04.11.07
Daniel Dennett lecture at RIT
Tonight (or last night I should say, as it’s now past midnight), I attended the capstone lecture in RIT’s 2006/7 Gannett lecture series, given by Daniel Dennet. I don’t intend this as a full review of the lecture, as I’m not particularly good at that sort of thing, but there were a couple of interesting points that I figured I’d log here before I go to sleep and forget them.
One thing I found interesting was a reference Dennett made in the context of co-evolution of genes and memes. Apparently, in one of his books (I’ve only read Consciousness Explained so far), he uses as an example the scenario where shamanism helps co-evolve humans who are susceptible to accepting irrational beliefs. His idea, as presented briefly in the lecture, is that shamanism may have provided a benefit to humans via a placebo effect, and so those humans who gained this benefit had a greater survival value and therefore the meme of shamanic beliefs co-evolved with the genes for susceptibility to them. Not having read more in-depth about this, I remain somewhat unconvinced of the historical accuracy of this, but as a thought experiment, I find it intriguing. (For the record, I tend to find Dawkin’s possible explanation in the TV series ‘The Root of All Evil?’ based on children’s need to follow parental instruction more compelling, but I digress…)
What intrigues me is not from a historical evolutionary point of view, but it helps me focus some thoughts on the flaws I find with some of the recent initiatives by prominant atheists such as Dawkins (as the posterchild, more or less) against faith. I agree with just about everything Dawkins has to say on the subject (and where I disagree, I can save for a future post). However, I worry that the atheist proponents who are getting their words out are focusing too much on logic and reason for their arguments, and therefore not dealing with most of the issues that lead people to follow (or stick with) faith, despite– or, in many cases, due to– the overwhelming evidence against their positions (or lack of evidence for their positions). I’ll expound upon this more in a future post, perhaps.
I also got a chance to ask Dennett a question of my own, which was a nice thrill. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the microphone was off as I spoke, but fortunately, my voice is loud enough naturally that at least Dennett and those around me heard what I said. My question was “is there a danger, philosophically, of over-relying on evolutionary models for understanding, to the point where one runs into the naturalistic fallacy?”
My concern is that, if we start to see everything in terms of natural selection, even if appropriate in terms of factual modelling, we can fall into a trap of thinking that no matter what happens, it is all part of a naturalistic process which will work itself out in the end, without requiring any intervention from us. If one believes in the inherent ‘goodness’ of natural selection, however, one might be compelled to see anything that happens as the result of such selection as inherently good. This thought is contradictory (as any intervention one might feel compelled to perform would be just as natural), but I fear it may nevertheless be seductive to those of an overly objective disposition.
As I asked the question, I was also noting to myself that, despite the applicability of evolutionary models to explain the development of various moral/ethical standards, in reality very few if any of these standards were consciously derived from evolutionary thought. I wonder if an evolutionary model useful for developing moral and ethical behavior, or only for explaining the development of them post facto. For example, there may be many different cultural ways in which we inculcate the notion that murder is bad… every one of these cultural rationalizations may lack foundation, and an evolutionary explanation may provide foundation, but what’s important for social order is not so much the foundation of an imperative, but rather the ability to get people to follow the imperative. It may be that appealing to faith is a much more expedient way to inculcate many of these values (good or bad). It may be more expedient for the survival of a civilization to believe that each of us is endowed by a creator with certain inalienable rights (among them the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), for which to abridge is not just a bad idea, it’s a violation of divine law, than it is to educate people that murder is bad because it weakens the civilization and therefore reduces its survivability due to poor resource management and external pressures.
I suspect that there is a way to inculcate such moral systems while limiting one’s appeal to faith (at least, not requiring appeals to supernatural entities), and thereby adding the benefit of reasoned review. I’m afraid, however, that I haven’t yet heard the so-called “new atheists” expound on them.
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