h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Then the issue is one of 'integrity of thought' - excuse me if that sounds in-your-face, its not meant that way, merely a friend challenging you to think about this point clearly -

If some things that are important to you grant yourself dispensation for 'whole-human-faculty multi-level reasoning', then what is so special about the BIG question that would prevent you from doing the same? Since it is as important if not more so than the others.

Is it becuase many Atheists and Agnostics avoid the "integrity of thought" being applied to the BIG question for ulterior motives?

You see, the other questions in life do not challenge the person to critically refelct on their lifestyle, with a view to change (and opening up repressed guilt feelings). The BIG question implies there is a judge, looking at how we conduct our lives and measuring it against an objective morality. Personally I think this is why many (though not all Atheist Fundamentalists) actually want life to have no meaning, no God. It's a kind of sub-conscious mechanism to avoid introspection of things they would rather bury away in their psyche.

Sigmund Freud is now mostly discredited as a chap who as an adolescent had sexual feeling towards his mother and hated his father (for being "weak" in face of an anti-semitic beating he saw his father take). His tirade against (mostly Christianity) is seen in the terms of his own psycho-analysis as a repressed reaction to guilty feelings. It's very sad of course.

I think some folks are Atheists becuase they have a strong, maybe unconscious personal need for things to be that way...consider ...

'...I want atheism to be true and I am uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally hope that I'm right about my belief. It's that I HOPE there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that'. (The American philosopher Thomas Nagel)

'(of his Near-Death-Experience) ... slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death ... will be the end of me, though I continue to HOPE that it will be.' (Prior to his death in 1989 A J Ayer the English philosopher, a lifelong and famous religious skeptic, had a vivid near-death experience after choking on a piece of smoked salmon that stopped his heart for at least four minutes. He attending doctor said 'Ayer told me he saw the Supreme Being.')

Why - if not Misology?

Finally you say Dan Dennet says "Mind is what delivers futures". What about Berkeley, what would he say? Maybe "Mind is what delivers the present".

Right on about Berkeley! And Dennett would not perhaps disagree; though his quote arose in the context of "on account of what survival value did consciousness come to evolve?"

But you ask "what is so special about the BIG question that would prevent you from doing the same ['whole-human-faculty multi-level reasoning']?"

It is precisely because of what you say misled Freud. We have no apparatus to think about the world as a whole (Wittgenstein again). We are bound to be wrong, like Tobit. Here's an acute warning: "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." -Anne Lamott

Now just because we are bound to be wrong, does that mean we shouldn't try? Well I play Renaissance music, and I'd love to know how it was performed 400 years ago. We have plenty of books to go by, but I am painfully aware that a theatre producer with only books to go by would come up with a very poor Dublin accent for a Brendan Behan play in New York. We are in a state comparable to an American actor who has never been to Europe, let alone Ireland, let alone Dublin, and has never met anyone who has, and has never heard a recording of a Dubliner etc., or met anyone who has.

And that's only for music of only four hundred years ago.

Well despite our certainty of being wrong, yes I think it's worth doing. Only I am not going to tell anyone "Believe this" or even "I believe this." If people come to my concerts, they are doing me a favour. If they applaud, I thank them for their generous indulgence.

Here is one of my favourite quotes from Berkeley (his "commonplace book"):

"The grand mistake is that we think we have Ideas of the Operations of our Minds. certainly this Metaphorical dress is an argument we have not."

My argument against the folks of Dennet and Dawkins persuasion is they go to far. And have done so for personal reasons, they purposefully misrepresent the opposition so as to 'make' their argument. Shamefull.

It is one thing to debunk the immature faith and reason of a fundamentalist christian or other theist. It quite is another thing to advocate putting in place of that a blighted worldview that denies meaning, that suggests that faith has no place in reason, when it actuality it is only our reasoned faith in reason/logos that enlightens our day.

It appears to me that the fundamentalist misological worldview that "I am right and you are wrong", is the root cause. Particularly when it comes with an attitude of immunity to "faith" and honest self-reflection. Like theproverbial ostritch with its head in the sand.

You're losing me again. I don't see either (a) how you can presume to know Dawkins's and Dennett's motivation, or (b) what difference that motivation makes to the validity of any arguments they may produce. Once again you lampoon my heroes, which makes me think you're in the business of persuading yourself, not me.

I am not trying to persuade myself that your hero's (Dawkins/Dennett) are anti-hero's. I have that opinion fairly firmly. I appreciate you do not, I suppose therefore that I am pointing out the inconsistency and disingenuity in their opinions so as to persuade you that you may be wrong to support them so vigorously. In that respect I am trying to help you .

Seriously though...

My comments are far from lampooning, that is what Dennett does to Gould's structuralist ideas in Dawkins Dangerous Idea, he is well known for this tactic take a look here...

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/lexicon/

Dennett goes to some effort to lampoon all those philosopher who dare to disagree with him! (its funny in places, but the motivation is to ridicule).

Dawkins and Dennet in their adaptionist stance make faith based assumptions on the correctness of evolutionary theory as applied to our psychology and sociobilogy (but avoid the reflection that it is as such) that is beyond a Popper sense of Falsification for good science. Adaptionism loses its luster when you see the truth of that (the EAAN argument we discussed earlier demonstrated - even in the serious rebuttals accepts that such hubris is misplaced.)

Bias in Science is what Huhn calls Incommensurability and Dennett and Dawkins could provide the best case examples for this phenomenon (have a look at this h2g2 entry) A1049915 He states that many scientific theories are not being (properly) justified with relation to objective empirical evidence - scientific theories are in fact judged after having passed through the interests, biases, and sensibilities of the scientists involved. The rapid, viseral, radical, militant Atheism of the 'deadly D duo' shrouds their minds and obscures their argument, and their "BRIGHTS" are merely mispelled -> "BLIGHTS".

The London Book Review article on Dawkins latest book gave ample evidence of Dawkins partial arguments.

It's bad science and worst philosophy. Given Dawkins hold a pUblic position for science - this is something warranted to be brought to account (way over time IMO).


Recumbentman - its time to sit up and see the error of your hero's ways. You can't be recumbent in face of this evidence anymore surely!

"faith based assumptions on the correctness of evolutionary theory as applied to our psychology and sociobilogy . . . that is beyond a Popper sense of Falsification for good science"

This is a bit much. As I see it, engaging in conversation (including writing a book) involves an act of faith, namely faith in a collective mind within which words can be uttered and understood.

This does not correctly imply that judgments (such as on the correctness of evolutionary theory) are themselves faith-based, beyond the blanket faith in the possibility of communication. The throey of evolution is specifically devised as faith-neutral.

By the way Popper does nothing for me. I did an undergraduate essay on The Logic of Scientific Development 35 odd years ago, and even as a callow youth I suspected he was making a circular argument -- begging the question. "Scientific method is superior, because it is the only method that is scientific."

I think you do Popper a diservice, as did Wittgenstein he came strongly out against Scientism.

I am not against Darwinian Evolution, personally I think the structuralist view (a la S J Gould) is more realistic that the adaptionist. It is not I that has charactersised the adaptionist views of DEnnett And Dawkins (hereafter the DEAD ) as Darwinian Fundamentalist, this is something well supported by much of the scientific community and you can find many examples on the web.

Dennet is infamous for his biased attack on Gould in his book the Darwins Dangerous Idea.

You've seen the criticism of the bias that Dawkins has from the book review you brought to my attention. It fits perfectly IMO the Kuhn concept of incommensurability.

As for evolutionary psychology basis as supported by the work of the DEAD, it's hightly contentious and inclined to support a worldview, that ALL human history and nature can be supported by adaptionist evolutionary theory and physicalist cognitive psychology. For me (and many other scientists/philosophers) that is a profoundly unscientific claim.

If this is not clear to you as a fair point to be making - let's drop the conversation.

Dropped.

I hope I did not upset you. I just sense we take different POV on Dennett and Dawkins, and this was not going to change a lot through our dialog at this time. Maybe later we can come back to this issue (we tend to!)

Absolutely no hard feelings. I have enjoyed breaking a lance with you. Conversation maketh a ready man, as old Ham said.