51. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #142069 by Russell Blackford on March 11, 2008 at 9:05 pm

Teratornis, I realise you weren't making a big point about it, but your comment about reflection touches on a lot of the issues in current debates about moral rationalism - i.e., broadly, the view that we can (somehow) derive morality from reason alone ... without invoking the contingencies of human psychology, contingencies about the sorts of things that we do actually tend to value.

I maintain that moral rationalism is a dead end. We can examine morality rationally, which is a somewhat different thing, but when we do so we find that it is, in fact, based at least in part on the contingencies of human psychology. This puts me in the party of Epicurus, Hobbes, and Hume, rather than the camp of Kant.

I imagine that most people here agree with me, perhaps including you. But your comment did remind me of how people like Gewirth, Nagel, Korsgaard, Michael Smith, etc., and Kant before them, try to advance various arguments for the claim that human beings, or human reflection, or human autonomy, or some such thing, viewed in the abstract, are objectively valuable. As I said, I think that all such arguments fail - and I believe I can demonstrate this to a pretty high level of plausibility if allowed a lot more space than is practical here - but they are of interest because if any of them worked they would provide another way to try to derive morality.

52. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #142006 by Russell Blackford on March 11, 2008 at 2:58 pm

MPhil, I think it's inevitable that we'll place special value on the lives and feelings, etc., of other beings like us for whom we'll have the strongest feelings of empathy (unless we are statistical outliers like psychopaths). If we didn't place value in that way, society would be impossible. We need to socialise our children into valuing others in this way.

But I don't see any reason at all to put special value on human life merely as such, i.e. on creatures with a particular kind of DNA.

On the one hand, human society is quite possible if we don't extend our special valuing as far as the unborn, and thus allow abortion - especially if it's not a very late abortion, by which time we really do need mothers to be bonding with their incipient baby, at least the way modern societies work. Actually, it's even possible to have a perfectly viable society that makes some limited and predictable use of infanticide.

Conversely, if we had societies that contained human beings mingling with another similar species - elves or whatever - it would be important that we value the lives and feelings of the members of this other species. To a very small extent, we already give domestic dogs and cats something like this status - but it is a very small extent when you consider how much mistreatment is inflicted on those animals.

Species-membership isn't the issue. The issue is what kinds of values we must require of each other for society, with all its benefits, to be possible.

Somewhat separately from this, we may also be motivated by our imaginations and empathic feelings to want to avoid cruelty to non-human sentient creatures, but there's no reason to place the special value on them that we place on the creatures like ourselves, with whom we must interact as social beings.

53. Should Galileo's tomb be opened for DNA tests?

Comment #141747 by Russell Blackford on March 11, 2008 at 6:48 am

Bonzai, my comment that you replied to was specifically directed at the point made earlier in the thread that we all have preferences about what happens after we die. My point is that I agree, but on the other hand, I don't see it as very sensible to have strong preferences about something as trivial as things done to my body that I won't experience ... even if it's something that sounds creepy. (However, I do have strong preferences about who inherits my money, but that's because I care about certain people who really will, if they outlive me, have experiences after I'm gone.)

Yes, there may well be reasons to have a taboo on mutilating bodies or whatever, having to do with the sensibilities of the living, the symbolic significance of the human form for empathic creatures like us, etc., etc. That's a different issue. It's a reason to treat the dead with some solemnity, e.g. don't make black jokes in the cadaver room; cultivate a certain solemn attitude in the cadaver room that will lead you to act in a dignified way when you're there, even if there's no one else observing; don't damage corpses gratuitously, and if you must do it for some purpose don't indulge in an evil laugh like a mad scientist. And so on.

I'm very well aware of such points. But I doubt that anyone is proposing anything different with Galileo and his daughter, and it isn't the point I was addressing.

What I don't understand is why no one else here sees this as an investigation of considerable historical interest. Am I really the only person here who's read Galileo's Daughter? Because if you have you'll want this project to go ahead - with all due solemnity and so on - and certainly not out of any lack of respect for Galileo (or his daughter). Quite the opposite.

In my case, Galileo is up there with Hume, Epicurus, and very few others as the nearest thing I have to historical heroes. I date the beginnings of modern science from Galileo's experiments and observations 400 years ago: 1609, when he made his first astronomical observations with the telescope, is as good a symbolic year for the beginning of science as we know it as any.

Bonzai, I am totally puzzled by your comment about sexual privacy. Who was it addressed to? I don't know what that has to do with anything at stake in this discussion.

Yes, we do usually want to be private while having sex. We would feel vulnerable in all sorts of ways if there were other people watching our performance - unless it's an orgy with friends or something, or maybe some kind of live sex stage show. In ordinary circumstances, there are lots of good reasons for wanting sexual privacy.

By the way, St. Augustine totally misunderstood this. He thought that our wish for sexual privacy was evidence that there's something inherently demeaning about the sexual act (redeemable only by its procreative potential ... so non-procreative sex is just plain sinful in his view). Well, so much for St Augustine; he could always be counted on to draw a stupid, insensitive conclusion on matters of sex and "sin".

Yes, if I'm having sex I'm going to be acting in all kinds of ways that make me vulnerable, and give that fact, I won't want what my lover and I are doing to be observed, judged, commented on, or whatever, by people who are not involved. Privacy is very much in my interests. So? I simply fail to see any analogy.

54. Should Galileo's tomb be opened for DNA tests?

Comment #141640 by Russell Blackford on March 11, 2008 at 2:22 am

While I do have some preferences about what is done with my body after I die, I don't really care that much if someone is silly enough to want to have sex with it. It may seem "icky" or "creepy" but it's not an ickiness that I'll experience. If someone in the distant future wants to conduct some sort of not-terribly-intrusive test on a sample of it (probably difficult, since I'm currently thinking in terms of cremation), that doesn't even sound icky.

I don't see the problem. Do the whole thing with a degree of solemnity by all means, but don't refrain altogether out of some irrational over-solicitousness for the dead.

55. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141630 by Russell Blackford on March 11, 2008 at 1:23 am

As for the test we're all supposed to do. I get:

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Level | Score
Purgatory | Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo | Very Low
Level 2 | Very High
Level 3 | Moderate
Level 4 | Moderate
Level 5 | Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis | Very High
Level 7 | High
Level 8- the Malebolge | High
Level 9 - Cocytus | Low

Level descriptions: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html
Take the test: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

To remind us, the second level is described like this:

Second Level of Hell

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate.

56. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141626 by Russell Blackford on March 11, 2008 at 1:10 am

Btw, my comment has now appeared on the Times site:

The cult of misery is always hard at work, always dreaming up shiny new "sins" and nifty new rationalisations for attacking our freedoms. It's great to know that some things never change.

Personally, I think that bringing up children to accept the moral authority of popes, priests, preachers, pastors, presbyters, pardoners, and all other such pretenders, is reprehensible ... though not exactly a "sin". The idea of sin implies a deity to sin against, and I haven't noticed any deities around these parts of late.

57. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141608 by Russell Blackford on March 10, 2008 at 9:22 pm

The pope is guilty of many things but criticising him when a British newspaper uses a common British spelling, rather than the American one, to describe his views seems a bit unfair - don't you think dragonfirematrix? :D I'd really hate to see this site bogged down in arguments about the correctness of British versus American versus Australian versus whatever else spelling, in the way that Wikipedia often is. For amusement, look up the Wikipedia article on yoghurt (or yogurt) some time, and check the discussion page, where people have been at each other's throats over which spelling to use.

Meanwhile, I love the way the Great Queen Spiderists always bring out their vague references to "dignity" - whatever the Hell that actually is - when they want to attack our freedoms.

58. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141525 by Russell Blackford on March 10, 2008 at 2:58 pm

It's always good to see the cult of misery hard at work.

59. Out of the Blue

Comment #141084 by Russell Blackford on March 10, 2008 at 2:28 am

Quine:

What is "built-in" is the ability to develop this.

60. Out of the Blue

Comment #141011 by Russell Blackford on March 9, 2008 at 4:37 pm

bitbutter it's not just objectivists who talk about consciousness being consciousness of something. That's a fairly widespread idea, I think. But what is this "of"ness? A present-day computer can have knowledge, or maybe "knowledge", of all sorts of things (e.g. in a data base). There must be more than that in the kind of "of"ness (or "about"ness) that we're talking about.

I'm with Steve on most of this debate. Going further, I don't think we are anywhere near having a convincing philosophy of mind. All the theories have problems. This doesn't help our theist friends, since substance dualism, their favoured theory, certainly has problems.

My view FWIW is that we know enough to be confident that consciousness does depend causally on the functioning of the neural system and particularly the "higher" areas of the brain; that it's nonetheless pretty damn mysterious how any amount of complex functioning of matter could ever get the dragon off the page (in Steve's metaphor); and that we are not well-situated to find out. Finding out may not be impossible in principle, but each of us is placed for direct observation of only one consciousness: his/her own. That's a real problem.

We can't have the slightest confidence of what kind of non-human brain or neural system or whatever generates consciousness. Do dogs have inner experiences, such as experienced pains and pleasures? I guess so. Do lizards? Well, I suppose. Do beetles? Do annelid worms? I wouldn't have a clue. Do paramecia? I imagine not. But I don't see how we'll ever be able to draw the line, given how we're epistemically placed.

Even our inference of other human minds is pretty dodgy, though we don't have much choice but to make the inference. We seem to come with a built-in (presumably evolved) tendency to attribute consciousness to each other, which is just as well because if each one of us relied on the actual evidence we might each be left in a lot of doubt as to whether solipsism might actually true. As it happens, no sane person, including me, even entertains that prospect.

61. Out of the Blue

Comment #140936 by Russell Blackford on March 9, 2008 at 6:11 am

Great Zeus, Bonzai, you make some good points in this thread, but your account of transhumanism is incredibly vulgar in much the sense you are referring to. Transhumanism is a complex cultural and intellectual movement with many streams, internal debates, disputed ideas, nuances, emphases, etc. Writing off an entire movement in the way you do really is incredibly simplistic.

My own attitude to transhumanism is that I'd like it to be a big tent, and I'd like to be inside the tent. That doesn't mean I support every wacky idea ever proposed by any transhumanist. For me, transhumanism isn't much more than thinking in a rational and liberal way about technology. It's an extension of the Enlightenment.

In any event, there's no question as to whom I find more congenial between, say, Nick Bostrom and Leon Kass. It's no contest; I'm with Nick.

62. Out of the Blue

Comment #140863 by Russell Blackford on March 8, 2008 at 11:22 pm

By the way there's a lot of interesting science fiction that deals with this sort of thing. Even I have a story about similar research (though I had to make up stuff, since no research actually existed when I wrote it) - "The Name of the Beast was Number" in Microcosms, edited by Gregory Benford. End of plug for myself.

63. Out of the Blue

Comment #140860 by Russell Blackford on March 8, 2008 at 11:14 pm

Random comments:

There are various estimates floating around of the number of neurons in the human brain. Some estimates I used to see were as low as 10 billion, which would indeed be only 10 doublings and a little bit. I don't think anyone puts the number that low now.

If the figure is 100 billion, that's still about 13 and a bit doublings. I doubt that that difference this is what the argument turns on.

I fail to see how an artificial brain could ever prove it is conscious to our complete satisfaction. After all, even solipsism is a perfectly consistent position, just not a practical one. I suppose it might end up being most practical to treat something as conscious in some circumstances, even if we have doubts. I.e., if its behaviour becomes incredibly complex in a certain way that is most simply explained by imputing beliefs, desires, fears, feelings, self-awareness, etc., to it, I suppose we'll come to think of that way for everyday practical purposes. But that won't solve any metaphysical problems.

64. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #138898 by Russell Blackford on March 4, 2008 at 11:44 pm

Styrer, that's all interesting, but you see it's really better not to proceed in the same vein - even if as you rightly point out it's gentle compared to a lot of what we see in internet forums. I refer to characterising someone's views as "almost hysterical", etc., though you did say "almost". :)

I think the internet is wonderful in many ways that I can't even begin to list, but I'm surprised that my comment about it even sounded controversial. The lack of non-verbal cues on the internet frequently leads to unnecessary conflicts that would probably not happen in face to face discussion. Alluding to that fact certainly shouldn't be thought of as near hysterical (though possibly resigned and a little bit despondent).

Anyway, I still think it's always good to seek clarification when you find yourself in disagreement with somebody who is clearly an ally. In this case, for example, you keep attributing to me views that I don't recognise myself as holding or having expressed. Or at least you think I am somehow giving aid and succour to those views.

Perhaps I'm expressing myself badly if the point isn't getting across, but for example I don't see how you can possibly chide me for my "curiously assertive comment" about God transcending the universe ... when I was describing the orthodox theist view, not my own view. If we can't even describe or mention the views of our opponents, we're in real trouble. I suppose I could sprinkle every single sentence with "in their view this, in their view that", but the technique I used follows a perfectly familiar convention that isn't "curious" at all, but widely-understood by most literate people ... and usually transparent to a skilled reader. And the fact is that you did understand it, so where's the problem?

If you're just fearful that I put it in a way that could be quote-mined, all right, perhaps so. But we've discussed this before. For the record, I think that it's possible to get worried about the possibility of quote-mining to an extent that's counterproductive. You may disagree, but perhaps this is the issue that really needs to be hashed out again.

Also, you still don't seem to get what I meant, in context, by "relaxed", and why there's no contradiction between taking a "relaxed" (in the sense I tried to explain) approach to a particular definitional issue and taking an aggressive approach to the defence of reason and science. As Wittgenstein demonstrated, some concepts just are a bit "fuzzy" or "loose", and if you or I come to that view about the concept of "supernatural" that in no way undercuts or contradicts any commitment we might have to oppose the forces of unreason.

I may be wrong of course. Perhaps "supernatural" does indeed have some kind of tight definition which stipulates the necessary and sufficient conditions for the word's correct application. But even if that's so and I'm wrong on the definitional point, the fact that I hold such a (hypothetically mistaken) view in no way implies anything about whether I do or do not have certain attitudes of commitment to the cause of reason, etc. I think even getting into that, as you've done, was a distraction.

Also btw, I thought my own tone was fairly gentle. Oh well. Just for the record, we're allies here on what really matters, given the social environment that we all face and need to overcome somehow. So let me say explicitly that I don't actually have anything against you, or feel personally upset about this, or anything of the sort. Some things you've said continue to puzzle me, but that's about all. Peace.

65. Fleabytes

Comment #138828 by Russell Blackford on March 4, 2008 at 8:17 pm

Well, what the people (like Chalmers) who talk about zombies mean by "consciousness" certainly does exist. We encounter it all the time. At least I do.

But I fail to see why anyone would think, as MPhil suggests, that the problem can be solved by: "There are no zombies, it's a obscured conceptual inconsistency. If all the inner and outer behaviour is the same, you have to be conscious"

It may well be that there are no zombies in the actual world and that there cannot be for some contingent reason relating to what events produce consciousness. It may be that the same physical inputs will always produce the same inner experiences (of experiencing a certain kind of pain, seeing an expanse of blue, feeling joy, or whatever it might be).

But it seems to be no more than a contingent fact about the world that these particular inputs (various brain processes, etc) do causally produce consciousness. We can coherently imagine a world in which that's not the case, because it's not analytically true that anything with such and such processes going on is having certain kinds of conscious experience. That world might even obey exactly the same physical laws as our own world does. It's no more difficult than imagining a world with different scientific laws from those we've discovered, such as a world that conforms perfectly to Newtonian mechanics.

In short, Chalmers doesn't need zombies to be possible in the actual world; all he needs is that they are logically possible, and I've yet to see a convincing argument that they are not.

Also, calling Chalmers a "mystic" doesn't advance anything. Apart from the fact that Chalmers could make all the above points without adopting any traditional mystical claims (such that consciousness is immortal or that it can exist independently of the physical world or that it is one with a universal spirit or that it can access some transcendent reality), it's getting awfully close to trying to gain an edge in the debate by name-calling.

66. Richard Dawkins' US Tour begins this week

Comment #138546 by Russell Blackford on March 4, 2008 at 1:54 pm

Sigh. I suppose Richard and his team might question the point of coming to Australia, where we're already relatively deity-free ... much as we have enough god-botherers around to distort public policy.

OTOH, we do have major international universities here, with large numbers of students, interesting people, etc., etc. I'm sure that Richard could attract big audiences, and some intense media coverage, if he spoke at any of them ... or at any other venue, if it comes to that.

Thank Zeus and all the other Olympians for the internet, but I still hate this whole tyranny of distance thing. So many of the events that I'd really like to get to are in the northern hemisphere.

67. Berlin gallery in Islam art row

Comment #136860 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 10:08 pm

32 would be good. Actually, I wouldn't even mind my current age, which is, ahem, somewhat more than that. But if I die at 95 and get resurrected at that age, I'm going to be Zeus-damned pissed off.

68. Fleabytes

Comment #136858 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 10:02 pm

Well, while we're waiting, maybe someone can explain eliminative materialism in a way that sounds neither incomprehensible nor massively counterintuitive.

If there is no X such that it's like something to be that X, then there's no special problem about what it's like to be a timeless, unchanging God. But I'm here to tell you that it's like something to be me ... although that fact is dependent on my existence in a world of time and change.

The conclusion seems to be that a timeless, unchanging God could not have the kind of inner experience that most of us consider a prerequisite for personality.

If we get over hurdles like that, though, I still don't see why God can't be omnipotent in various meaningful senses. Even a being such as Zeus could be omnipotent in various senses.

69. Fleabytes

Comment #136812 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 6:47 pm

Oh, and while we are amusing ourselves with random thoughts while waiting for God-botherers, I think that PZ's Courtier's Reply is a perfectly good (and funny) riposte to someone like Terry Eagleton ... who really made a bit of a fool of himself in his review of TGD, IMNSHO.

I wouldn't want to use PZ's reply much beyond that context, though. What theologians have to say may be relevant to a whole load of matters that are in dispute between the godly and the ungodly. But for Eagleton to claim that Dawkins needed to deal with all kinds of tangential subtleties, in a book primarily about whether God exists at all, was a load of bunk. PZ paid out royally (as it were).

70. Fleabytes

Comment #136804 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 6:09 pm

I'm losing track of the thread, and MPhil has probably said this already in different words, but one problem for orthodox Abrahamic religionists is specifying what it is like to be God. Now, they have a good initial answer: we are too limited to be able to specify that.

Okay. But we are also too limited to specify what it's like to be a bat - assuming that bats have some kind of consciousness and that there's something that is like to be a bat.

On the other hand, I can imagine that there's a superhuman non-bat (SNB) somewhere in the universe that knows what it's like to be a bat. Perhaps the SNB has a telepathic sense of some kind and can kind of invade and reconnoitre batlike minds.

I can't imagine that there's a superhuman non-god (SNG) that knows what it's like to be God. That isn't because all SNGs are limited, but because there's a snag: I can't see how it can be like anything to be something that exists outside of time and never changes ... never, for example, has thoughts or perceptions unfolding in a temporal order.

Yet, God is supposed to be a personality.

Part of the trouble is that the unbeatable, f...in' powerful war god of Abraham and Moses did not seem to possess a whole lot of metaphysical properties like omnipotence, omniscience, aseity, etc. He was just this great big angry motherf... father figure who could create worlds, send plagues, rain down fire and brimstone, and do all sorts of other neat stuff. He also delighted in wine and wandering around in the garden planting trees of knowledge of good and evil.

There's no more reason to believe that such a thing exists than to believe in the existence of Poseidon, or Thor, or Aphrodite, or the Silver Surfer, but at least we could form some more-or-less coherent idea of such a being. It's a lot harder with the metaphysical God of orthodox Abrahamic monotheism, and damned hard to see how they can both be the very same thing.

71. Fleabytes

Comment #136789 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 5:08 pm

The thing is, I think some of theologians do think it just means something like invincible or f...in' powerful. I didn't simply make this up, although I can't now recall the provenance of the idea.

They certainly are not likely to say that they mean "capable of violating the laws of logic". I know that, historically, some theologians have claimed that, but it seems to be a minority view among the Christian ones (Islam may be different). And they have good reason. If I say that God can do something like "make it be the case that Richard Dawkins both does and does not exist in the very same sense" someone might scratch her head and wonder whether I've managed to specify anything coherent at all. If I say that God is incapable of doing that, someone might similarly wonder whether I have really given a coherent description of some event or state of the world that God is incapable of bringing about. If I haven't, then I haven't defined a limit on the divine power.

I know that the paradoxes of omnipotence are fascinating, but I think they're ultimately a dead-end if what we really want to do is challenge religion's cognitive and moral authority - which is my aim.

As for the horseman thing, well we have Daniel Dennett. But he doesn't really get into these kinds of traditional arguments.

Now, Graham Oppy - yes, Graham, I know you just might read this at some point. You must write a popular book on the subject.

Apart from Graham, we have Stephen Law, Nick Everitt, Michael Martin ... and a host of other distinguished philosophers of religion ... on the team. It would be good if a big publisher would make it worthwhile for one of these people to write a book as accessible to the public (in language and style but also print-run) as The God Delusion.

Hey, in a few months when some other projects are under control, I'll have nothing better to do than co-write it for them if they want someone to help translate it into more popular language. OTOH, most of these people are quite capable of doing that for themselves. They're just very busy as working academics with students and grants and stuff to worry about.

72. Fleabytes

Comment #136710 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 3:47 pm

Well, I think the idea of "all powerful" or "almighty" was originally something more like invincible, if we go back to the biblical texts. I.e., God will always prevail over His enemies - however much they can bring to the fight, He'll always bring more. Medieval theologians turned this into something more technical, and we get all these philosophical debates about it, but I don't see why any of it should touch the faith of actual religionists in the mega-churches or wherever.

Whereas the Revised Problem of Evil should really bug them if they are intellectually honest ... as it did me in my religious days. It forces them to worry about just what God's goodness or benevolence or power or knowledge really amounts to, given how much evil there is in the world by their own lights.

73. Fleabytes

Comment #136702 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 3:33 pm

My point is that He's capable of using His power to design a world without design flaws such as evils. Being f***in' clever will do for that, I think. But I'll accept "God knows a f***in' lot of shit".

74. Fleabytes

Comment #136697 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Great post, MPhil, but I actually disagree with it. The concept of omnipotence is one that the orthodox Abrahamic theologians came up with. It seems to me that people in that tradition get to define it however they like.

Of course, they may come up with a definition that is embarrassing to them in some way, just as they often define God's goodness in ways that are embarrassing to them. But I see no reason why they should claim that God can do something that makes no sense or that it would be a contradiction to do.

I also don't even see why there is any problem with their admitting that God will always act in accordance with His nature - having power is having the capacity to do the things you want to do. If there are certain things that God would never want to do because of His beneficent nature or some such reason, that is not a restriction on His power.

I've never had much truck with the supposed paradoxes of omnipotence. The God of the Bible is obviously a very powerful being, surely powerful enough to remove all evil from the world if He wanted to, or to start again and create a whole new universe (He does have a problem coping with chariots with iron wheels, I hear, but maybe there's some explanation for that).

To abide by the spirit (as it were) of their holy book, religionists don't really have to say much more than that God is f***in' powerful - as in universe-creating-and-destroying powerful. They don't have to define their deity's "omnipotence" in such a way that it becomes paradoxical.

This leads us to the Revised Problem of Evil:

(1) God is f***in' powerful.
(2) God is f***in' clever.
(3) God is f***in' benevolent.
(4) There's a helluva f***in' lot of evil in the goddamn world.

As a card-acarrying atheist, it'll do me to observe that this set of claims, taken as a whole, is wildly implausible even if not strictly self-contradictory.

75. Ayaan Hirsi Ali to get EU protection

Comment #136391 by Russell Blackford on March 1, 2008 at 4:30 am

I hope this story has some substance behind it and isn't just PR or a beat-up.

76. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #134531 by Russell Blackford on February 28, 2008 at 12:15 am

http://www.savagebreastbook.com/photos.php

77. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #134524 by Russell Blackford on February 28, 2008 at 12:00 am

Yeah, it's important to put your commas in the right place or you can change the entire meaning. I must say, though, that I'd be interested in meeting these "savage breast people".

78. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #134520 by Russell Blackford on February 27, 2008 at 11:52 pm

It's actually "savage breast", people, though that is also kind of evocative.

79. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #134379 by Russell Blackford on February 27, 2008 at 4:52 pm

Why, Styrer, how nice. Your post is a fine example of what's wrong with the internet.

It's not a bad comment, you make some interesting observations, and you are, of course, entitled to disagree with me or to request clarification. And yet it's a bit annoying when people go around accusing each other of being "foolish" in what is supposed to be a friendly discussion. No wonder flame wars happen when such churlish (to borrow a word you used) remarks are made by people who are supposed to be allies.

Oh well, I've been called worse, but I just think there's a lesson here. Why not simply stick to the merits of arguments?

As for the points of substance. No, I am not hung up about the distinction between natural and supernatural in the sense that I had in mind and attempted to convey. I'm relaxed about it. I.e., I don't think we should try to draw the distinction too precisely because I don't think it's a precise concept. We should accept that it's a loose distinction and carry on from there. My whole post was about that, so I don't see how I've contradicted myself.

Nor do I see how I've somehow "bought into" a theistic idea without evidence. The orthodox Abrahamic theists do typically claim that their deity somehow transcends/precedes/is independent of the universe, not merely one of the things in the universe, like a ghost would be. I have plenty of evidence that that's what they say.

If you mean that I have no evidence that such a thing as the God of the orthodox Abrahamic theologian actually exists, of course that's true ... but when did I assert that such a thing exists? Since I'm an atheist it's an assertion that I'm very unlikely to make.

The point is that it's easier to believe in God if you believe in other (loosely) supernatural stuff like ghosts and spirits, and harder if you think we live in a disenchanted universe, devoid of all those spooky things that people used to believe in - ghosts, fairies, spirits, and all the rest.
LuisGarcia said:
If the biosphere showed evidence of non-common descent, especially arranged by "kind", and geology indicated the world was 7,000 years old, and there was a ceiling somewhere in the firmament, and Pliny the Elder noted a bizarre unpredicted 3 hour solar eclipse in 33 AD, and prayer to the christian god worked, and god(s) kept coming down every now and again to redirect human affairs, and we could communicate with the dead, and anyone could actually agree a coherent definition of what this god thing is anyway, and on and on, we'd all be christians.

The fact is the evidence is already in on all these things, so people get hung up trying to think of one single observation that could overthrow all this evidence that is already in, and failing.

Exactly right. This puts the point so well that all I can do is applaud.

80. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #133734 by Russell Blackford on February 26, 2008 at 4:04 pm

I think we can get too hung up about this natural/supernatural business. Our concept of the supernatural may be more like the Wittgensteinian concept of a game rather than being best defined analytically as "what is beyond nature" where "nature" includes the entire reality that we can we investigate. On the latter definition, the supernatural does not exist, but this becomes a trivial truth with no empirical content: it leaves open that there are ghosts, angels, etc., etc., as part of "nature".

The kinds of things that we think of as supernatural may have no single defining characteristic, but rather have various family resemblances to each other.

The "supernatural" things include gods, ghosts, devils, angels, the planetary influences described in astrology, etc, etc. I'd say that we've reached a point where we can be confident that none of those things, or things closely analogous to any of them, or resembling them in impressive ways, exist in our universe. But the evidence could have been otherwise ... and could still be if a whole lot of new, unexpected evidence comes in.

Admittedly, if the evidence of spooky things came in we'd have a larger view of our total reality, but I suspect that we would indeed continue to distinguish between nature and supernature.

God, of course, is not just supernatural; He's actually something that supposedly transcends the universe, unlike spooky things within the universe such as ghosts. But it's important to be confident that the latter don't exist. If we had actual experience with disembodied spiritual intelligences, it would greatly alter our attitude to the idea that there is a very powerful one existing outside the observable universe. This would become a much more plausible hypothesis.

81. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #133303 by Russell Blackford on February 26, 2008 at 3:36 am

We should have a Galileo Day, as well. Galileo was in many ways the first great scientific thinker in the modern understanding of what science is all about, and he got into a lot more trouble from religionists that Darwin or Newton ever did. If there's one person who should be a hero to rational thinkers, it's Galileo.

He was born on 15 February 1564. If we're running this off birthdays, we're a week or two late.

Next year will be the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observations with the telescope, which is one point that can be used as marking the beginnings of modern science. I hope we're going to make a HUGE goddamn fuss about this.

82. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #133291 by Russell Blackford on February 26, 2008 at 3:11 am

As has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere, the evidence could easily have favoured biblical Christianity in an overwhelming way. With so much evidence already in, it might indeed take a lot of doing to change the balance at this late stage, but it might not have been like that. It might have happened that the evidence favoured diluvian geology, an age for the Earth of 6000 years, etc. We might have routinely encountered beings matching traditional descriptions of angels. And so on.

It's not that the world is a huge duck-rabbit, seen as a duck by religionists and as a rabbit by atheists. For most purposes, people of all kinds apply the same standards of evidence. That's why science is so convergent - even at the dawn of the scientific age, Galileo had no trouble demonstrating the moons of Jupiter to the Vatican astronomers, even though they were contrary to the world picture of those same astronomers, and even though it was not obvious why the telescope did what it seemed to do.

By those usual standards, the evidence is that we live in a disenchanted universe.

So, why do people disagree about things like evolution, God, etc? First, almost no one who really understands the relevant chains of inference doubts that evolution is an overwhelmingly corroborated theory. The chains of inference are quite long, but the sort of evidence and reasoning involved is continuous with usual kinds. All serious biologists have converged on accepting the theory, and this can be expected to continue.

Conversely, many people will cling to certain kinds of beliefs even in the face of the evidence, especially if the beliefs are psychologically attractive, sufficiently mutable to defy falsification, sufficiently ubiquitous in a culture, and/or ingrained in individuals at a young enough age to become subjectively axiomatic.

83. The coming religious peace

Comment #132004 by Russell Blackford on February 23, 2008 at 9:41 pm

It's an interesting graph, but it'd be interesting to see a comparison of countries with similar wealth, yet varying religiosity, on such things as education levels, sex equality, delivery of universal healthcare, social security in general, high life expectancy, civil liberties and the rule of law, and doubtless other factors that we call speculate about.

I suspect that wealth tends to enable some of those things (and to be encouraged by them in a virtuous cycle). But it may be possible to have some of them without great overall wealth and to have overall wealth in the economy without necessarily having these things. I'd be willing to bet that some combination of these things is more important to a decline in religiosity that the actual amount of cash that people have.

Still, economic prosperity has at least some tendency to deliver all these good things so that's another reason to favour it.

84. Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Comment #131949 by Russell Blackford on February 23, 2008 at 4:56 pm

While we're talking about this, some of you already know that I am now editor-in-chief of the Journal of Evolution and Technology, an on-line refereed journal devoted to rigorous discussion of exactly these sorts of issues. See

http://jetpress.org/

The first issue for 2008 is currently being published in instalments.

If anyone who contributes here is minded to write something sufficiently developed and rigorous about Kurzweil's views, or about any aspect of claims about a technologically-driven future evolution of humanity (or whatever comes next), feel free to submit an article to JET.

(This means you, Richard. It also means anyone else who is capable of putting together a sufficiently detailed and tight argument.)

Book reviews are also welcome.

JET has a certain pro-technology, transhumanism-friendly bias, but it welcomes a wide range of views. It will certainly not be limited to publishing views that I or the other editors happen to agree with. E.g., we'll be publishing an article soon that contains reflections on religion, science and technology by an Indian transhumanist who writes from a religious perspective that I definitely do not share.

What matters isn't what the editors happen to think, but the ability of contributors to say something new and to provide sustained, substantiated, well-written arguments for their positions.

85. Moral thinking

Comment #131657 by Russell Blackford on February 23, 2008 at 12:21 am

I have no problem at all with biologists or psychologists producing theories and conducting experiments that may have philosophical implications. That's one way that philosophy advances, by getting data back from the particular sciences. I have a lot of time for Marc (not "Mark") Hauser, in particular.

It's even a good idea for philosophers to collaborate with these folk, as some are doing.

But whatever data come out of the exercise will still need to be interpreted and argued about. Even if we have a whole lot of data and a well-corroborated theory as to how human beings came to believe that certain kinds of actions are required of them, or permitted to them, or forbidden, or whatever, that's a long way from answering any interesting normative or meta-ethical questions.

Edit: The discussion of Hauser's work in the article sounds simplified and distorted to the point where it doesn't make sense.

86. Fleabytes

Comment #131592 by Russell Blackford on February 22, 2008 at 4:15 pm

To my fellow logicians, the best way I think I can explain my point is this. You cannot deduce any Q merely from any P that just happens to be false; rather, you can deduce any Q from a P that is false if you are prepared to use it as a premise even though you know it's false. That is what Bonzai demonstrated, and he is quite right to that extent.

If I affirm "Russell is a boiled egg" I can't immediately deduce "BAEOZ is the Queen of England."

However, if I know that what I've affirmed is false I can deduce:

"If Russell is a boiled egg then BAEOZ is the Queen of England."

That's a consequence of the truth table for material implication.

If I am then prepared to rely on a proposition that I know to be false, i.e. "Russell is a boiled egg", I can indeed, by modus ponens, deduce "BAEOZ is the Queen of England."

So the situation is this:

1. You can deduce anything you like from a contradiction.

2. You can deduce anything you like from a false premise that you actually know is false but are prepared to rely on anyway. I.e. you can deduce anything at all if you are prepared to rely on both a premise and the fact of its falsity. This is really a special case of 1.

3. You cannot deduce anything you like merely from a proposition that you think is true but which just happens to be false (without being a contradiction).

Now, 3. is important, because it rules out people saying simply: "You can deduce anything from a false proposition." No you can't: not unless the proposition is a contradiction or you are prepared to introduce a contradiction by dishonestly relying on a proposition that you know to be false, while also relying on its falsehood.

The moral is that you can't dismiss someone else's conclusion that you disagree with as being just the sort of absurd thing that can arise from affirming a false premise, as if you can use a merely false premise to prove whatever you like (without also relying on its falsity). It doesn't work like that, and the sort of comment I was originally objecting to massively over-simplifies.

I suppose I could add 4. for anyone who is interested.

4. If someone else knows that your premise is false they can then prove anything they like from it by also relying on their knowledge of its falsity. In doing so, however, they will be relying on something they don't believe (i.e. that the proposition is true) while also begging the question against you by assuming something you don't believe (i.e. that your premise is false).

87. Fleabytes

Comment #131222 by Russell Blackford on February 22, 2008 at 4:36 am

No worries, BAEOZ ... I didn't think you were being entirely serious, and my own tone was meant to be light-hearted, but I still couldn't work your example out.

Oh, and that's a good example you've now given of a negative claim that can, indeed, be proved.

88. Fleabytes

Comment #131216 by Russell Blackford on February 22, 2008 at 4:15 am

BAEOZ, I don't get your example. How is it to do with being able to draw any conclusion you like from a false premise?

Take, for example, the (false, I assure you) conclusion: "Russell is a scrambled egg." This could certainly be demonstrated from any two mutually contradictory premises. It can't however be derived from any premise that merely happens to be false. For example, it's not derivable from the premise "Russell is fluent in Swahili". Nor can it be derived from "Clay is a metal."

Admittedly, "Clay is a metal" may enable you to deduce some particular false propositions if the scientific concept of a metal has enough semantic content. But you can't deduce just anything you like from it.

As for not being able to prove a negative, well, you can often have pretty damn good evidence for a negative claim, evidence that would count as proof to a high standard in a court of law. E.g., with a bit of effort I could prove beyond reasonable doubt that there are no living dodos on Earth. I suppose what is meant is something like "Conclusions to the effect that no entities of a particular kind exist are not established with deductive certainty by a process of inductive generalisation." But that's a much narrower point and seldom a useful one.

Another thing I'd like a moratorium on, though I haven't noticed it on the site lately, is the claim that there's something wrong with having beliefs.

There may be something wrong with having irrational beliefs, or beliefs that lack good evidential justification, or beliefs that are based on wishful thinking, or whatever, but there's nothing at all wrong simply with having beliefs. For example, I believe that it's nearly bed time. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

89. Fleabytes

Comment #131189 by Russell Blackford on February 22, 2008 at 3:37 am

Actually, it's not true that you can derive any conclusion from a premise that happens to be false. Can we please have a moratorium on saying this?

The logical point that people presumably have in mind - and which first-year logic student always have trouble getting their heads around - is that you can derive any conclusion from internally inconsistent premises. That's not the same thing at all.

90. Fleabytes

Comment #130966 by Russell Blackford on February 21, 2008 at 3:21 pm

I am so sick of talk about "human dignity". The expression corresponds to no objective feature of the world, it's difficult to imagine what such a feature would even be like, and no such feature is needed for us to have a moral sense or moral norms. Talk of "human dignity" is not so much Kant as cant.

91. Fleabytes

Comment #130649 by Russell Blackford on February 21, 2008 at 4:52 am

I'm not sure what Paula meant by her atheism being strengthened, but it doesn't seem all that odd to me.

I can believe something on the balance of probabilities while still having quite strong doubts, e.g. I might think there's a 60 per cent chance of there being chocolate in the cupboard - but a 40 per cent chance that there isn't. I think I can remember seeing it there earlier, but I'm not all that clear about the matter; I could be wrong.

I might then gain additional evidence that makes me give it, say, a 90 per cent chance ... e.g. someone reminds me that we bought 8 chocolates at the supermarket last week and put them away in the cupboard, and she's sure we haven't yet eaten that many.

If I actually go to the cupboard and see the chocolate, the probability I assign to the belief rises to 100 per cent (or near enough ... I may be being deceived by an evil demon).

It's quite common that as we gain more evidence our level of belief in certain propositions can go up or down.

Similarly, someone might originally give the existence of God only a 20 per cent probability - I'd call that person an atheist. After getting more evidence, she might find that she gives it a probability that is close to zero.

92. Fleabytes

Comment #130592 by Russell Blackford on February 21, 2008 at 1:02 am

Nearly 30,000 words, Paula. I'm sure much of it will be recyclable into your own book.

93. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #130478 by Russell Blackford on February 20, 2008 at 4:27 pm

My conclusion is ...

If this research and the author's analysis are accurate, the effect of irrational thinking on public perceptions of science in the United States is even greater than might have been feared. Admittedly, there may be misuses or hazards associated with nanotechnology as it develops, as with any powerful new technology, but that is not a good reason for holding that nanotechnology in itself is morally unacceptable.

More research surely needs to be conducted to confirm whether the basis for widespread moral rejection of nanotechnology in the US is primarily religious in origin, particularly whether it is based on fears of "playing God". However, the reported research is certainly suggestive of such thinking. If that's correct, we have another example of why popular US-style religion is incompatible with the development of a broad public policy based on freedom, reason, and the advancement of science. It's not necessarily a matter of explaining the situation more effectively: the people interviewed were not ignorant, so it's claimed, but morally opposed to something that they actually did understand.

It appears yet again that the ultimate solution is not more explaining, spinning, "framing", or what have you, even if these are necessary. We need a direct, long-term, unremitting campaign to weaken the cognitive and moral authority of religion. We need to attack the root of the problem by doing whatever we can to create a more rational and sceptical ethos in Western societies, the US above all.

Even the figures from the UK, Germany, and France are worrying. About 45 per cent in the UK did not find nanotechnology to be morally acceptable. Almost 40 per cent in Germany. Almost 30 per cent in France.

Again, nanotechnology will surely create risks, but that does not make it essentially immmoral. So why, in those relatively secular countries of Western Europe, do we still find very large numbers of people who consider it so? Is the quasi-religion of an inviolable nature having an influence here, or is there some other factor that hasn't yet been identified?

94. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #130087 by Russell Blackford on February 20, 2008 at 3:44 am

My thoughts over here:

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/02/religion-and-nanotechnology.html

95. A match made on RichardDawkins.net?

Comment #128810 by Russell Blackford on February 18, 2008 at 2:38 am

Well blow me down! This is really cool news. Congratulations to both of you.

96. God vs. Gridiron

Comment #120921 by Russell Blackford on February 2, 2008 at 6:52 pm

I have no doubt which side I'm on.

This is an excessive, greedy, and perhaps legally contestable, use of intellectual property law, and it doesn't matter that some of the organisations getting screwed happen to be churches.

It's a matter of principle, not of rooting for whichever organisation you happen to like for some other reason. You can't take one attitude on such a matter if the organisation affected is a church and another if it's the local atheist society.

I'm going to say the same about all matters of legal principle. E.g if the Great Big Silly Church of Spider Worshippers happens to be adversely affected by a bad law restricting freedom of speech, I'll take the same derisive attitude to the law as if its victim were something innocuous like the Society of Sea-Otter Lovers or the Christopher Hitchens Fan Club.

97. Pope says some science shatters human dignity

Comment #120610 by Russell Blackford on February 2, 2008 at 5:51 am

Oh, and I hate it when the word "criteria" is used as a singular noun. That is almost as evil as official Catholic morality.

98. Pope says some science shatters human dignity

Comment #120609 by Russell Blackford on February 2, 2008 at 5:48 am

Yeah, here comes the good old cult of misery again. All hail the Great Queen Spider!

There is no such thing as "human dignity": some mysterious property that is supposed to be possessed by zygotes, blastocysts, etc. There are suffering human beings to look after (sometimes, in extreme situations, even by helping them die), human societies to preserve, non-human beings that are also capable of physical (and in some cases a degree of psychological) suffering. There are decent moral responses to all these things and more.

But "human dignity" puts morality on a false basis. It's a concept that should be challenged it, and if scientific research is doing so then I say that that's a good thing.

99. George Scales, War Hero and Generous Friend of RDFRS

Comment #112347 by Russell Blackford on January 16, 2008 at 11:57 pm

All best wishes, and remember to follow the advice from Dr Benway, except I suggest that you flirt with the nurses appropriately.

100. Fish out of water: Your Inner Fish

Comment #111135 by Russell Blackford on January 13, 2008 at 5:32 pm

I was expecting this article to be someone taking a much-deserved shot at Stanley Fish for his nasty review of The God Delusion.