The Catholic Church’s actual stance with regard to the scientific fact of the existence of the evolution of living orgamisms by random mutations followed by natural selection, contrary to popular interpretations, has never really been anything close to logically coherent and free from internal contradictions.
In his famous 1996 Papal letter, “Message on Evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences”, Pope John Paul II tried desperately to reconcile the scentific evidence of the evolution of all living organisms from a common ancestor with the anthropocentric “revelation” or dogma that man is somehow seperate, distinct from and above the rest of the animal kindom:
Revelation teaches us that [man] was created in the image and likeness of God. … if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God … Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. … With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological leap, one could say.
But the Pope went on to admit that the two positions were fundamentally irreconcilable:
However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the field of physics and chemistry?
The solution: meaningless obfuscation and sophistry.
Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seen irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being.
The “moment of transition to the spiritual” refers to the lengendary theological phenomenon of “ensoulment” which, in the case of ontogenetic questions like abortion and the fundamental rights of the morula and the the blastocyst takes place at conception, but with respect to phylogenetic questions like the status of species can occur, apparently, anywhere along a vast spectrum running from Australopithecus africanus to Homo habilis to Homo erecutus or Homo Sapiens.
But the arbitrary intervention of a supernatural power into the physical chain of cause and effect is a violation of the principle of the causal closure of the physical world. The problem is that the hypothesis of even one such possible intervention implies that the process of evolution itself is not nomologically necessary (i.e. it doensn’t occur as a result of unalterable physical and chemical laws univerally) and therefore is not scientific.
Well, this position was already deeply problematic for philosophers of science and evolutionary theorists, but did not necessarily carry with it the much more unacceptable practical implication that evolution was only to be regarded as a hypothesis among other competing explanatory hypotheses such as “intelligent design.”
Or, at least, it didn’t seem to. Now, we have this from an editorial by a German Cardinal in the New York Times of Thurday:
EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was “more than just a hypothesis,” defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance – or at least acquiescence – of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.
But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.
The first thing to notice here is the attempt to adversely label, and hence discredit, the whole of so-called neo-Darwinian theory (what is this shibboleth precisely? is he actually refering to the New Synthesis of the 1930’s which helped to put Darwin’s theory on an unassailable scientific footing by incorporating the matehmatical mechanism of Mendelian heredity or has it something to do with the discovery of genes, the struture of DNA and the eventual decoding of the genome) as a “dogma.” It is not a dogma. The fact of random variation and natural selection can be observed under a microscope as one generation of bacteria in culture is subjected to increasing amounts of a particular variety of antibiotic to the point where most of the organisms die off with the exception of a hardy few, perhaps one, who are capable of adapting to the new environment because of a random mutation in its genetic code. These mutations are the result of “errors” in the meiotic reproduction or copying of the DNA sequences of an organism from one generation to the next. These surviving specimens will then pass their genes on to the next generation of bateria who will them be subjected to a different variety of antibiotic specifically designed to knock them and their hardy gene out of the ball game and the process will repeat itself for many generations preceisly because the mutations are absolutely random and not pre-determined. If the process of mutation were deterministic in nature, then it would be fairly easy to identify which genes will mutate at what time and bacterial resistance to antibiotics would no longer be a problem. The process of natural selection is, on the other, perfectly deterministic.
Moreover, if the universe is to be consistently viewed as governed by divine pre-determinition even down to the microscopic level, it becomes extremely difficult to see how the Chruch can maintain it’s traditional belief in the existence of free will.
Second, notice the disingenuous claim that “neo-Darwinians” reject the idea of “design” in nature. Darwinians do not reject the [b]appearance of design [/b] as a consequence of the long and arduous process of natural selection. The probablity that an “eye” will spontaneously appear somewhere on earth is extremely low. But the probabality that a photo-sentive cell will appear is much higher. The probablity that the parts of the photo-sensitive cell will appear and aggregate themslves togther over a period of hundreds of thousands of years becomes very high indeed. “Design” results from the accumulation of these infinitesimal and random (in the sense of heads or tails in the tossing of a coin) but highly probable (50% in the case of the coin) developments over many generations.
What Darwinians do reject is [b]intelligent design [/b]. This is the idea that nature looks designed and ordered because someone or something must have planned it that way. But what is the probability that an enormously complex designer came into existence without any planning and designing of its own?
This is not proof againt the existence of god or gods, but it takes the idea of his necessity in the complex “design” of natural organisms out of the picture.
The rest of the article essentially consists in dogmatic assertions about the existence of God, borrwed mostly from the late John Paul II, and his fundamental role in the universe which seem designed to assimilate the position of the vast majority of modern evolutionary biologists to the denial of the existence of god. This strategy is designed to marginalize Darwininian evolution in the consciousness of the Catholic religious community by equating it with atheism and philosophical materialism. The consequence is to leave room for doubt about this “dangerous” hypothesis which rejests the key buzzword, mentioned about seven or eight times in the article, of creationist “design”.
He [Wojtyla] went on: “To all these indications of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which would thus refuse to think and to seek….
Note that in this quotation the word “finality” is a philosophical term synonymous with final cause, purpose or design. In comments at another general audience a year later, John Paul concludes, “It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity.”
Naturally the Chruch is opposed to “materialistic philosophies”. If it weren’t then it would have to reject the existence of God and accept atheism. But this has nothing to do with the fact of evolution as interpereted by modern science and philosophy.
In an unfortunate new twist on this old controversy, neo-Darwinists recently have sought to portray our new pope, Benedict XVI, as a satisfied evolutionist. They have quoted a sentence about common ancestry from a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission, pointed out that Benedict was at the time head of the commission, and concluded that the Catholic Church has no problem with the notion of “evolution” as used by mainstream biologists – that is, synonymous with neo-Darwinism.
Here, neo-Darwinism is finally defined and indentified with “mainstream biologists”. The new Pope, Benedeict XVI, is implicity dissociated from these horrid and terrifying “mainstream biologists”, a group of strawmen who all believe, ex hypothesi, that the universe is run by chance and that god cannot possibly play a role in its existence.
The commission’s document, however, reaffirms the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of (intelligent?) design in nature. Commenting on the widespread abuse of John Paul’s 1996 letter on evolution, the commission cautions that “the letter cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.”
Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of “chance and necessity” are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.
Decoding this last paragraph gives us some indication of where the CC is really heading:
At the beginning of the 21st century, faced with dangerous truths like the evolution of species by natural selection and intersting hypotheses such as the one about the exitence of multiple universes which do nothing more to threaten faith in the existence of god and supernatural forces than Copernicus’ theory that the earth orbited the sun, the Catholic Churh will again exploit the irrational fears of the scientifically illiterate by proclaiming that intelligent design is true and that all theories which contradict it are false and dangerous.
Even imputing a claim of physical continuity to modern evolutionary science is a misunderstanding, and not only because of the modern ‘punctuated equilibrium’ model of the evolution of traits. Complexity scientists can actually model and observe ’emergent’ properties, a sort of ‘whole is more than the sum of its parts’ phenomenon where systems cross some critical threshold and and as a result show large qualitative changes in response to only a small quantitative change. Some speculate that consciousness, or the soul, or whatever that thing there is, is just such a property. While real biologists are probably hesitant to do science on the soul, genius dilettantes like Stephan Wolfram and Roger Penrose do not hesitate, in their own ways, to put forth this hypothesis.
The bacteria example in interesting because it has been discovered that evolution and natural selection are not the only factors in observed antibiotic resistance. Bacteria can exchange tidbits fo useful DNA between species, thus spreading resistance to organisms whose forbears were never exposed to the antibiotic. They evolved a generalized mechanism acquiring useful genes without having to evolve them directly.
The claim of physical continuity was made by Pope John Paul II who confounded physical with ontological
continuity in the same exact paragraph. That’s a fine illustration of the absurdity of the Church’s casuistical convolutions of thought when it comes to these sorts of issues on the margins between philosophy and science.
Ontological continuity is surely a fundmantal part of evolutionary biology becasue, ntwithstanding the possibility of the phenomon of emergence (which is a highly controversial proposal in the philsophies of science and mind), evidence is constantly accumulating that such charateristics as consiousness, self-awareness, sophicticted emotional states and, even, things like propisitional attitutes and other “mental” states and events can be instantianited acroos species.
In principle, their is no limit to the kinds of material substances which may instantionate the exact same functional mental states of human organisms (the pehoenoemom is called “multiple realiziability” in the context of predomiant theories of token-token idenity theories in the phlopshy of mind).
In any case, to regard human orgaism as somehow “special” or teleogically “final” objetcives in some sense is to breakwith the princple that evolution is local adaptation to immdeiate surronding envriomental circumstamces.
To use SJ Gould’s famous example, if elefants (I’m using the language of species selection here soley for convenience) were to regrow a coat of fur over a period of twenty genrations (or somehting) of living in a new age and conseuqently return to a phycial condition remebling that of the wooly mamoth, they would certainly be better adapted (better abe to survive and reproduce) to the new circmstanece. Does that mean there is some grand cosmologisl sense in which they are “better” or “superior” or represent an “ontological discontnuity” with the rest of the animal kindom? Of course not!! Consciouness is simply an adaptation to the local enronviroment of our primitive pre-human ancestors. It came into existenece throuhg mutation and natural slection just liie every other “desirable” adaptive trait. There’s no need for emergence , ensoulment ot any other such extraordimay mechaasnims.
But that is exactly what is necessarywith respect to humans in order for for the CC to maintin its moral postion that human life is sacred from , e.g, chimpanee life is dispendable at any time beacue it has no soul or no consiousness. This is comltely arbirtary dogma, niether science nor philopshy sustains it.
With repsect to your obersavtion about bacteria, I absolutley agree. There are more mechanisms involved in evolution than soley and exceluviely mutation and natural selction, as was once beleived.
But that would take us into the question of whether the mechanisms at the bottom of things like “genetic drift” are random or sonmehow controlled by god. I would argue that they are random. But I can’t prove that.
But the fact that mutation and natural selction are involved at all is what I was trying to get at in oder to illutarte that these processes can be verified even in one’s own liftime.
Iìm not arguing to reduce eveything to natural slection. I doubt anyone does beleive that its quite that simple anymore.
My concern with Cardinal Schonborn’s NY Times editorial isn’t the content, which isn’t that far from the position they’ve had for years, as much as the “wink and nudge” given to the American fundamentalists by the Catholic Church that “under our new management, we Catholics are with you guys against liberalism in all its pernicious forms…”
In Catholic high school in the mid-1970’s, I was taught that the body could have evolved to the pre-human level, but there was a discontinuity when the soul (“image and likeness of God”) was infused into man by God. Like you say, that makes humans (according to Catholics) qualitatively different than the rest of creation. And this very point has environmental, medical, and other policy implications that make this issue of interest to those beyond Catholics and ex-Catholics.
It’s interesting that this “discontinuity” theory is similar to the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, which is officially viewed with suspicion by the Church. (The first time I ever heard Chardin mentioned in a sermon was in a Unitarian church, LOL.) Chardin saw evolution as passing through various thresholds or making quantum leaps, one of which is the arrival of man on the scene in the universe. Like you said, their body of thought on the matter has been intellectually inconsistent. Unfortunately, they might be leaning towards bringing some consistency to their thought by devolving to the 18th century…
Thanks for posting on this. There’s a discussion on the same subject going on at European Tribune, if folks want to check out the comments there as well.
Thanks Dem,
i agree with you that is the central problem with the Cardinal’s editorial. But I also think it’s interesting to think about the Church’s position on evolution overall which seems to, as you note, be moving toward a new consistency of neo-Aristotelian essentialism or somthing close to it.
There is a very interesting discussion on this subject at pharyngula.org (this is a biology prof’s site and many scientists and profs hang out there).
thanks for the link….
The Catholic Church has only separated itself from the Evangelicals on 2 issues, The Death Penalty and Evolution. Looks like we may be going to only 1 thing (and how long for that one?).
No, that’s not quite accurate.
The CC also opposed and continues to oppose the Iraq war.
Generally speaking, I think it’s position on war is much more restrictive, less militaristic than the evengelics.
The Chruch has also continued to speak out againt what one of its representatives recently called “this clash of civilizations”, referring to the so-called War on Terror.
It also seems to me that the evangelicals put much emphasis on the moral responsibility of the poor for their own conditions, whereas the CC is more inclined to look at societies responsiblities.
With regard to so-called social issues, thouhg, they seem to be going through a peculair and distasteful convergence.
You’re making a lot of really insightful comments, but…
…the spell check function is your friend.
Dem in Knoxville,
The fact is I just don’t know how to type with more than one finger and I’m been habitauted over time to using forums and blogs without spell-checking.
I’ll try to break this aweful habit. But right now I have to go to bed in any case. It’s getting rather late over here, folks (nearly 11:00 p.m.)…..
Sorry, it was meant in fun. You did make several good points in the discussion, though. I meant that part sincerely.
Regards,
– D
I’ll try to break this aweful habit.
Your contributions to this thread have managed to alleviate a morning of working while depressed. I sincerely thank you.
So I went without spell check for ages on blogs. Then I downloaded the free Google bar which has a pretty good one. I don’t mind misspellings and tend to pay a great deal more attention to what is actually being said but it seems that others do.
It also seems to me that the evangelicals put much emphasis on the moral responsibility of the poor for their own conditions, whereas the CC is more inclined to look at societies responsiblities.
I think that’s true historically and also that the laity holds these concerns but it also seems to me that the hierarchy’s alliance with r-w evangelicals and the rightward lurch of the CC in he past 20 years has caused them to considerably mute whatever concerns they have for moral positions in regard to poverty, war, the barbarism of the dp and so on and concentrate entirely on ‘social’ issues revolving around human sexuality, at least in the political arena.
I don’t see any major institutions dealing seriously with poverty issues as a moral or values issue, no major church and no political party either.
Oh, I completely agree with you. There has been a substantial deemphasis on everything not concerned with the control of micromanagment of sexuality and female choice in the all-male hierarchy of the CC.
All sex is considered shameful and evil, outside of that which takes place between the priest and his preferably very young flock of disciples.
In that case, evil no longer exists. It’s a matter of psychopathology!!
It truly is depressing to see how far to the right the US Conference of Catholic bishops has drifted from the pastoral letters they issued on the economy and nuclear weapons during the Reagan years. And even then the beginning of the backpedalling from Vatican II was underway.
The concept of “social sin” had a good run in Catholic circles from the early ’60’s to the early ’80’s (see, for example, this on racism), but there’s been much less of an emphasis on it in the last 20 years, as the focus has – sadly – shifted to the viewpoint you discuss and the common cause between the right-wing fundamentalists in both the Catholic and protestant denominations. 🙁
A follow-up article which ran in the NYT on Saturday, “Leading Cardinal Redefines Church’s View on Evolution” is notable for at least two reasons.
First, it indicates that while Schönborn’s position is not quite the official one of the Catholic Church,
From this, it would seem as though Schönborn’s essay is being used as a means of testing the waters to gauge the reaction. Today’s letters to the editor in response to the piece make me think that many (if not most) completely missed the import of the Ratzinger/Benedict XVI endorsement.
Second, and to me more disturbingly, the Saturday article notes that a major advocate of “intelligent design” was the original impetus in encouraging Schönborn to write the essay, and assisted in funnelling it over to the Times:
Scientists, as well as all other rationalists, have significant reason to be worried about this. There’s no way to interpret this as anything other than as an attempt at rejection by the Church of the theory of evolution. That the archbishop of Vienna should choose to make these statements in The New York Times is to me convincing evidence that the essay was designed principally for the benefit of “intelligent design” forces in the U.S., to be used as a political tool in our continuing education debates.
as is the German Cardinal.
The Catholic Church is just teaching what all of us already except as self-evident truth — that human beings are special creatures. We know we all except this as truth because we believe, among other things, that all humans “were created equal,” and that as a result we are all “endowed with certain inalienable rights.” This is a given, not just for Catholics, but especially for all of us who believe in a liberal democratic society.
What you see as obfuscation is the Pope’s wrestling with the problem of physical evidence that may be contradicting that given. He determines, rightly, that in the face of such evidence, ontology — the logic of being — must rule, not least because the physical sciences are answering a completely different question. Ontology is an inquiry into the meaning of life, while biology, like all physical sciences, is an inquiry into how life works. It’s “why?” versus “what?” But since the question of “what” is itself a derivation of “why”, and not vice-versa, ontology supercedes science until human reason can solve the contradiction. The Pope’s letter indicated that as far as the Church was concerned, there is no contradiction between evolution and the idea that humans are special and unique.
However, there remain possible contradictions that may result from an unguided acceptance of the truth of biological evolution. Namely, one could come to the logical conclusion that human beings are not at all special creatures, but are merely the result of accidents that resulted in a sentient mind, no more important than a tree or a bacteria. Such a belief, allowed to develop, could well result in rejection of the the principals of liberal democracy (which should concern all of us) as well as a rejection of the moral bases of Christianity (which is of direct concern to the Pope, but also of the rest of us since such bases still form the foundations of liberal democracy too).
In fact, the Nazi’s, who specifically rejected the idea that all humans are special creatures when they took up Nietzche’s line of thinking, provide us a particularly gross example of the danger of the rejection of the Greco-Christian idea of human equality and importance. The Pope and the Church are right to continue to warn of those dangers. Some of the other dangers to our belief in the importance of human beings, and therefore to idea of human rights, caused by such logical inconsistencies are the practice of abortion as well as treatment of human embryos as means rather then ends during invitro fertilization and stem cell research, which is why the Church continues to challenge those practices as well.
btw, I fully believe this: Namely, one could come to the logical conclusion that human beings are not at all special creatures, but are merely the result of accidents that resulted in a sentient mind, no more important than a tree or a bacteria.
But I’m not trying to overthrow democracy, or get people to reject Christian morals (though I don’t consider myself Christian). You’re making the assumption that a logical conclusion of the nature of what makes us human precludes any sense of moral objectivity (e.g., killing people is plain wrong, no matter how you slice it). I’d argue that this objective morality can be instilled by the same logical conclusions that lead one to believe that humans aren’t special in the first place. You just have to be willing to take it to the next step.
You don’t have to believe that humans are special to realize that we should still treat each other well. You just have to remember that other people are human too.
*Note – the above is merely a representation of my views. In no way do I endorse any group of people accepting what I say as truth, as it is merely the results of long hours of observation and thinking on my part. If you’ve come to different conclusions for yourself, I’m don’t have the pride or arrogance in me to say I’m right and you’re wrong. I’m just throwing my personal philosophies and thoughts out there for your consideration.
have to believe that humans are special to have any consistent ethic that calls on people to treat each other well. Try to come up with an ethic that does not have that as a center and see if it can hold up under the logic of the many circumstances that the world throws at it. Not believing in the specialness of humans does not require you to overthrow our democracy, but it allows you to rationally come to that conclusion, which is a problem. Believing in the specialness of humans, which is another way of saying “inalienable rights,” precludes you from believing in anything that is not a just form of government that specifically exists to secure those rights.
The smartest philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who were all a part of the most significant advances in ontological thought since Plato, approached that problem specifically. Heidegger derived, independently of the Greek tradition that Christianity follows, the idea that human beings (or just mortal, sentient beings) were, by their nature of being both mortal and knowing it, uniquely special beings, even absolutely necessary for the existence of the rest of universe. However, his early non-acceptance (I got it right this time) of the idea of a universal humanity –that all humans are special just because some are — is what led him to back Nazism in what is arguably the greatest error in the history of philosophy.
The main problem that one has with the idea that humans are not special in and of themselves is this, however: our democracy was founded on that principle and no other. What, for you, replaces inalienable human rights as the need for a just and free form of government? And even if you , yourself, being a nice person, may not back a murderous regime, the existence of an ethic that logically allows rational people to back something like the Nazis is very problematic, and moral leaders like the Pope and other philosophers of ethics and science should be concerned.
(Sorry about the typo “except.” I think I misspelled “principle” as “principal” too. I am a victim of spellchecking dependence.)
(btw, it wasn’t my intention to be a dick about the spelling…either accept or except would work there (technically), but they would mean different things. I was just clarifying. We all fall victim to the misspells occasionaly 🙂
Like I was saying in my first post though, I disagree with that, because I think you’re abandoning the logical train too early because of what it infers, without using what you’ve learned to avoid that fate.
Logically, you are correct: if you don’t believe humans are special, then there is no moral ground to prevent society from falling into a dog-eat-dog kind of free-for-all.
But, I would argue that if you follow that logic one step further, you see that it can indeed happen. Now you have a new problem: Can that be prevented, and how?
And my answer is that it can be prevented by following the logical argument, regardless of the moral argument. From a logical cause and effect standpoint, we have to treat each other well exactly to prevent that scenario from playing out.
that would hold that humans are not special in and of themselves, but also be able to oppose a Nazi-like catastrophe.
I think that you, yourself, as well as me and most people today, could probably handle that, but tyrants are not most people, and today is not tomorrow or yesterday. The question from the tyrant will be, “Why should it be prevented?” Why shouldn’t the strong rule and the weak obey? Why shouldn’t otherwise starving humans be given positive employment as slaves? Why shouldn’t order be provided where chaos rules, and why shouldn’t those who stand in the way of such progress be killed?
The concept of inalienable human rights allows us to respond to all of the inquiries of tryanny, but can such questions be refuted without it?
I am open to an ethic that allows for both non-specialness of humans and prevents tyranny, but I can’t yet figure out why I should bother to prevent tyranny, especially if it were to come with some enjoyable features, if I don’t believe humans are special. But I’m still open to ideas.
Those are some great questions. I may need to think on them a little more before I give you a good answer, so allow me to go slightly stream of consciousness for a minute, and we’ll see how it turns out…
I don’t question the idea of inalienable human rights, but it isn’t because I think humans are special in some way. To me it is more of a pragmatic principle. When people are happy (or at least content) in what they have, there is less chance of crime, war, etc. So treating people as well as possible, in an equal manner, reduces the chances of transgressions against others (myself included). Obviously there will still be jealousy, envy, greed, and such that can lead to issues, but having a justice system that treats these situations fairly is (in my opinion) the best way to keep things running as smoothly as possible.
As to tyranny, I guess first of all I’d point out that even people who do believe people are ‘special’ (maybe we’ll have to have a “what does is mean, exactly” discussion at some point) are still often capable of tyrannical acts.
So I guess my answer as to why tyranny should be fought under this ethos, is that establishing equality is the best way to ensure the stability of a society, and with equality comes the concept of inalienable rights.
I don’t know if I actually added anything to the discussion with that…If I can come up with anything better I’ll be sure to post it.
Show me a reason that accepting humans as unique encourages the survival of humanity and discourages tyranny. Human vs. nature, good vs. evil, god vs. the devil: these are dualistic constructs. “If you are not with me you are against me.”
Those who could torture a human could torture a dog. Those who harm humans tend to begin with animals. A system that discounts the suffering of some creatures does not inherently enhance compassion for all humans.
An understanding of humans as part of a greater whole (a greater creation or greater world, whichever you embrace) requires understanding humanity and each other as a continuum. An understanding of humans as apart from nature is a potentially dangerous dualistic construct like an understanding of man as apart from woman.
There are of course reams of philosophy that argues for a comprehensive view that embraces all beings as subjects of compassion. If you advocate a moral system that places only the human in the circle of compassion it is easier to shrink that circle to place the the RIGHT humans in the circle of compassion. The philosophical arguments for this are better made by the Hindu ancients or the Gaia new philosophers. Peter Singer for example has spent his life working to develop an ethical code. (And pls don’t say he advocates infanticide; that requires a very limited and twisted reading of his questioning of the specialness of humans. Anyone who has read any of his works as a whole knows this claim to be specious.)
It is ironic that someone would use the protestant German National Socialist religion to advocate for human vs. nature dualism as ethical. Certainly every religion has its fundamentalist abuses, but the twentieth century has made particularly and bloodily clear the risks of dualistic certainties as ethical constructs.
Please read more widely and recognize that dualism is widely considered by many to be a greater risk for all those evils you list, than the belief in intrinsic sacredness within all things.
For history’s sake let me note that Papal infallibility was not formally ensconced until the Vatican Council of 1879; and there is a wealth of Christian historical support for life beginning at quickening (which corresponds roughly to 18 – 22 weeks and modern viability.) So talking about abortion in terms of dualism, ethics, and the church is actually rather complicated before 1850 or so.
The quality of dualistic value systems in preventing atrocities is at best debatable and is widely debated. And if you know of this debate, mention those schools of thoughts and ethicists who disagree with you. If you know of the debate, it is (frankly) an ethical requirement to inform others who may be less well read of both sides rather than demanding a comprehensive ethical system on a threaded blog discussion in the timeline and space constraints of a commentary. Unless winning the argument is the only true goal, which is a pretty dualistic approach ;->
Thanks very much to the original diarist for the work on Catholicism and evolution.
It all comes down to whether you believe that there is such as thing as inalienable human rights. That concept is the only thing right now between tyranny and a free society. I don’t know if it says anything about human survival, but I do know that human tyranny is a product of not believing that all humans are created equal and have inherent inalieanable rights as a result.
If you don’t believe in such rights, which is the same as believing that humans are special (the ontological reasons for which I have already detailed in other comments on this thread), then you are, by definition, a member of the might-makes-right camp of politics, the same one that tyrants belong to, whether or not they spew democratic slogans. It doesn’t make you a tyrant, but it makes you less than completely useful in opposing tyranny. That camp is what the human rights camp, to which the Catholic Church, the UN, and as many other insitutions of enlightened society belong, including the United States of America and the Democratic Party. We all believe that a human being has special rights even if that human does not have the power to execute those rights presently, and that governments are instituted for the express and only purpose of securing those inalieanable rights.
While it is possible to believe otherwise, you can’t really call yourself a liberal and believe otherwise.
I’ve got to run now , so I’ll respond more later or tomorrow. Thanks.
more in depth.
First, I’m not talking dualism here, at least not in the way you are. There is no human vs. nature or even good vs. evil implied here. I confess to know little of the duality concepts you invoke other to say that I don’t think they apply here. I understand humans to be animals like others in nature, and the Pope’s letter on evolution says the same thing. Humans are not separate from nature but merely part of it.
That, however, does not preclude some creatures from being special and being able to name inherent rights for themselves and others that other creatures do not have. Namely, it is the ability to name things. We can go even further: Such creatures that care and think and understand the meaning of their own impending deaths can be called human beings, and they can name for themselves inalienable human rights for the simple reason that they have the capacity to think through the significance of such a thing. They are the only ones who care about them and will be the only ones who notice their absence. There may be species other than homo sapiens that have such gifts, and we can simply call those creatures human beings too, just like women are included when we say “mankind.” Should elephants or whales get the same rights? Maybe, but that’s a different question than whether such rights even exist. Don’t get caught up in the trivial semantics, because I’m not, and neither are people like the Pope or philosophers, including Peter Singer, who think about this for a living. The issue of whether humans have inherent rights is not a trivial one of taxonomy or genes.
You write:
Again, I’m ignoring the dualism stuff, because I don’t know where you’re coming from there. The Nazis borrowed heavily from the fact that Germany was the center of philosophical thinking during a true revolution in philosophy, much as ancient Greece was over 2000 years previously. Most recently, Nietzsche completely challenged the prevailing 2000+ year history of philosophy by proposing that Socrates was wrong and that the moral code developed on his foundations were flawed and should be replaced by a new, earlier ethic of will and power. The Nazis believed that humans were not born equal and with inherent rights, which had been the steady, sometimes difficult progress of philosophy under Greece and then Christianity. Instead they believed as instructed by Nietzsche and his disciples that those who have the capability of willing it thus have the rights provided by their power and others must defeat them or obey. The will to power was their ethic, not anything that can be recognized as Christianity. Rather most historians see their political philosophy as entirely antithetical to Christianity.
You also mention Papal infallibility. Not an issue here. No pope has ever invoked infallibility on the evolution question (or even abortion for that matter). The issue of the Church’s evolution of thought on conception is a fascinating one, but the only part of it that is relevant to this discussion is that the Church, like liberal thinking in general, has evolved, if ever, to be more and more inclusive of who gets saved. Slavery was once accepted; now slavery is banned. People of other races and religions were once feared as barbarians, but now they are accepted as fellow human beings with the same rights. Likewise, the human fetus was at times thought to be without life until it started moving. Now our understanding of embryonic development allows us to defend human life up to the moment of conception. (An idea originally postulated by Pythagoras, a few hundred years before Christ, actually.) The Church is more like the Hindu philosophers in this matter. Or, to quote Peter Singer in his recent letter to the NYT:
“Even the earliest embryo conceived of human parents is alive and a member of Homo sapiens, and that is enough, in the eyes of many, to make it a living human being.”
Such knowledge was not available until recently so it is not a mystery why its discovery has sent the Church back to Pythagoras for its abortion teachings.
Finally, you say:
I’m not pro here, so I don’t know of the debate you refer to, and am not aware of the debates you mention. However, we aren’t talking about preventing atrocities here. We’re talking about why anyone should be compelled to prevent one. In order to prevent atrocities, you need to have a reason. It’s hard and risky to do, so what can you invoke to compel people to do it? What would you invoke if you don’t believe humans have any particular right to be protected from one? Even if you believe the same right to be free from mass murder applies to non-sentient animals, you still have to start with a basis for where such a right comes from. What is it? I am not asking you to write a book here? I just want to know what the basis for such an ethic is? Since I don’t believe there is one, the question might be partly rhetorical. But if there is one, I would truly be interested in learning about it.
I have made the commonly accepted case that humans have inalienable rights inherent in the fact that they are humans, meaning that they think, care, and know they will soon die, unlike other beings who do not. The Pope’s concern regarding evolution is along the same lines. He was worried that people will believe precisely what many I have argued with here have said: that humans have no inherent rights. That is an amazing statement, not just because it directly contradicts the reason this country was formed, and it is exactly what Nietzsche’s philosophy was. While interesting as a philosophy, the worst war in human history was actually fought because of it, and I believe it lost, though its remnants are still existent today in the idea that we Americans can use deadly force to impose our will on a nation like Iraq.
Like Peter Singer says, consistent ethics are important. But I fear that those who, like the diarist, state that human beings have no inherent rights, have not really thought through the inconsistency of such a statement with other things you believe to be true.
The fact that there exist a univeral human nature is accpeted as a logical impliaction of the theory of evolution.
That nature itself has endowed us with certain traits such as alrtuism which we share with many other species inlcuding chimpanzees and orangs.
But the real differnce is that human beings have passed beyond bioligcal evolution beacsue of certain genetic mutations which took place during the course of human developement that allowed his brain to grow and develop in such aa way as to allow the creation of “cultures.”
I canìt spend much time on this right now but it is fundmantally a combination of inherited traits and culture which defines morality. We “learned” most of our moral behaviors through the indepndent process of “cultural evolution.”
That’s what makes us “different” with respect to morality as well as many other things. But it doesn’t make us “special”or “better” any more than the elephant’s highly unique and speiclized proboscis makes it “better” or superior”….
BTW, you seem to be assumng that other species of animals have no moral codes or other forms of sophistiated social orgaiznaition. That is a very ancient falsehood.
There is no “war of all againts all” even among the shimps. Bonobos are cmltely non-violent. They use sex to resolve theer problems and antagonismis peacefully.
You are explaining how humans (and other species) have evolved social organization, mental capacity, knowledge of the significance of death (like elephants), and even our own sentient awareness that we associate with humanity. (I don’t exclude the possibility that other species may share them and, if discovered, and they want to abide by the morality that results from such an understanding, such creatures should be assumed endowed with inalienable rights too.) You are not explaining why that matters.
The reason is that you cannot explain it from the point of view of evolution or any to her scientific inquiry because it’s not a question where observable measurements of natural phenomenon matter.
Here’s the basic problem for you: Let’s assume you are correct, and that human beings have no special rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness just because they came alive as homo sapiens or some other sentient race and not something else. Why, then, is Hitler evil? Why is it wrong to kill all the whales? Why can’t the powerful rule over the weak? Does an argument about the evolved nature of humans to altruism provide guidance here? No, because a tyrant need only believe he is an anomaly, a super-human, whose superior power alone gives him the right to rule and kill. And what right have any of us to oppose him, other than our own will to defend our own particular needs and pleasures. That is a might-makes-right world which is both contrary and hostile to any idea of liberal democracy, let own Judeo-Christian morality.
Could it be true? Yes, it could if we wanted to interpret our current understanding of biology that way. But we need not accept that as so. What people like the Pope are doing is asking us is to reject that particular interpretation of the biological truth of evolution because ontologically it would invalidate everything else we already agree upon after millenia of considerable reflection, dialogue and even blood.
Because causing suffering is wrong- even if the sufferer is not “special”.
Why?
Well, here’s the key matter at issue for you.
I believe, and I think there’s an erormous amount of evidence to supprt this (see for easmple Robert Wright and Steven Pinker and other evokutianry physchologist and socio-biologists for more such evidnce in popular and understandable format) that human beings experinece suffering as “wrong” because the human mind (which is just an acitvity of the brain or shall we get into the deabte about the absurdity of dualism here) has been genetically programmed through generations of natural selection to realize that allowing the suffering of other indiduals of the same species is antitetcical to its own self-ineterst. This phenomomen is called “reciprocal altruism” and you should definetly take some time to read up on it.
the fundmantal principle is simply: if I don”t do somthign to help this person now , then parhaps oin the future this person, or other mebers of the species, will not do soemhting to help me out when anf if I am confronted with suffering of my own. Thus arises the pehenomom of empathy, defined as the innate and irrestible desire to feel the way the other person does, to put ourslelves in the other’s place in the imagination. It is becasue we know that the same thing could happen to us that we feel empathy toward craatures which are similiar to us. Thus is borne out by the fact that we feel more empethy towdr our closest relatives among the apes and less empathy toward e.g a dod. We feel more empethy toward a dog than to a froog becuase we recognize instintibbely that it is more simailr to us than is a frog.
What is your alternative explanation: that god has put the sensation into us? Well, who put the senation into god?
and human beings experience suffering as unpleasant and painful, not necessarily wrong. Even if the ethic of “Do unto others as you would have done to you” can be explained as an evolutionary development that has allowed our species and others to survive and prosper where they otherwise might have failed, it does not allow anyone to say that suffering is wrong, in the sense of evil or bad, any more than it is possible to say that death is wrong.
I think you mean to say that causing suffering is wrong, and that we have learned through millions of years of evolutionary development that this response is one that leads to maximum survival and prosperity in human and other species’ social organizations. Fair enough. I can buy that. But it is not pertinent to the discussion at hand.
Remember, I don’t disbelieve in evolution and neither did Pope John Paul II. What we are discussing here is whether human beings are special in the sense of being able to say they have inalienable rights due to the fact that they are human (or if you like, sentient, thinking, and caring beings) and not something else. I am not excluding anyone from this humanity thing. I am simply distinguishing between creatures that actually can and do care enough about the universe to try to name it and things in it and those that don’t.
All the Pope meant in his critique of materialist philosophies was that the issue of the specialness of humans is an abstract one that is not answerable by the measuring of phenomenon. It is only answerable through abstract reasoning. Why? Because of the problem of relativity. It is a basic problem in the philosophy of science that you can never be completely objective — everything is relative to the perspective of the observer. For most problems in science, it is not a major issue, because most problems do not try to answer questions about the observer himself, so approximate objectivity is obtainable. However, questions regarding the being of the observer can never be objectively answered through observable phenomenon because the observer is also part of the observable phenomenon. That is why only abstract reasoning can approach questions regarding what is means to be human.
Also, please note that I don’t mention God in any of my arguments here. It is not necessary — indeed, it can even be an impediment — to believe in God to come to the conclusion that temporal, thinking, caring, beings are special creatures that have inalienable rights.
So why is it that humans have inalienable rights and other animate creatures don’t? And why is it that humans must have inalienable rights that other creatures don’t to prevent abuses of those inalienable rights?
Inalienable rights, like the existence of the universe itself, is important to to beings that can notice it, not any other creatures. We can provide such rights to any creatures we like, and we can make laws based on those rights that we will abide by. But other creatures cannot provide themselves or us with any rights, and they will not even abide by any laws that we provide for them. We can forbid ourselves from killing an endangered condor. But we cannot forbid any other animal from killing it.
You can’t abuse a right until you have it. The right comes first, abuse later. Philosophers determined that we have such rights based on reason, and we have been following their logic to expand the membership of the bearers of rights to include foreigners, slaves, women, Africans, and even the unborn. But before the existence of such rights were discovered, might alone determined who was right, which is where we are going back to if people start to believe that human beings do not have inherent rights.
So you’re saying that someone who’s unaware that they have a right should not be granted the benefits of that right? That someone who has, for example, been raised in slavery and has no conception of freedom of movement or action, has no right to go where they wish and do what they want?
As far as I can tell, you’re the only one arguing that human beings have no inherent rights, by arguing that we either have rights that no other being has, or that we have no rights at all. The rest of us seem to be arguing that all living beings have certain rights, even if the structures to protect or recognize those rights do not exist. The fact that no philosopher has “discovered” the right to freedom of speech does not make it any less fundamental or intrinsic. Or does the relatively recent “discovery” that women have equal rights to men mean that cultures which oppressed and abused their women were right to do so before that.
That’s not what I am saying.
I am saying that beings that care, think, and know their own deaths are the only ones capable of determining who has rights, and they are the only ones to whom rights even matter. Most animals are simply unable to benefit from any right that a human being has been able to determine for them, so human beings are the logical owners of rights. They must use reason and logic to do so, which actually limits what rights are possible as well as expands them, but such beings are special just because of that ability — caring, thinking and knowing of death.
You have to be careful if you follow the argument that all beings have the same rights as humans, because even if you limit rights, it is probably not logically consistent to not at least provide the most basic right that humans have — life — if you really believe that all creatures have the same inalienable rights. That would affect not only animals but fetal and embryonic offspring of humans and animals too. You could not consistently argue that a jellyfish has more of a right to live than a human fetus if you were to extend the same rights that humans have to animals too. If you don’t extend those rights, then you are, by definition, saying that humans are special and distinct from at least some other animals which is exactly what I am arguing here. Just stay consistent with what you really think.
My overall argument here is not one of taxonomy however, and neither is the Pope’s. I don’t care what beings you throw under the human umbrella, but we need to be logically consistent about what it means to be there and what rights are consistent with it.
You are right that given that we know now through reason that rights exist, we can say that previous, present or future cultures that denied those rights were wrong. They did not abuse any rights, technically, but they were wrong by not knowing about them. Dictators are wrong now, in the future, and were in the past, even if people at the time believed otherwise. It is not possible to believe in inherent rights and think otherwise.
The discovery that such rights exist provides us with a consistent, abstract logic for determining what those rights are, and who actually has them. That’s what philosophers ranging from the Pope to Peter Singer spend their professional lives doing. The fact that we came to understand that humans were created with inalienable rights has led us on a path of discovery, using logic, to determine that it is impossible to say that only white males have those rights, but that instead all human beings do. That same logic, applied consistently, leads to the conclusion that unborn human organisms must also enjoy those rights, although some have argued that not even infants or severely disabled people necessarily enjoy the same rights if they cannot meaningfully experience key parts of life.
a very bad attempt to distract from my fundmatal points.
Of course, I meant that causing suffering is bad and not suffering in itself.
Now your previous post asked the question “why is suffereing bad?” The question is obviously menaignless if it not refered to a specific entity. But YOU are the one who asked it, not I.
The question should have been “why do humans experince suffereinf as soemthing bad?” and for that specific question I have provided you with a more than sufiicent answer. If you are unwilling to accept it, please proivde meeith an altervative explation which I can, in turn, anslayse i thew light of sceientific knwldge, empirical evidence and logic.
But please don’t change the subject!! Come on, sir!! You’re alterative explanation of why human beings experinece the suffereng of others as bad???????
that I agree with your explanation of why human beings experience suffering in others. What else do you want?
I also said that it is not what we are talking about here. It doesn’t matter how the feeling of empathy evolved. What matters is whether you can rely on feelings like that to provide an ethic of human behavior and social governance.
I argued that you cannot because of the subjective nature not just of feelings, but because the whole determination of whether humans are entitled to any rights or not cannot be addressed by observing phenomenon in which the observer is also part of the observation. Ethics are a question of what it is to be a human being, and that question is simply not relevant to the observation and measurement of physical phenomenon. We need to use abstract reasoning to address the question, and when you do, you get the conclusion that thinking, caring, mortal beings are significant in the universe in a way that other beings are not. Hence, evolution is a dead end for determining moral norms. And that leaves us with philosophy and religion and people like the Pope, among others.
I agree that the sentiment of emaoath toward those who suffer is not an suffiectn basis for the moral and slcial orgaizntion of society.
But that was not the question you asked here.
I told you in seberal places and in several different ways that “morality” can be derived from a combizntion of innate factors (there are indeed genes which make human beings reluctant to do certain things) and [b]a stoehouse of normative cultural knowledge and wisdom acccumulated throgh generations of experince and trial and error (cultual evolution in short)…
Cultural evolution is also the final, consclusive and defifnite answer to your question about why human beings beleive in the exitnece of inalienebale rights to life,liebarty and what have you. In Italy,BTW, this set would include the right to work as fundmatal and inalienevalle. This diveregence bewteen the beleif in a fundmantal right to work in Italy and the lack of it in the US is also a excellent demcotration that such things are culture-relative and cultrually defined.
So where’e the problem?
is a completely different question than whether it is true that we have them or not.
And that is the whole limitation of using observation of phenomenon to determine abstract truths.
Try this tack, maybe. Do you need science to prove — not just provide empirical evidence of, but actually prove — a geometry problem like this
Given:
Qaudrilateral DEFG is a parallelogram.
Prove:
Angles G and E are congruent
You don’t. That is because it is an abstract problem. We have been solving abstract problems since Pythagoras without the benefit of scientific methods. In fact, abstract reasoning is the basis of scientific methods.
Same thing applies to human rights. You don’t need science to come to the conclusion that human beings have inherent rights, because it is an abstract problem, not an empirical one. It is provable by taking the knowns — or givens — and applying logic. Science, in fact, can just get in the way of that question with trivialities like determining why we believe we have rights rather than addressing the real question of whether it is true or not that we have them.
You still insist on claiming that human beings have an instinctive sense of inalianable rights to life, e.g, in a nation in which 60 to 70% of the prople believe that the State should be allowed to execute people who have commited certain acts of which it does not approve.
There is no such thing as the right to life, even for humans, and you know it. This is complete sophistry.
Your nation has illgeally invaded and occupied an foreing nation for its oil, killing some 40,000 inncoent Iraq people who presumably didnìt have the right to live in the process, and you still want to talk to me about human beings having an instinctive sense of inalienable rights.
Right are indeed abstractions which are formulated either through the accumulated widsom of culural experience or through moral reasoning. I prefre the first theory, you perefr the second.
But none of this matters to the argument I made in my diary that the Chruch beleives that these are inherent and exclusive biological charateristics of the species that we call human.
In fact, you have stated elswhere that you beleive these rights might, matbe even shoud, be extended to other senetient beings. That is fundmtally contrary to the Churshc’s anthropocentric dogma that HUMANS and ONLY HUMANS are special in this way becaus they are “made in the image of God”. Thanjs you for admitting that I’m correct on this altotugh you are unwilling to accet the consequent abandonment of anthropecntrism which this implies.
The Chruch beleives that a non-sentient, non-consious brain-dead human has fundmnatal rights just because it is human but that a chimpnzee, about whose extremely high level of sentience and consciosness we are learnign more and more every day, has no such rights. TIt also beleives that a clump of cells called a zygote
has fundmntal rights and that dollhins do not. thes era morally repugnant, antt-scientific and logically absurd beleifes. You simply canìt get out of that.
probably due to my own inability to get the thoughts across.
Here’s is where we are not connecting: I, as well as Pope John Paul II and thinkers like Peter Singer speak of human superiority, whether they agree or disagree, in the metaphysical sense of Platonic forms and geometric proofs. That is why when I say human being, I can include other sentient beings easily in that term. You, on the other hand, as well as the ID folks and maybe Cardinal Schoenberg, are speaking of empirical, biological superiority which, of course, is nonsensical. As you say, there is no such thing as superior in a physical sense, because “superiority” is a value-laden term, and values are the purview of metaphysics, not empirical observation, which must remain value-free.
Metaphysics is not false, any more than an equilateral triangle is false. You won’t find it in the physical world, but you can deduce truth about the physical world from it and, where appropriate, can even find empirical observations that provide evidence for or against hypotheses about those deductions.
You can also deduce morality and ethics for human behavior from metaphysics — something that you cannot do from empirical science. In order to deduce an ethic, you need to be logically consistent with the basic proofs about what it means to be human that have already been presented and accepted as true, or else you need to challenge the veracity of the accepted metaphysical truths — non-euclidian geometry, for example, or the work of Nietzche and Heidegger who challenged Platonic philosophy.
“Made in the image of God” is a metaphysical concept, not a biological one. It does not mean that it is false — it just means that biology has nothing to add to that statement, and it has nothing to add to biology. The same applies to this statement by Thomas Jefferson,”… that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, …” There are logical proofs for this that philosophers much smarter than me have made and that they continue to debate. It adds nothing to the field of biology, but it adds a lot to the fields of law and politics. Biology, philosophy, and law, in a liberal society, share one thing, however: the need to use consistent reason.
I am equally concerned if there is actually a movement afoot within the Catholic Church to go back to the medieval days when metaphysics was confused with empirical observation by the Church, so the NYT letter from the German Cardinal is disconcerting in that way. However, especially under the Popes of the 20th century, particularly John Paul II, that has not been a problem. The Church has been logically consistent with its teachings regarding abortion, euthanasia, invitro fertilization, and stem cell research as well as consistent with the basis of liberalism — that human beings have inherent rights. Science might provide additional information to such ethical debates, but because it is ethics and not biology that religion and law are concerned with, the problem must be solved with abstract reasoning in the metaphysical realm — the world of philosophers, priests, and eventually politicians.
No, I’ve understood you perfectly well and have answered every one of your objections. But I will give you credit for one thing: you certainly are persisent to the point of obduracy and that’s a quality which I admire.
You obhjetion this time is different.You say:
[quote]
Here’s is where we are not connecting: I, as well as Pope John Paul II and thinkers like Peter Singer speak of human superiority, whether they agree or disagree, in the metaphysical sense of Platonic forms and geometric proofs. That is why when I say human being, I can include other sentient beings easily in that term. You, on the other hand, as well as the ID folks and maybe Cardinal Schoenberg, are speaking of empirical, biological superiority which, of course, is nonsensical. As you say, there is no such thing as superior in a physical sense, because “superiority” is a value-laden term, and values are the purview of metaphysics, not empirical observation, which must remain value-free. [/quote]
It’s clear to me that John Paul’s metaphysicial (ontoloy is part of meataphysics BTW so introding the term does not add antyhting to your arguemnt) ontological view of human superioty has profound implications for biology. Evolutinary biology explains the whole process of coming into existence of spceies, the transforamtion of species from one into another oevr an inexorable millenerian process of natural law,
the annihilition of species and all of these other once-mysterious phenomona which were once cosigned to the realm of metaphysics but are not its prorty any more. The vast majority of modern, at least analytic, philosophers, are naturalists and consequently beleive that while the logical positivist were wrong in denying meaning to metaphysical questions, thet were right in bekeiving that these questions could, and would, ultimatelt be resolve through naturlaistic methods.
The point here is that:
is a special being. I have seen no ecidence to contradcit this intereetation if his statement. If you have nay, please put it forth. Othrwise, you tyourself, must admit that the Churhs is wrong according to your own reasoning.
3) With respct to metaphyics of forms and numbers, tose are all fudnmatlly religious beleifs. They have nothing to do with reason. Platonic forms, if they exist, must neceasrily essist in some extra tracsnednetal dimension. But noone has ever sucessfuly expalined how it is possible for such a trenascental thrid world of forms can interect with the material world of expernce or the asbtsrat reasining of the material brain.
Another problem was once expressed nicely by a philophy professor of mine in a humorous but very pwerful untuitive form: “What is the ideal form of shit?”
In sum, where are these forms if not in the mind (invented by man) or the matreial world. They must lie in the spiritual one. If they lie in the spiritual one, then you have a duty to explain to me what this spiritual realm is whthout invoking faith and other theologial concepts.
4) Most imprtantly, whethre you beleive that forms and the trascedntal dimeions exist or not, morality is not a part of it. Look up moral philopshy and you will find that it does not fall under the classifiction “metaphysic.Nit even in ancient times. Values are a product of either nature or nurture or both. Either that or you ahve to invoke “divine command ehtics”. That’s not a serious philopshcial alternative.
[quote]
Metaphysics is not false, any more than an equilateral triangle is false. You won’t find it in the physical world, but you can deduce truth about the physical world from it and, where appropriate, can even find empirical observations that provide evidence for or against hypotheses about those deductions. [/quote]
Red herring. I did not claim that metaphysics is false, nor that it is meanigless. I’ve expresed my naturalistic position on it above. Traingles are an abstratin of the human mind from and infinfite set of objcets which just hapen to have a certain shape. I reject Platomnism out of hand, but that really IS a metaphcal discussion in my opinion and will take us into widely different territory.
You can deduce highly useful appromations of the physical world from mathmatical structues but not final truths and this becuae of the ineleimable element of empircism that eneters into mathatcial reaoning at its begginigns and at it ends. Mathstaics is like a an enormous web of abtraction propositions (verbal or visual) wrapped arounf the phycial world and residing in the human mind intersubectively (like Quine’s web of holictic theortical scientific propitions) which
touches the empircal world only along its edges. But that is sufficnt to eplai its “unreaosnable sucess”!!
This is really a very simified reprerantion of my philophy of math, but it will do for a spoantanous discussion on a political blog.
I will have to sign off now as it’s getting late over here again. The probekl is that these US based blogs come alive juts when my day is winding down because of the time zone difference.
I’m glad I could get in another exchange of ideas.
Perhops you can start another diary of your own. thus one is about to sink off into oblivion………………………..
but I simply don’t agree that the Catholic Church has any doctrine that says that the species homo sapiens is the only “superior” being. There is nothing that I am aware of that would not allow Catholics to beleive that any sentient being that cares, thinks, and experiences death as humans do from being included in the term, “man.” No other such species has yet presented itself or been discovered by humans, but there is nothing in the catechism that would stop a Catholic missionary from someday trying to convert and baptise a sentient, non-human being.
Humanity was an ontological, not biological, concept for the last Pope and almost everything he has written was based on an almost anti-septic, Pythagoran logic — something that Church leaders have been doing since the 19th century when ideas like “ensoulment” were tossed out the window. For a Pope, John Paul was famous for being very sparing in his use of even the word “God” in his many letters, and God, when mentioned, is very rarely employed as a necessary piece of logic for proving anything either. He was also known for pushing the idea within the church that even atheists should be able to arrive at the same moral conclusion on issues like war, abortion, and euthanasia that Christians do and he wrote his letters on those topics thusly.
So I simply do not agree that the Church pushes any idea that contradicts anything we know today about biology, though the Church would certainly disagree with you, and perhaps other natural philosophers, who discount the existence of metaphysics as a figment of a biologically induced and explainable imagination. (Theologians disagreed with Heidegger and other phenomenologists for discarding Plato too, so there should be some good debates on the philosophy of science down in Hell someday.) 🙂
And there is nothing that I am aware of that suggests that that Church does not mean, when it says that “man (ie. homo spaiene sapiens) is made in the image and likeness of God” that that would include what I would call “sentient” beings like chimpanzees and bonobos. The burden of proof is on you, since you are one the who propounds the interpetation to provied me with documantary evudence suggetsing othewise.
It seems rathre obvious, and it is to anyone with anthe slightest but of common sense them, that when the Pope says that “man is special” he is referring to homo sapienes sapiens and nothing else. There’s no point in arguing further on this matter unless you can demostatre the contaray with evidence.
As you refuse to underatnd what modern philopshers almost universally accept with regard to methaphysics, I can only refer to David Chalmers’ excelent website which if studied carefull will help to clarify the confusion.
the only way you can have a problem accepting that “man” can mean any sentient life form that experiences existence as we do is if you insist on a biological definition instead of an ontological one. The Church does not make that insistence anywhere that I am aware of, as evidenced by the Pope’s quote that you cited as obfuscation:
He is clearly stating that “spiritual” is a metaphysical concept of forms and ideas, which means that the Pope is in no way limiting any future definition of human being to include other sentient life forms. In fact, that statement specifically leaves open that possibility by “discovery at the experimental level.”
Furthermore, I’ve read the Catechism of the Catholic Church , which is the summary document of its teachings. There is nothing in there that says that human means member of the homo sapiens species. Instead human means created in the likeness of God — something completely irrelevant to taxonomic concerns. It can only cause problems like you’re having if 1) You don’t believe in God, AND 2) You don’t believe that the Pope does either — an absurdity.
If my fault in this discussion is not being up to date on philosophy since Heidegger, your fault is an unwillingness to get inside and follow a logic whose premise you may disagree with but is at least internally consistent.
I think it’s clear that, at bottom , what you’re really trying to state is the ancient canard about morality being impossible without the existence of god. You are familair with Plato’s unassailable over two-thousand year old refutation of that assertion aren’t you?
Breifly,if you are quite certin that there is a difference between right and wrong, then you must answer the following question: Is that difference due to god’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for god himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that god is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, then obviously you must say that right and wrong have some meaning independent of god’s existence.
So wherever morality comes from, it can either be explained naturalistically in terms of a combination of nature and nurture or it cannot be expleained at all.
Being a naturalistic ph.D candidate in analytic philosophy, I obviously lean toward the first position. It can be and is being explained, in part, through the studies of evolutionary psychology and socioboiology. The rest is explained by changes in cultural attitudes (cultural evolution, for lack of a better word). African-Americans were once treated as slaves. Western civilization gradually came to the realization that it was “wrong” to treat people that way. It didn’t happen spontaneously as some divinely- inspired insight.And not even slogans about “inalienable rights” could prevent the “liberal democratic” US from continuing to practice it long after it had been abolished in monarchical England which had no such slogan in its unwritten and undemocratic (at that point in time) constitution.
Another probelm with all of your discussion is that it is all based on a single unwarranted generalization: that anthropocentrism is necessary to morality. This is simply false. The Jainists of India believe that all life is sacred down to the humblest insect. They do not, for all that, treat human beings horribly or immorally.
In many native American cultures, the same thing was true. There is no anthropocentrism in most Eastern religions and philoshies, as far as I know, and yet they are all profoundly moral and admirable civilizations.
I not only do not accept (it’s accept BTW not except) the radically anti-evolutionary idea that human beings are “special creatures” but indeed I find it morally reprehensible.
I call it anti-evolutionary becasue, as I’ve reapted oever and over an will repeat again, the assumtion of an ontoloigcal discontinuity between man and the rest of the rest of the animal kingdom is contrary to the fundemental meaning of evolution, which has nothing to do with progess or any other arbitratily a posteriorily defined teleological intentionality. Evolution is survival through adaptation to local enviroemental cirumstances confronting partcular organisms.
The example from SJ Gould is telling and logically unassilable. If there were suddenly an ice age most elephants would die. But there might be a very small subset which managed to survive becasue of an odd mutation in their genomes. These hardy survivors could quote plausibly go on to develop, throuhg the infiniely slow but inexorable process of mutation and selction, thick coats of fur whicb protect them from the extreme cold of the new conidtion with which thet confronted.
If this were to be so, they would have effectively returned to the original physical condition of their ancestors: the wooly mammoth.
These creatures newly endowed with fur and other physical appurtenaces highly adapted to help them surive and reprodece copies of their genes into the next generations will undeniably be “better adapted” and more “fit” to survive in the new environmental cirumstances. But does that meean they are “better” or “superior” or “ontologically discontinuous” with the rest of the animal kindom. Of course not!! The idea is preposterous and anti-evolutionary. So why should human beings make any exception in all of this?
Consciusness and other such traits of human beings are excatly the same,. from a scientific point of view, to the situation of the fur of the woolly mammoth. Or, if we are to make an exption in this case, why not make it
with cats, birds, frogs, bears, chimps, orangs, etc, etc… The nomologial nessicity implied in laws of science rules out the possibikity of the existnce of an ontological discontinuity. If one organism is special, then the scientific generalizations upon which evolutionary their is based must be eliminated.
I say it’s morally reprehensible because I believe that anthropocetrism is destruvive of life on earth, incuding human life. We cannot continue beleiveing that we are “outside of” or “beyond” other livign organism and that these latter are just soulless and feelingless creatures which we can manipulate for our own good. We have leardy wiped out some 99% of the speiece which have ever existed upon this earth in the name of such horrifying biblicial precepts as “man made in the image of god” and “go forth and conquer the earth”…If we continue on this track we eil evetually have wiped out our own food chain as well, of course. So it’s really profoundly counterproudctive.
I also don’t need to mention the absuridty of the idea that a human blatocysty which has the level of conscioueness of a fungus must be held sacred and it fufmdnta rights ptotected, while a fully developed chimpanzee which has the levek of consiousness of the President of the US can be treated in whatver manner we see fit (induding experirntak torture and systematic extermiantion.)
[quote] We know we all except this as truth because we believe, among other things, that all humans “were created equal,” and that as a result we are all “endowed with certain inalienable rights.” This is a given, not just for Catholics, but especially for all of us who believe in a liberal democratic society. [/quote]
If all men are created equal, why am I not as great and revolutionary a thinker as Albert Einstein or Isaaec Newton.
WRT your repuslive Nazi comparison, lets be clear: the Nazi’s hald to a strict hierarchy of creation. Man was the greatets of creautres and the Arayan race was the greatest of sub-species. This is just a further logial development of the alerady prevalet Judeo-Chritian madness of “species superiorty” to extend to sub-species. The Jews ere not consedered mebers of the same species in many cases, in fact.That is why it was os extraodinaruy easy to extreminate them.
I am a lazy victim of phonetics and spellchecking software.
Here’s the ontological issue, which can be derived completely outside the Christian/Socratic Greek philosophy of modern Christianity and requires no belief in God:
Humans are special because, unlike other beings, they know they will die, and that knowledge not only motivates all of their conscious actions, but is the only thing that allows any particular, including scientific, understanding of the universe to even occur. Humans are those who are capable of both asking and finding the answers to “why?” If humans never existed, neither would evolution, which is just a human model of an observed phenomenon which answers the question of how we got here, which is itself derived from, “Why am I here?” The universe would go on without us, but it would be no different than a million other alternate universes that might as well not exist because we would not be there.
Even your moral judgement regarding anthropocentrism and its evil destructiveness to life on earth cannot logically exist outside a starting place that has a mortal, thinking mind at the significant center. Why is it bad to hurt animals and natural life? Why is torture bad? Why were the Nazis wrong? Why do women have a rights? Or men for that matter? All of these questions are answered in only two ways 1) Because we will it to be so (the Nietzche/Nazi way), or 2) Because human beings have inalienable rights whose endowment is dependent on nothing other than being human and not something else (the way of human specialness and equality, upon which both Christianity and liberal democracy are based, a.k.a., the Jeffersonian way).
Sorry, I’m with gilgamesh here, even if he’s too worked up to use spellcheck. 😉
I think we may have hit on a telling point with your comment:
“The universe would go on without us, but it would be no different than a million other alternate universes that might as well not exist because we would not be there.”
You’re making an assumption that what makes the universe of value is that we are there to appreciate it. While that may make it of value to us, some of us would maintain that the universe has inherent value on its own whether we ever existed or not. It’s anthropocentrism that we’re having a problem with here.
If the universe and its creatures have inherent value in and of themselves as a manifestation of the Tao, or God’s creativity, or however you want to label it, then our existence does not add to their value. There is no need to postulate a special exalted role in the universe for us, because animals, plants, whatever already have an inherent value that would (morally)protect them from abuse of their rights and abuses such as Nazism.
On the other hand, if the environment only has instrumental value, and the universe is only a stage whose value lies in it being a setting for our drama to play out, what moral basis is there for preventing environmental degradation? In fact, if some pseudo-science can “demonstrate” that one group of people is “sub-human,” your philosophy allows for Nazism (until the error is identified, at least), since the victim group falls into that class that only has contingent value and need not be protected, who have no more moral value than schools of overfished cod.
It’s very convenient and self-serving to identify the specific traits that make us uniquely precious as the traits we just happen to have. Fortunately, we’re slowly moving to draw the circle of acceptance wider, to accept the inherent worth of other species as well, and so to provide the moral and philosophical underpinning for the maximum protection for the environment on which we all depend, humans and other species.
I’m not the best person to provide a detailed defense and exegesis of deep ecology, Taoism, or other such systems of thought while blogging on the fly at work, but I’d encourage you to investigate them further.
Or as my teenage son would say, “It’s not just about you.”
But I don’t think you’re drawing the same conclusions that I do from it.
I am making the statement that we are what makes the universe important, and that without us it wouldn’t matter and might as well never exist. Why is that true? Because only to humans (and you can add any mortal, thinking, sentient species you like to the “human” umbrella here) does anything like “universe” or “value” or “importance” or “evolution” mean anything. This means that it is logically impossible to separate the human being from scientific inquiry. There is no objective view of the universe that is completely divorced from mortal beings’ relative position in it. Such an understanding of this ontology of science is what helped Einstein develop the Theory of Relativity. It is also what the Pope was talking about regarding evolution in what the diarist believed was obfuscation.
This means that if humans were not here to witness it, the universe as we know it would not exist. Existence itself is concept that requires a mortal, thinking being to be there. That is how important we are. The universe really does depend upon us.
In order to be consistent, as you seem to be implying, it is true that all such creatures with a conscious experience of mortality and thought must also being considered special and have such rights. Trying to be consistent with equality among sentient creatures by expanding the circle of endowment of rights is exactly what is being done when religious and righteouos folks have pushed to ban human slavery as well as advance women’s rights, and oppose abortion, stem cell research, and invitro fertilization.
It is not necessary to bring God or supernatural phenomenon into the discussion at all to get here. You can even begin with the assumption that there is no God or at least that you have no idea what God means. And you can generalize the idea of humanity to avoid the problem of anthropocentrism. What you are left with is still the fact that unless someone is around who cares about something in the universe, such as its existence, the universe won’t matter and disappears like canceling out both sides of an algebra problem. The universe requires someone to think about it just like the thinker requires the universe to think about. Such beings must be both thoughtful and temporal, and their unique necessity to themselves and everything else is what makes them special and deserving of inherent human rights.
The universe requires nothing. It just is. Why does it require meaning? Humans require meaning, not universes.
You are making a fundamental assumption that I simply do not understand. Why would the universe not exist if it contained no sentience? Did the universe not exist until humans evolved? What are you talking about?
It sounds to me like he is proposing a very radical form of anti-realism or “Berkeleyan idealism” (though badly expressed) in which nothing exits outside of the human mind, there is no such things as an external world, other minds, etc..
An interesting question for such idealist and post-modernistic thinking, though, is ” why don’t you walk thtouhg the window instead of through the door when you exit a building?”
I can’t see why it should be a problem, since nothing,not even the universe istelf, exists except as subjective experince in the mind of man.
But since I’ve agreed to read up on evolved altruism, why don’t you try books about the thinking of Kant and Heidegger, in addition to Peter Singer.
The universe is real, but it only matters to you because you exist, and since you are trying to ask questions about your own being, you can’t trust merely observable phenomenon because you don’t know how dependent those observations are on the fact that it is you observing them. Therefore your only tool is abstract reasoning.
[quote]
The universe is real, but it only matters to you because you exist, and since you are trying to ask questions about your own being, you can’t trust merely observable phenomenon because you don’t know how dependent those observations are on the fact that it is you observing them. [/quote]
The first part of this proposition is as anlaytic philophers say, “devoid of meaning.” Of course the universe only matters to me because I exist. And if I didn’ìt exist, the universe wouldn’t matter to me.
It’s like Riudolf Carnapì’s joke about Heidegger, “He says being is the basis of all. If there were nothing, then we couldn’t comprehend being…..ummmm,, yeah obviously.”
The second part delibarately confounds the theory-ladeness of observation with radical epesitmolgocial skeptisicm. From the obvious fact that observations about the extrenal world are theory-laden and, certian degree dependent on the mind of the observer, it absolutley does not follow that there is no such thing as knoweldge of the external world. Karl Popper accepted the fact that observations were theory-laden and yet he was an extroaxintily ferocious realist about the extrenal world, other minds and he was prorouinfly opposed to epistiemlogical skepticism.
Ok, here’s an illutration directly from Popper: Galileo
proposed a helio-centirc theory of the solar system Cardianl Belarmino eventually alloowed that this theory could be accepted as an interetsing and useful mathematical hypothesis to be pleced alonside the geo-centric theory. Galilio wnet much furhter, however, insisnitng that his hyothesis was TRUE and that the reath did in FACT orbit the sun.
Bellarimo, the istrumentalist and epistemologial relativist, was wrong. The fact is that the earth orbuts around the sun and this is true for any sentient being which exuists, has ever exieteed and will ever exist.
And this example ais useful another way. The insruments that Galileo used were extremely basic and rudimentary compared to modern telescopes and technlogies.The first were baseds on relatibvely simple theories,the second are based on enromously complex and sophiticted theories, infintitely many theories almost, which involve a great deal more human intervention and consious subjetive activity on the part of the modern observers. Do we know less about the univeres today than we did in Gailio’s time as result. NAHHHHH, quite the contrary, I certainly you will acknoweldge.
And how is increase in knwedge possible anyway under your idea of epistemoloigval relativism.
But there is a much much greater danger with repcet to epistomological relativism than these discusson of phyics and biology suggest.
Here’s what you also have to deal with: Did the holocoust really happen or didin’t it? Why should “realtivism” be restrcited to the human species adnd not rather to a particular sub-species (e.g. members of the Aryan race)?
How do you deal with that?
in this discussion. What I have meant by human, and I think I said this is in a couple of my previous comments, is a thinking, caring, mortal being. There may be more species than just homo sapiens. Let’s not address that yet, but keep humanity general enough to include everyone that matters, regardless of taxonomy.
You have not adequately addressed the epistemological relativism issue regarding the real problem at hand — whether we can use science to determine if human beings have special rights or not. Of course the problem is surmountable for many of the things we want to inquire about our universe. Cardinal Bellarimo is making the same mistake that Cardinal Schoenberg is making in the NYT, and that you are making, which is why I first responded that you and he are over-complicating the issue. It is a matter of the appropriateness of the tools to apply to a problem. Religion is no more appropriate to apply to the question of the earth’s location in the universe any more than science is useful in determining whether human beings deserve rights or not.
An observer can escape from the theory-ladeness problem and accept reality for every part of the universe EXCEPT that which deals with the observer’s own being. For that issue, observable phenomenon are meaningless, because you can’t gain the necessary objectivity that science requires to be able to answer a question like “Why (not how, but why) am I here?”
That is why someone like the Pope can say that evolution is more than a hypothesis, but is also correct when he says that such an understanding of where we came from in no way replaces the importance of human being in creation. Let science address how and philosophy and religion address why through the use of abstract reasoning, while at the same time learning from advances in other fields of human inquiry.
No, that isn’t the issue,;that’s a straw man.
the issue I have with the Pope’s proclamation about the “speicalness” of human beings is that HE makes into a fundamental ontoligival issues that neccearsoyl touches biology. He and the Catholic Vruvch beleive that human beings have “inalaienable rights” becuase of huma being are biologically superior in some sense. That is a horrind viodaltion of eveolutonary theory and is fumandatlly anti-scitnific.
I expalined above that human beings “believe” they have “inalaienbale rights” becuase of a process of cultural evolution (the accumulation of moral knoedlge and widom through generationss of expereince and trial and error.
They don’t really have inside them, imprimnyted on thear pancreus somewhere “inalaienbale right”!! “Inalainable rights” are an abstraction which man has invented to make impove his lot in the world. If such things were always latent and inherent in man, then they would have come into exietnce a great deal soner than they have one would imagine. they would also be in aplication univreally all over the face of the earth, nit just in thr welthiest 2% of thw rold’s population. they aslo wouldn’t be apllied so damned hypocrictally in those countie like the US which claims so constantly and ostentatiously to espose them and then turns around and treats the vast majoritu of its own population, not to speak of the rest of the world, as worthless dirt and indentured servants.
They are , in fact, a myth!! A lie prepeterated by the ruling elites on the vast majority of the wordl for whch they have no, and will always have no, meaning!!
and now, as yuo should be able to dicsern from the shocking sloppines of that last comment, I’ve had it.
We shall have to agree to diagree. But I think you undretand ny position by now!!
thanks.
Y’are more than welcome!!!
To be entirely accurate, humans don’t just require meaning, we create it. Meaning is a construct that we apply to the external world. We see an arrangement of ink on a page, or hear a wave passing through air, and assign it meaning as a representation of our language. We see an action take place and say “that is right” or “that is wrong”. We attach labels and descriptions to things.
only exists because humans evolved. Had humans, or something like humans, never evolved, the universe would not exist any more than the millions of other parallel universes already do. In other words, who cares, because we’re not in them and can deny their existence just like many people deny the existence of Heaven.
The problem is the one of relativity. The only things that matter are the things we care about, either now, then, or in the future. Other creatures that do not care about anything do not play the same role in the existence of the universe that we do because they are unable to know the difference between existence and non-existence. They might have always been there, but they only matter to us because we noticed them either directly or indirectly. The observers, us, are part of the observable phenomenon of the universe and it is not possible to separate us out to look at it objectively. That is why it logically doesn’t exist unless we’re here to witness it.
That is also why we are special and can claim for ourselves inalienable rights, like Thomas Jefferson did when the Founders had to come up with a rational reason to oppose the tyranny of King George.
The issue at hand is that because we are the ones who we are concerned about with a question like, “What does it mean to be human?” science is not capable of providing the objectivity it needs to be truthful. You can’t take the observer out of the observable phenomenon with a question like that, so abstract reasoning is the only appropriate tool to use. Science, which relies on the measurement of observable phenomenon is useless in any question regarding the being of ourselves. That is why evolution can be completely true but must not be solely relied upon to make any statement about what it means to be human and how we should ethically behave.
How about dogs. Would they have caused the universe to exist? Why not? You are espousing a religion here, not anything real.
exist as only dogs know it, not as we do or ever will. That is not the universe we live in.
Since things like rights are important to us, but dogs have no idea what to do with it and they never will, it is logical to say that human beings (in the broad sense of sentient beings) have inherent rights, just by being created humans and not something that can ever understand rights.
CAUSE the universe to exist. That would not be true. I only say that the universe exists as we know it because we are here and it is important to us in ways that it is important to no other beings that we yet know of.
Acually, you said this:
and this oviously imlies that humans, ot somehting like humans, are necessary for the exitence of the universe.
TAs we know that the universe existed for about 4.3 bliion years before the existnce of man, the stament is simply false.
of something is different than a cause. A car needs wheels to really be a car, but the wheels don’t cause the car to be. But even then, I may have over-reached in my previous statement.
The fact of the matter remains, however, that the universe we find ourselves thrown into is one that is already 4.3 billion years old, and the only reason time is important at all is because of our own temporal nature as beings that are going to die. That means that the very fact that we are thinking mortal beings is what allows a determination of something like an age of the universe.
We are still integral and although we can speak in empirical terms about a universe that does not need us to move and change and happen as it does, it doesn’t eliminate the fact that the only reason this universe matters at all is because we are here, even if it is for the briefest of moments in cosmological time.
However you look at it, that’s a starring role in creation.
If you were the only human in existence, would you really exist? How would you know that you weren’t just a figment of your own imagination if there weren’t others to observe you? But then, if there were others to observe you, how would you know you weren’t making them up too?
Following that line of thought, you claim that humans know the difference between existence and non-existence. Is that really true? If you did not exist, would you know that you did not exist and yearn for existence?
You can say ‘No. Obviously if I did not exist I would have no knowledge of even the concept of existence, so that is impossible.’
Which brings up: Why, then, can you claim it works the other way? How do you understand the concept of non-existence?
It wouldn’t matter if I were a figment of my imagination to understand existence and non-existence. The universe is as it appears through my own perspective, as is my ability to think in the abstract and imagine not being here, an impossibility because obviously I am. I can think of the impossible — an abstract idea.
But I don’t mean to take that issue too far, because smarter people than me have already thought through and solved the problems you raise. I brought it up because I was inadequately trying to make this point:
The question of whether human beings (whatever that may mean) are special enough to warrant inherent rights — the basis for our Constitution — is a metaphysical one of abstract reasoning. It is not a question for empirical science.
The question of how homo sapiens came to be as they are and behave as they do is a question for empirical science — not metaphysics.
We need to use abstract reasoning on metaphysical issues, and we need to use observation of measurable phenomenon for empirical scientific issues.
That is why the Pope can say that evolution is true, but that does not mean that human beings are not inherently special and can claim special rights for themselves and even other life forms. If you wish to disagree with that statement you need to disagree with it in the metaphysical realm using abstract reasoning — like philosopher Peter singer does. You can’t use empirical science to disagree with it any more than you can use the Bible to disagree with a finding of empirical science.
We need to be careful to not confuse one’s metaphysical statements with empirical ones and vice versa, which appears to be what was happening with the cited Cardinal’s NYT letter and the ire it has raised among many people.
“Cogito ergo sum” is an enthymeme… a for which has no logical validity. It is really just an assertion like “God is cool, man!!”
It is not taken seriosuly by modern philopshers.
In fact,there’s a woderful joke about Descartes:
Descates went out to a fine restaunt one day alone to have his dinner. The waitress asked him, “Would you like somehting to drink?” and descartes respomded “I think not” and vansihed out of existence…..LOL!!
for that question, and I did stop that dead end argument there. But it is not true that philosophers don’t take him seriously any more. That is why his text is still in most Intro to Philosophy courses. His work is part of the foundation of modern philosophy, even if that particular way of thinking may have been discarded. The field has just been able to move beyond that particular problem, but it is still a basic issue that was first addressed by that statement.
Good Descartes joke though — LOL.
You comment:
“This means that if humans were not here to witness it, the universe as we know it would not exist. Existence itself is concept that requires a mortal, thinking being to be there. That is how important we are. The universe really does depend upon us.”
I’m not sure where you’re coming from here. The first sentence above seems tautological or circular to me. Are you saying that the physical existence of the universe depends upon having an observer? Or the experiential existence?
That is, to revive an old chestnut, “Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if no one is there to hear it?” Is the sound the generation of the air vibrations or the action in a listener’s ear and brain. I’d say the former, which is why I’m differentiating between what’s happening “out there” versus the existential experience of reality.
Since we now know that the universe existed for millions of years after the big bang but before the physical conditions of the universe were such that any kind of life could evolve anywhere in the universe, actual physical existence (rather than the experience of existence in an observer) either does not require sentience, or even a passing electron possesses some primitive form of sentience that is sufficient to be some kind of an “observer” on at least some primitive level, as per Spinoza and Whitehead. (A thought I’m quite willing to entertain, but process thology is getting off-topic.) If we’re talking physical existence here, I believe even a passing stray electron is a sufficient “observer” to break quantum degeneracy, for example (resolving the status of poor Schrodinger’s cat).
Interestingly enough, some research has just hit the press today that may indicate that even in a totally isolated system, quantum degeneracy is not stable forever. The story relates to the problems this will present in creating quantum computers, but it has far-reaching philosophical implications, if true (which I’m still mulling over) (At least if you try to have a philosophy that is consistent with observed reality.).
It would seem to imply, if I read it correctly, that given infinite time, any quantum degeneracy (Schrodinger’s cat situation) will resolve itself into one or the other condition on its own, without an observer whatsoever. If there are any quantum mechanics / mechanicians / magicians out there, please check the link and see if I’m reading its implications correctly.
((Aside: God, isn’t this FUN? I used to live for these kinds of discussions when I was in college!))
The difference is that Spinoza and Whitehead are perfectly consistent in maintining that their positions because they were bith fundamentally pantheists who beieved that all of the universe is infused with spirit and, at least in the case of Spinoza, it is infinite (or least finite but unbounded like the surface of the earth).
For Spinoa god is idenitcal to the molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, leptons, and all the way down ad infinitum. Evolution in the scenario, would just be the unfoding of spirit intot many didffrents manisfeattions. Paradoxially, this is very analagous to the position of the ancient atomists (Democratus and his followers)who beleived that all of the phenomenal world is made up of invisible material objects called atoms (which means, literally, indivisible).
I’m not a physicist, but I do have a pretty string scisntific background and one of my chief areas is the philopshy of science. The artcile you have linked to is quite fascinating. The phenenonon which underlies the idea of qubits in hypothetcial quantum computers is called, technically, the “superposition of eigenstates.” The orthodox position is that it is impoosible to know which of many states a partcilcar system is in. That it is otntoligaclly indetermate and that this indetrerminacy can only be reolves by the intervention of an observer (collapse of the wave function).
If the theoreticians which the artcile refers to are correct, then this is no longer the case. That would be a revolutionary discovery indeed. It would overturn the orthodox Copenhagen interpreation in favor of something apparently deterministic in nature it would seem. But, according to the artcile istelf, it has not been verified experimentally.
My interpretation was the same as yours on the quantum computer article, which is why I wanted a second opinion. Quite a surprise. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.
A thought: Could the quantum degeneracy be “spontaneously” destroyed because a virtual particle pair happened to be created, destroying its degeneracy? Or is this something more fundamental at work? Unfortunately, the news story doesn’t provide enough detail.
Of course, we both know that a really closed system (in a vacuum) doesn’t exist because of the continous fluttering in and out of exietnce of virtual particles.
So it seems entirely plausible to me that such particals could cause a collapse of the wave function. But further than this I dare not venture without the help of an expert in the field. That’s an intereting thought which, along with the artcile, makes me want to go and get some books and bury my head in them for several weeks though.
on blogs about evolution. I’m really an economist, to blow any credibility I might have even further.
My argument is a circular one and the old tree riddle appropriate, if trite. But that is because the problem of a non-objective observer is precisely the issue with using science to address questions on being.
Except for basic stimuli, everything we witness in the world is a modeled representation of what really is. There is no such thing as evolution, per se, apart from human invention of the concept. But evolution explains a lot about how observable things have been, are, and will be, so it appears to be true. However, if we weren’t here to think about evolution, it would not exist, even if the phenomenon that we understand as evolution was still there. We humans are adding the key ingredient by just being here to try to make sense of it. My argument is that beings that are capable of doing that are special — not separate from nature — but special in and of themselves and that we can, as Thomas Jefferson did, claim inherent rights based on that alone.
Another way to think of it is to ask yourself if Heaven really exists. Does it matter if there is a place with angels and (for Muslim suicidals, virgins) if we are not there to see it. Or can we just as easily deny its existence. Being there to witness it is really important, because some things just don’t matter unless someone is there to care about it.
Value is a valid concept here. There is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is dependent upon some person wanting it. The same is true of the universe, or Heaven, or a million other parallel universes that might exist but we don’t even care about because we are not there.
You can’t make an general ethic out of something that doesn’t matter, so since we are the ones who make things matter — to us, at least, but that is all there is — that is sufficient reason to say we are special and entitled to special rights.
This doesn’t address the problem adequately:
The reason is that time is not important here. It is enough that we are here now to see the universe that we have already corrupted the experiment. No matter what happens now, the universe will always have to be understood by us as we understand it, so it is not possible to hypothesize a “what if we weren’t here” to address it when questions regarding are own being are at issue. There’s no problem when trying to inquire about other physical phenomenon. But you can’t use that information alone to address questions regarding your own being because you’re part of the observable phenomenon.
It just means that we need to use abstract reasoning instead of observable phenomenon to determine questions like, “Are human beings special?” or “Is abortion wrong?”
That link is very interesting. I don’t know if it affects my argument, but it is something that I’ve been interested in for while, so I’ll think on it.
Especially you and gilgamesh. I must have a month’s worth of deep pondering to do after all of this. Haven’t has this much fun in a long, long time.
BTW, I’m certainly not a professional philosopher either – I’m an environmental chemist. LOL
I’ll throw in a hearty cheer of my own!! And, although you are not professional philosphers (strictly speaking I am not either– just an aspiring student who has been held back from finishing his formal studies becasue of various health problems), I am impressed with the appearent “compreheniveness” of both of your educations. You are bth scientists of different sorts, but you haven’t boxed yourselves off in your specializtions as so many people that I know seem to do.
It’s what Ortega y Gasset called “the barbarism of specialization”. But I’ve gone way off topic.
But I still recommended the diary. I’ll just let other (smarter) people discuss it.
The whole idea of intelligent design has always bothered me because of the overwhelming absence of evidence for it. The ID folks’ argument basically boils down to this: organisms are exceedingly complex and well-suited to their environments, therefore they were designed.
The assumption that complexity cannot arise except by intelligent design can only be held by people who had an easier time in organic chemistry than I did. 😉
The real problem with ID is that if you look at just the gross anatomy of humans and other animals, you can fill a book with the design flaws. If we had today the sort of mastery of genetic engineering that we might well have in a couple of centuries, we could design much better animals than what has evolved on its own. The spine, knees, the eyes, the female reproductive system, the brain, the immune system, and the circulatory system, just to name a few, are parts of the human anatomy that would be vastly improved if we had the ability to alter them to fit engineering specifications, to say nothing of adding a whole raft of features like the ability to regenerate limbs, see in the dark, breathe underwater, and hibernate.
In other words, if God designed man, then God is just either just not that damn smart, or there is some hidden purpose behind osteoporosis and ovarian cysts that we just aren’t smart enough to understand. Personally, I prefer to believe that if God exists, he isn’t the incompetent hack that the intelligent design people think he is.
My wife just got out of veterinary school, and she’s constantly commenting on this very point. Her favorite is the knee, although you are right, the closer you look the more examples you can find.
It’s only been in the last few years that they’ve finally figured out how a creature as un-aerodynamic as the bumblebee can fly at all.
And what’s with the whole “…inordinate fondness for beetles” thing? I guess even God needs a hobby. 😉
just not a very good one! I think we all got beta-test versions of the knee.
I am reminded of a line by Nietzsche:
It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author – and not learn it better.
– Beyond Good and Evil
How about the inordinateness fondess for [b]bacteria [/b], for Jove’s sakes!!
All of so-called “complex” organic life inlcuding even betales can be seen as, statisitcally speking, a tiny little tail off the right side of a Guassian distribution
in whihc bacteria occupy the whole areas covered by the bell shaped part.
Does anyone still really belive that human bsings are “special”? It’s time for such folks to get a real education,I’m sorry to say.
I get moved to send rants to the NYT whenever they push ID. Here’s the one I sent in response to the Schoenbrun piece:
I got more carried away responding to a real ID shill, Michael Behe, and expanded another LTE into a diary.
One thing to remember is that they don’t really take ID seriously, they just view it as a wedge issue that can be used to support a new round of politicization of science education, and thereby fan the fundy base to a froth for elections.
What’s really interesting and throws a wrench in the works is the recent discovery that environmental factors can affect how genes are expressed, and that this also can be passed down from generation to generation. Not to mention this mind-bender.
It’s consistent with another recent study that found gene expression varies between twins with different environmental exposures.
There’s a lot more to be learned about how you get from DNA to you and me than we thought even a few years ago. Not that the basic concepts of natural selection and genetic inheritance are incorrect, they’re just more complicated than we believed, as you point out.
Just another inherently fascinating aspect of the universe we live in…
Evolution on earth is evolution at its very best.
Thanks to our sun and our distance from it, and thanks to our moon endlessly stirring the evolutionary pot, the gas Giants shielding us from bombardment, thanks to all the necessary conditions coming together in just the right way life has evolved to become as the Marines say “All that it can be.”
Are you referring to the “rare earth” hypothesis? Interesting stuff.
You might want to check out the discussion here (continues onto additional pages), as well as here and here.
Full disclosure: I’m in the “life everywhere” camp: You just can’t keep a good physicochemical process down…
Thanks for the links; I guess I am more in the rare earth camp than the life everywhere camp. The creationist have sullied the entire notion of intelligent design, to me the laws of physics are the bone and sinew of God so I see his hand in everything.
I went to a Catholic college and majored in chemistry. I used to enjoy shocking people by telling them that the greatest insight I got into the mind of God while I was there was when I took physical chemistry, especially when we studied quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics (which are mind-altering to study, regardless of your theology!).
Like you, I also see the hand of God in everything, I just define God a lot differently now (as the Tao) than I did 25 years ago (standard Judeo-Christian-Islamic personal God).
An ominous sign in the new direction of church thinking is the innocuous-sounding sentence referring to the “multiverse”. This is, i my view, the first salvo in a general attack on physical science. The Cardinal is referring of course here to the Everett-DeWitt
many-worlds interpreation of quantum mechanics. This interpretation of quantum mechanics among other things provides a systematic argument against the existence of a universal probability bound used in the design argument by Dembski; it also challenges the idea of the “exceptional character” of our universe.
The fact that there is really no sharp demarcation between biology and physics means that any attack on evolution will necessarily require attacks on all of science and physics in particular. Quantum mechanics presents an easy target since it is seemingly susceptible to the “anti-realist” claim.
Bingo! The fear (perhaps justified) that phyical relativism will of necessity lead to moral relativism.
And since this is the centennial of Einstein’s “miracle year” it’s only taken the sh** a century to hit the fan…
There are many good reasons to criticize the church but this is just sniping. By an large they are not promoting the Discovery Institutes work, in any fashion. Their theological views on most modern subjects are murky.
I said:
gilgamesh then wrote:
And I then said:
You seem to be pretty well-versed in quantum mechanics. Upthread I mentioned this press item that seems pretty mind-boggling if it holds up. What’s your take?
Here’s the key quote:
“Much to their surprise they discovered that the coherence [in an isolated quantum computer qubit, but presumably this would have wider implications] tends to spontaneously disappear, even without external influences. The degradation process is linked to the occurrence of quantum mechanical spontaneous symmetry breaking.”
Quantum Mechanics is ‘Terror Incognita’ to me. 😉 Sorry.
A friend of mine, who died recently, would have been the person to ask; during the early 70’s he was a Ph.d theoretical chemist working on (IIRC) Green’s Theorum (?) investigating exactly this question.
An excellent techincal reference book on the science of Quantum mechanics AND its philsopical consequences, underpinning s and implication is comatined in book called “La Filosofia della Fisica” (The Philopshy of Physics) by Giovanni Boniolo and Pauli Vidali. I donìt know if it has been translated into English.
Warning: it is NOT popular science. These are philosphers who all have an extremely extensive background in physics
and beleive that the philsopy of these questions cannot be discueed without undretanding (to the extent that that is possible with reperct to QM) the mathematics of Hilbert space including, for example, the set theory of orthonormal states, Hernitian and symmetric operators,successions of orthonormal variteites and montone successions of projective operators…..just to pick some randon topics discussed in the book.
Iìve never seen anything like this when I lived in the US.
There is aslo an excellent popular exposition (also in Italian unfortunately) called “A Glance at the Hand (as in a card game) of God” by Giancarlo Girardi.
The second one helped me immenesley in slogging my way through the first.
Also, when it comes to the philophy of physics, biology, or anything else for that matter, I can never overemphasize the importance of sites like David Chalmers “On Line Papers in Philosophy”. If you scroll down towdr the btoom their is a section on philopshers who specialize in physics.
Iìll get you the link as soon as I can. Philopshy has come a loooooooooooooooooooong way scince the days of Heiddeger, who was fundamtally anti-science in any case and not really much of a philopher either.
Here’s the link to Chalmers’ collection and here’s a list of the professional philosopher of physics and biology
with their particular specializations indicated next to their names:
As I said, philopshy has changed radically over the last thirty or forty years. These people KNOW their physics and biology respectively.
Reading this thread was like sitting in on a graduate-level philosophy seminar.
Thanks to all the participants.