Destructive dilemma for Dawkins

Dawkins tells us he is a "good reductionist" (each time I hear this expression, I think of Glinda asking Dorothy "Are you good witch or a bad witch?"), and he takes science as helping to demonstrate this truth. On the other hand, he also agrees that ethical reasoning is a genuine form of human rationality, even though we can't derive our ethical principles from science.

I will show how his ethics and reductionism collide with each other. But before I do that let me caution that my criticism does not hinge upon human immortality or the existence of God: those are matters for another discussion. Even one who is agnostic about or hostile to those theses will find Dawkins unable to deliver himself from the horns of the following dilemma.

First let me set up the premise:

Ethical reasoning cannot take place unless you accept your identity through time, for there is no agency without identity. That is, we must use the word "I" and "you" and "we" to wish, deliberate, choose, and execute. You can claim all you want that there is no such thing as a self, as an I or you, but as soon as you try to reason about how to act, you will be quite convinced that you need to do something.

This leaves us with two alternatives: ethical thinking is either dualistic or delusional.

1. Dualistic: the "I" of practical reasoning is real. But since it cannot be measured or observed using the scientific method, there must be another, metaphysical sort of reality, one that transcends the gaze of the scientific method.

2. Delusional: there is no "I": it is a fiction, a delusion, an untruth, but an unavoidable one (and since we cannot live with materialism, it is existentially worthless).

In either case, Dawkins' take on reality is internally inconsistent.

Caveat: while this dilemma is unavoidable for Dawkins, it does not necessarily arise if you reject reductive materialism. This cavelat would be even more credible if I offered a cogent argument for an alternative understanding of how science and ethics are related. I intend to do that. For the moment, however, I will point out that even if you think that materialism and dualism are the only two options available, you will have two grant that this dilemma undercuts Dawkin's understanding of reality, as well as that of any reductive materialist.

Addendum: Massimo and Tim sent me clarifications, which I am posting below:

T: a quantum field one one hand and matter on the other are not mutually exclusive entities. Every particle is also a wave, whether or not the particle is matter or energy. In quantum field theory, where quantum mechanics is consistently merged with special relativity (but not general relativity), the "wave" gets extended to become a "field", but still everything, matter and energy, is a "field" fundamentally.

M: matter is a byproduct of the fields; as the universe expands and cools down, the fields "decay" in that particularsoth of thing we call matter. Both dark matter and regular "barionic" matter are basically made in this way, at different times immediately after the big-bang.

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others. But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and may eventually go out of existence. The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual. The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being. In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...

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