New Freethinkers

Owl & Ibis – A Confluence of Minds represents one among many new approaches being tried alongside contemporary and more popular freethinker groups. This new direction derives from and has its precursors in the humanistic thinking of John Dewey, Paul Kurtz, Isaiah Berlin, and many others. Owl & Ibis, as a learning endeavor, is interested in and respectful of all civilizations, societies, cultural traditions, and belief systems but professes to none. It holds in high esteem secular-scientific thinking yet is committed to pluralism and tolerance regarding all other modes of thought. At the same time, it will critically assess and when necessary vigorously challenge the beliefs and values of persons and groups that advocate and carry out harm* against persons, peoples, and Humankind as a whole. This includes challenging efforts to place religious beliefs in the curricula of public-funded science classrooms, and in legislation drafted by otherwise secular governments. Both actions, when successful, are regarded as harmful to Humankind. 

Many freethinkers often become zealous about their views regarding science and atheism, and descend into "scientism" and religion- and believer-bashing. When this occurs freethinker understandings of science’s methods become dogmatic and science’s provisional knowledge becomes misconstrued as absolute. Such a freethinker worldview becomes similar to that of the very religious fundamentalists they most abhor such that both defend their respective beliefs as absolute truth and their methods for arriving at them as superior to all others.

Ultimate Knowledge

Philosopher in Meditation by Rembrandt

Some Modern Perspectives on the Quest for Ultimate Knowledge (2013)

by Stephen Wolfram

The importance of this article is its accurate description of the great promise of applying the natural sciences and mathematics to human behavior, AND their limitations. Wolfram's comment toward the end on taking a certain comfort that there will most likely never be an ultimate, totally predictive knowledge of human behavior and the processes of the universe should not cause discouragement. Nor should the unlikely attainment of such a perfect knowledge cause us to abandon the focusing of the natural sciences on Humankind. Acceptance of the unlikely emergence of a complete, deterministic natural science of man is an acceptance of the reality of the complexity of the universe and in turn the complexities of the affairs of Humankind. I am comforted by the provisional scientific knowledge we continue to build, not by a desire or need for an absolute knowledge. The former seems a better fit for the provisional, evolving universe we are in.

Natural Science, Certainty, And Widget Factories

The Problem of the Neuroscience Backlash

by Gary Marcus

My posts against scientism are cautionary comments motivated by my love of and respect for science and Humankind. It is disheartening that so many of my fellow humans, such as Donald Brooks mentioned in the essay linked above, take criticism of neuroscientism as a justification for condemning and ignoring the important work and findings of the brain sciences.

It is becoming more and more apparent that we in the West, and most acutely those of us in the US, have sunken into an age of reactionary extremes where certainty, bombast, and outrage are our favored and most often only modes of expressing our views and reacting to the views of others. Umbrage, indignation, and knee-jerk conclusion jumping, such as that of Mr Brooks and others such as politicians, are in vogue and too often taken as signs of the correctness of the position taken by such persons regardless of whether they have any expertise in the matter they speak of or not. Fortunately, discerning minds easily recognize cautionary comments for what they are and can look beyond the bluster and fury of self-appointed experts and windbags.

All will eventually be well and this age of certainty, determinism, and absolutism - among the believers AND secular-scientific thinkers, and among the left AND right - will pass into another age. Hopefully, it will be an age of tolerant pluralism where we must work harder at finding common ground and ways forward for Humankind and forsake the easier work of expressing certainty, outrage, and intolerance. We will need many more discerning minds to express themselves than are currently doing so to take us toward a new age with a viable and sustainable global morality and civilization at its core. The current age of zero-sum certainty and bombast is divisive, inclined toward conflict, and intellectually sterile. Humankind can and will do better, if we don't self-destruct along the way.

*           *           *

Materialism, reductionism, and determinism are essential to the scientific method. But also essential to scientific methodology is the recognition that complex structures and functions, beyond atoms, molecules, tissues, and organs and what they do, represent and require different and more complex levels of analysis.

The Two Greatest Inventions

Printing Press With Movable Type, Johannes Guterburg, c. 1440

The New York Times Magazine, The Innovations Issue - "If you were trying to name the greatest invention in human history, it would be...,"

The above link takes you to the opening essay of the New York Times Magazine, Innovations Issue of June 9, 2013.  The answer to the Times' rhetorical question about the greatest invention in history shouldn't surprise you.  No, it isn't the printing press with movable type pictured above.  The greatest invention ever was the first stone chopping tools used by our ancestors 2.6 million years ago.

Olduwan Stone Chopping Tools, East Africa

These simple, modified pieces of rock in themselves are not so great to us modern humans when we compare them to subsequent inventions, innovations, and discoveries.  It is true that fire usage, metal tools, the wheel, writing, mathematics, architecture, industrial manufacturing, electricity, the internal combustion engine, airplanes, atomic energy, medical science and technology, electronic computation, and others have been greater in terms of their power to manipulate the environment and their ability to improve human living conditions.

The greatness of these first hominin (humans and their close extinct relatives) tools is in what they contributed to if not on their own precipitated - a new type of survival strategy in the natural history of animals commonly known today as "human cultural adaptation."  These rudimentary tools our ancestors made, used, became dependent on, and gradually improved upon stand as our most important invention, ever.  The subsequent impact of this new hominin way of life of which tool use was inseparable is still being powerfully applied to Earth, its environment, and all its life forms.

Stone chopping tools, used for butchering scavenged carcasses in East Africa 2.6 million years ago, are the oldest of our ancestors' tools to be preserved and later discovered in the archaeological record.  Stone tool manufacture and usage helped initiate an unprecedented evolutionary adaptation in the natural history of animals.  Hominin cultural adaptation did not emerge suddenly or fully formed.  It is a set of innovations in hominin evolution comprised of the following:  tool manufacture and reliance, upright walking, high protein consumption, social group innovations, increased brain size, and language.  It is this adaptation complex - an ecological-behavioral niche that we gradually created and continue build upon - that allowed us to survive and upon which we still depend today.

This complex is an emergent baseline bio-cultural foundation that made possible and sped up the emergence of all subsequent human inventions, innovations, and discoveries.  Without the advent of this tool-centered adaptation complex the subsequent social, technological, and scientific advances humans have made would have been unlikely if not impossible.  For further reading on how Phase I, the human cultural adaptation complex, came about and what it has led to see The Driving Forces Of Human Evolution - A Reading List and The Case For Human Evolution, Science And Reason - A Reading List.

Scientism And The Humanities

Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture - A Defense of the Humanities by Leon Wieseltier

EXCERPT:

"Our glittering age of technologism is also a glittering age of scientism. Scientism is not the same thing as science. Science is a blessing, but scientism is a curse. Science, I mean what practicing scientists actually do, is acutely and admirably aware of its limits, and humbly admits to the provisional character of its conclusions; but scientism is dogmatic, and peddles  certainties. It is always at the ready with the solution to every problem, because it believes that the solution to every problem is a scientific one, and so it gives scientific answers to non-scientific questions. But even the question of the place of science in human existence is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical, which is to say, a humanistic, question.

"Owing to its preference for totalistic explanation, scientism transforms science into an ideology, which is of course a betrayal of the experimental and empirical spirit. There is no perplexity of human emotion or human behavior that these days is not accounted for genetically or in the cocksure terms of evolutionary biology. It is true that the selfish gene has lately been replaced by the altruistic gene, which is lovelier, but it is still the gene that tyrannically rules. Liberal scientism should be no more philosophically attractive to us than conservative scientism, insofar as it, too, arrogantly reduces all the realms that we inhabit to a single realm, and tempts us into the belief that the epistemological eschaton has finally arrived, and at last we know what we need to know to manipulate human affairs wisely. This belief is invariably false and occasionally disastrous. We are becoming ignorant of ignorance."

Science And Morality

Science and Moral Life - The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture

A must read complement to Michael Shermer (The Science of Good and Evil) and Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape) on science and morality.  All three are excellent treatments of this subject.

Am In Uganda, The Pearl of Africa, And Loving It!

Wanale (Nkokonjeru), a major rock prominence in the western

shadow of Masaaba (Mt. Elgon), Bumasaaba, the homeland

of the Masaaba people of eastern Uganda

Have been at my second home in Uganda since February 1.  Been visiting relatives and friends and completing the preliminaries for research for a book I'm writing, The Bamasaaba or Bagisu of Uganda: An Historical Ethnography.  Will resume posting in May.  Cheers!

Brain Creates Self, Self Becomes An Emergent Agent That Connects Brain To World

Art by Mark David Dietz, used with permission

If the self is a delusion, as many tell us, who or what is it that is being deluded? The self is produced by the brain based on inherited biological potentials and the brain's interactions with the environment via the senses. It is maintained and projected socially by the brain throughout our lives. It is that which the brain creates and imposes on the local and global community of minds we are born into, a community that also provides access to the thoughts of minds from the past. It is not a stand-alone dualistic soul, homunculus, or ghost in the machine. Nor is it solely a collection of impulse discharging nerve cells in the brain. It begins at birth and ends at death. Look for the self in what a person says and does in between. ... As for changing or improving one's self, here's a great, somewhat tongue-in-cheek article by journalist Kathryn Schulz on the self-help industry: http://nymag.com/health/self-help/2013/schulz-self-searching/.

Also, there is this:  the archaic mammalian SELF at the sub-cortical level - http://www.academia.edu/1312559/Affective_Neuroscience_and_the_Philosophy_of_Self.  One cannot help after observing the individual and social behavior of reptiles and birds that there must also be a reptilian and avian SELF, and a SELF at work in all sentient beings.  When a bird, for example, flees at the approach of what might be danger to its well-being and continued existence it appears to be doing so as a deliberative response to a remembered experience of one or a number of characteristics the danger possesses.  The bird appears to have "decided" this particular danger is a threat and responded in a manner it believes is in its best interest.  This postulation and its resulting decision is made with reference to its remembered individual experience and its remembered observation of other animals' fleeing or making referent calls in reference to the same danger.  We've all seen birds and other animals respond to danger and non-dangerous others and situations - most times appropriately, sometimes inappropriately, and sometimes in a confused, undecided manner.  The fact that they don't always respond appropriately seems to me to support the idea that their deliberative sometimes breaks down from the lack of full information about the threat or a misinterpretation of full information.  Stealth, camouflage, mimicry, and other traits and tactics on the part of dangerous others, such as predators, are used to confuse the deliberative process in their prey.  Predator animals likewise engage in deliberative processes in their decisions to pursue or not pursue prey, and in what manner they will do so.

In light of the research and thinking presented in the above paper by Stephen T. Asma and Thomas Greif, a synthesis of neuroscience, philosophy, and social science regarding the human self could be expressed as follows:

The self, at the cortical level in humans, is an evolutionary emergent elaboration along the continuum of the mammalian self. What we humans have is a mammalian self at the level of the mid-brain that is augmented and elaborated by the cortex using language. It is this enhanced self we create and use to engage the global community of minds, past and present - a self that is both biological and social.


Perhaps the most important question for which Humankind remains in search of an answer, after why there is something rather than nothing in the universe, is how, exactly, the brain creates a self at the sub-cortical and cortical level?  This will require a detailed accounting of how the neural matter of the brain gives meaning to the sensory experiences of the individual, including the individual's experience of the meanings of others' sensory experiences as found in their speech, writing, and behavior.  Studying the formulation and projection of a self by other sentient animals may help lead to a breakthrough among neuroscientists who are at an impasse in explaining human consciousness.  An explanation my very well lie outside the human brain.  It may be a more common experience than we are at present willing to admit.  A form of consciousness and the continual creation and projection of a self appear to be characteristics of all sentient life on Earth.

Consciousness, to one degree or another, and self creation and projection appear to be far older and more widespread than their manifestations in the human brain and in the relatively brief experience of Humankind.

Is Self Or Personhood Dependent On Memory?

Amnesia and The Self That Remains When Memory is Lost

In response to scientistic (strong reductionistic/deterministic) claims that we have no free will and that the self is a delusion I always argue for the emergent, agent self/person being a real entity and part of the global, prehistoric, and historic community of minds. That a person is defined by him/herself and his fellow humans by his/her connection to this domain of dynamic, remembered ideas.

The article above argues that our self remains when we lose our memory.  However, it doesn't really provide evidence that the man with the brain tumor has a self independent of his memory. In fact, his memory in large part remains intact.  One, he remembers that it is important for him to do work he enjoys. Two, he has not lost that crucial part of his memory that he uses for the various aspects of language he learned during his life, and still remembers.

For me, if he had lost his memory of all the knowledge, beliefs, and values he had acquired during his life, and his memory of all aspects of language/speech comprehension and production, yet remained physiologically vegetatively alive, we could say his self/personness had ceased to exist. Fortunately, we would still respect his humanness and his inclusion as a member of Humankind, as we do a newborn who has yet to learn a language or acquire beliefs and values.

See the following link for a brief discussion of the legal and philosophical understandings of personhood.  Those quoted say little to nothing about memory being an essential part of being a human being. Their emphasis is on consciousness (which is reliant on memory) and biological processes.

Human Exploration: A Look At Our Genetic Capacity To Imagine And Explore

Photo:  Michael Nichols

Restless Genes by Daniel Dobbs, National Geographic, January 2013

Here’s a great article on why humans are exploratory. Note that the author and most of the scientists cited take a pluralistic, multiple level of analysis approach to the question. They, the journalist and most of the scientists, eschew a reductionistic, deterministic, single level approach such that the possession of a single gene or set of genes explains all. This is an example of good science and good science writing. It offers a template for evaluating the explanatory validity of other scientific inquiries and science reporting, especially in the currently popular and highly reductionistic fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and genetics.

Crazy Far by Tim Folger, National Geographic, January 2013

Explanatory Pluralism Ignored By Many Neuroscientists And Journalists

Here's a must read for scientific secular thinkers confident that neuroscience is our best hope for developing a comprehensive, ultimate understanding of human behavior: Psychological Concepts and Biological Psychiatry: A Philosophical Analysis (2000) by Peter Zachar.  From the text (128-134):

"The most obvious response to someone who wants to talk about psychology only in terms of neurophysiology is the infinite regress critique; i.e., if psychology is really the activity of the nervous system, then neurophysiology is really the result of biochemical interactions, which in turn are really the activity of subatomic particles.  If sensations are 'really' brain processes, then brain processes are 'really' actualized genetic programs, which are 'really' incredibly complex arrangements of atomic particles.  Ultimate, everything will have to be eliminated in favor of subatomic physics.  Scientistic thinkers (followers of strong scientism) are most vulnerable to this regress because physics is presumably more scientific and therefore more real than biology or psychology.

"The regress is such a ridiculous consequence that eliminativists (deterministic reductionists) have to admit multiple levels of analysis.  They merely want to make separate levels more consistent with each other, their famous unity of science goal.

...

"Endorsing what he calls 'explanatory pluralism,' McCauley (1996) suggests that different levels of analysis make separate explanatory contributions, with each level having its own internally consistent legitimacy.  Part of this legitimacy involves a unique research tradition, with research techniques, and specific kinds of professional problems to solve.

...

"Modern day eliminativists think that higher level neuroscience can move into the level of analysis now occupied by psychology, but still be called neuroscience.  If I am correct, once neuroscience gets to the psychological level, new and complex problems endemic to that level will emerge.  These include perennial problems indigenous to psychology that no comprehensive model at that level of analysis can escape."

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **

 

Therefore, strong deterministic, reductionistic scientism ignores or downplays various levels of analysis of emergent phenomena beyond the nervous system, and descends into an infinite regress to the concepts, theories and methods of subatomic physics that simply cannot explain higher level phenomena.  The problem here does not lie only with journalistic license.  Neuroscience practitioners such as Sam Harris and many others seldom if at all acknowledge the need for explanatory pluralism encompassing numerous levels of analysis above the nervous system.  Neuroscientific reductionism and determinism are not enough.  Research efforts at all levels are needed.  Such a pluralistic approach is discouraged by journalistic and neuroscientific pseudo-comprehensive claims that free will and the self are illusions, intuition and psycho-evolutionary moral foundations in our brains are the real drivers of political behavior, and that there are economic marketplaces and value computing neurons in our brains.

Zachar's book is a good place to start thinking pluralistically about human behavior and skeptically about neuroscientific reductionism-determinism.

Further Reading

The Science of Bad Neuroscience by Dorothy Bishop, Oxford neuroscientist, a video of a 2011 talk
Neuroscience: Under Attack by Alissa Quart, The New York Times, November 23, 2012
Neuroscience Fiction by Gary Marcus, The New Yorker, December 2, 2012
BishopBlog, blog of Dorothy Bishop
Mind Hacks
Neurobonkers
The Neurocritic
Neuroskeptic

Neuroscience And Genetics - Their Potential Impact On Human Cultural Evolution



The Marketplace In Your Brain: Neuroscientists have found brain cells that compute value.  Why are economists ignoring them? by Josh Fischman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, September 24, 2012

Never mind the fallacious language about economic markets existing in your cranium and the neuron-machine comparison in the above linked title and leader.  The article has much that is useful to say about the relationship between neuroscience findings and how they are responded to within the social sciences, in particular, economics.

I have been skeptical for some time about how journalists, writers, reporters, as well as many neuroscientists, academics, and other professionals, too often exaggerate the findings of neuroscience research.  More disturbing is their insistence that the reductionistic and deterministic approaches of neuroscience research will surely give rise to a biology of all human behavior based on genetics and brain structures and functions.  This would be a sociobiology (Wilson) that trumps the social sciences and humanities and makes them obsolete, subordinate, or relatively weak in terms of their explanatory-predictive power regarding human behavior.  See Ray Tallis for an excellent treatment of such exaggerations and misplaced confidence.

Though extremely skeptical, I can't help but wonder what "new world" awaits Humankind if the natural science of human behavior many neuroscientists and geneticists seek is realized.  What will it mean to have a irrefutable sociobiological, neuro-genetic understanding of human nature expressed in terms of laws, theories, and models equivalent to those in physics, chemistry, and biology?

I hope I live long enough to see a synthesis of neuroscience and social science that produces reliably predictive laws and models of human behavior, if in fact such a natural science of Humankind is possible.  If such laws and models are produced an unprecedented upheaval in the cultural evolution of our species must surely ensue.

I have argued elsewhere in this blog that the greatest challenge facing Humankind is successfully making whatever efforts necessary to bring about a binding global morality and civilization, and an effective human stewardship of Earth - Cultural Evolution, Phase II - Establishing a Unified Worldview.  Will a natural science of human behavior as envisioned by many neuroscientists and geneticists, if it comes into being, enhance or hinder our on-going efforts to realize this vital second phase of Humankind's evolution?

Much if not all of what we accept as being our human nature and what we accept as moral behavior is founded on the principle of individual intentionality, agency, and rationality.  If neuroscience and genetics unequivocally establish that we have have no free will, intentionality, or agency, that our behavior is intuitive, instinctive, and pre-determined and/or otherwise controlled by our genes and brains, the life of the individual within a local and global community of minds will no longer be the reference point for what it means to be human.  The structures and functions of our genes and brain cells will become that which "contains" what it means to be human.

New beliefs and values regarding what we are and how we should relate to each other will need to be created. Our notions of the intentionality and agency of the self and person, our personal obligations and responsibilities to each other, our moral and legal culpability, our notions of human freedom and human rights, our humaneness, our understandings of just warfare, and all other personal, social, and global aspects of who and what we are must be changed.

My worry is who or what will make these changes - competing nation-state governments, religious leaders, scientists, global fora such as the UN, or our brains and genes themselves? How will they go about it? What will the new beliefs and values be? How will we use them?

I am skeptical that such predictive theories and models will ever materialize. If they do they will likely be more probabilistic than predictive. Still, such a future neuro-social science dominated paradigm would be fraught with great risks, many of which would have direct implications for Humankind's survival and Earth's continued life sustaining capability.

What are we to do as individuals, as societies? Remain skeptical. Trust, exercise, and vigorously defend individual intentionality, agency, and rationality. Behave compassionately toward all.

Whatever neuroscience and genetics ultimately reveal about human nature, our future will be an unimaginable journey well worth taking - if we and the planet survive it.

Critique - "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt

[The following are notes used by the author for a presentation at a meeting of the Blue Moon Group of freethinkers in Peachtree City, Georgia on September 9, 2012.  The author was invited by the leaders and organizers of the group to give a critique of Haidt’s book. Author's comments after extracts from Haidt are in italics.]

UPDATE 01
March 23, 2019

The Well-Meaning Bad Ideas Spoiling a Generation

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt on politics, morality, and the coddling of the American mind.

Brian Gallagher

Nautilus

March 7, 2019

Above is an interview of Jonathan Haidt. It’s pretty good on some things like his latest book The Coddling of the American Mind. I think he may be better on this topic than “human nature” and things such as the evolutionary emergence of human morality, values he contends we are hard-wired and therefore compelled to express. 

The following excerpted statement of his from the interview caught my attention in that it is revealing in terms of my critique of his book, The Righteous Mind. He’s asked to account for the now Trumpian Republican Party. Haidt’s response raises this question: If his moral foundation theory is as powerful and useful as he leads us to believe in his book, how could one election and one president, Trump, in effect debunk it?

JH: “Trump has shifted a lot of things around. The Republican Party is no longer the social conservative party. I believe, in other research I’ve published with Karen Stenner, a political scientist in Australia, Trump is appealing to more authoritarian tendencies. It’s very hard to see how Donald Trump is a conservative. So the psychology that I just described a moment ago [moral foundation theory] no longer quite applies. [Italics mine.] The Republican Party, I don’t know what’s happening to it [shouldn’t his moral foundation theory provide some answers?], but it is bringing in elements that are overtly racist. It is bringing in desires for rapid change, which is not a conservative virtue, generally.”

Haidt hitching his moral foundation theory to evolutionary human nature remains a problem for me. 

Equally unsatisfactory is his claim in his The Righteous Mind that Democrats are less loyal and less patriotic than Republicans just doesn’t hold water. Since Trump’s election who, really, is proving to be the greater patriot, Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell?

I think a good theory of cultural evolution, one I’m working on, would tell us a lot more about how humans became what we are and why we behave as we do than Haidt’s moral foundation theory.

ADDENDUM TO ORIGINAL POST

The Righteous Mind by Jonathon Haidt: Critique Postscript, November 21, 2013

ORIGINAL POST:

Professor Jonathan Haidt is a self-described moral psychologist.  I am neither a psychologist nor a neuroscientist.  As for being a moralist, no, I don’t teach morality but I am, regrettably, prone to moralizing.

Professor Haidt took approximately five years to research and write The Righteous Mind.  To conduct a thorough analysis of his work and the references he cites would take at least half that long.  I haven’t done that.  I have read the book twice and found certain methods and conclusions he has come to objectionable either due to his failure to use the best or most appropriate way to understand human behavior, or because of the language and argumentation he employs is a misleading or incorrect portrayal of Humankind.

Before I turn to that, let me say up front that I am a strong agnostic.  That is to say, if you drew a line in the sand and told me I had to stand on one side or the other, with either the religious believers or the atheists, I would unhesitatingly place myself among the latter.  I am also a secular humanist. 

I am not a Cartesian dualist.  Although I consider consciousness, mind, and self to be emergent properties of the various processes of the brain interacting with the environment via the five senses, I feel reasonably certain that when the body/brain dies, consciousness, mind, and person cease to directly exist.  I will address matters of the self, free will, and person later, in more detail.

As for science, it is not perfect in its knowledge or methods, nor is it immune from political manipulation or inhumane use.  Science produces a provisional truth that encourages skepticism and invites challenge.  A full, over-arching, grand theory or understanding of Life and Humankind cannot be derived from reducing all human behavior to physical and chemical determinism.  Given the complexity of human social and cultural life, past and present, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is a theory of human behavior based on our history, and expressed in terms of future probabilities, not certainties or laws.  I’m reminded of the science fiction notion of “psychohistory” developed by Isaac Asimov’s character, Hari Seldon, in the Foundation novels.  Maybe we’ll live long enough to see such a theory and methodology become a reality.  Maybe.

Human language-based cultural behavior is an emergent property of mammalian, primate evolutionary history.   Our high symbolic communication and cumulative culture provide a domain of human expression that transcends (goes beyond) our genes, neural wiring and brain chemistry.  I am therefore fairly certain that the social and behavioral sciences of anthropology, psychology and sociology, or philosophy, will not be replaced by a science of humankind based exclusively on physics, chemistry and neurology.

Finally, I do not regard reductionism and determinism, that is, in the strict materialistic sense that is practiced in most quarters of the natural sciences, as the only valid and therefore best approach for understanding and explaining human behavior.  The nature of Humankind, that which unequivocally distinguishes us as Homo sapiens among all other animals, is most apparent from and best understood by examining and considering the interaction between the conscious, language and culture-bearing human person, and the social and physical worlds.

The work of neuroscience and evolutionary biology is providing important insights.  However, a complete understanding of the nature of Humankind is not solely or ultimately to be found in the brain, its circuits or nerve cells, or in our genome.  To argue that it is or will be, is scientism.  Strong scientism produces dogma.  Dogma is an absolute, inviolable truth and is often associated with supernaturalism and totalitarianism.  It is the antithesis of the provisional truth of science.

Among the numerous unequivocally distinguishing characteristics of our species is human morality.  Let me now turn to Haidt’s book where morality is the major topic.

My goal in this critique is to persuade you to consider that a biologistic, reductionistic, and deterministic approach to morality and other complex human beliefs and behaviors, as Haidt offers, is not, by itself, sufficient.  Haidt believes it is.

I hope to persuade you that insisting on the primacy of such an approach, one that minimizes the influence of self, agency, free will, and the local and global community of minds, past and present, is inappropriate, dehumanizing, and dangerous.

I want to talk about four areas of method and findings in Haidt’s book that are inappropriate or unproductive ways for understanding and explaining human behavior.  These areas are:

I.          The Nature of Humankind

II.         The Biologism of Intuition and Reason

III.       Moral Foundations Theory

IV.       A Better Approach For Understanding Mind And Humankind

Brain, Self, World - Being Human Is More Than A Reduction To Physics And Chemistry

Art by Mark David Dietz, used with permission

Is Reductionism Wrong? A Philosopher Weighs In by Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution Is True blog, August 20, 2012
Reality Is Flat. (Or, Is It?) by Richard Polt, The New York Times, The Opinionator, August 16, 2012
Anything But Human by Richard Polt, The New York Times, The Opinionator, August 5, 2012
Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis And The Misrepresentation of Humanity by Raymond Tallis, 2011

Professor Jerry Coyne’s definition of “emergence” in the link above is the most narrow and incomplete I’ve come across. Emergent properties need not be consistent with (the same as) and therefore reducible to lower-level properties. Emergent entities and processes are dependent upon lower-level properties but they, in some important way, transcend them. See Stuart A. Kauffman, 2008, page 5 and "emergence."

Implying that Professor Polt is some kind of dualist is a diversionary accusation. Accusing Polt of denigrating science when he is in fact focusing his criticism on scientism, not science, is hyperbole. Calling Polt antiscientific, antimaterialist, and antinaturalistic is almost as shrill as the hue and cry of Christians when religion is criticized by agnostics and atheists. We are discussing science and its provisional knowledge, not religion and its dogma that the faithful consider to be unassailable.

It is true that the reductionistic analysis of volition, emotions, and other mental phenomena has begun to link these cognitive states to locations and circuitry in the brain. There is no question that these anatomical locations and their neural circuits produce these states, and that they cease to exist when the brain ceases functioning. However, the physio-chemical, developmental, and causal pathways between genes, brain matter, and cognitive states have not been mapped, even in rough form. Nor have neuroscientists produced an unequivocal, testable, and verifiable model of the mind and consciousness.  The likely reason neuroscientists have not is they deny intentionality and human agency, and see the mind entirely as a function of a material brain evolved from material processes.

More broadly, neuroscience has not definitvely linked genes and brain matter to ever more complex human thoughts such as ideologies and scientific theories, or complex activities such the social interactions between individuals and the interactions between variously defined groups, over time.

I do not share Professor Coyne’s optimism that the work of sociobiologists and neuroscientists will eventually lead to a detailed account of such causal pathways and maps for human individual cognition, or their vastly more complex ideas, or social interactions over time. Imagine, for example, charting or modeling the trillions of complex beliefs, values, and individual and collective interactions that preceded and resulted in the Allied victory over Germany and Japan in WWII, or those that led to the collapse of the USSR in 1991 being reduced to genetic chemistry, neural matter, and brain circuitry. I find such an accomplishment inconceivable despite my love of and confidence in science, and my usually boundless imagination.

Anything But Human - Genes And Brains Don't Behave, Humans Do

UPDATE
Reality Is Flat. (Or Is It?) by Richard Polt, The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, August 16, 2012.  Polt's rejoinder to comments he has received on the article below.

ORIGINAL POST
Anything But Human by Richard Polt, The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, August 5, 2012

Thank you, Professor Polt, for some clarity in the ever-intoxicating Nature-Nuture paradigm that is becoming increasingly dominated by sociobiology and neuroscience, especially in the minds of the American public.  I am beginning to think that philosophers are better at understanding and accepting the findings of paleoanthropologists than are biologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists.  Perhaps it is what they choose to look at and emphasize when they seek understandings of Humankind’s physical and behavioral repertoire.  Looking at genes and brains links these to behavior.  Looking at ideas, beliefs, and values links these to behavior.  Humans behave.  Genes contain codes for building anatomical structures and processes, including neurons and brain circuits.  These, in turn, produce behavior.  What the genes and neurons do is not the behavior.  What humans do is the behavior.

The "nature" of Humankind is a story of our early ancestors' and modern humans’ ability to beat the poor survival odds our relatively feeble hominid anatomy gave and still gives us.  How? We beat the odds by exploiting language-based culture and sociality to a degree that allowed minimal dependence on our inherited primate anatomy and instincts.  Ultimately, this and the subsequent cultural and technological innovations that followed allowed us to move into, survive, and increase in numbers in environments far more arduous than the Pleistocene woodlands of East and Southern Africa. Grasslands, deserts, oceanic islands, tundra, snow and ice, all became habitable.  Why, because we carried behaviors out of the African woodlands, into the grasslands, then on throughout the rest of the world as soft- or hard-wire encoded scripts in our genes?  Because of neuronal and brain configurations and behaviors our genes orchestrated?  These arguments have not been proven to a degree that merits abandoning the cultural evolutionary model.

The emergence of a sophisticated linguistic-cultural adaptation among the hominids, one far more successful at diverse environmental adaptation and exploitation than the quasi-cultural adaptations of all other animals that have evolved with us, and all that it has led to since that emergence, is the crux of the story of Humankind during our brief time on Earth.  Reducing this unique achievement relative to all the achievements of all other forms of life that ever appeared on Earth to a secondary role below the vestigial animal instincts encoded in our genes and neurons, and how they drive or override our beliefs, values, and ideals, dehumanizes us and removes our responsibility for continuing to use culture to beat the evolutionary odds stacked against us.  Sociobiology and neuroscience have much to offer but their findings do not reduce emergent language-based culture and human agency to an epiphenomenon or mere behavioral expression of a more profound and truthful story residing in our DNA and neurons.

Dumb And Dumber - Brain Circuitry Versus Sociocultural Argumentation

Dumb and Dumber by George Lakoff, Foreign Policy, August 7, 2012

Linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff's point is a simple one - liberals go wrong when they use the term "low-information voters" for Americans who vote for Republicans, a party that, in fact, works to their disadvantage. Fine, point made.

Need he claim, like so many now on the neuroscience bandwagon, that "conservatives and liberals have different ideas of what is right: …they have different moral systems, each characterized by neural circuitry in the brain?" What, let's not discuss or debate our differential values and beliefs, let's take a look at our brain scans when we think about them? What, because certain configurations of the brain are detectable by scanners when one thinks one way or another we must therefore accept Lakoff's argument that liberals shouldn’t use or think of certain Republican voters as “low-information voters”? Please.

A simple, more demonstrable and therefore better argument is that the values and beliefs of liberals about what constitutes a “better” America are different from the values and beliefs of conservatives, and that liberals and conservatives differ in terms of what they value and use as bases for decision-making behavior such as voting. List the values and beliefs in two columns and compare them, critically. Then point out errors in liberal methods to persuade others of the merits of their values and beliefs, and ways liberals can do better. Period.

Brain circuit images don’t trump, prove, or disprove sociocultural explanations.

Syria: Global Reaction A Crime Against Syrian People, Humankind, And Earth

How Syria Divided The World by Michael Ignatieff, The New York Review of Books, July 11, 2012

This NYRB essay highlights the points made in my previous post - "Nationalism: One Of Two Major Threats To The Survival Of Humankind And Earth" - regarding the dangers of strategic nationalism as currently practiced by the most powerful nations on Earth.  The actions of the respective leaderships of the U.S., Russia, and China regarding Syria starkly exemplify how these leading nations willfully choose to ignore the broader dangers posed by their robust nation-state competitive gamesmanship to Humankind and the planet.  The machinations of all three are impeding efforts to establish a binding global ethic and pluralistic world governing body that put the well-being of Humankind and the health and sustainability of the planet above the interests of nation-states.

While U.S. leadership sometimes supports a global morality and governing body, too often when push comes to shove it too will do, sometimes very forcibly, all that is necessary to serve its national interests first and foremost.  As for Russian and Chinese leadership, they are never ambivalent about their respective positions regarding nationalism versus globalism.  Both consistently opt for a winner take all strategy among competing nation-states in their pursuit of resources, markets, and global influence - political, historical, ideological.  The needs of Humankind and the planet - much less that of the Middle East, the most volatile place on earth - are seldom, if at all, the concern of Russian and Chinese leadership.

I'm reminded of the Parker Brothers-Hasbro board game "Risk" of the late 1950s, early 1960s where each player's goal is world domination.  Fun for the parlor or family room but a heinous strategy when exercised throughout the increasingly fragile biosphere and accompanied by an inconsistent, negligible, or non-existent regard for human suffering.

If the Occupy Movement is looking to firm up its cause and message I recommend condemning the demotion of the needs of Humankind and Earth to the selfish, destructive desires of the most powerful nation-states.  Put Russia and China at the top of the target list, followed closely by the U.S.

Nationalism - One Of Two Major Threats To The Survival Of Humankind And Earth

UPDATE
How Syria Divided The World by Rober Ignatieff, The New York Review of Books, July 11, 2012

This NYRB essay highlights the points made below regarding the dangers of strategic nationalism, as currently practiced by the most powerful nations on Earth.  The actions of the U.S., Russia, and China regarding Syria starkly exemplify nation-state competitive gamesmanship.  The machinations of all three are impeding efforts to establish a global ethic and a pluralistic world governing body that puts the well-being of Humankind and the sustainability of the planet above the interests of nation-states.

While U.S. leadership sometimes behaves as if it supports a global morality and governing body, too often when push comes to shove it will do, sometimes quite forcibly, all that is necessary to serve its national interests first and foremost.  As for Russian and Chinese leadership, they are never ambivalent about their respective positions.  Both consistently opt for a winner take all strategy among competing nation-states in their pursuit of resources, markets, and global influence (political, historical, ideological).  The needs of Humankind and the planet much less that of the Middle East the most volatile regions on earth, are seldom, if at all, the concern of Russian and Chinese leadership.

I'm reminded of the Parker Brothers-Hasbro "Risk" board game of the late 1950s, early 1960s.  Fun for the parlor or family room but a heinous strategy when exercised throughout the increasingly fragile biosphere and accompanied by an inconsistent, neglible, or non-existent regard for human suffering.

If the Occupy Movement is looking to firm up its cause and message I recommend condemning the demotion of Humankind's and Earth's needs to the selfish, destruction desires of the powerful nation-states.  Put Russia and China at the top of the target list followed by the U.S.

ORIGINAL POST
AU Summit Highlights Pan-African Weaknesses, African Progress Panel, Volume 5, Issue 13, July 6, 2012

The above link presents a snapshot of Humankind's difficulty in growing the slowly emerging global morality as described by Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and others.  It describes a struggle between international justice, African regionalism (Pan-Africanism), African nationalism, and the conscience of a national leader, Malawi's president.

Lack of support for the International Criminal Court by China, India, and the US make these powerful nations part of the problem not the solution for growing a unifying, pluralistic, global morality.

The fact that this and other struggles between nationalism and global needs is seldom commented on by major thinkers or world leaders much less acted upon indicates that Humankind has a long way to go in terms of putting the needs of all Humankind and our planet's health ahead of national agendas.

The other major threat to a pluralistic, global morality and responsible Earth stewardship is fundamentalistic religion.

Further Reading:

Coalition for the International Criminal Court
Postnationalism, Wikipedia
Nationalism: Its Nature and Consequences by Richard Ebeling, Freedom Daily, June 1994
Globalism, Wikipedia
Globalism Versus Globalization by Joseph Nye, The Globalist, April 15, 2002

"God Particle" - A Metaphor Causing Increased Science And Religion Collisions

A graphic showing traces of collision of particles at CERN in Geneva,

where scientists believe they have found the Higgs boson.

My previous post, “'God Particle' Discovered – Really?,” cautioned that the journalistic over-use of the term “God particle” could be problematic for science, religious believers, and the global public at large.  It is already proving to be so.  The following is a small sample of articles about believers’ reactions to news of the possible discovery of the “Higgs boson.” The responses range from a reaffirmation that the particle is the creation of the Abrahamic deity as described in the Bible, to indifference, to a condemnation of godless scientists for not possessing a reason for awe, wonder and worship:

“God and the God Particle”
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/07/06/faqs-god-and-the-god-particle/  "The Higgs boson may be responsible for holding the universe together, but Jesus holds the "God particle" in its place."

"All Things Visible and Invisible - Celebrating the 'God Particle'"
http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/all-things-visible-and-invisible-celerating-the-god-particle.html "God is not a particle, of course. God is absolute being, which is something else entirely. We now have more insight into the physical reality of God’s creation. “Basic scientific research, as well as applied research, is a significant expression of man’s dominion over creation,” the Catechism tells us. This week’s result is as basic as research can get. … The Church – and belief in the supernatural in general – are often said to be in conflict with science. Not true. But the Church is in conflict with a materialist scientism that believes all reality is empirically observable and testable, and that no other questions are worth asking. This scientism is deadly. Walker Percy writes:

[T]he consciousness of Western man, the layman in particular, has been transformed by a curious misapprehension of the scientific method. One is tempted to use the theological term “idolatry.” This misapprehension, which is not the fault of science, but rather the inevitable consequence of the victory of the scientific worldview. . .takes the form of a radical and paradoxical loss of sovereignty by the layman and of a radical impoverishment of human relations.

"So it was wonderful to hear the excitement of the scientists, to see them celebrate with the ordinary ritual of champagne, to hear of Higgs’ own amazement at the discovery within his lifetime. They were marking a success in where wonder can take us using our reason to seek truth."

"Pakistan Shuns Physicist Linked to 'God Particle'"
http://www.omaha.com/article/20120708/AP15/307089958 "Despite his achievements (researching the Higgs boson), Abdus Salam's (Pakistan's first Nobel laureate) name appears in few textbooks and is rarely mentioned by Pakistani leaders or the media. (Salam belonged to the Ahmadi sect, considered to be heretical by Pakistan's Muslims.) By contrast, fellow Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan, who played a key role in developing the country's nuclear bomb and later confessed to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is considered a national hero. Khan is a Muslim."

“Scientists Discover ‘The God Particle’, As Clerics Insist It Represents God”

http://www.tribune.com.ng/sun/church-features/7805-scientists-discover-the-god-particle-as-clerics-insist-it-represents-god  "It (the discovery) shows that it is establishing the fact that there was a force behind creation in such a way that God was behind it. Those particles did not just happen. It was the spoken word of God that caused the collision that resulted in creation."

“Vatican Astronomer Says 'God Particle' Misnamed, But Exciting” http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-astronomer-says-god-particle-is-misnamed-but-exciting/  "...if there was a particle that could exist that could explain all the little things we wanted to explain, it would be a gift from God."

"Evidence of the God Particle Found"
http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-blogs/seekers/science-of-spirituality/evidence-of-god-particle-found
"The discovery of The God Particle represents a step forward in appreciation of God’s awe-inspiring universe however claiming to find the elusive piece of the cosmic puzzle is too naïve an attempt. Having said that, scientists may discover it, but we can’t deny HE (the eternal force God) invented it! To deny is to accept it too. ... Faith is the opposite of proof. I have faith in HIM and need no proof. God exists outside and inside of it all. He's not something which can be explained away by science, nor proven by religious fervor or argument. The God Particle is, in you and in me and in every particle around us. We only need to seek earnestly."

“‘God particle’ Discovered by Scientists - What It Means For Your Faith”

http://odysseynetworks.org/news/2012/07/03/scientist-christian-theologian-and-the-god-particle  “People of faith have nothing to fear by these new scientific discoveries.  The God of Christian theology is not a god of the gaps, an intelligent designer who can be proved in the places of our scientific ignorance. God is the One who holds the whole scientific story in existence by maintaining the laws of physics. … Behind the myriad of particles and the laws, the universe has a coherent story because it is creation.”

“The God Particle: What Does It Mean From a Spiritual and Metaphysical Perspective?”

http://metaphysicalbible.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/the-god-particle-what-does-it-mean-from-a-spiritual-and-metaphysical-perspective/  “I’m putting my quantum spirituality and metaphysician hats on when I say I believe the ‘God particle’ quantum physicists believe they’ve found is really the ‘Christ Particle.’ Why? I believe it is most appropriately called the  ‘Christ Particle’ because the Christ is God in physicality. And that’s the most famous duet of all: God expressing as the Christ. It is the ‘Christ Particle that gives “all matter in the universe size and shape.”

“Hunt For ‘God Particle’ Will Collide With Faith”

http://blog.crown.org/2011/12/16/hunt-for-god-particle-will-collide-with-faith/  “This infinitesimally small piece of physical matter will likely become a big matter indeed and could impact the lives of Christians globally. For many in the scientific community, the Higgs boson particle is the Holy Grail that will allow modern science to finally and forever trump ancient religious beliefs.” … “The paradox of it all is that the “God particle” will likely be used in an attempt to undermine the very existence of God—even though any discovery will fail to explain how the Higgs boson particle originated in the first place. … But we have nothing to fear. Our God created every particle in the universe, and I am confident His fingerprints will ultimately be found on each and every one. … The invisible God not only made the Higgs boson particle, He made all other matter!”

"God Particle" Discovered - Really?

Higgs event.  Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Much has been reported in the news the past few days about the discovery at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe of a new sub-atomic particle.  The media is often referring to this yet to be definitively identified particle as the "God particle," with some writers using the qualifier that it is not a description liked by most scientists.

Such media usage of the term "the God particle" might persuade you think/believe that this discovery has something to do with the Christian biblical claim that a deity created all the mass we observe in the universe.  The rationale for such a view is something like the following:  These subatomic particles spontaneously come together in space to form clumps of matter that have mass, that this process led to the formation of atoms, and that gravity gave rise to all the more complex matter that followed.  So far, so good.  This is what leading theoretical physicists believe happened in the formation of our universe and all that is in it, including us.  Here is where the science stops and journalist conjecture and license, much to the delight of many believers, begins - that such a process of matter formation as described by scientists can only be explained as a creation act of God.

I am reminded of the hoopla that arose a few years back over the so-called discovery of the "God gene."  See my post The God Gene? on what became of that hyperbolic claim.

Why is the purported Higgs boson or particle being called the "God particle?"  Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

From the Wikipedia article, "Higgs boson"

The Higgs boson is often referred to as the "God particle" by individuals outside the scientific community, after the title of Leon Lederman's popular science book on particle physics, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?. While use of this term may have contributed to increased media interest, many scientists dislike it, since it overstates the particle's importance, not least since its discovery would still leave unanswered questions about the unification of quantum chromodynamics, the electroweak interaction, and gravity, as well as the ultimate origin of the universe. Higgs, an atheist himself, is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle", because the term "might offend people who are religious".

Lederman said he gave it the nickname "the God particle" because the particle is "so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive," but jokingly added that a second reason was because "the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing."

A renaming competition conducted by the science correspondent for the British Guardian newspaper chose the name "the champagne bottle boson" as the best from among their submissions: "The bottom of a champagne bottle is in the shape of the Higgs potential and is often used as an illustration in physics lectures. So it's not an embarrassingly grandiose name, it is memorable, and [it] has some physics connection too."

Don't be lulled by this widespread usage of the term "God particle" into thinking that this important discovery of what psysicists believe may be the "Higgs boson" or "Higgs particle" pertains to science having finally proven that God exists.  It doesn't.  Here are two excellent references that explain what physicists, not journalists, believers, or theologians, mean by the term "Higgs particle" or "Higgs boson:"

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.  This book was also the subject of a PBS-NOVA science miniseries:  Fabric of the Cosmos, viewable online, free.

A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss
How the Higgs Boson Posits a New Story of Our Creation by Lawrence M. Krauss, Newsweek, July 9, 2012
A Blip That Speaks of Our Place in the Universe by Lawrence M. Krauss, The New York Times, Science, July 9, 2012
Nothing Is Negligible: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing by Michael Shermer, eSkeptic, July 11, 2012

I found Greene's and Krauss' books difficult to read but nevertheless was greatly rewarded for my efforts to push through them by the knowledge I gained.

No points lost if you go for the PBS-NOVA miniseries which is an excellent visual, verbal explanation of this complex subject.

Wishing you smooth sailing on the "Higgs ocean!"  We live in an extraordinary time of scientific discovery.  Embrace it!

Rasputin - A Profligate Christian Who Changed The Course Of Russian And European History

The Rasputin File by Edvard Radzinsky (2001)

Just finished this 500 page tome. Could hardly wait for him to get bumped off. Too long, yes, but if you want insight into what happened in Russian +/- 1900 re. the downfall of the last of the tsars, Russian religious mysticism of that period, Russia's role in WW I, and the major factor prompting the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Rasputin himself, check this one out. The man was vile to the core, a demented debaucher who had the tsar Nicholas and, more so, tsarina Alexandra in his pocket, so to speak.... Only $1.05, used, on Amazon.com. Here are a couple of quotes from the book:

"It had come to pass by the end of 1916. It was neither the bullets of revolutionary terrorists, nor the shells of Germans at the front, but the existence of a single person that was threatening to destroy one of the greatest empires in the world. The opposition, society, the court had all struggled in vain against the illiterate peasant with the awful name from an unknown village."

"Just who was that man (Rasputin) who appeared in the fire of the first revolution (1905) and perished on the eve of the second? He was undoubtedly a deeply religious person. And at the same time a great sinner. With the simplicity of a century of uneducated, ignorant Russian peasantry, he tried to combine the mysterious passions of the body with the teachings of Christ. And he ended up a sectarian, a 'Khlyst,' a profligate, yet at the same time remaining a deeply religious person. He was the epitome of the Russian's staggering ability to live upright within while enveloped in unceasing sin."

See also Rasputin in Wikipedia.