Posted on 10/28/2006 3:22:14 PM PDT by betty boop
Moral conservatives were shocked to read a thinly veiled defense of infanticide in the New York Times a few years ago by MIT [now of Harvard] professor Steven Pinker. But they would be even more disturbed if they saw Pinker’s justification for his views in a book that appeared about the same time.
In How the Mind Works, Pinker argues that the fundamental premise of ethics has been disproved by science. “Ethical theory,” he writes, “requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused.” Yet, “the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events.”
In other words, moral reasoning assumes the existence of things that science tells us are unreal. Pinker tries to retain some validity for ethics nonetheless by offering a “double truth” theory: “A human being,” he says, “is simultaneously a machine and a sentient agent, depending on the purposes of the discussion.”
It’s astonishing that anyone, especially an MIT professor, would be capable of sustaining two such contradictory ideas. But in fact, it is quite common, says Phillip Johnson in The Wedge of Truth. Since the Enlightenment, knowledge has split into two separate and often contradictory spheres: “facts” (science) versus “values” (ethics, religion, the humanities).
The trouble with this division is that eventually one side comes to dominate. This is the key to understanding why America is embroiled in a culture clash today, Johnson argues — and why moral and religious conservatives are losing. The direction in intellectual history since the Enlightenment has been to grant science the authority to pronounce what is real, true, objective, and rational, while relegating ethics and religion to the realm of subjective opinion and nonrational experience.
Once this definition of knowledge is conceded, then any position that appears to be backed by science will ultimately triumph in the public square over any position that appears based on ethics or religion. The details of the particular debate do not matter. For, in principle, we do not enact into public policy and we do not teach in the public schools views based private opinion or tribal prejudice.
Johnson gives a rich description of how the fact/value dichotomy operates. Its origin is generally traced to Descartes, who proposed a sharp dualism between matter and mind. It was not long before the realm of matter came to be seen as more certain, more objective, than the realm of mind. The subject matter of physics is indeed much simpler than metaphysics, and hence yields far wider agreement. This was mistakenly taken to mean that physics is objective while metaphysics is subjective. The result was the rise of scientism and positivism — philosophies that accord naturalistic science a monopoly on knowledge and consign all else to mere private belief and fantasy.
Today, Johnson writes, “the dominance of the scientific naturalist definition of knowledge eventually ensures that no independent source of knowledge will be recognized.”
Darwin, Buddha, Jesus, Fairies
Yet, depending on how scientists judge the public’s mood, they are more or less blunt about this epistemological imperialism. When feeling secure in their role as the cultural priesthood, they insist that naturalistic science has completely discredited the claims of religion. Tufts philosopher Daniel Dennett, in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, says Darwinian evolution is “a universal acid” that dissolves all traditional religious and moral beliefs. He suggests that traditional churches be relegated to “cultural zoos” for the amusement of onlookers.
I witnessed the same attitude at a conference last April at Baylor University: Nobel prize-winner Steven Weinberg lumped together all spiritual teachings, whether of Buddha or Jesus, as talk about “fairies.” A few months earlier he had told the Freedom From Religion Association, “I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive to religious belief, and I’m all for that.” If science helps bring about the end of religion, he concluded, “it would be the most important contribution science could make.”
Using a sports metaphor, Johnson calls these outspoken scientists “the offensive platoon,” brought out as needed to “invok[e] the authority of science to silence any theistic protest.” At other times, however, when the public shows signs of restlessness at this imposition of naturalistic philosophy under the guise of science, “the defensive platoon takes the field. That is when we read spin-doctored reassurances that many scientists are religious (in some sense) . . . and that science and religion are separate realms which should never be mixed.”
But separate-but-equal in principle invariably means unequal in practice. For example, a report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) says, “whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.” But a survey of NAS members by Larry Witham and Edward Larson in Scientific American found that 90% of scientists don’t believe in a supernatural God. Witham and Larson conclude: “The irony is remarkable: a group of specialists who are nearly all unbelievers — and who believe that science compels such a conclusion — told the public that ‘science is neutral’ on the God question.”
Or perhaps worse than an irony, Johnson comments; it may be a “noble lie” that the intellectual priesthood tells to the common people to conceal their own nihilism.
Keep the Public In the Dark
Similarly, Harvard’s Stephen J. Gould proposes a peacemaking formula he calls NOMA (“non-overlapping magisteria”), granting science and religion each its own distinct authority. This sounds fair enough — but it all depends on where one draws the line. Consider Gould’s assessment of the 1996 statement by John Paul II, in which the pope tentatively supported evolution while emphatically rejecting any theories that “consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter.”
How did Gould treat this affirmation of the reality of the spiritual realm? He condescendingly granted that such a quaint notion might have some “metaphorical value,” but added that he privately suspected it to be “no more than a sop to our fears, a device for maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature.”
In other words, Gould reduced religion to mere emotion at best — at worst, to the sin of speciesism. This was a bit much even for John Haught of Georgetown University, himself an ardent evolutionist: He complained that Gould “never concedes the slightest cognitive status to religion” — that for Gould religion merely “paints a coat of ‘value’ over the otherwise valueless ‘facts’ described by science.”
Precisely. For the modern Darwinist, Johnson explains, the only role left for the theologian “is to put a theistic spin on the story provided by materialism.” Theology does not provide an independent source of knowledge; all it can do is “borrow knowledge to put a subjective interpretation on it.”
Clearly, the function of the defensive platoon is merely to keep religious folk content with their subordinate status. Darwinists understand that it is sometimes more effective not to press the logic of the fact/value split to its unpalatable conclusions too adamantly, lest the public catch on and raise a protest. Instead of arguing that religion is false, by relegating it to the “value” realm, they keep the question of true and false off the table altogether. As Johnson says, religion is consigned “to the private sphere, where illusory beliefs are acceptable ‘if they work for you.’”
Thus the fact/value split “allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them that science does not rule out ‘religious belief’ (so long as it does not pretend to be knowledge).”
Once this division is accepted in principle however, Johnson warns, the philosophical naturalists have won. “Whenever the ‘separate realms’ logic surfaces, you can be sure that the wording implies that there is a ruling realm (founded on reality) and a subordinate realm (founded on illusions which must be retained for the time being).” Hence, “the formula allows the ruling realm to expand its territory at will.”
Epistemological Imperialism
The expansion of the “fact” realm into theology can be traced in the work of scientists such as Harvard’s E.O. Wilson, who seeks to explain religion itself as a product of evolution. Religion is merely an idea that appears in the human mind when the nervous system has evolved to a certain level of complexity.
In Consilience, Wilson says religion evolved because belief in God gave early humans an edge in the struggle for survival. Today, he says, we must abandon traditional religions and develop a new unifying myth based squarely on evolution — a religion that deifies the process itself, where no teaching, no doctrine, is true in any final sense because all ideas evolve over time.
A similar expansion can be traced in ethics, where sociobiology and evolutionary psychology now presume to answer moral questions. In the notorious New York Times article mentioned above, Pinker argues that since infanticide is widespread in human cultures, it must be a product of evolution. As he puts it, the “emotional circuitry of mothers has evolved” to include a “capacity for neonaticide.” It is simply part of our “biological design.”
Accept this logic, Johnson warns, and you will be pressed to the conclusion that killing off babies is not a moral horror but a morally neutral act, a genetically encoded evolutionary adaptation, like wings or claws.
Pinker does not draw this conclusion — yet. But when the time seems ripe to overthrow the traditional moral view, Johnson predicts, doctrinaire naturalists “will complete the logic by observing that the moral sphere is as empty as the religious realm,” and therefore has no power to stand against the conclusions of “science.”
Shortly after Johnson finished his book, his forewarnings were confirmed by the appearance of a book titled The Natural History of Rape, which argued that, biologically speaking, rape is not a pathology; instead, it is an evolutionary strategy for maximizing reproductive success: In other words, if candy and flowers don’t do the trick, some men may resort to coercion to fulfill the reproductive imperative. The book calls rape “a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage,” akin to “the leopard’s spots and the giraffe’s elongated neck.”
The book roused sharp controversy, but as one of the authors, Randy Thornhill, said on National Public Radio, the logic is inescapable: Since evolution is true, it must be true, he said, that “every feature of every living thing, including human beings, has an underlying evolutionary background. That’s not a debatable matter.” Every behavior that exists today must confer some evolutionary advantage; otherwise, it would not have been preserved by natural selection.
The “fact” realm has even expanded into the philosophy of mind, where consistent Darwinists tell us there is no single, central “self,” residing somehow within the body, that makes decisions, holds opinions, loves and hates. Instead, in the currently popular “computational” theory, the mind is a set of computers that solve specific problems forwarded by the senses. The notion of a unified self is an illusion, Pinker says — an illusion selected by evolution only because our body needs to be able to go one direction at a time.
Of course, computers operate without consciousness, so the question arises why we are conscious beings. Some neuroscientists conclude that we aren’t — that consciousness too is an illusion. Philosopher Paul Churchland says mental states do not exist, and suggests that we replace language about beliefs and desires with statements about the nervous system’s physical mechanisms — the activation of neurons and so on.
Piling example upon example, Johnson illustrates the epistemological imperialism of the “fact” sphere. This explains why moral and religious conservatives seem to have little effect in the public square: Their message is filtered through a fact/value grid that reduces it to an expression of mere emotional attachment and tribal prejudice. To turn the tide of the culture war, conservatives must challenge this definition of knowledge, and make the case that religion and morality are genuine sources of knowledge. We must “assert the existence of such a cognitive territory,” Johnson writes, “and be prepared to defend it. ” [Emphasis added.]
Of course, others have offered philosophical arguments to undercut the fact/value dichotomy, notably Michael Polanyi and Leo Strauss. What makes Johnson’s approach unique is that he takes the battle into science itself. He proposes that Darwinian evolution itself can and should be critiqued, since it functions as the crucial scientific support for philosophical naturalism. For if nature alone can produce everything that exists, then we must accept the reductionist conclusions described above. If, to take the last example, the mind is a product of material processes at its origin, then we must concede that it consists of nothing more than material processes — that our thoughts are reducible to the firing of neurons.
How Information Changes Everything
In science itself, the cutting-edge issue is information, Johnson says. Any text, whether a book or the DNA code, requires a complex, nonrepeating arrangement of letters. Can this kind of order be produced by chance or law? The answer, he argues, is no. Chance produces randomness, while physical law produces simple, repetitive order (like using a macro on your computer to print a phrase over and over). The only cause of complex, nonrepeating, specified order is an intelligent agent. [Emphasis added.]
Ordinary laboratory research implicitly assumes the reality of intelligent design, Johnson notes. Biologists talk of “molecular machines” and evaluate their “engineering design.” They conduct experiments that are described as “reverse engineering” to determine what functions biological structures perform. They talk about “libraries” of genetic information stored in DNA, and about how RNA “translates” the four-letter language of the nucleotides into the 20-letter language of proteins.
All this implies that information is real — and information in turn implies the existence of a mind, a personal agent, capable of intention and choice. Thus purposes and ends [e.g., formal and final causes, to use the Aristotelian language] are real and objective, and the “value” realm is restored to the status of genuine knowledge.
Johnson only hints at what this would imply for a revival of traditional theology and ethics. But he suggests that it would begin with the many-layered verse in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word,” the Logos — reason, intelligence, information. “These simple words make a fundamental statement that is directly contradictory to the corresponding starting point of scientific materialism,” Johnson writes, and they open the door to a much richer definition of knowledge and of reason itself.
This conclusion is certainly suggestive, though not well developed. Johnson’s greatest accomplishment is to give a deft analysis of the imperialism of the “fact” sphere. Unfortunately, he barely touches on the opposite dynamic — the incursion of the “value” sphere into the “fact” realm — which is well advanced in many fields. It is called postmodernism, and it reduces all knowledge claims to social constructions at best, to power plays at worst. Johnson devotes a chapter to the impact of postmodernism on the humanities, but it is the thinnest chapter in the book, and it is clear that his greatest concern is with the scientific fields where the older Enlightenment rationalism still reigns.
For the rationalist, Johnson is no doubt correct that the only approach that carries weight is a scientific one. Only a demonstration that the scientific data itself has theistic implications bridges the sphere of objective, public, verifiable knowledge. Johnson includes clear and readable discussions of standard anti-Darwinian arguments. (There has long been skepticism within the scientific community about the enormous extrapolation from minor variations within living things to explain the origin of living things.) He also gives a deliciously witty account of the Kansas controversy.
The strength of the book, however, is to show the wide-ranging implications of intelligent design theory in other fields, and to trace its relevance for nonscientists — indeed, for all who are concerned about preserving a free and humane society.
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This data file may be reproduced in its entirety for non-commercial use. A return link to the Access Research Network web site would be appreciated.
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Hayek points out that modern science fought against the old analogies to replace them with relations that go beyond mere appearances.
Take the stars, for example. They make patterns easily discernible to a child, but what is that to science? A real star for science is found in relations that are not sensuous but mathematical. Superceding the classification based on the senses, the new method of the natural sciences claimed greater precision and universal consent in their focus on quantitative relations. The question will be whether the definition of science is complete once it has thoroughly eclipsed the qualitative relations. In other words, must the prejudice of the old analogies against science become the prejudice of science against the traditional analogies in order to be science?
Hayek writes,
Nor is Science as such interested in the relation of man to things, in the way in which man's existing view of the world leads him to act. . . When the scientist stresses that he tries to study things independently of what men think or do about them. The views people hold about the external world are to him always a stage to be overcome.
You have suggested a sort of detente through compatibility or complementariness. What appears contradictory should not be considered exclusive if we allow the point of view. The the strictures of the logical mode of thought--especially the principle of non-contradiction--may block us from considering the integrated, but disparate categories or levels of phenomena which in and of themselves still exhibit analogical relations.
Suggesting a complementariness is but the beginning of a long and arduous task toward understanding it. You know how the Greeks pushed to find the underlying principle. I am willing to pony up my cautionary conjecture. The nature of the kinds of compatibility is likely to be multitudinous.
I'll add a second in the form of a question. Our noetic ability to acknowledge disparate relations as being simultaneous--can that faculty be mistaken as the principle of complementariness? I think an answer to that is important, especially when we have had Logos to be a running candidate.
Mathematics enters into knowledge of the stars very early. Primitive societies needed to understand the seasons and to know when to plant and when to harvest. Therefore you early develop a four-quarter calendar, with solstices and equinoxes.
Astronomy grows out of astrology. Astrologers needed mathetmatics to calculate stellar and planetary affects. In the Renaissance, Tycho Brahe was an astrologer, as I recall, and developed the math that led to the theory of eliptical orbits in his efforts to pin down astrological calculations more accurately.
Modern astronomers still use the constellations for reference, as well as measurements in degrees, because it makes it easier to locate something with the human eye. So the change from viewing stars and planets as gods or as celestial objects set in crystaline spheres inhabited by spiritual beings to objects made of the modern elements moving by gravity was not a sudden switch but something gradual.
As C. S. Lewis often notes, and plays with in his trilogy beginning with Out of the Silent Planet, the universe changed from something filled with light, life, and spirit into something dark, empty, and lifeless, but a good part of the change is more a matter of attitude than of scientific advancement.
In its origins, science was intimately connected with magic, because both are concerned not only with knowledge, but with a desire for power and control over nature and other people. Skeptical modern scientists tend to confuse science with religion, thinking both are superstitious. But religion is the desire to do what God wants and to do right toward others; magic is the desire to displace God and gain power for oneself. In that regard, magic and superstition are closer to science than to true religion.
P.S., I don't have Hayek here in the house, but I suspect he has more of the traditional modern view of what analogy means. But I suspect that analogy can be much deeper and truer than what we think it was.
Actually, McInerny argues that when Thomas Cardinal Cajetan, the first great Thomist interpeter, explained what Aquinas meant by analogy, he got it wrong, and for that reason it tended to be misunderstood from that point on. Quite a large claim to make, but I think McInerny makes a convincing case, and it's his third book or so on Aquinas.
As McInerny puts it, with his detective-story style interrupting his philosophical style, “[E]tiam Homerus dormitat and when Cajetan nodded, his head hit the table” (p. ix). That's why I would recommend his book, because I think he rescues analogy from its weaker senses.
Yes, there are kinds. Can you share?
Why is it you have to pray that God will change my heart?
Just give me facts, and if they are convincing facts, I will change my mind.
If you have to reach out to God to change my heart and mind, it tells me that you don't have much of an argument.
Science is based on the physical, repeatable, and inductive, it is not Philisophical as you guys are attempting to claim.
If you feel the need to believe that God created the universe, then please do so. Just because you feel this way, does not make it necassary for science to make itself useless so that you will be philisophically comfortable with it.
Not sure exactly what you mean, but I'll give it a quick effort.
I don't seem to be able to put my finger on McInterny's book at the moment, which is pretty hard to summarize anyway (that quotation above is from a review I once wrote of it), but he moves toward the view that analogy is the best way to understand the relation between God and the creation, or eternity and time, or the eternal forms and their phenomenal shadows (probably not a very accurate way of putting it).
To take an instance, can you say that "God is good," using the word "good" in any human sense? God is completely other, and therefore human goodness really is not properly descriptive of Him. But you can't say that "God is not good" either, nor does it make much sense to say that "God is super good." Perhaps it is better to say that God is real goodness, and that whatever goodness we see in this world is a pale shadow or analogy of that divine goodness. So God is not like our goodness, but our goodness is like God.
Similarly, one could ask, what is truth. The Thomistic answer, following Aristotle, is that truth is that which is most real, that which IS. But that which is most real is God. "I AM that I AM." So, if science is the pursuit of truth, of that which is, rather than something else, then how can science leave God out of the equation, if He is the most real of all? Maritain makes a good case that Thomas went a step further than Aristotle in defining the nature of reality as a kind of verb, to be.
The relation of the created world to God, Who is ultimate Truth or Reality, is analogical.
I'm afraid that's a very brief and rough account of some ideas that require a book full of philosophical development to tease out, and even that is only a start.
Thanks. I asked because you attributed something about a modern view to Hayek and I wanted to know what you recognized as different.
The mind of the flesh is hostile against God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.Aquinas put it this way:
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.If I present a case that provides a over welling preponderance of evidence supporting intelligent design, it is impossible for you to understand until your presuppositions are changed first. This is not because you are intellectually stupid--in fact I believe just the opposite, I believe that you have a cunning wit and are very intelligent and have a great deal of respect for you as you were created in the image of God. However, the perspective of the heart is fundamental to what the observer can see and is capable of understanding.
Sorry, but DNA evidence is rather convincing, and it is repeatable.
Fossil evidence, is rather convincing, and it is also repeatable, because the fact is, that if you find a fossil in a certain strata, most likely, you will find another of the same sort, and age in that same strata.
Abiogenesis is not evolution, it is not even a theory at this point, it is a convenient noun for a possible theory of the future, that explains how life came from nonlife, and do not give me Pasteur, you should know better, it is a logical fallacy to use such a silly argument when it comes o abiogenesis. Just because we don't know how scientifically yet, does not mean that it is impossible.
If we went to a completely faith based society, we would be living in grass huts, and hunting and gathering, because science in such a society would be useless.
Science is the how, religion is the why, if you feel that religion also answers the how, then feel free, but get off your computer, because that evil science created that machine you are sitting at.
If someone had looked at electricity and said, well, God did it, we would still be looking at the pretty lightning, and not have a clue how to create lightbulbs, heater elements etc.
Science has brought many things, due to the fact that it is physical, and is limited to the physical word.
As some people say, "god did it", is an excuse in science, and to use such an excuse makes science useless.
Evolution is one of the most rock solid scientific theories there is, and you can whine about how it is impossible to recreate history, but, history is not all that supports it.
The amount of evidence that supports the Theory of Evolution would take literally Terrabytes of space on a computer, and would take up a library the size of the capitol building to hold it all.
To just brush off that much evidence as a marxist plot, or as unscientific, is not only foolish, it's just plain ridiculous. It is ignoring the reality, because your faith won't allow you to deal with the reality.
I am a realist, science, is science, religion is religion, and they are 2 separate entities that have nothing to do with the other.
BTW, ust because I understand that evolution is the most rock soild scientific theories there is, does not make me areligious.
I have religion, it just isn't your religion, and my religion sure as heck is not scientific nor science.
Oh. I didn't mean that Hayek favored a modern view, but that he probably shared the somewhat diminished view of analogy assumed by just about everyone this side of the middle ages, even by those sympathetic to the earlier worldviews. I grew up with analogy as rhetorical theory and poetic method, and never thought of it in real philosophical terms until much later, even after having read fairly extensively in earlier literatures and having had a pretty good exposure to ancient thought in school and college.
Hold that thought, Cicero, because we'll be returning to it shortly.
Meanwhile, attitude and atmospherics seem to be what's driving the public discourse these days. (Forget reason.) And it is a very thin gruel.... One cannot be nourished from it.
Thank you for another beautiful essay post!
Oh what a tantalizing question, cornelis! I'm all over it, like flies on honey. Please give me the time I need to gather my sources and reflect, so as to make an articulate reply. At the very least, this is a question I need to "sleep on."
Be speaking with you soon. Thank you so very much for writing!
"The rise of freedom in the west owed something to liberal philosophy, but its solid foundations were laid by Christianity over the course of the middle ages."
And what follows your excellent opening quoted above is a summation of the ethics involved which is worthy of the men who struggled with those issues. Pity we don't see closer attention paid to them today. Thanks for your contribution; I won't remark on what you say because I don't see where I could improve it any.
And vive la difference! As it plays out in the human soul and, beyond that, into human communities, I mean.
Thank you for the insight, Cicero. Be speaking with you again soon.
Sounds exactly right to me, Cicero!
Thank you for another beautiful essay/post!
"This architect contrived a new method for building houses by starting at the roof and working down and establishing a foundation at the end of the project. The architect pointed out that among the obvious advantages of this method is that once the roof was in place the workers could toil in the shade of the hot sun and at other times be protected from rain and snow. Thus, inclement weather would not delay the progress of the construction. The Grand Academy of Lagado had approved this proposal by peer review, but the architect had not yet put it into practice at the time of Captain Gulliver's visit."
Don't you just love it??? :^)
Very appropriate passage to share here, thanks! I've never read Gulliver's Travels... sounds like a book to add to the "to-do" list... thanks betty boop!
What ignorance is this, Jaguarbhzrd? Specifically.
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