John G. Messerly's Blog, page 109
July 8, 2015
Michael Shermer’s The Science of Good and Evil: Summary of Chapter 3
Chapter 3 – Why We Are Immoral: War, Violence, and the Ignoble Savage
66-69 – The “problem of evil.” God’s will is not a good explanation. So from whence does evil come? In the first place, evil is not a separately existing thing all by itself, it is not a Platonic essence. Rather, evil is “a physical concept that exists entirely within the natural realm as behavior…Good and evil are human constructs.” 69
70-76 – We all can be good or bad depending on the circumstances; human nature is malleable, as the Millgram and Zimbardo experiments demonstrate. [So there is no mystery why people torture each other or why apparently normal people with power do extraordinarily bad things.] Thus, there was nothing special about Nazi leaders except that they shared: “overweening ambition, low ethical standards, and a strongly developed nationalism which justified anything done in the name of Germandom.75 ” [Does this sound familiar to modern day Americans?] Given different situations the mass murderer could have been a quiet accountant; and the accountant a mass murderer. “From and evolutionary perspective this makes sense.” 75 Both cooperation and competition have been necessary throughout evol history. Human behavior comes in shades of grey.
76-81 – Adolp Eichmann appeared quite normal. Most of us restrain our impulses normally, but we all have the potential for great violence. And the myth of pure evil—that others are evil and we are not—makes it more likely we’ll be violent.
82-91 – Human behavior falls on a “fuzzy” scale and moral principles have fuzzy values. So are we really fierce and violent, or erotic and loving? Are we, or the Yanomamo tribe, fierce or erotic? We are both, we don’t possess a fixed essence but are capable of various behaviors in various contexts. “We have the evolved capacity to adopt either strategy.” 89 “Homo sapiens in general … are the erotic-fierce people, making love and war far too frequently for our own good…” 91
92-97 – The beautiful people myth is as mistaken as the pure evil myth. Humans are neither beautiful nor ugly; they are capable of doing most anything. The noble savage is a myth. “The evidence is overwhelming that violence, aggression, and warfare are part of the behavioral repertoire of most primate species.” 97
July 7, 2015
Michael Shermer’s The Science of Good and Evil: Summary of Chapter 2
Chapter 2 – Why We Are Moral: The Evolutionary Origins of Morality
25-31 – Versions of the golden rule are found throughout the world, dating back at least 3000 years. So where did this idea come from? Moral sentiments evolved from the behaviors of our pre-moral ancestors. Non-human animals display moral-like behaviors proportionate to how human animal-like they are. Dogs, cats, and bats display moral-like behaviors, but not to the extent that the great apes, our evolutionary cousins, do. Cooperative, reciprocity, and other moral-like behaviors have been well documented in the great apes as well as in other animals. [Remember that the DNA of a human and chimp differ less than that between some species of birds. For more see: The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal.]
31-40 – Moral ideas and behaviors were codified by religions that arose as societies became larger. As food production and population increased, division of labor developed, and organized religion came of age to, among other things, justify and support political power. Religions provide a means of exchange between humans and their gods for things that political powers cannot give or give only rarely. Traditionally, religion and politics are bedfellows. [Consider this famous quote from Seneca, quoted by Gibbon at the end of his famous work on the Roman Empire: Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.] “In addition to sanctioning political power “religion has also served as an institution of social order and behavior control.” Religions back up their moral authority by claiming that moral codes are divinely inspired. Crucial to the survival of religion is a strong focus on accentuating in-group loyalty and out-group hostility, which are themselves near universal human traits.
40-46 – Formal moral discipline, behavior control, and conflict resolution become necessary when a group reaches about 150 members. In small groups, reciprocal altruism [a well-documented behavior in human and non-human animals] is the primary mechanism for behavior control and is re-enforced by gossip. Eventually religion took over the role of moral enforcer, evolving as the social institution that promoted cooperation and altruism, and discouraged greed and selfishness.
47-56 – The key idea of group selection helps explain how morality evolved, since groups benefit from cooperation while individuals often don’t. S suggests that group selection might be useful in explaining the evolution of morality. But however we explain it, morality is a behavior that has evolutionary origins.
56-60 – Morality is deep in our nature. Some are more moral than others, but feeling good or bad about our actions is a human universal. And the best way to convince others one is moral and thereby gain cooperative benefits is actually to be moral. All this is best understood by considering the prisoner’s dilemma. Iterated PDs demonstrate that cooperation is a good—possibly the best—strategy.
60-64 – Moral universals exist cross-culturally and thus probably have a biological basis. As evidence for this thesis, S lists over 200 universal human traits related to morality.
July 6, 2015
Michael Shermer’s The Science of Good and Evil: Summary of Prologue and Chapter 1
Here are the summary notes I’ve taken of Michael’s Shermer’s fine book: The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
Prologue: One Long Argument
Page 2 – “All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.” Let’s investigate morality this way, remembering that all claims are provisional, that is, we should maintain a balance between doubt and certainty. Let us begin by noting that “To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat.” [This book is the 3rd in a trilogy. In the first he investigated superstition and pseudoscience, which led him to investigate religious claims, which led him to morality.
4-7– As a statement about the universe agnosticism is the rational response; as a personal statement, Shermer (S) is a non-theist. Moreover, he doesn’t think it possible to know if there are Gods or not. Still religion thrives by “providing a foundation for social order and moral edification.” [He claims that religion need not be in conflict with science as long as religion doesn’t try to explain the world.] S differentiates between morality—descriptions, facts about morality (part 1 of the book)—and ethics—prescriptions and moral theories, (part 2 of the book).
7-8 – Religion has been the traditional source that promotes ethics. But to understand the deep source of moral sentiments in humans we need to look at our evolutionary history. For S, answering questions about morality demands that we must understand our evolutionary history. We must engage in “evolutionary ethics.” But other sciences are relevant to answering the question. [Part 1 of this book will reveal the origins of morality and part 2 will advance an ethical theory consistent with those findings.]
Chap 1 – Transcendent Morality: How Evolution Ennobles Ethics
17-19 – Enlightenment thinkers attempted to ground morality without the gods, although they still believed morality was absolute. But does a scientific, empiricist explanation of ethics lead to relativism? If values aren’t transcendent, are they relative? S says people typically assume the answer is yes. But S argues that moral sentiments transcend us, since universal moral sentiments are inherited from evolution, and thus morality is subject to empirical analysis. This is what he calls his transcendent empiricism.
19-21 – This leads to a summary of S’s basic argument.
• Moral naturalism – a secular and scientific approach to morality
• An evolved moral sense – moral sentiments and principles evolved through natural selection either because they are good or bad for a group or individual.
• An evolved moral society – social morality evolved from biology.
• The nature of moral nature – humans naturally display a range of moral traits. The codification of moral principles corresponding to moral traits evolved for social control and group survival.
• Provisional morality – moral principles are neither relative nor absolute; they are provisional, that is, they apply most of the time.
• Provisional right and wrong – happiness and liberty are key values.
• Provisional justice – there is no absolute justice, but there is provisional justice.
• Ennobling evolutionary ethics – “moral principles exist outside of us and are products of the impersonal forces of evolution, history, and culture.”
June 28, 2015
No Place on Earth
I saw the moving and profound documentary “No Place on Earth.” It tells the story of caving enthusiast Chris Nicola 1993 visit to the Ukraine to explore the Verteba and Priest’s Grotto caves. There he found evidence that they had recently been inhabited by Jews escaping The Holocaust. He then embarked on a decade-long quest to find survivors. The film features interviews with survivors and their descendants, now living mainly in New York City and Montreal. At the end of the film Tobias brings some of the survivors, now in their 80s and 90s back to the caves.
It is an incredible story of human survival which really makes your typical first-world troubles trivial in comparison. But it also reminds us how terrible life is, how filled it is with suffering, and how we are all obligated to make a heaven of our universe—the only real place such a heaven could ever exist.
June 27, 2015
“Transcendence for Realists”
My friend Lawrence Rifkin published another great piece the other day in the Huffington Post “Transcendence for Realists.” His basic point is that transcendent experiences—by which he means experiences beyond the ordinary—don’t need to be interpreted as supernatural. He concludes:
Those having such experiences need not discount reason, and need not interpret a profound experience or emotion as being part of a supernatural explanation. Numinous is not synonymous with miraculous. Transcendence properly understood—a naturalistic transcendence—embraces the non-rational, not the irrational. Non-rational transcendent emotions are harmonious with reason, evidence, and naturalism. They can be cherished as supreme human experiences.
As usual, I agree with my friend. One need not, and should not, posit supernatural explanations for anything, as the supernatural is just the imaginary and irrational. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t non-rational experiences. Being moved by Beethoven is not rational in the way that biology is, but music is neither irrational or supernatural. Instead listening might evoke an experience of non-rational transcendence.
June 26, 2015
Darwin: Was He a Genius?
Darwin possessed no single talent of creative genius that cannot be found commonly in others. Therefore many people could compete with Darwin on specific, isolated abilities. But the collection of his talents and character put together in one individual is extraordinary – the combined sum of all that made Darwin Darwin. That, along with the level of his accomplishments, qualifies him as an exceptional genius, on par with geniuses with off-the-charts specific talents. And if you, very intelligent reader, were on the Beagle, I do not believe you would have achieved Darwin’s level of ideas and evidence. For these reasons, I would argue that Charles Darwin was a rare genius.
I think this is about right. Of course there has been a lot written about the idea of genius lately. Some say that geniuses are made not born, and that devoting enough time to a pursuit from a young age essentially defines what we call genius. Others argue that genius is more nature than nurture, mostly a case of inborn ability. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. What we call genius is a combination of native talent, the right environment, the drive to succeed, and more. So if you or had hit golf balls or played piano or studied from the age of two, we would be better golfers, pianists, or physicists. But we probably wouldn’t be Tiger woods, Mozart, or Newton because we don’t possess their natural athletic or musical or mathematical abilities. So geniuses are those with the natural talent and who had the right environment, disposition, etc.
If forced to guess though, I’d say that tenacity and other personal traits are probably more important than native ability. So I agree that reasonably intelligent people who put forth the effort can achieve great things. Which is what Larry said at the end of his piece. Perhaps then I might find the meaning of life with enough effort.
June 23, 2015
Letting Ideas Simmer
I’ve noticed another phenomena of not writing a post for almost two weeks now. Not only is playing good for you, as I mentioned in my last post, but I find that various ideas simmer in my head even when I’m not writing about them. I so often respond to thoughts and events by writing about them, that not writing provides a different experience. Ideas not immediately expressed simmer in the mind and slowly mix with others. Perhaps this will lead to some breakthrough or, if not, to a renewed energy to find a breakthrough.
Perhaps all this is just an excuse for not working. Still it takes time to assimilate and coordinate new thoughts. What I do know is this. The weather is beautiful here in Seattle, and it is hard to sit in front of my computer when the sunshine and the mountains and ocean call. And I know that life is too short to spend all of one’s time thinking about life.
June 16, 2015
Play is Good For You
My June 10, 2015 post marked the 193rd consecutive day I had written a post. And then 3 days without a post. What’s up with that? Well to tell the truth I wanted a break. Moreover, I had just finished my book, Who Are We?: Religious, Philosophical, Scientific and Transhumanist Theories Of Human Nature
, so I decided to take a few days off.
So playing—hiking, golfing, urban trekking and babysitting my granddaughter—have taken center stage in the last few weeks. When the weather is beautiful I just get the urge to be outside. And by the way, play is good for you; it is part of the meaning of life. A life without the joy of play is a diminished life. So here’s to just playing.
June 12, 2015
Who Are We?
Who Are We? We may think we know the answer to this question, but there are possibilities we haven’t considered. For example, we may think that what we are is inside our bodies, but perhaps that’s wrong. Why do we end where our bodies do? After all, our skin is porous and interacts with the environment. We can’t survive for more than a few minutes without the air, so why isn’t the air as much a part of us as our lungs or legs? And for us there is no breathable air without plants, so why aren’t they a part of us too? In fact, our existence depends on the earth’s ecosystem and the sun. Following this line of thinking, our existence ultimately depends on the entire universe.
So perhaps we aren’t egos inside bags of skin; perhaps we aren’t separate egos at all. Maybe we are like windows, apertures or vortexes through which the universe is conscious of itself for a brief moment. While we are fond of saying things like “I came into this world,” as if our essence was preparing to wage war on reality, isn’t it more accurate to say, “I came out of the universe?” Don’t people come out of the universe like leaves come out of trees, or waves come out of oceans?
And such questions are not merely academic. If we feel separate from the world, then it is alien to us; it becomes something we must confront. But if we see that are connected the universe, then we are more likely to treat it as our home. We will realize that the environment that surrounds our bodies is as much a part of us as our heart or lungs. If we despoil the environment, we despoil ourselves; if we destroy the environment, we destroy ourselves. So perhaps we are the universe looking at itself from billions of perspectives. In fact, couldn’t we say that we are the universe slowly becoming self-conscious?
These are just some of the ideas we will consider in this book. What we will discover is that there are many ways of thinking about human nature. We might be mostly social selves as Confucius thought, or God in disguise like Shankara believed, or have no self like the Buddha claimed. Aristotle and Kant thought we are primarily rational creatures, but Marx and Freud believed that we are largely determined by societal or irrational influences, while Sartre argued that the only nature we have is the one we create. But one thing is certain, we are animals with a long evolutionary history, and we will continue to evolve as science and technology transform us. We now know where we came from, but we are not sure where are we going.
In discussing individual theories I will consider each theory as encompassing a:
1) theory of reality; 2) theory of human nature; 3) major problem of life; and 4) solution to that problem. I hope that this will both better explain the theories, and allow them to be compared with each other.
We will begin by examining various religious systems that originated in the axial age: Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judeo-Christianity. Then, we will discuss the philosophical theories of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Kant and Sartre, as well as two theories of human nature from the social scientists Marx and Freud. Next we will turn to Darwin and the neo-Darwinians for insights into human nature from evolutionary biology. Finally, we will ponder the future of human nature, especially how science and technology will transform human nature to the extent that we may become become post-human.
Generally early theories of human nature are religious, modern theories of our nature respond to science or are full-fledged scientific theories, and theories about the future consider how science and technology will transform our nature. This transition from religious descriptions of reality and human nature to scientific ones is not surprising, given the rise of influence of science since the seventeenth-century. Today science is the only cognitive authority in the world, and if we really want to know who we are we must understand something of modern science, particularly our evolutionary history. And once we take an evolutionary perspective we will see that our descendents, should they survive, will come to resemble us about as much as we do the amino acids from which we sprang. Such concerns lead to our final question, what is the future of human nature?
(excerpt from Who Are We?: Religious, Philosophical, Scientific and Transhumanist Theories Of Human Nature)
Who Are We? An Excerpt
Here is an excerpt from the preface of my newly published book: Who Are We?: Religious, Philosophical, Scientific and Transhumanist Theories Of Human Nature
Who are we? We may think we know the answer to this question, but there are possibilities we haven’t considered. For example, we may think that what we are is inside our bodies, but perhaps that’s wrong. Why do we end where our bodies do? After all, our skin is porous and interacts with the environment. We can’t survive for more than a few minutes without the air, so why isn’t the air as much a part of us as our lungs or legs? And for us there is no breathable air without plants, so why aren’t they a part of us too? In fact, our existence depends on the earth’s ecosystem and the sun. Following this line of thinking, our existence ultimately depends on the entire universe.
So perhaps we aren’t egos inside bags of skin; perhaps we aren’t separate egos at all. Maybe we are like windows, apertures or vortexes through which the universe is conscious of itself for a brief moment. While we are fond of saying things like “I came into this world,” as if our essence was preparing to wage war on reality, isn’t it more accurate to say, “I came out of the universe?” Don’t people come out of the universe like leaves come out of trees, or waves come out of oceans?
And such questions are not merely academic. If we feel separate from the world, then it is alien to us; it becomes something we must confront. But if we see that are connected the universe, then we are more likely to treat it as our home. We will realize that the environment that surrounds our bodies is as much a part of us as our heart or lungs. If we despoil the environment, we despoil ourselves; if we destroy the environment, we destroy ourselves. So perhaps we are the universe looking at itself from billions of perspectives. In fact, couldn’t we say that we are the universe slowly becoming self-conscious?
These are just some of the ideas we will consider in this book. What we will discover is that there are many ways of thinking about human nature. We might be mostly social selves as Confucius thought, or God in disguise like Shankara believed, or have no self like the Buddha claimed. Aristotle and Kant thought we are primarily rational creatures, but Marx and Freud believed that we are largely determined by societal or irrational influences, while Sartre argued that the only nature we have is the one we create. But one thing is certain, we are animals with a long evolutionary history, and we will continue to evolve as science and technology transform us. We now know where we came from, but we are not sure where are we going.
In discussing individual theories I will consider each theory as encompassing a:
1) theory of reality; 2) theory of human nature; 3) major problem of life; and 4) solution to that problem. I hope that this will both better explain the theories, and allow them to be compared with each other.
We will begin by examining various religious systems that originated in the axial age: Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judeo-Christianity. Then, we will discuss the philosophical theories of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Kant and Sartre, as well as two theories of human nature from the social scientists Marx and Freud. Next we will turn to Darwin and the neo-Darwinians for insights into human nature from evolutionary biology. Finally, we will ponder the future of human nature, especially how science and technology will transform human nature to the extent that we may become become post-human.
Generally early theories of human nature are religious, modern theories of our nature respond to science or are full-fledged scientific theories, and theories about the future consider how science and technology will transform our nature. This transition from religious descriptions of reality and human nature to scientific ones is not surprising, given the rise of influence of science since the seventeenth-century. Today science is the only cognitive authority in the world, and if we really want to know who we are we must understand something of modern science, particularly our evolutionary history. And once we take an evolutionary perspective we will see that our descendents, should they survive, will come to resemble us about as much as we do the amino acids from which we sprang. Such concerns lead to our final question, what is the future of human nature?
