From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:06 PM To: alt.atheism.moderated Cc: Elizabeth Hubbell Subject: Re: evidence of god? replies to the redoubtable Latta, Filseth, Holtz -- long This response to "G Riggs" has the following parts: AXIOLOGY SOCIOLOGY OF ETHICS EXTINCTION AND PACIFISM HUMAN NATURE MARKET FAILURES POLITICS AXIOLOGY > > why not instead explore [..] the space of all possible values? > > Please name me any values that supercede the happiness of > one's posterity. Thanks. Easy. The happiness (i.e. well-being) of Homo sapiens is a higher value to me than the well-being of my own posterity. Further, the well-being (i.e. extropy) of our ecosystem is a higher value to than the well-being of H. sapiens. (Extropy is the amount of a system's intelligence, vitality, and capability for increasing its intelligence, vitality, and capability.) I value the extropy of the universe even more than I value the extropy of our ecosystem. The extropy of the universe is my highest value -- it is more important to me than any other possible thing. You're welcome. :-) > do you consider that there is naive altruism versus well-grounded > altruism, and if so, what's the difference? Naive altruism is what undergirds ethical collectivism and political socialism, both of which are inferior in promoting human well-being than ethical individualism and political liberalism (i.e. libertarianism). Naive altruism also improperly emphasizes charity, on which I comment in section 1.3.3. (Philosophy / Axiology / Virtue Philosophy): The virtue of kindness makes humans want to help their fellow humans, especially those in need. A common view is that the best form of kindness is charity. Charity is the sharing of material wealth with the needy. But throughout history the greatest improvements in human well-being have come not from charity but from justice and knowledge. Humanity's surplus of injustice, superstition, and ignorance is a far bigger problem than its deficit of charity. > > Not-yet-existing future persons have no rights. The result you seek > > can be effected by protecting the rights of present persons to > > be free from negative externalities. From section 5.1.2.2 > > (Social Science / Economics / Microeconomics / Market Imperfections) > > of my book: > > > > Externality is a cost imposed or benefit bestowed on a person > > other than those who agreed to the transaction that created > > the cost or benefit. > > Well, surely persons "other than those who agreed to" said > "transaction" can still easily include future inheritors of > this planet Not easily, no. How many of these inheritors will there be? How far into the future should we count? If future merely possible people have rights, then what of the rights of all the myriad presently-possible people that are not being instantiated? Again: the result you seek can be effected by taking living people as proxies for the rights of all their offspring. That is, any "rights" of my unconceived descendents can be protected simply by protecting *my* rights. > Unless there are riots first, of course. I'm starting to > feel troubled by a certain complacency reflected here in a > seeming neglect of the practical difficulties entailed in > keeping the global population within minimal bounds > of social contentment. I in turn am troubled by your willingness to reconfigure your ethics simply because you don't personally understand how complex and dynamic systems will meet the social needs you perceive. I have confidence that social systems founded on political and economic freedom will continue to provide for and improve humanity's material well-being. Calling this confidence "complacency" may simply reflect your possible lack of understanding of the relevant system dynamics. SOCIOLOGY OF ETHICS > so-called "civilizing influences" are as intrinsic to the > psychological and biological makeup of raw humanity as any > of the most basic drives for food or sex [..] studying certain > civilizing or ethical influences can still yield as > fruitful a set of insights into what makes nature herself > tick as the scrutiny of any of the most basic mating patterns But for the normative program of advocating how people should behave -- i.e. for ethics --, the most valid ethical principles can be reasoned out directly and theoretically, and cannot be determined empirically. > I believe I may have detected a common thread > connecting the most selfless ethics coiners of all time. > [..] to wit, a possible tantalizing > glimpse of the extratemporal or the metaphysical I believe this common thread is about as significant as the similar common thread that these guys were not exposed to much television growing up. Your four antecdotes are too hopelessly confounded by uncontrolled variables to motivate the conclusion that you draw (viz., that deity probably exists). > even if deity exists, it is > not necessarily supernatural [but] a natural force > immanent in the cosmos, [..] some influential entity with genuinely > powerful consciousness whose predilections and ideas are apt to > suffuse a multitude of species, provided > those species have sufficient brain power to pick up on such "deitic" > notions as "Love your neighbour" or basic reciprocity. If by "deity" you simply mean the "natural force" of the idea of reciprocity, then your "probabilistic" argument for the existence of deity is nothing more than a tautology: "The idea of reciprocity exists, therefore the idea of reciprocity exists". If by "influential powerful concsiousness" you mean something more than this, then your argument is going to need elaboration. > > Morality is the domain of philosophy, not science. > > science is indeed intrinsic to a proper > understanding of morality, since science is intrinsic to an > understanding of how species survive--both species survival > and morality ending up one and > the same anyway, it still seems to me, however poorly > I may argue that as an objective take. Values cannot be fundamentally objective. To say they can be is called the Naturalistic Fallacy. > I have thrown in my lot with the additional supposition that > survival for a species is the highest good. Yes, and that throw is an axiological (i.e. philosophical) choice, not a scientific one. There is absolutely nothing in science that can tell you that your choice is right or wrong, good or evil. Once you have made your axiological choice of some ends to value, science can of course advise you of the most efficient means to those ends. But science simply cannot choose your ends for you, and saying it can bespeaks a possible existential fear of moral uncertainty. > > > the most original ethical concepts > > > throughout time come from the context of an engagement with or an > > > acknowledgement of [deities] > > > > Such concepts no doubt correlate even better with coming from men > > instead of women. > > Sadly, women were subjugated by society to the extent that they had less > luxury to indulge in a life of the mind. Yes, and the men living the life of the mind did not have access to the Darwinian theory necessary to realize deities don't exist. It's shockingly naive to draw such dramatic conclusions from the (not-too-surprising) historical accident that the obvious theories of ethics were discovered in a milieu that was ignorant of evolution and thus devoid of robust atheism. > If we're going to suggest that > ethical concepts--at least groundbreaking and original ones-- > are by nature only a product of maleness, then we'd have to > assume the same of groundbreaking atheists, [..] > all of whom are male. If your only four true positives are male theists, then such such false negatives as male atheists don't disprove that maleness is as essential as theism, because there are far more false negative male theists (i.e. who did not break ethical ground). > only theism *appears* to be associated only with the most profoundly > groundbreaking ethicists Your two "only"s make this statement false. The underlying association is quite weak and entirely explicable in ways that do not motivate your conclusion. > the more scientific assurance that a predisposition towards such > an admirably upright adoption already existed in the heart of said > individual lies in those cases where some reasonable presumption > can be made that the code was adopted from the individual's own > viscera. It seems odd to promote "admirable" ethics by trying to reproduce the allegedly theistic "viscera" that created them, instead of just rationally defending those ethics as optimal. > > What is your evidence that there must be "brain circuitry" for > > original ethical thought? And why on earth would you presume that > > any thoughts produced by such circuitry (itself a product of > > evolution) should be given any special exemption from skeptical > > reasoning? All ideas are created equal, and only their > > objective merits determine their validity. > > And to me the objective merits of ethical ideas lie in the > extent to which they can lead to the healthy and happy > thriving of the species. Fine -- let's debate that proposition's objective merits, and dispense with psychoanalyzing the ancients who were necessarily first in discovering the most obvious (and perhaps naive) ethical principles. > Such [an atheist] would have to be ranged right up there along with > the other four, an unequivocally admirable, unequivocally secular > figure making the task of determining the essence of *independent* > ethicists a challenge involving theists and nonbelievers alike. You still have not answered my question above: What is your evidence that there must be an "essence" of valid ethical thinking, an "essence" that leads to more-valid ethical conclusions than the alternative of rational discourse? I strongly disagree that any such essence exists, and I seemed to have missed your argument to the contrary. > > It's hardly surprising when you realize that a naive altruism is > > rather obvious, while a truly robust atheism could not exist > > before Darwin. By then, the obvious (and flawed) doctrine of > > naive altruism had already been thoroughly enunciated. > > do you consider that there is naive altruism versus well-grounded > altruism, and if so, what's the difference? See the answer above. Here I simply note that you did not rebut my statement that altruism is much more obvious than robust atheism and that this explains why the first altruists were theists. > it's primarily in the C.E. period > that more published thinkers tend to be believers than nonbelievers. > The two groups *appear* to be more evenly balanced, IMO, in the > B.C. period. That's probably because 1 A.D. marks the dawn of sophisticated monotheism. It doesn't take a genius to realize that pagan gods (such as the Old Testament's El/Yahweh) do not exist. But it takes a Darwin to dispense with a Designer. > social scientists and cultural > historians are solemnly obligated to study the sentiments of such a > modern-day [originally atheistic] ethicist with the utmost rigour, > side by side with the other four, determining, now that theism > would clearly be no longer in the mix at > all, just what all *five* altruists have in common. I just don't see this solemn obligation at all, and I've never heard of a philosopher or social scientist who thought that ethical validity was so tightly constrained by originality. > Are you saying that there is literally no possible unifying > preceptive or behavioral pattern whatsoever that could ever > be decipherable among a group of like-minded idealists? No, I'm saying that the decipherable pattern of theism that is common among your idealists (and among the ancients in general) can be explained as their mistaken attempt to understand the universe without the aid of Darwinism. > the theism that unites all these four [might be] a > red herring. Fine. But [..] digging hard enough > would indeed disclose some common patterns of some kind. But not any pattern that could help improve on the ethical principles derived from rational consideration of various principles' objective merits. > All four, for one thing, stress reciprocity; Yes, because you selected for it. :-) > > So whoever is first to enunciate an admirable ethical principle is > > automatically correct in hypothesizing the existence of the > > inspiration of that principle, and that existence claim is > > not subject to independent inquiry and verification? > > As for hypothesizing the nature of a principle's > inspiration, *multiple* spokesmen count for more, IMO, than one. We're not debating the nature of the inspiration, we're debating whether the object of the inspiration exists. People can be inspired by the idea of something even if that thing doesn't exist. > a *probability* for deity, not a proof, because of *more* *than* > *one* ethical spokesman at this epochal level showing similar patterns. > Independent inquiry and verification are still essential And they give no support to the primitive and untutored theistic suppositions of your four ancients. > what Buddha, Confucius, Socrates or Jesus *said* > it's been hard, even in the unsympathetic accounts of > contemporaries or near-contemporaries, to find > biographical details in what they *did* that, in any way, > contradict what they professed. I know we have no "unsympathetic accounts" of Jesus' behavior by anyone with independent knowledge of it. What unsympathetic independent accounts do we have for the other three? > My primary concern is purely that which makes altruistic pioneers tick. In my judgement, your primary concern should be the rational consideration of ends that you value, and whether altruism is the most efficacious means to them. EXTINCTION AND PACIFISM > it's *polar* warming that it just so happens is transpiring right now, > not "global warming" as such [if you read a recent article in The > New York Times Magazine concerning a researcher near the North Pole, > it was made quite clear that *polar* warming--and an alarming > thinning of the ice cap is already well on its way!]. The Times got the story wrong, and retracted it: http://reason.com/tcs/091800.shtml As for global warming, in section 5.7.7. (Social Science / Futurology / Challenges) of my book I write: Over the next millenium and for the rest of human history, earth's major environmental problem will be warming due not to greenhouse gases but rather to increased waste heat from non-solar energy (initially petrochemical, but then fusion). The problem emerges when a world population in the high tens or low hundreds of billions all enjoy an energy budget equivalent to the industrialized West in 2000. All the waste heat from all the energy uses adds up, and the laws of thermodynamics guarantee that energy use always creates heat exhaust. Heat pollution will have to be managed to prevent a runaway greenhouse effect like on Venus. As I say in the rest of that section, other environmental challenges to our material well-being will be quite manageable by comparison. Note that decreased biodiversity threatens scientific and aesthetic loss, but is not really a threat to our material well-being. > if the circle of moral/ethical empathy and concern > isn't continually enlarged, this planet simply dies. Hello? It is quite beyond human power to sterilize the planet, and so this kind of hyperbole makes the rest of your message less credible. > grim developments of the past hundred years Note that the last hundred years have also seen an unprecedented increase in humanity's freedom and material well-being. > The notion that any conflict would run the risk of destroying both > combatants altogether in the end showed humanity graphically that > the surest bet for humanity's future was not to engage in any > conflict at all. I strenuously disagree. If the freedom-loving West had simply adopted your brand of pacifism during the Cold War, it seems obvious that humanity's present and future would have been worse than it is now. If fears stemming from "duck and cover" are the philosophical basis for your ethics, then you'll have to excuse the rest of us for not sharing them. :-) > utter annihilation probably sometime before 2050......and I'm > not near 50 myself, so most likely I'll be a (terrified, > despairing and exasperated) witness to > the hideous apocalypse (ecological, weapons-caused, or whatever) I think you seriously misjudge the threats that humanity faces. See section 5.7.8. (Social Science / Futurology / Possible Catastrophes) of my book for a survey of humanity's natural and manmade threats. > Hating your enemies almost bequeathed us the nuclear winter. That's a mischaracterization. I would say: opposition to tyranny -- as compared to pacifistic acceptance of it -- helped end it while also avoiding nuclear catastrophe. > It was only the dissolution of the Cold War as symbolized in > epochal moments such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall that prevented the > dreary ways of hate [..] from destroying this whole globe. The Cold War didn't "dissolve" itself; it was *won*, by people who rejected fearful pacifism. > some modicum of empathy, at least, > with one's enemies is essential for us to survive in any sane way. > Erring on the side of some glimmering understanding of one's > enemies is, at the very least, wiser than turning one's back > on them entirely. Strawman. Nobody seriously says that enemies deserve no ethical consideration and do not need to be understood. Your hyperbole here makes it hard to discern what your substantive thesis is. > the megalomaniacs may have taken over the asylum, but > hopefully the "medics" "in their clean white coats" > can calm down the megalomaniacs in time. In my judgement, it is simply not the case that "megalomaniacs" have "taken over the asylum". I further note that the greatest capacity for badness lies with people who consider themselves to be wearing "clean white coats". Indeed, I think that your sort of self-righteous semi-mystical neophobic naive opposition to techno-economic development will prove to be in the next few centuries perhaps the greatest manmade brake on humanity's progress toward increasing material well-being. How does it feel to be seriously considered one of the patients instead of one of the "medics"? Doesn't this make it seem prudent to tone down the self-righteous denunciations of e.g. Newt Gingrich? > humanity, whether we like it or not, now has the capacity to > ruin not just itself but our entire world. Thus, irresponsibility > with our species' future means de facto irresponsibility with > our entire world's future as well. Modulo fears of nanoplague, it will be many millenia before humanity has the capacity to sterilize Earth. Doing so would require vectoring a kinetic planetary impactor with a diameter on the order of hundreds of miles. If you really think humanity is a cancer on the planet that is likely to sterilize it, then I seriously think you should advocate human extinction now, before humanity becomes more dangerous. HUMAN NATURE > > It's more accurate to say: personal survival and, more importantly, > > inclusive reproductive fitness. > > "inclusive" by your meaning might not necessarily mean an > entire species' involvement. From section 3.5.5. (Natural Science / Biology / Evolutionary Biology): The inclusive fitness of an individual organism is the relative number of its alleles that are passed on to subsequent generations by the organism or its relatives. > > > Our species (and perhaps not just our species alone) may > > > have a collective sense of survival after all > > > > Natural selection operates > > at the individual level, not at the species. > > [..] if one individual member of a species responds with certain > behavioral patterns, then others will do the same. This can be true for social species, but it should not be confused with the general evolutionary selection for survival of the individual's alleles (as opposed to the species' genotype). > Do you regard humanity as an entirely > neutral balance of the considerate and the selfish, or do you > believe that any ethical considerateness is counter-intuitive > to humanity's raw and basic makeup? I reject your apparent premise that self-interest and mutual interest are always contradictory. If instead of "the considerate and the selfish" you asked about cooperation vs. aggression (i.e. violation of rights), I would assert that cooperation clearly outweighs aggression. > If you believe that selfishness in its worst form is the true > core of human *nature* I don't. I already told you: Humans are not by nature necessarily evil, but their natural self-interest gives them a natural capacity for evil. In their natural social environment of family and community, humans tend naturally to be more good than evil, and to cooperate for mutual benefit. > then how would *you* account for civilizing codes Evolution has been responsible for producing sociality and intelligence, which together produce civilization and its codes. > Or do you take selfishness as being something that can function > in an entirely value-neutral way? Human self-interest is a net positive. > How come we're still here in > the form of intricate urban centers, nations and global structures > today? *Something* facilitated our developing more > and more interlinked structures in the first place. Was that > "*something*" an aspect intrinsic to human *nature* Yes -- the combination of sociality and intelligence. See 3.5.5.2. (Biology / Evolutionary Biology / Paleontology) for an explanation of why sociality is in fact the most important causal factor for intelligence. > would you consider such cooperation that promotes extropy in the > first place as being fully as natural for humanity as the most > basic drives for food or sex? It's quite natural, but it's not nearly as powerful or direct. MARKET FAILURES > > The freedom and prosperity that any true altruist should desire > > would in fact be promoted by Gingrich's vision of technological > > progress created by free markets under democratic limited government. > > I might suggest that we tell that to the people of > Argentina today or to the employees bereft of life savings at Enron, > that entire matter being a microcosm in itself of what can happen > with a Gingrich-style approach applied too complacently. Enron is a simple case of fraud, and fraud can no more be legislated out of existence than can murder. The causes of Argentina's problems include government deficit spending, increased tariffs on consumer imports, agricultural trade barriers in its customer nations (like America), and exchange rate manipulation by both Argentina and Brazil. None of these are the free-market policies that Gingrich would advocate. > the canonization of market principles by forces like the > International Monetary Fund "Canonization"? If you have a substantive criticism of the IMF, please state it and dispense with the content-free hyperbole. > or like certain crooked accounting > firms have proved as pernicious as the most hidebound > fundamentalisms. Free markets (and the technologies they harness) have been the greatest force for material prosperity in human history. As measured in the centuries by which humanity's progress has been retarded, theistic fundamentalism has been history's most pernicious socioeconomic force by about an order of magnitude. > The absence of any restraints on a dog-eat-dog-type market > will only foment further social unrest in the long term. Strawman. Every serious advocate of free markets acknowledges the need for "restraints" like those I advocate in section 1.3.2. (Philosophy / Axiology / Political Philosophy): * prevention of force and fraud; * enforcement of contracts; * protection against negative externalities (like pollution); * regulation of monopoly, incorporation, and bankruptcy. > The essentials of economic development (which I happen to agree do > indeed thrive best through free enterprise Then what, precisely, are you arguing against? > are imperiled through any absence of laws that [..] > protect the weak against the strong. Look again; the laws are there, enforcing the restraints I listed above. And for persons in mortal danger from starvation and illness, many of us free-marketers also advocate a safety net (though not necessarily one like America's federal welfare system). POLITICS > the core of the Gingrich doctrine [is] a profound acceptance > of the proposition that each man is an island. Strawman. People like Gingrich and me stress individual rights, but that does not make us anarchists. Have you ever even listened to an entire speech by Newt, or read one of his papers or books? You seem to have completely swallowed the leftist media's caricature of him. > "We have now won the Cold War. We sit at the banquet of nations [..] > let's fulfil such a greatness through helping more of our > starving neighbours [..] > through developing alternative renewable energy resources [..] > through addressing the educational demands of children > throughout the planet. > [..] sowing the seeds for a happy human future." In this gauzy speech you cite only three specific goals: feeding the world, educating the world, and developing renewable energy resources. Gingrich would agree with me that free markets are the best mechanism for accomplishing the first two. The third goal is misconceived; the proper goal is to achieve the energy usage pattern that is most conducive to humanity's values of material well-being and biodiversity. Gingrich would agree with me that this goal can again best be achieved by 1) internalizing things like pollution that currently are negative externalities in free market transactions, and 2) publicly funding the production of positive externalities through scientific research. > Gingrich's opponents instead "spun" their pitch > into a cut-and-dried mantra boiled down essentially into a > "What's in it for you" slogan. Yes, the Democratics are clearly the party of economic security (i.e. handouts), while the Republicans stress economic freedom (which in the end allows *more* economic security). Unfortunately, Republicans stress personal security over freedom -- the opposite of the Democrats. The right answer is both economic *and* personal freedom: libertarianism. > [the] tenet I might personally view as profoundly immoral [..] > would be the idea that each man is an island. That is one of > the most insidious and self-destructive of all. > [..] > I'm not out to abuse Gingrich supporters here or Rebublicans in > general. No, you're just out to call them "profoundly immoral"! > I hope others here don't get into a scrap over the Gingrich > concepts, PLEASE. Too late. :-) > But I simply can't come up, right now, with any other equally > clear example of [..] the practical versus [..] inspiration. Your example is extremely inappropriate, as even the leftist media acknowledges Gingrich to be an intellectual and a visionary. I challenge you to read his paper The Age of Transitions (at http://www.newt.org/age.htm) and then repeat your claim that Gingrich isn't inspirational. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net