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.

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ]. Aquinas thus holds that it was not all death that entered the world through man's sin, but human death.

The Human Question

Search This Blog