Richard Dawkins Writes About Human Responsibility In Light of Darwinian Evolution

EDGE -- World Question Center ^ | Richard Dawkins

[SirLinksalot]

Let's all stop beating Basil's car

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give "satisfaction' to the victims of the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as "atonement' for "sin'.

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me).

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

[FreedomProtector]

Thank you so much, FreedomProtector, for providing the details of Aquinas' arguments WRT to causation. He, of course, was a student of Aristotle (among other things).

The strength of Aquinas arguments WRT to causation was the reliance on Aristotle thought and Aristotelian logic. The reliance on Aristole to Aquinas writings as a whole was a weekness. Aquinas didn't expend much effort discrediting parts of Aristotelean thought which are invalid. In the years to follow, the teachings of Aristotle became elevated to that of scripture and orthodoxy. Although not writing something is not equivalent to cause, nor do I believe Aquinas elevated Arisotle to the level of scripture, this is one of the only criticisms of Aquinas which I believe has some validity.

thoughts?

[redgolum]

Most "scientists" don't really believe in science. To get to be a research scientist you have to follow the party line, which is one reason I became an engineer.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply!

To respond to your radioactive decay assertion, we'll need to clear up the difference between the terms randomness, unpredictability and pseudorandomness (unpredictability as the effect of a cause.) If you are game, let me know.

LaPlace actually threw a lot of fuel on the Deist (also strong determinist and predestination) fire by declaring God as an unnecessary hypothesis for the advancement of scientific knowledge. Newton did not hold that view - nor was that the intent of Liebnitz' questions "why does it exist" and "why does it exist this way and not some other way."

[A. Pole]

Does eternal life remain on this side of eternity?

Hard question. I will venture a tentative opinion.

Perhaps both. Since men are created as temporal physical beings and their individual nature is not going to be erased, then their life after death will retain some time aspect.

But because if saved they will contemplate the eternal Glory of God and share in His eternal Bliss and also because the human nature was united with the divine through the Incarnation, they will have link to Eternity as well.

Either way, I would rely on the words of Saint Paul who said: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." (1Cor:2:9) and "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1Cor:13:12)

[MaineVoter2002]

I don't get this whole debate

Me neither. He should have stuck to doing Family Feud

[Alamo-Girl]

What an outstanding essay-post, betty boop! Thank you!

Lastly, the machine analogy for living beings works superficially, but quickly falls apart on closer inspection. Two points here: (1) machines are fully subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but living systems (to be living) are able to work against it (at least during their lifetimes); and (2) living systems are able to alter their paths away from the paths predicted on the basis of initial conditions and the laws of physics. That is, they are not completely causally determined; but the same cannot be said of a machine. All it can do is execute its program.

Just because it needs to be repeated...

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your encouragements!

[RobRoy]

>>When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software. <<

Wow! I mean, WOW!

I guess it is true about "book learnin' vs. common sense.

Let me know when you get a computer endowed with a free will.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you all so much for this fascinating sidebar on the nature of time!

If I may, I'd like to add one distinction for your consideration - that is the difference between infinite time and timelessness.

It is roughly the same difference between zero and null.

God precedes "all that there is" both spiritual and physical (Col 1).

He is the existence which is ("I AM that I am") and is therefore uncaused and relevant to this discussion exists in not just zero dimensions, but no dimensions: no time, no space, no energy, no matter, no physical causation, no thing.

OTOH, infinite time is time without boundaries. It is thingly, dimensional.

We Christians usually speak of infinite time when we talk of eternity, but per Col 3:3 - we are actually alive in timelessness, with Christ in God the Father, even while yet in the flesh. That is the Spiritual leaning I have - the awareness I experience, my testimony on the matter.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your encouragements and for your excellent research above and for sharing your insights.

[MEGoody]

People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did.

That's justice. You murder another human being, you pay with your own.

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour.

I'm anxious to read the rest of this thread and see if any evols comment negatively about Dawkins attempt to blend his moral views with science.

[MEGoody]

To get to be a research scientist you have to follow the party line

Shhh! Evols get all upset when you point out that the scientific community is affected by politics.

[betty boop]

Aquinas didn't expend much effort discrediting parts of Aristotelean thought which are invalid. In the years to follow, the teachings of Aristotle became elevated to that of scripture and orthodoxy. Although not writing something is not equivalent to cause, nor do I believe Aquinas elevated Arisotle to the level of scripture, this is one of the only criticisms of Aquinas which I believe has some validity.

I've heard this criticism of Aquinas and the allegation that Aristotle had been elevated to the status of scripture and orthodoxy, FreedomProtector. I can agree with the first part; yet I can't say I've seen any evidence to support the second assertion. So much is "in the eye of the beholder," I gather.

Thank you for your wonderful contributions to this discussion!

[Zionist Conspirator]

But . . . but I thought that replacing G-d with Darwinian evolution would leave all our morality in place! What about all those atheist FReepers who have been crowing that society will still have to cage people like animals and fry them in the electric chair because "ve must have order"? I thought only a "religious fanatic" would connect G-d to morality!!! [/sarcasm]

I still say that Dawkins wouldn't be nearly as brazen with "indigenous pipples" and their quaint (and totally valid!), non-western worldviews. It's easy to push redneck American Protestants around, but that's because Dawkins and his ilk (including those here on FR) are cowards and bullies. But of course they know that already.

And btw, in the absence of G-d, "the truth" has no moral superiority whatsoever to falsehood, which means neither Darwinism nor scientism even justifies its own existence.

[betty boop]

But this is too quick a reply for a big topic.

Then I hope if you can find the leisure some time you'd consider fleshing out the topic for us. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[Busywhiskers]

If I understand the point of this gibberish, I suppose he is correct..IF..you accept his premise that man is skin sack of bio-chemicals that were configured into a system as the result of time and chance.

The problem with his silly analysis is that in a "scientific, mechanistic view" of man's being you cannot define anybody as a "faulty unit" as there is no objective basis for the definition. If, for example, I want to kill Richard Dawkins, drag his family off as slaves and take his stuff, he may view it as faulty behavior but evolutionary science would view it a just another survival strategy that I undertake because it was hard wired into my brain by my Viking ancestors.

[FreedomProtector]

Thanks. I thought you would have a thought on the matter. : )

[steve-b]

Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing?

I have no problem with regarding them as faulty units that need scrapping. Any useful parts can be harvested in the process.

[A. Pole]

I still say that Dawkins wouldn't be nearly as brazen with "indigenous pipples" and their quaint (and totally valid!), non-western worldviews. It's easy to push redneck American Protestants around, but that's because Dawkins and his ilk (including those here on FR) are cowards and bullies.

Hey, why would they want their heads to be chopped off?

[A. Pole]

If, for example, I want to kill Richard Dawkins, drag his family off as slaves and take his stuff, he may view it as faulty behavior but evolutionary science would view it a just another survival strategy that I undertake because it was hard wired into my brain by my Viking ancestors.

Well said :)