhetorical force. But there too, atheists are easily outmatched: Coulter notwithstanding, there are armies of professionally trained preachers out there who will trump Hitchens — in the eyes of their constituencies at least — even when the latter is perfectly sober. And the important keyword here is “constituency,” since these are the very same people that turn around and elect a creationist board of education, causing endless headaches to Scott and collaborators, headaches that are not in the least helped by Dawkins-style posturing.
And really, look at Dawkins’ prescription here. According to him we should be even more “contemptuous” than the religious fanatics are; we should “really hurt” with our “sharp barbs”; we “can’t lose” because truth is clearly on our side. One almost gets the feeling that if Dawkins had the resources of the Inquisition at his disposal he might just use them in the name of scientific Truth (a philosophical oxymoron, by the way). Thanks for the public relations disaster, Dick!
What are we to do, then? First, learning some good philosophy wouldn’t hurt the likes of Dawkins a bit. That way they would finally appreciate that Genie’s position is not just a matter of pragmatism, and it has nothing to do with intellectual cowardice. Second, and more importantly, we really need to turn to psychology and sociology, the sciences that tell us how and when people change their minds. If we want a cultural change, we need to understand how cultures change. And by the way, let us remember that scientists are most certainly not immune to the same problem of walking around with a mind a bit less open than one would hope. Dawkins may like to think that science is about free inquiry that inevitably leads to people accepting new discoveries and renouncing old ideas based on the weight of evidence and rationality. If so, he hasn’t practiced science in a while (indeed, he hasn’t). As physicist Max Plank aptly said: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Analogously with creationism: changing minds is a painstaking, largely unrewarding, capillary job, which the National Center for Science Education does superbly. Dawkins & co. should simply get out of the way and let them do their work.
[Note: I became aware of this latest much ado about nothing debate through a fairly well balanced post by Paul Fidalgo at the DC Secularism Examiner, where you will find additional quotations from the various parties involved.]
About Rationally Speaking
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
When Republicans don’t know squat about science, and proud of it
If you are even a teensy little bit into reason and rationality, then you are likely to wince every time you open a newspaper, surf the web or watch tv. The wince of the week definitely came from an interview that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos conducted with GOP House opposition leader John Boehner (see the story as recounted by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum on their blog, and while you are it, pre-order their forthcoming book, Unscientific America).
The topic was global warming and what the Republican’s “plan” to deal with it might look like (don’t laugh! Not yet). I prepared myself for the usual denial mixed with narrow minded statements to the effect that we cannot afford to save the planet during a recession, and I was not disappointed. But the real kicker came when Stephanopoulos asked Boehner: “What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?”
Here is the answer, in full: “George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”
Ok, let us analyze this piece of politico-scientific flim-flammery on Boehner’s part. First, he is saying that the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen is comical. It would be, if anyone had actually made that claim. Boehner is confusing cancer with global warming, an astounding example of non sequitur that he can quickly fix by checking out the definition of greenhouse gas on Wikipedia. (Don’t these people have science advisors?) Second, Boehner claims that burping cows emit carbon dioxide. They don’t, they produce methane (which is a greenhouse gas!). Again, Mr. Boehner, please at least check Wikipedia if you can’t bother with a more highbrow source, the entry is “methane.”
The interview then concludes with an unwitting bit of humor on Boehner’s part (at least, I think it was unwitting...), when he said to Stephanopoulos: “I think you’ll see a plan from us. Just like you’ve seen a plan from us on the stimulus bill and a better plan on the budget.” Hmm, you mean like the very thin budget without numbers you came up with? Wanna go see what Wiki says about budgets? They typically include numbers.
This would be very funny if it weren’t for the fact that Boehner isn’t an irrelevant country bumpkin, he is the minority leader of a party that has been in control of the fate of this nation and of much of the world for the past eight years, a party that could regain control at any time because of the fickleness of the electorate and the vagaries of things like economies, wars and terrorist attacks.
There is absolutely no excuse for this level of ignorance by a prominent elected official. It is of course natural to disagree on political issues; it is even ok to be skeptical of a scientific consensus on the basis of one’s own honest understanding of the situation. But to say that cows discharge CO2 and that environmentalists claim that CO2 is a carcinogen is not just bizarre, it is a flagrant case of unethical and willful ignorance. Boehner should be ashamed of himself and resign his post in disgrace. Alas, that won’t happen until the cows come home. I mean, burp CO2.
The topic was global warming and what the Republican’s “plan” to deal with it might look like (don’t laugh! Not yet). I prepared myself for the usual denial mixed with narrow minded statements to the effect that we cannot afford to save the planet during a recession, and I was not disappointed. But the real kicker came when Stephanopoulos asked Boehner: “What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?”
Here is the answer, in full: “George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”
Ok, let us analyze this piece of politico-scientific flim-flammery on Boehner’s part. First, he is saying that the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen is comical. It would be, if anyone had actually made that claim. Boehner is confusing cancer with global warming, an astounding example of non sequitur that he can quickly fix by checking out the definition of greenhouse gas on Wikipedia. (Don’t these people have science advisors?) Second, Boehner claims that burping cows emit carbon dioxide. They don’t, they produce methane (which is a greenhouse gas!). Again, Mr. Boehner, please at least check Wikipedia if you can’t bother with a more highbrow source, the entry is “methane.”
The interview then concludes with an unwitting bit of humor on Boehner’s part (at least, I think it was unwitting...), when he said to Stephanopoulos: “I think you’ll see a plan from us. Just like you’ve seen a plan from us on the stimulus bill and a better plan on the budget.” Hmm, you mean like the very thin budget without numbers you came up with? Wanna go see what Wiki says about budgets? They typically include numbers.
This would be very funny if it weren’t for the fact that Boehner isn’t an irrelevant country bumpkin, he is the minority leader of a party that has been in control of the fate of this nation and of much of the world for the past eight years, a party that could regain control at any time because of the fickleness of the electorate and the vagaries of things like economies, wars and terrorist attacks.
There is absolutely no excuse for this level of ignorance by a prominent elected official. It is of course natural to disagree on political issues; it is even ok to be skeptical of a scientific consensus on the basis of one’s own honest understanding of the situation. But to say that cows discharge CO2 and that environmentalists claim that CO2 is a carcinogen is not just bizarre, it is a flagrant case of unethical and willful ignorance. Boehner should be ashamed of himself and resign his post in disgrace. Alas, that won’t happen until the cows come home. I mean, burp CO2.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Enough complaining about blogs, FaceBook and Twitter
I am getting a bit tired of all this complaining about our alleged obsession with connectivity and how dehumanizing it is. It doesn’t help, of course, that most of the complainers have their own blogs, FaceBook or Twitter accounts, like Russell Bishop over at the Huffington Post. The fact that I often find out about these rants because someone posts them on FaceBook, or that I read them on my Kindle (where I get the Post delivered several times a day) just adds deliciousness to the irony.
Bishop is, according to his byline in the Post, an “editor-at-large, author, executive coach, and performance improvement consultant.” Whatever. Apparently this background prompted him to ask why “we are so fascinated with the notion of instant, easy connection,” to which the obvious answer would be “why not?” In the usual predictable Luddite fashion (and despite admitting to having a blog, FaceBook, Linkedln, Plaxo and Twitter accounts!), Bishop says that he “can’t risk not being connected, but am I really connected?” Well, it depends on what you mean by ”connected.” Trivially, you are, meaning that every time you post or read a post by someone else on any of the above mentioned platforms, you are “connecting” in a meaningful, if somewhat special, sense of the word. But, argues Bishop, this is artificial connectivity. Well, yes, literally it is, considering that it is done through electronic media. Then again little of what we do, including driving cars and living in houses, is not “artificial,” an obvious fact is often spectacularly missed by Luddites of all stripes.
Bishop laments that “communication skills seem to be dropping rapidly” and that we don’t know “how to talk through difficult issues.” anymore. Are you kidding? I don’t know about Bishop’s blog, but I think I communicate at least somewhat clearly about difficult issues, and most readers of this blog are very articulate indeed. Granted, there isn’t much articulation one can do through Twitter (to which I do not subscribe), but then again the thing isn’t designed for deep discussions, it is meant to let people know instantly what is happening to a given person at a particular point in time. Yes, most of what goes on at Twitter belongs to the category of irrelevant trivia, but let’s be frank, so does most of the content of our everyday conversations with family, neighbors, friends, and colleagues. Besides, Twitter has been used so far to try to start a revolution (in Moldovia) and to let Senator McCain’s constituents know how exactly the Senate (in his opinion) was wasting time and money.
Bishop goes on to complain that we are “rapidly learning to substitute what we really need — warm, intimate, in-depth connection and communication — with symbols of being connected.” Maybe that’s the case for Bishop, I don’t know. I am happily and warmly connected to my wife, my daughter, my close friends and a few other members of my family. With the rest of humanity, I don’t need quite that much warmth, but I like to know from time to time what distant friends and former students are up to — so I check their FaceBook updates.
“Real life happens in the spaces between blog posts, email and SMS’s,” declares Bishop. Baloney, say I. So-called “real” life is often overestimated, considering that for most people it consists of jobs they don’t like, continuous struggle to make ends meet, and often unhappy human relations. Moreover, since blogging, for instance, is about writing, and writing has always been considered a high and meaningful form of expression, how does it not count as “real life”? Is it only the rare Mark Twain or Ian McEwan (how do you like that random paring?) who are living a real life when they shut themselves up in their room to write? Shouldn’t we welcome the fact that so many people can now easily and freely express themselves and be challenged by others about what they think and write?
Bishop concludes: “could it be that we are more likely to be texting someone else than connecting with the person in front of us?” Hell yes, because the person in front of me is often a random stranger with whom I likely have little or nothing in common, while the person I’m texting is a loved one, or someone I need to alert about my delay in meeting him for an important lunch.
The basic flaw underlying Bishop’s essay, and many others like it that I’ve come across lately, is that it is based on a false dichotomy: if I spend time blogging, I don’t have warm relations with my family; if I exchange a short SMS with my brother I don’t bother talking to him at length about serious issues; and so on and so forth. This is nonsense, and demonstrably not factually true. We can easily do both, and the two types of activity actually reinforce each other. I do feel closer to my brothers in Italy just because I get to know what they had for breakfast through their FaceBook page. The alternative would be to limit ourselves to phone calls (which we have anyway, usually via Skype video, another welcome electronic innovation). Of course, just like any technology, one can become obsessed with electronic networking and plainly overdo it. But human beings have always found a way to get obsessed and waste their time in one way or another. I can imagine the elders at the time of Gutenberg complaining about a socially disconnected youth spending its time reading books and in the process losing their ability to communicate orally. A few centuries later, miraculously, the spoken word is still going strong.
My advice to techno-phobes around the world: relax, take the long view on humanity’s foibles, and if you really have to complain about blogging and FaceBook, don’t do it by posting a link to your blog entry on your FaceBook account.
Bishop is, according to his byline in the Post, an “editor-at-large, author, executive coach, and performance improvement consultant.” Whatever. Apparently this background prompted him to ask why “we are so fascinated with the notion of instant, easy connection,” to which the obvious answer would be “why not?” In the usual predictable Luddite fashion (and despite admitting to having a blog, FaceBook, Linkedln, Plaxo and Twitter accounts!), Bishop says that he “can’t risk not being connected, but am I really connected?” Well, it depends on what you mean by ”connected.” Trivially, you are, meaning that every time you post or read a post by someone else on any of the above mentioned platforms, you are “connecting” in a meaningful, if somewhat special, sense of the word. But, argues Bishop, this is artificial connectivity. Well, yes, literally it is, considering that it is done through electronic media. Then again little of what we do, including driving cars and living in houses, is not “artificial,” an obvious fact is often spectacularly missed by Luddites of all stripes.
Bishop laments that “communication skills seem to be dropping rapidly” and that we don’t know “how to talk through difficult issues.” anymore. Are you kidding? I don’t know about Bishop’s blog, but I think I communicate at least somewhat clearly about difficult issues, and most readers of this blog are very articulate indeed. Granted, there isn’t much articulation one can do through Twitter (to which I do not subscribe), but then again the thing isn’t designed for deep discussions, it is meant to let people know instantly what is happening to a given person at a particular point in time. Yes, most of what goes on at Twitter belongs to the category of irrelevant trivia, but let’s be frank, so does most of the content of our everyday conversations with family, neighbors, friends, and colleagues. Besides, Twitter has been used so far to try to start a revolution (in Moldovia) and to let Senator McCain’s constituents know how exactly the Senate (in his opinion) was wasting time and money.
Bishop goes on to complain that we are “rapidly learning to substitute what we really need — warm, intimate, in-depth connection and communication — with symbols of being connected.” Maybe that’s the case for Bishop, I don’t know. I am happily and warmly connected to my wife, my daughter, my close friends and a few other members of my family. With the rest of humanity, I don’t need quite that much warmth, but I like to know from time to time what distant friends and former students are up to — so I check their FaceBook updates.
“Real life happens in the spaces between blog posts, email and SMS’s,” declares Bishop. Baloney, say I. So-called “real” life is often overestimated, considering that for most people it consists of jobs they don’t like, continuous struggle to make ends meet, and often unhappy human relations. Moreover, since blogging, for instance, is about writing, and writing has always been considered a high and meaningful form of expression, how does it not count as “real life”? Is it only the rare Mark Twain or Ian McEwan (how do you like that random paring?) who are living a real life when they shut themselves up in their room to write? Shouldn’t we welcome the fact that so many people can now easily and freely express themselves and be challenged by others about what they think and write?
Bishop concludes: “could it be that we are more likely to be texting someone else than connecting with the person in front of us?” Hell yes, because the person in front of me is often a random stranger with whom I likely have little or nothing in common, while the person I’m texting is a loved one, or someone I need to alert about my delay in meeting him for an important lunch.
The basic flaw underlying Bishop’s essay, and many others like it that I’ve come across lately, is that it is based on a false dichotomy: if I spend time blogging, I don’t have warm relations with my family; if I exchange a short SMS with my brother I don’t bother talking to him at length about serious issues; and so on and so forth. This is nonsense, and demonstrably not factually true. We can easily do both, and the two types of activity actually reinforce each other. I do feel closer to my brothers in Italy just because I get to know what they had for breakfast through their FaceBook page. The alternative would be to limit ourselves to phone calls (which we have anyway, usually via Skype video, another welcome electronic innovation). Of course, just like any technology, one can become obsessed with electronic networking and plainly overdo it. But human beings have always found a way to get obsessed and waste their time in one way or another. I can imagine the elders at the time of Gutenberg complaining about a socially disconnected youth spending its time reading books and in the process losing their ability to communicate orally. A few centuries later, miraculously, the spoken word is still going strong.
My advice to techno-phobes around the world: relax, take the long view on humanity’s foibles, and if you really have to complain about blogging and FaceBook, don’t do it by posting a link to your blog entry on your FaceBook account.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Faith and Reason
One of the constantly bewildering aspects of living on planet Earth is the assumption that most human beings seem to make that faith (usually, but not necessarily, the religious variety) is a virtue. This bizarre attitude — just to add insult to injury — often comes coupled with the equally strange idea that somehow too much reason is bad for you. Why?
Faith means that one believes something regardless or even in spite of the evidence. This, I should think, is so irrational, and potentially so bad for one’s health, that educators and policy makers would be very worried at the prospect of a nation where faith was praised and encouraged. I mean, suppose I tell you that I have faith in my auto mechanic, but then you discover that the guy knows nothing about cars, can never get one fixed, and on top of that charges me thousands of dollars every time I see him. You would be outraged at him, possibly to the point of calling for legal action against the rascal, and you would pity me for being such a fool. Now substitute any of the words “Preacher,” “Pope,” “Imam,” or even “Guru” for mechanic in the above example, change the care of my car to the care of my soul (whatever that is), and suddenly you get the phenomenon of strong social and legal defense of the concept of organized religion. How nut is that?
But Massimo, people usually ask me whenever the f-word is brought up, don’t you have faith in anything? Nope, I say, a denial that is immediately met with both bewilderment and commiseration. Don’t I have faith in my wife, for example? No, I trust her because I know her and know that she loves me. What about faith in humanity, considering that I profess to be a secular humanist? No, I have hope for the human lot, and even that is seriously tempered by my awareness of its less than stellar record throughout history.
Ah, but I believe in evolution, don’t I? Yes, I do, but notice the switch between “faith” and “belief,” two words that don’t necessarily mean the same thing at all. A belief is something one thinks is true, but beliefs — unlike faith — can be held in proportion to the available evidence and reasons in their favor. I “believe” in evolution because the evidence is overwhelming. I don’t have faith in evolution.
Okay, then, the irrepressible defender of faith might say, what about your acceptance of things you cannot possibly prove, either logically or empirically, such as that there is a physical world out there (instead of the universe being a simulation in someone’s mind)? Isn’t that faith? Nope, it’s a reasonable assumption that I adopt for purely pragmatic reasons, because it seems that if one rejects it apparently bad things will happen to him (like smashing his brains on the ground while believing that he can fly off of a skyscraper).
The exasperated faithful will then conclude that my life must be devoid of emotions, and that I am — once again — deserving of pity and commiseration more than anything else. But of course this is yet another common confusion that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny: my life is as emotionally rich as anyone else’s, I think, in accordance with both philosopher David Hume’s and neurobiologist Antonio Damasio’s conclusion that a healthy human existence requires a balance between reason and emotion. Without reason, we would not have been able to build our complex civilization; but without emotion we wouldn’t have given a damn about accomplishing anything at all. Still, while faith is obviously emotional, it is not a synonym of emotion; the latter is necessary, the former is parasitic on it.
What about this insane idea that somehow we live in a hyper-rational society which is already too burdened by the triumph of reason? If we are, it is hard to distinguish such society from a hyper-irrational one dominated by faith. This conceit that too much reason is bad is a leftover from the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, the so-called “age of reason” (which lasted much too briefly, and during which time reason was heard, but hardly dominated human affairs). If one wants to have a good measure of how little reason plays into our society, one only has to listen for a day to what most of our politicians say, or to what most of our journalists write, not to mention of course the often surprisingly frightening experience of simply overhearing people’s conversations on the subway or at work.
We are frequently told with a certain degree of smugness that we need to go “beyond reason,” even though that phrase is uttered by people who likely wouldn’t be able to pass logic 101. Now, this isn’t to say that reason is boundless, much less that it is a guarantor of truth. Reason is a tool, fashioned by natural selection to deal with largely mundane problems of survival and reproduction in a specific type of physical and social environment. But it seems to work pretty darn well even when it comes to proving complex mathematical theorems, constructing excellent hypotheses about how the universe got started, and even providing us with decent guidance on how to conduct human affairs while maximizing justice and minimizing killings — at least in theory!
Faith doesn’t bring us beyond reason, as amply shown by the fact that not a single problem — be it scientific, philosophical or socio-political — has ever been solved or even mildly ameliorated by faith. On the contrary, faith has a nasty tendency to make bumbling simpletons of us, to waste our energies, time and resources on pursuit that do not improve the human condition, and at its worst it convinces people to drive planes into skyscrapers, or to mount “holy” crusades to slaughter the “infidel.” Faith is not a virtue, it is a repudiation of one the few good things human beings have going for them: a little bit of reason.
Faith means that one believes something regardless or even in spite of the evidence. This, I should think, is so irrational, and potentially so bad for one’s health, that educators and policy makers would be very worried at the prospect of a nation where faith was praised and encouraged. I mean, suppose I tell you that I have faith in my auto mechanic, but then you discover that the guy knows nothing about cars, can never get one fixed, and on top of that charges me thousands of dollars every time I see him. You would be outraged at him, possibly to the point of calling for legal action against the rascal, and you would pity me for being such a fool. Now substitute any of the words “Preacher,” “Pope,” “Imam,” or even “Guru” for mechanic in the above example, change the care of my car to the care of my soul (whatever that is), and suddenly you get the phenomenon of strong social and legal defense of the concept of organized religion. How nut is that?
But Massimo, people usually ask me whenever the f-word is brought up, don’t you have faith in anything? Nope, I say, a denial that is immediately met with both bewilderment and commiseration. Don’t I have faith in my wife, for example? No, I trust her because I know her and know that she loves me. What about faith in humanity, considering that I profess to be a secular humanist? No, I have hope for the human lot, and even that is seriously tempered by my awareness of its less than stellar record throughout history.
Ah, but I believe in evolution, don’t I? Yes, I do, but notice the switch between “faith” and “belief,” two words that don’t necessarily mean the same thing at all. A belief is something one thinks is true, but beliefs — unlike faith — can be held in proportion to the available evidence and reasons in their favor. I “believe” in evolution because the evidence is overwhelming. I don’t have faith in evolution.
Okay, then, the irrepressible defender of faith might say, what about your acceptance of things you cannot possibly prove, either logically or empirically, such as that there is a physical world out there (instead of the universe being a simulation in someone’s mind)? Isn’t that faith? Nope, it’s a reasonable assumption that I adopt for purely pragmatic reasons, because it seems that if one rejects it apparently bad things will happen to him (like smashing his brains on the ground while believing that he can fly off of a skyscraper).
The exasperated faithful will then conclude that my life must be devoid of emotions, and that I am — once again — deserving of pity and commiseration more than anything else. But of course this is yet another common confusion that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny: my life is as emotionally rich as anyone else’s, I think, in accordance with both philosopher David Hume’s and neurobiologist Antonio Damasio’s conclusion that a healthy human existence requires a balance between reason and emotion. Without reason, we would not have been able to build our complex civilization; but without emotion we wouldn’t have given a damn about accomplishing anything at all. Still, while faith is obviously emotional, it is not a synonym of emotion; the latter is necessary, the former is parasitic on it.
What about this insane idea that somehow we live in a hyper-rational society which is already too burdened by the triumph of reason? If we are, it is hard to distinguish such society from a hyper-irrational one dominated by faith. This conceit that too much reason is bad is a leftover from the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, the so-called “age of reason” (which lasted much too briefly, and during which time reason was heard, but hardly dominated human affairs). If one wants to have a good measure of how little reason plays into our society, one only has to listen for a day to what most of our politicians say, or to what most of our journalists write, not to mention of course the often surprisingly frightening experience of simply overhearing people’s conversations on the subway or at work.
We are frequently told with a certain degree of smugness that we need to go “beyond reason,” even though that phrase is uttered by people who likely wouldn’t be able to pass logic 101. Now, this isn’t to say that reason is boundless, much less that it is a guarantor of truth. Reason is a tool, fashioned by natural selection to deal with largely mundane problems of survival and reproduction in a specific type of physical and social environment. But it seems to work pretty darn well even when it comes to proving complex mathematical theorems, constructing excellent hypotheses about how the universe got started, and even providing us with decent guidance on how to conduct human affairs while maximizing justice and minimizing killings — at least in theory!
Faith doesn’t bring us beyond reason, as amply shown by the fact that not a single problem — be it scientific, philosophical or socio-political — has ever been solved or even mildly ameliorated by faith. On the contrary, faith has a nasty tendency to make bumbling simpletons of us, to waste our energies, time and resources on pursuit that do not improve the human condition, and at its worst it convinces people to drive planes into skyscrapers, or to mount “holy” crusades to slaughter the “infidel.” Faith is not a virtue, it is a repudiation of one the few good things human beings have going for them: a little bit of reason.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Philosophy never ends
Today I was forwarded by several people a really bad and confused op-ed piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks. It is entitled “The End of Philosophy,” which naturally raised my baloney detector level to yellow alert. Brooks’ main argument is that philosophy’s approach to ethics is “hyper-rational,” and that it does not appreciate the fundamental role of the emotions. Odd, considering that it was David Hume (the 18th century Scottish philosopher, 1711-1776) who famously wrote about how reason and emotion interplay to give meaning to our lives (a much, much earlier statement than the very similar sentiment attributed by Brooks to psychologist Jonathan Haidt).
Brooks tells us that according to cognitive scientists “moral thinking is like aesthetics” and invites his readers to consider an analogy with food. We do not engage in much rational thinking to decide whether we like a dish or not, we simply have — almost literally — a gut reaction to it. Similarly with moral “intuitions,” where people “feel” whether something is right or wrong and act accordingly. So much for two and a half millennia of philosophical thinking, how could Socrates not realize such a simple truth? It apparently didn’t occur to Brooks that perhaps philosophy started out as a reaction to the then prevalent reliance on gut feelings in matters of ethics, and to the violence and injustice that it was bringing to the human lot.
The problem, Brooks continues, is that philosophy ignores science, and in particular Darwin. Evolutionary biology has begun to show how emotions, as well as reason itself, evolved over time, largely to maximize the individual’s survival in a challenging environment (I say largely because evolution is also characterized by contingent events, like meteors striking the planet and wiping out most life forms regardless of how well adapted to their environment they happened to be at the moment of the impact). Moreover, human beings, like some other species, evolved in a situation where a great part of their environment was defined by their social relations, which means that biologists expect a mixture of selfishness and cooperation to have resulted from the continuous shaping of behavior by natural selection.
There are so many problems with this view that I can hardly do it justice here. Let us start with the evolutionary view of morality. I am an evolutionary biologist, and I have no problem with a naturalistic understanding of the roots of moral behavior. But Brooks is happy that the evolutionary view “entails a warmer view of human nature,” because cooperation among individuals is one of its results. However, biology predicts cooperation and other niceties to evolve within groups, not among groups, because different groups are typically in competition with each other. Which means that a natural instinct to help members of your group (good) also comes with an equally natural instinct to slaughter members of other groups (presumably, not so good).
Let us consider further Brooks’ praise for moral intuitions. It is certainly true that science is demonstrating that humans, and likely other primates, have a strong innate sense of right and wrong. Yet, moral intuitions — just like any kind of intuition — can easily lead us astray. Many conservative Christians, for instance, have a strong moral intuition that homosexual relations are evil and should be forbidden by law. They report having precisely the same kind of instinctual revulsion that we experience for poisonous food. The difference is that a good moral philosopher can explain why such moral intuition is, in fact, wrong: it violates other people’s rights to associate as they please while not harming anyone else. That right cost us thousand of years of cultural evolution, as well as countless deaths, to achieve and defend. Do we really wish to part with it on the strength of a bad analogy?
Brooks himself seems to vacillate on this, as he states that “there are times, often the most important moments in our lives, when in fact we do use reason to override moral intuitions.” Ah, and when we do — and remember that these are often “the most important moments in our lives,” where do we turn to in order to figure out whether something is right or wrong? May I suggest a good philosopher, perhaps?
What Brooks flagrantly commits is something known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was first discussed by the above mentioned David Hume. Hume famously said that one cannot seamlessly go from matters of fact (what is) to issues of value (what ought to be) because the first does not entail the second. It is a fact that most people feel or behave heterosexually, i.e. heterosexual behavior is “natural.” It does not at all follow that homosexuality is immoral and therefore should be banned from society. More trivially, reading New York Times columns on a computer screen as I did this morning certainly does not qualify as “natural” behavior (and arguably does nothing to increase my chances of survival and reproduction), but I doubt Brooks would argue that it is therefore wrong.
The point is not that science has nothing to tell us of interest about morality. On the contrary, cognitive science is discovering how human beings make moral decisions and evolutionary biology is unraveling the long and complex history of how we came to develop a moral sense of right and wrong to begin with. This is important stuff, and philosophers would be ill advised to ignore it while developing their own theories. But it is an invaluable aspect of being human that we don’t rely just on instincts, we try to reason things through and talk to each other to see if we can reach a compromise on complex issues about which we disagree. Brooks concludes his column by chastising scientists for having their own limits, often forgetting that “most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.” Kant (a philosopher) would have approved.
Brooks tells us that according to cognitive scientists “moral thinking is like aesthetics” and invites his readers to consider an analogy with food. We do not engage in much rational thinking to decide whether we like a dish or not, we simply have — almost literally — a gut reaction to it. Similarly with moral “intuitions,” where people “feel” whether something is right or wrong and act accordingly. So much for two and a half millennia of philosophical thinking, how could Socrates not realize such a simple truth? It apparently didn’t occur to Brooks that perhaps philosophy started out as a reaction to the then prevalent reliance on gut feelings in matters of ethics, and to the violence and injustice that it was bringing to the human lot.
The problem, Brooks continues, is that philosophy ignores science, and in particular Darwin. Evolutionary biology has begun to show how emotions, as well as reason itself, evolved over time, largely to maximize the individual’s survival in a challenging environment (I say largely because evolution is also characterized by contingent events, like meteors striking the planet and wiping out most life forms regardless of how well adapted to their environment they happened to be at the moment of the impact). Moreover, human beings, like some other species, evolved in a situation where a great part of their environment was defined by their social relations, which means that biologists expect a mixture of selfishness and cooperation to have resulted from the continuous shaping of behavior by natural selection.
There are so many problems with this view that I can hardly do it justice here. Let us start with the evolutionary view of morality. I am an evolutionary biologist, and I have no problem with a naturalistic understanding of the roots of moral behavior. But Brooks is happy that the evolutionary view “entails a warmer view of human nature,” because cooperation among individuals is one of its results. However, biology predicts cooperation and other niceties to evolve within groups, not among groups, because different groups are typically in competition with each other. Which means that a natural instinct to help members of your group (good) also comes with an equally natural instinct to slaughter members of other groups (presumably, not so good).
Let us consider further Brooks’ praise for moral intuitions. It is certainly true that science is demonstrating that humans, and likely other primates, have a strong innate sense of right and wrong. Yet, moral intuitions — just like any kind of intuition — can easily lead us astray. Many conservative Christians, for instance, have a strong moral intuition that homosexual relations are evil and should be forbidden by law. They report having precisely the same kind of instinctual revulsion that we experience for poisonous food. The difference is that a good moral philosopher can explain why such moral intuition is, in fact, wrong: it violates other people’s rights to associate as they please while not harming anyone else. That right cost us thousand of years of cultural evolution, as well as countless deaths, to achieve and defend. Do we really wish to part with it on the strength of a bad analogy?
Brooks himself seems to vacillate on this, as he states that “there are times, often the most important moments in our lives, when in fact we do use reason to override moral intuitions.” Ah, and when we do — and remember that these are often “the most important moments in our lives,” where do we turn to in order to figure out whether something is right or wrong? May I suggest a good philosopher, perhaps?
What Brooks flagrantly commits is something known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was first discussed by the above mentioned David Hume. Hume famously said that one cannot seamlessly go from matters of fact (what is) to issues of value (what ought to be) because the first does not entail the second. It is a fact that most people feel or behave heterosexually, i.e. heterosexual behavior is “natural.” It does not at all follow that homosexuality is immoral and therefore should be banned from society. More trivially, reading New York Times columns on a computer screen as I did this morning certainly does not qualify as “natural” behavior (and arguably does nothing to increase my chances of survival and reproduction), but I doubt Brooks would argue that it is therefore wrong.
The point is not that science has nothing to tell us of interest about morality. On the contrary, cognitive science is discovering how human beings make moral decisions and evolutionary biology is unraveling the long and complex history of how we came to develop a moral sense of right and wrong to begin with. This is important stuff, and philosophers would be ill advised to ignore it while developing their own theories. But it is an invaluable aspect of being human that we don’t rely just on instincts, we try to reason things through and talk to each other to see if we can reach a compromise on complex issues about which we disagree. Brooks concludes his column by chastising scientists for having their own limits, often forgetting that “most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.” Kant (a philosopher) would have approved.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Epigenetic what?
The other day I posted on my FaceBook profile that I better hurry up to finish my presentation on epigenetic inheritance. One of my friends commented: “I have no idea what that means, but good luck to you!” Ironically, that is, in part, the point of my presentation: understanding what it all means. Let me explain.
I am in Durham, NC, at the National Center for Evolutionary Synthesis, where — together with two former postdocs of mine — Christina Richards (soon at the University of South Florida) and Oliver Bossdorf (now at the University of Bern), I am running a brainstorming workshop on the meaning and potential importance of epigenetic inheritance.
Epigenetics is an old word, which traces back to Aristotle, and has a long and convoluted history in biology. Today it refers to a panoply of molecular phenomena ranging from methylation patterns of DNA sequences to prions, from so-called “interference RNA” to the tridimensional arrangement in the cell nucleus of a particular class of proteins called histones, which closely bond to and stabilize DNA. What all these things have in common is that in one way or the other they help direct the development of living organisms, turning certain genes on or off in particular cell lineages, and responding to signals from the external environment. The “epi-” in epigenetics stands for a general class of phenomena “beyond” the genes.
But why, you may ask, is an evolutionary biologist interested in epigenetics? Because a subset of epigenetic effects turns out to be heritable across generations. This means that there is something else other than classical genes (i.e., sequences of DNA) that both carries information and is passed from one generation to the next. This is big news for biologists (though the suspicion had been around for a while), because it suddenly broadens and complicates — possibly dramatically — our concept of inheritance, with a wide range of consequences for how we understand evolution. After all, the natural variation among organisms so crucial for natural selection to work had been assumed until recently to originate only from changes in gene sequences. Depending on how much epigenetic inheritance there turns out to be in the living world, the job of biologists will become much more complicated and interesting at the same time (biologists, by nature, like messy stuff, unlike, say, physicists, who always look for simple solutions to simple questions — oh boy, am I going to get in trouble for this one!).
What we are discussing here at Durham, among other things, is precisely how to find out whether epigenetic inheritance is a negligible curiosity or a widespread phenomenon and, if the latter, what consequences it might have for the way we look at evolution, genetics and development. The consensus answer that is already emerging (both from this workshop and from the recent literature) is that epigenetic inheritance as a whole is no fluke, but that different types of heritable epigenetic effects range all the way from very rare (e.g., structural inheritance of cell-surface properties, probably confined to some unicellular organisms) to ubiquitous (e.g., DNA methylation and RNA interference), with others being common in some groups of organisms but absent or rare in others (e.g., a phenomenon called “paramutation,” found in some species of plants).
Skeptics of epigenetic inheritance (of which there are a good number among professional biologists) point out that the empirical evidence is scarce and that the very concept of epigenesis is rather fuzzy. The first objection is becoming less and less tenable. One of the participants to our workshop, Eva Jablonka of Tel-Aviv University, has a huge review paper in press in the Quarterly Review of Biology, in which she details hundreds of known and published examples; and if some of the talks I’ve heard here so far are any indication, there will be much more hard data coming out soon.
As for conceptual fuzziness, my response during the introductory talk I gave at the workshop is that — contrary to what most biologists would acknowledge — the concept of gene itself is not exactly crystal clear either. This is not because geneticists don’t know what they are talking about, but because there are several legitimate uses of the word “gene” that can be deployed in different contexts, depending on one’s research agenda. And some of these uses are not entirely compatible either, and certainly not equivalent to each other.
Consider, for instance, the fact that some biologists refer to genes as whatever has causal effects on the formation of phenotypes and happens to be heritable. Well, by that definition both classical DNA-based “genes” and a variety of epigenetic phenomena qualify! In other cases, genes are defined simply as sequences of DNA that code for a particular protein. That not only excludes epigenetic effects, but also large swaths of DNA sequences that regulate development even though they do not produce proteins. You see what I mean?
Epigenetics is at the threshold of becoming an established discipline in the biological sciences, with implications for genetics, developmental biology, evolution and even medicine (many epigenetic effects are causally involved in a variety of diseases). P.B. and J.S. Medawar, in their classic Aristotle to Zoos (1983) famously said that “genetics proposes, epigenetics disposes,” meaning that the whole of epigenetic processes is what allows genes to produce phenotypes. If that is the case, and I don’t see any good reason to doubt it, epigenetics is poised to become a central discipline in 21st century biology.
I am in Durham, NC, at the National Center for Evolutionary Synthesis, where — together with two former postdocs of mine — Christina Richards (soon at the University of South Florida) and Oliver Bossdorf (now at the University of Bern), I am running a brainstorming workshop on the meaning and potential importance of epigenetic inheritance.
Epigenetics is an old word, which traces back to Aristotle, and has a long and convoluted history in biology. Today it refers to a panoply of molecular phenomena ranging from methylation patterns of DNA sequences to prions, from so-called “interference RNA” to the tridimensional arrangement in the cell nucleus of a particular class of proteins called histones, which closely bond to and stabilize DNA. What all these things have in common is that in one way or the other they help direct the development of living organisms, turning certain genes on or off in particular cell lineages, and responding to signals from the external environment. The “epi-” in epigenetics stands for a general class of phenomena “beyond” the genes.
But why, you may ask, is an evolutionary biologist interested in epigenetics? Because a subset of epigenetic effects turns out to be heritable across generations. This means that there is something else other than classical genes (i.e., sequences of DNA) that both carries information and is passed from one generation to the next. This is big news for biologists (though the suspicion had been around for a while), because it suddenly broadens and complicates — possibly dramatically — our concept of inheritance, with a wide range of consequences for how we understand evolution. After all, the natural variation among organisms so crucial for natural selection to work had been assumed until recently to originate only from changes in gene sequences. Depending on how much epigenetic inheritance there turns out to be in the living world, the job of biologists will become much more complicated and interesting at the same time (biologists, by nature, like messy stuff, unlike, say, physicists, who always look for simple solutions to simple questions — oh boy, am I going to get in trouble for this one!).
What we are discussing here at Durham, among other things, is precisely how to find out whether epigenetic inheritance is a negligible curiosity or a widespread phenomenon and, if the latter, what consequences it might have for the way we look at evolution, genetics and development. The consensus answer that is already emerging (both from this workshop and from the recent literature) is that epigenetic inheritance as a whole is no fluke, but that different types of heritable epigenetic effects range all the way from very rare (e.g., structural inheritance of cell-surface properties, probably confined to some unicellular organisms) to ubiquitous (e.g., DNA methylation and RNA interference), with others being common in some groups of organisms but absent or rare in others (e.g., a phenomenon called “paramutation,” found in some species of plants).
Skeptics of epigenetic inheritance (of which there are a good number among professional biologists) point out that the empirical evidence is scarce and that the very concept of epigenesis is rather fuzzy. The first objection is becoming less and less tenable. One of the participants to our workshop, Eva Jablonka of Tel-Aviv University, has a huge review paper in press in the Quarterly Review of Biology, in which she details hundreds of known and published examples; and if some of the talks I’ve heard here so far are any indication, there will be much more hard data coming out soon.
As for conceptual fuzziness, my response during the introductory talk I gave at the workshop is that — contrary to what most biologists would acknowledge — the concept of gene itself is not exactly crystal clear either. This is not because geneticists don’t know what they are talking about, but because there are several legitimate uses of the word “gene” that can be deployed in different contexts, depending on one’s research agenda. And some of these uses are not entirely compatible either, and certainly not equivalent to each other.
Consider, for instance, the fact that some biologists refer to genes as whatever has causal effects on the formation of phenotypes and happens to be heritable. Well, by that definition both classical DNA-based “genes” and a variety of epigenetic phenomena qualify! In other cases, genes are defined simply as sequences of DNA that code for a particular protein. That not only excludes epigenetic effects, but also large swaths of DNA sequences that regulate development even though they do not produce proteins. You see what I mean?
Epigenetics is at the threshold of becoming an established discipline in the biological sciences, with implications for genetics, developmental biology, evolution and even medicine (many epigenetic effects are causally involved in a variety of diseases). P.B. and J.S. Medawar, in their classic Aristotle to Zoos (1983) famously said that “genetics proposes, epigenetics disposes,” meaning that the whole of epigenetic processes is what allows genes to produce phenotypes. If that is the case, and I don’t see any good reason to doubt it, epigenetics is poised to become a central discipline in 21st century biology.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)