John G. Messerly's Blog, page 37

Mild Autism

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A mother asked me about her child who has been professionally diagnosed with mild autism.1 She was particularly upset about the little boy’s fear of strangers at the playground.

While I know almost nothing about autism, and I’m sure that his stranger anxiety is troubling, I was hesitant to reply at all. But she specifically asked me to provide any comforting ideas I might have. So I suggested that the little boy might outgrow his fears, as least somewhat, or, to put a positive spin on things, I proposed that fear of strangers isn’t all bad and may be a sign of intelligence—recognizing that people and animals much bigger than he is are threats.

Next, I shared the view that this anxiety (or the repetitive behaviors she observes) are just a few of the many psychological traits this little boy possesses. I know his biological parents to both be exceptionally intelligent and the little boy is both physically adept and attractive. So, from a larger perspective, assuming we all have to play life largely with the hand we’re dealt, his disability is mild. In fact, given that he will be blessed with a loving family in good socio-economic standing, he may end up doing well. (Again let me emphasize that I don’t know much about autism as I stressed to the mother.)

Moreover, as a philosopher, I would say something like this. Get him all the professional help you can and learn as much about autism as you can. But remember too that all you can do is your duty while the outcomes of your efforts are not completely within your control. We study for the test, apply for the promotion, raise our kids as best we can, and then … something will happen; you just can’t guarantee a good outcome. But I did stress that she should try not to awfulize, to imagine the worst-case scenarios since they may not happen and worrying doesn’t help anyway. (I know this is contrary to the Stoics‘ advice.)

I also emphasized how tenuous psychiatric diagnoses can be. They change constantly and aren’t written in stone like theories about atoms or gravity or evolution. I’m not saying this little boy doesn’t suffer from some maladaptations, but that it is easy to overemphasize them and see everything through the diagnosis.

Finally, while you don’t want to give false hope, I shared my best guess that this little boy— armed with his intelligence, good looks, and an educated and loving family who will do their best for him—may very well do just fine.  Here’s to hoping that all the world’s problems find resolutions someday.

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1. Disclaimer – Let me reiterate. I have no expertise in autism whatsoever. My opinion was solicited. Perhaps I should not have said anything, but at the moment I felt it best to provide some consolation. I hope I was right to do so. As you can see I’m very hesitant to offer advice about topics on which I’m ignorant. At the same time, I’m hesitant to resisting a suffering person’s request. Moral choices are hard.

Albert Camus’ The Plague

[image error](Note. I first published this piece exactly one year ago. Since the pandemic continues, I thought it worth a reprint.) Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) was a French author and philosopher who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. His novel The Plague[image error] has recently garnered much worldwide attention due to the pandemic of 2020. As a philosopher familiar with Camus’ thought, I’d like to highlight the book’s main philosophical themes. But first a very brief plot summary.

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Part 1

In the town of Oran, thousands of rats die. People become hysterical and the authorities respond by killing rats. The main character, the atheist Dr. Bernard Rieux, realizes there is a plague, but the authorities are slow to accept the situation, fighting over how to respond. Eventually, they declare a pandemic. Soon the hospitals are overflowing and many die.


Part 2 

The people react differently to the town’s quarantine. Some try to commit suicide or covertly leave town; a priest assumes the plague is divine punishment; a criminal becomes wealthy as a smuggler; and others, like Dr. Rieux, treat patients as best they can.

Part 3

The situation worsens and the authorities shoot people who try to flee. They declare martial law to control violence and looting; conduct funerals without ceremony or concern for the families of the deceased. Gradually, people become despondent, wasting away both emotionally and physically.

Part 4

The plague continues for months and again responses vary. Dr. Rieux controls his emotions in order to continue his work, while others seemingly flourish due to their close connection with strangers. An antiplague serum is developed but it doesn’t save even an innocent child. The priest argues that the child’s suffering is a test of faith—the priest soon dies too.

Part 5

Gradually deaths from the plague start to decline and people begin to celebrate. But many of the main characters have died of the disease. Dr. Rieux’s wife, who was being treated elsewhere for an unrelated illness, also dies. The narrator concludes the novel by stating that there is more to admire than to despise in humans.

Camus’ Philosophy 

The key to understanding Camus’ novels is to know that he was an atheist and an existentialist who emphasized the absurd—the conflict between our desire for value and meaning and our inability to find any in a meaningless and irrational universe.

But Camus believed that we should revolt against absurdity—not by cowardly committing suicide or fleeing into religious faith—but by taking responsibility for our lives, enjoying the goodness and beauty around us, and creating our own meaning in an objectively meaningless world. We do this primarily by struggling against suffering and death even if our efforts fail. This is what the novel’s hero does, fighting defiantly against absurdity.

Philosophical Themes in the Novel 

The plague represents this absurdity. There is no justice regarding who lives and dies from the plague; there is no rational or moral meaning to be derived from it; religious myths or angry gods don’t explain it. The gods watch the unfolding calamity with arms folded either unwilling or unable to do anything. The plague is neither rational nor just.

Moreover, wishful thinking doesn’t help; instead, it distorts reality. Miracle cures won’t work and real cures aren’t right around the corner. Life is fleeting, our lives are ephemeral. Neither wealth nor education completely shields us from microscopic pathogens. Yet people forget all this. They’re surprised that they’re vulnerable, that their status or accomplishments don’t provide immunity. They shouldn’t be surprised.

For the plague is everywhere—people suffer and die; psychopaths create havoc; nations commit genocide. We live in a plague-filled world. The plague is always with us—our lives can end at any moment. Death doesn’t await us at the end of the tracks, it’s right here, now. It is a constant companion of our transitory lives. Eventually, the plague will kill us all.

What then should we do? Express care and concern for our fellow travelers and try to help them. That’s what the novel’s hero Dr. Rieux does. He accepts the absurdity of suffering, death, and meaninglessness, but battles them nonetheless. He treats his patients for no other reason than that he sympathizes with their undeserved plight.

We all have the plague; we live in its midst, and we don’t deserve it. Nothing makes sense. Still, all we can do is care for each other.

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Here is a brief summary of Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” the best introduction to his philosophy.

Also, The School of Life produced an excellent, short video about the novel’s philosophical themes. It’s definitely worth a watch.

Russell: In Praise of Idleness

In 1932, at age 60, Bertrand Russell penned a provocative essay, “In Praise of Idleness.” Russell begins,

… I was brought up on the saying: ‘Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.’ Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, [and] that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous …

Russell divides work into: 1) physical labor; and 2) the work of those who manage laborers (those whose work allows them to buy what the laborer’s produce, essentially almost everyone else.) In addition, there are the idle rich, who “are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work.” Russell despises this type of idleness, dependent as it is on the labor of others. But how did this all come to be?

For all of human history until the Industrial Revolution, an individual could produce little more than was necessary for subsistence. Originally any surplus was taken forcefully from the peasants by warriors and priests, but gradually laborers were induced to believe that hard work was their duty, even though it supported the idleness of others. As a result, laborers worked for their masters, and the masters, in turn, convinced themselves that what was good for them was good for everyone. But is this true?

Sometimes this is true; Athenian slave-owners, for instance, employed part of their leisure in making a permanent contribution to civilization which would have been impossible under a just economic system. Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.

Russell saw that 1930s technology was already making more leisure time possible. (This is even more true with 21st-century technology.) Yet society had not changed in the sense that it was still a place where some work long hours, while others are unemployed. This is what he called “the morality of the Slave State …” He illustrates with a thought experiment. Suppose that a plant manufactures employs a certain number of people who work 8 hours a day and produce all the pins the world needs. Now suppose that an invention allows the same number of people to make twice as many pins.

In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

Russell notes that the rich have always despised the idea of the poor having leisure time.

In England, in the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day’s work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child … certain public holidays were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: ‘What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.’

Russell acknowledges that there is a duty to work in the sense that all human beings depend on labor for their existence. What follows from this is that we shouldn’t consume more than we produce, and we should give back to the world in labor or services for the sustenance we receive. But this is the only sense in which there is a duty to work. And while the idle rich are not virtuous, that is not “nearly so harmful as the fact that wage-earners are expected to overwork or starve.” Russell admits that some persons don’t use their leisure time wisely, but leisure time is essential for a good life. There is thus no good reason why most people should be deprived of it, and “only a foolish asceticism … makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.”

In the next few paragraphs Russell argues that in most societies the governing classes have always preached about the virtues of hard work. Working men are told they engage in honest labor, and unpaid women told to do their saintly duty. The rich praise honest toil, the simple life, motherhood, and domesticity because the ruling class wants to hoard their political power and leisure time. But “what will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours?”

Russell argues that what has happened in the West is that the rich simply grab more of what is produced and amass more leisure time—many don’t even work at all. Despite the effort of the rich to consume more—their yachts sit mostly unused—many things are produced that are not needed, and many people are unemployed. When all this fails to keep enough people working

we have a war: we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them … By a combination of all these devices we manage … to keep alive the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man.”

It seems we are determined to be busy no matter what the cost.

The key philosophical idea for Russell is that physical labor, while sometimes necessary, is not the purpose of life. Why then do we so value work? First, because the rich preach that work is dignified in order to keep the workers content. Second, because we take a certain delight in how technology transforms the world. But the typical worker doesn’t think that physical or monotonous labor is meaningful. Rather “they consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.”

Some object that people wouldn’t know what to do with more leisure time, but if this is true Russell thinks it “a condemnation of our civilization.” For why must everything be done for the sake of something else? What is wrong with deriving intrinsic pleasure from simply playing? It is tragic that we don’t value enjoyment, happiness, and pleasure as we should. Still, Russell argues that leisure time isn’t best spent on frivolity; leisure time should be used intelligently. By this, he doesn’t just mean highbrow intellectual activities, although he does favor active over passive activities as good uses of leisure time. He also believes that the preference of many people for passive rather than active pursuits reflects the fact that they are exhausted from too much work. Provide more time to enjoy life, and people will learn to enjoy it.

Consider how some of the idle rich has spent their time. Historically, Russell says, the small leisure class has enjoyed unjust advantages, and they have oppressed others. Yet that leisure class

… contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from barbarism. The method of a leisure class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful … and the class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent. The class might produce one Darwin, but against him had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought of anything more intelligent than fox-hunting and punishing poachers.

Today “the universities are supposed to provide, in a more systematic way, what the leisure class provided accidentally and as a by-product.” This is better, but the university has drawbacks. For one thing, those in the ivory tower are often “unaware of the preoccupations and problems of ordinary men and women.” For another thing, scholars tend to write on esoteric topics in academic jargon. So academic institutions, while useful, “are not adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in a world where everyone outside their walls is too busy for unutilitarian pursuits.”

Instead Russell advocates for a world where no one is compelled to work more, but allowed to indulge their scientific, aesthetic, or literary tastes, or their interest in law, medicine, government, or any other interest. What will be the result of all this? Russell answers this question with his quintessentially beautiful prose:

Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one percent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits.

But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.

Reflections – The hopeful nature of this last paragraph nearly move me to tears. And these are not mere quixotic ideas. Open source code, Wikipedia, my own little blog and millions like them all attest to the desire of people to express themselves through their labor.

Moreover, recent research shows that more money is not what people want from work—people want autonomy, mastery, and purpose in their pursuits. This is consistent with what Russell is saying. Give people time, and many will produce good things. So much creativity is wasted in our current social and economic system, where people are forced to do what they don’t want to do, or when they are denied the minimal amount it takes to live a decent life. (In a previous post, I looked at the surprising scientific evidence about what motivates people to work. Spoiler alert. It is not what you think.)

Darwinian Theories of Human Nature

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(This is my summary of a section of a book I often used in university classes: Thirteen Theories of Human Nature[image error],  Oxford Univ. Press. There is an outline of the material at the end of the post.)

What does modern biology say about human nature? To understand the answer to this question let us look at the history of evolutionary ideas.

Evolutionary Theory, Stage I: Darwin and his Contemporaries – Before Darwin came along scientists in the 18th and 19th century realized the world was much older than the Judeo-Christian tradition had assumed. Geologists like Charles Lyell realized that layers of rocks or soil were formed by processes like eruption, sedimentation, and erosion over vast periods of time. Scientists before Darwin had also discovered fossils of creatures that no longer existed. Many thinkers, including Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin, had realized that the organisms that exist now had come from predecessors through a series of small changes. [Even some pre-Socratic philosophers had theories of evolution.]

Darwin on Natural Selection – Of course, it is one thing to realize that something had happened but quite another to show how it had happened. What Darwin realized was that natural selection was the mechanism for evolution. The most prominent theory about how this had happened before was Lamarck’s theory. Lamarck believed in the “inheritance of acquired characteristics.” If animals, for example, stretch their necks they might pass on long necks to their offspring. [Or if you lift weights you might pass on your muscles to your offspring.] Darwin, who came to Cambridge to study first medicine and then theology, found himself most fascinated with biology and geology—which led to his getting a position as the naturalist about the HMS Beagle on its five-year trip around the world.

During his excursion, he found bones of huge, extinct animals, the fossilized remains of sea creatures, an earthquake in Chile that uplifted earth, and other evidence of the processes of geological change. And of course, he saw the birds and other animals in the Galapagos Islands, which were similar to those of the mainland but differed from one island to another. Even the beaks of little finches differed from one island to the other, in each case so as to help them get food on that island. Shortly after his return to England, he came up with the idea of natural selection, but he did not publish the idea for almost twenty years since they were so controversial. Finally, after Alfred Wallace had arrived at the same conclusions, his friends encouraged him to publish so that he could get the credit.

The basic idea of evolution can be logically deduced from 4 basic empirical facts:

1) Variation of traits exists among individuals in a given species [look at other humans]
2) Traits of parents are passed on to offspring [look at people’s parents]

You can easily see both of the above by looking around you. This is how we have bred animals and plants for thousands of years. Just like humans artificially select to modify species—hence all those different dogs walking around—so too does nature select. And that’s called natural selection. Here are the other two facts:

3) The population of species can increase quickly, and
4) An environment’s resources typically cannot support such increases.

Fact #3 can be confirmed when you realize that any pair of organisms can produce more than two offspring, in some cases thousands of offspring. Along with fact #4, this means that only a small portion of offspring reach maturity and reproduce and that there is a competition to survive and reproduce. Given fact #1 we can logically infer that some individuals, because of their differences, have a better chance to survive and leave offspring than other individuals. Thus the traits of those individuals that reproduce will be passed on. This means that the characteristics of populations gradually change and, given enough time, this will lead to new species. All you need is natural selection working on individuals with different traits. (Darwin also recognized sexual selection, the process of selecting for traits that help individuals reproduce—the color of birds, antlers of the stag, or a peacock’s tail.) The Origin of Species is basically 700 pages of evidence to support his logical inference—evidence from selective breeding, natural history, paleontology, and more.

Darwin on Human Evolution – While others immediately saw the implications of his theory for human bodies, Darwin waited another 12 years to publish The Descent of Man. In it, he used anatomical, medical, embryological, and behavioral evidence to support the thesis that the human body has a common ancestry with other animals. Today biological evolution is acknowledged as a fact beyond any reasonable doubt by biologists. The overwhelming evidence for this today comes from literally dozens of sciences including but not limited to: comparative anatomy, botany, embryology, biochemistry, genetics, anthropology, geology, molecular biology, chemistry, mathematics, population ecology, zoology, and more. This is as well established as anything in science.

[Evolution is as well established as that gravity or atoms exist! It is every bit as certain as that the earth is (roughly) round and goes around the sun. Anyone who tells you that evolution is false is either a) lying, or b) scientifically illiterate. The only way to imagine it is false is if intelligent aliens or deceptive gods are playing tricks with our minds. But you don’t have to trust me. You can easily verify this claim at the National Academy of Science website or any of hundreds of legitimate scientific websites linked here. Even better, major in biology at a good university and you can learn to understand this fact first hand. ]

Social Darwinism – But what are the social, ethical, or religious implications of the theory? Specifically, can a scientific fact imply anything about values? Can you get an ought from an is? It seems not. For example, it may be a scientific fact that penicillin cures certain bacterial infections, but that doesn’t mean that you ought to take penicillin (unless you value health.) Or it may be a fact that large amounts of energy are released when we split atoms, but that doesn’t imply that you ought to split atoms. Similarly, the fact of evolution doesn’t tell us what we ought to do. (Defenders of this view say that those who think you can get facts from values commit the naturalistic fallacy.)

Still others say that since evolution implies the most biologically fit survive and reproduce, and since biological success might be thought of as the ultimate value, those who survive must be the most valuable. They take Darwinism to imply that we should do everything we can to survive, that greed is good, etc.

[Not surprisingly Ayn Rand, the matron of today’s Republican Party in the USA, titled her work on ethics: The Virtue of Selfishness.] In other words, those who survive are not the biological fittest, but basically the fittest in a larger sense. [In the USA today this is generally taken to mean those with the most money. This also implies that charity, health-care, social security, public education, child care, etc are pointless. You must let the inferior die; they cannot possibly be as valuable as the idle rich! Many thinkers in the USA in the 19th century adopted this attitude, and it was as common among the robber barons at that time as it is among large elements of today’s Republican Party in America. It advocates competition to weed out those they view as moochers. It is but a small step from social Darwinism to racism and genocide.

But it doesn’t follow that those who are biologically fit—like cockroaches—are morally, artistically, intellectually, spiritually, or psychologically fit. Those who have the most children or the most money aren’t necessarily the best in other ways. And social Darwinism was not Darwin’s idea, nor did he subscribe to it. The idea came from the philosopher Herbert Spencer and was embraced by the wealthy in America in the 19th century, as it still in large part is. How ironic that so many of the opponents of biological Darwinism in the American political arena, primarily from the right, are supporters of social Darwinism. They disbelieve what we know to be true, and believe what we know to be false.]

Darwin’s Own Values – Darwin suggested that not only had human bodies evolved from lower forms but so too had our intelligence, language, emotions, morality, and religion. [Today we know that Darwin was right about all this. He was, I believe, the most important human being who has yet lived.] Darwin knew he was speculating by extending evolution from human bodies to their minds and behaviors. And some of his ideas, especially about selection operating at the level of the group—group selection—are still matters of controversy today. [Yes there are controversies about how evolution happened, but none about that it happened.] He also realized that culture, as well as biology, influenced ethical values and religious beliefs. Darwin believed that human sympathy and compassion were noble. By all accounts, he was a humble man, dedicated father, and affectionate husband.

The reply to social Darwinism is that evolution has given us sympathy and concern for our fellows, and the intelligence to make a just and moral world. This is every bit as natural as a survival of the fittest. But in the end, the appeal to the ethics of Kant or Marx or Christianity at its best goes well beyond any biological imperative. As for religion, many pages have been spilled on the issue of Darwin’s religious beliefs. But anyone serious about discovering his views will conclude that by the end of his life he was almost certainly a closet atheist. He had come a long way from preparing for the clergy as a young man.

Charles Robert Darwin is buried in the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey, not far from Sir Isaac Newton.

Evolutionary Theory, Stage II: The Reaction Against Biological Accounts of Human Nature

 

 

Gregor Mendel

 

 

 

 

The Genetic Basis of Heredity – Darwin knew that there are variations between individuals and that these variations are inherited, but he didn’t know the mechanism of inheritance. This mechanism was discovered by Gregor Mendel who figured out that distinct casual factors—what we call genes—are passed from parents to offspring. We now know that sometimes genes change or mutate randomly, which accounts for genetic variation. Putting Mendelian genetics together with Darwinian natural selection along with precise mathematically modeling resulted in the “modern synthesis.” [This feat accomplished during the 1930s and 1940s is one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time.] To make the ideas even stronger, the biochemical basis of gene copying was uncovered with the discovery of DNA in 1953 by Crick and Watson. [And Rosalind Franklin, whose contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely recognized posthumously.] This ushered in the era of molecular biology so that we now understand evolution at a molecular level that Darwin couldn’t imagine. Today, in laboratories around the world, biological evolution is confirmed over and over every single day! Over and over and over; day after day after day! 

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Crick & Watson                                             Rosalind Franklin 

Eugenics, Racism, and Sexism – Many were led to the conclusion that evolution implied that there are innate differences between individuals, sexes, or races. Perhaps this implies that we should let the physically or mentally weak die or at least keep them from breeding. This led to the idea of eugenics, the study of how to produce fit offspring. In the early twentieth century, much of the western world was enamored with this idea. Yet even if this was ethically acceptable, it is practically impossible to know who has “bad” genes. Moreover, such judgments, as Darwin himself realized, were sociological, not biological. What we call different races are all the same species. Racism and sexism all emanate from prejudice against groups with no biological justification for such prejudice. [Race is not a justifiable biological concept. More genetic diversity exists within populations than between them.]

The Reaction in Favor of Culture and Education: Intelligence Tests, Sociology, and Anthropology – Many went further to suggest that women and some racial groups were intellectually inferior to white men. But this raises a number of questions. Is there some single thing called intelligence that can be measured? Even if there were how would it be measured. Are there different kinds of intelligence, say social or moral intelligence as compared to simply being good at math or language? And even if we had tests to measure this supposed intelligence how do we know if the results are due to innate ability or social opportunities? Today the whole idea of intelligence measurement is controversial.

Moreover, the burgeoning social sciences of the 19th century placed more emphasis on the influence of culture rather than biology to explain human behavior. (With the exception of some basic biological functioning.) Social scientists generally say that facts about human beings are: 1) physical; 2) psychological; and 3) social/cultural. Most importantly social facts are not reducible to psychological or physical facts. This means that social facts really exist just as physical things do. [There really are such things as sub-cultures or societies.] Social facts are facts about wholes that cannot be reduced to their parts. [Society is not just a collection of individuals.] The social world strongly affects the individual. Culture is not reducible to biology. [If you were raised in a non-English speaking culture, you would probably not have learned English.] However, none of this implies cultural relativism. Some cultures may be better than others, at least in certain ways.

John B. Watson

The Reaction Against Instinct Theory: Behaviorist Psychology – There was also a reaction against supposedly Darwinian ideas in psychology, especially the idea of instincts. To put psychology on a more scientific basis John B. Watson (1878-1958) proposed that psychology study observable behaviors and reject the appeal to vague notions like instincts, intentions, or other mental states. He was so adamant about the influence of the environment that he thought he could make any healthy child a world-class scholar, musician, or athlete if the right environment were provided. This program was carried forth by B.F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) at Harvard. Skinner argued the environment selects behaviors by rewarding them or eliminates behaviors by punishing them. [Classical and operant conditioning.] In other words, Skinner emphasized that behavior was explained by environmental causes. While there is some truth in all this, studies of identical twins reared apart—who share identical genomes—reveal the strong influence on the biological as compared to the environmental.

[image error]  B.F. Skinner

Because of the perversions of social Darwinism, racism, sexism, and all the other immoral ideas attached to Darwinism, the biology of human nature was ignored until the 1960s. And while we acknowledge the horrors of racism and sexism and social Darwinism, we should also not ignore facts about our biology. In the last few decades, a new wave of thinkers rediscovered and extended the Darwinian paradigm further than Darwin could ever imagine. They have brought about a scientific revolution. We now turn to these ideas.

Evolutionary Theory, Stage III: The Return to Human Nature

Genes and Memes –  Throughout the 1960s and 1970s evolution was further confirmed and understood at greater depths than ever before. Mathematical insights shed light on adaptation, kin selection [altruism toward close relatives], reciprocal altruism [directed toward away from relatives even toward other species], and the relevance of game theory to evolving populations [for example, non-human animals often find themselves in situations with the structure of a prisoner’s dilemma.]

 Richard Dawkins

This research meant that evolution could be understood at the level of the gene, an idea popularized by Richard Dawkins in his famous book, The Selfish Gene. The very title of the book helps us see evolution in terms of the competition of genes trying to survive. [With today’s mathematical modeling we can understand this in great detail.] At the end of the book, Dawkins argued that culture evolves analogously to biology only much faster. The elements of culture that are selected for are ideas, beliefs, practices, fashions, etc. Dawkins called these “memes.” Some memes catch on and survive–say a belief in gods or immortality or wings for aircraft—while others go extinct—like the idea of celibacy for everyone or wings attached to your arms. Like genes, memes are transferred from person to person, only rather than being transferred from one body to another, they are transferred from one brain to another. This means you can spread memes must faster than you can spread genes. Cultural evolution is very fast while biological evolution proceeds very slowly. [Cultural evolution also seems to be guided by Lamarckian “inheritance of acquired characteristics.” You inherit your religious or sports team loyalties from say your parents, who acquired them.]

Niko Tinbergen

The Rise of Ethology – In the mid-twentieth century a new discipline arose, ethology, which studies animal behavior in its natural environment. The key finding was that such behavior is physiologically innate or hard-wired. Many behaviors in animals can’t be explained by environmental conditioning. They exist independent of experience or learning, they are fixed. It seems evolution has designed species-wide behaviors. Regarding animal behavior, the great ethologist Niko Tinbergen discovered that the explanations usually were in muscle contractions, hormone secretions, fetal development, and previous learning with the goal of surviving and reproducing. In other words, much animal behavior depends on causes that are innate to those animals.

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Konrad Lorenz

Konrad Lorenz (1903 -1989) became famous for studying animal behavior, especially the imprinting of ducks to the first moving thing they see. He assumed imprinting was an innate feature of many animals, but he reached this conclusion too easily—how does one know which traits are learned and which are innate? Moreover, if an anti-social behavior is innate, can it be eradicated or are we stuck with it? Lorenz did believe in group selection, but as we have seen the level or levels at which selection operates is still open to debate.

[image error] Noam Chomsky

Chomsky and Cognitive Psychology –  While B.F. Skinner thought that language could be explained by the social environment, the linguist Noam Chomsky showed that human facility with language is different from other animal behaviors.  All normal humans can learn language and no animal language approaches the complexity of human language. Even chimps who use sign language fall far short of human language. Chomsky famously argued that the speed at which infants learn language and grammatical rules suggests that a capacity for language is innate. There is a universal human grammar, and it is a result of our evolutionary history. [This has been the most influential idea in 20th-century linguistics.] In short, our facility with language is an evolutionary adaptation, a feature selected for in our long evolutionary history. Language aids survival. Today research on this topic is pursued by linguists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary biologists.

[Today Chomsky is known mostly as a political philosopher and social critic, especially as a critic of American domestic and foreign policy. Despite writing voluminously on political topics, despite a fearless desire to debate anyone, anywhere, you will almost never see him on TV or noted in the mass media. His ideas are generally censored from the masses. Here is a collection of his essays: Masters of Mankind: Essays and Lectures, 1969-2013.]

[image error] E. O. Wilson

E. O. Wilson and Sociobiology – But if language has a strong evolutionary component, then wouldn’t other human behaviors? The Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson was the first to argue convincingly and vehemently that the humanities and social sciences can be reduced to biology, and that all this leads to the new science of sociobiology. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, On Human Nature, Wilson offers biological explanations for human social behaviors like aggression, sex, ethics, and religion. [I think this is one of the most important books of the 20th century. And it is eminently readable.] Needless to say, Wilson’s ideas have provoked controversy, especially from social scientists who don’t want to believe their fields can be biologized. Moreover, they fear that Wilson’s views give support to those who would misuse them for racist or sexist views. Even some biologists believe he is underestimating the influence of culture. The political implications of Wilson’s theories are thought by some to be so controversial, that this grey-haired grandfather once had a bucket of water dumped on his head at a conference!

But Wilson’s detractors were wrong. He clearly saw both biology and culture as influential on human nature, and he made this clear to anyone who read his books carefully. In fact, he wrote an entire book on gene-culture coevolution. Still, he may have been right when he said that, for the moment, “genes hold culture on a leash.” We are not that far removed from our evolutionary past; its imprint is apparent in our behaviors.

Cosmides/Tooby and the Integrated Causal Model – What Wilson called sociobiology goes by other names like evolutionary psychology or evolutionary anthropology. This school of thought applies Darwinian insights to the human mind and human behaviors. Key premises are: 1) universal human nature refers primarily to evolved psychological mechanisms; 2) these mechanisms are adaptations selected for over many generations that helped us survive and reproduce, (remember though what was formerly adaptive and what is now adapted can be different—going to college may now be adaptive, aggression may no longer be); 3) our minds contain adaptations from distant ancestors, all the way back to the Pleistocene. This final point has been challenged by evidence that genes may evolve faster than previously thought.

[image error]    Cosmides and Tooby

Cosmides and Tooby, an anthropologist and psychologist respectively, also critique the standard social science emphasis on the environmental factors. Because social scientists fear racist and sexist ideologies, they argue, they have been blind to the overwhelming evidence for evolutionarily produced cognitive mechanisms. Like Wilson, they propose that a complex web of causal factors produced human nature. Behind any human phenomena is 1) natural selection operating over eons of time producing innate cognitive structures; 2) historical development; 3) unique genes as the result of sexual reproduction; 4) physical, cultural, and social environments; and 5) information processing which leads to beliefs and desires.

What all this means is that there are innate mental modules resulting from natural selection that operated on our distant ancestors, especially regarding factors relevant to reproductive fitness like perception, language, cooperation, mate selection, parental care. [Harvard’s Steven Pinker and Rutgers’ Helen Fischer both write about these issues for popular audiences.] Still, all of this is open to further investigation. Human nature is complex and there is much more to be learned.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love

Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

Evolutionary Theory, Part IV: Hope for Humanity

Trees and Bushes

There are many issues surrounding the connection between evolution and progress, ethics, hope, or religion. For instance, some Darwinists and philosophers think of the evolution of species as progressive, that some animals now are more complex or now have bigger brains. But Darwin generally used the term “descent with modification” which doesn’t connote progress. And some Darwinists deny that species change is necessarily progressive. In fact, natural selection doesn’t imply that species are better only that they are better adapted to their environment. More complex species may go extinct while simpler ones may survive. Evolution may not be like a tree sprouting upward, but more like a bush sprouting sideways.

Historical Progress

Turning to progress in human history, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and other modern thinkers espoused progressive views of history that echoed the positive interpretations of history found in the Western monotheistic religions. But if we’ve generally lost hope in religious stories of progress, have we not also lost faith in secular progress as well? We might become smarter or more moral, but then again we might not.

Theism, Darwinism, or Both?

Evolution is so well confirmed that it is essentially a fact in the same way that the earth is round or goes around the sun. (Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or scientifically illiterate.) Still, many religious fundamentalists refuse to accept the science and prefer their creation myths instead. Somewhat more sophisticated believers suggest that their god didn’t create things literally, but used cosmic evolution to create us. (A strange way for an omnipotent being to proceed—that took about 14 billion years!)

Others argue that biological evolution reduces us to being just animals. But Darwin himself didn’t draw that conclusion. We may be human-animals, but that doesn’t mean that ethical or aesthetic standards no longer apply to us. We are at least special kinds of animals. So even if there was no exact moment at which humans became different in kind from their evolutionary ancestors, we can still say that we are vastly different now. Or consider that though our brains are products of evolution, that doesn’t imply the truth of our beliefs. In short, our values as persons needn’t be undermined by considerations of our origins.

Ethical Values and Evolution 

Religious objections to evolution surely emanate from concerns that evolution implies that values are no longer objective or life no longer meaningful. But the fact that there are biological underpinnings to human altruism, for example, doesn’t mean that all altruism can be reduced to biology. While there are many reasons to doubt the objectivity of ethics, facts about our origins aren’t one of them. In the end, while our brain states affect our values, our values affect also our brain states. We can choose our values independent of any considerations of our origins.

My Final Thoughts

Darwin himself was a scientist who was unafraid of the truth:

[Humans in their] arrogance think [themselves] a great work worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble and I think truer to consider [them] created from animals. 

Yet at the same time he was an artist who saw beauty in that truth:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

He was also, by all accounts, a wonderful father and husband too.

Charles Darwin and his wife Emma Wedgewood

Finally, allow me to reiterate that Darwin is one of my greatest intellectual heroes, and he may have been the most influential person in human history. Today multiple sciences converge on his basic insight—which is true beyond any reasonable doubt. He gave us the greatest idea we have, and perhaps will ever have, an idea applicable to everything from the cell to the cosmos. Without a basic understanding of evolution, one lives in intellectual darkness. Before encountering Darwin that’s where I lived, and I thank him for showing me the light.

Summary Outline

Biological Darwinism

Biological evolution was in the air in the 19th century.
Darwin was the first to realize the mechanism—natural selection.
He supported his claim with mountains of evidence.
He didn’t publish the results—that non-human animal bodies evolve—for about 20 years.
He later extended the argument to human-animal bodies.
Today we know that biological evolution is true beyond any reasonable doubt.

Social Darwinism

Scientific facts seem independent of values. Is doesn’t imply ought.  
But social Darwinists say if individuals survive, they must be better people.
This attitude is reflected in political attitudes—winners are good people; losers are bad people.
But why does biological survival or money make you a better person?
Darwin was not a social Darwinist.

Laws of Inheritance and Genes

Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance.
The modern synthesis united Darwinian natural selection & Mendelian genetics.
This was one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time.
The exact molecular structure of the gene was discovered in the 1950s.
Today biologists understand evolution all the way down to the molecular level.

The Reaction Against Biology – Eugenics, Racism, Sexism, Behaviorism

Eugenics is about producing fit offspring.
Some people think that certain races or sexes are less intelligent or have bad genes.
But Darwin recognized these were sociological judgments.
And race is a weak proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics.
Also, the social and cultural play a large role in influencing traits.
Watson and Skinner believed that our nature was primarily shaped by our environment.

Biology Ascends Again

We now have detailed mathematical modeling of genetic evolution.
Cultural ideas and beliefs evolve too—as memes.
Lorenz found that many animal behaviors are hard-wired by genes.
Chomsky showed that the ability to learn human language is hard-wired.
E. O. Wilson argued that all human social behaviors have largely biological explanations.
Others argue that social scientists generally reject biological explanations for human behavior because they associate those explanations with racism and sexism. But biology largely determines our nature.

 

Tornstam on Gerotranscendence

 Lars Tornstam (1943 – 2016)

My post, Summary of Maslow on Self-Transcendence, elicited many thoughtful comments. One reader, Dr. Janet Hively, suggested that self-transcendence is connected with aging, writing, “people gain experience and wisdom as they grow older, reaching the age for generativity toward the end of life.” She also suggested that I look into the theory of gerotranscendence, elucidated in detail by the Swedish sociologist Lars Tornstam in his 2005 book, Gerotranscendence: A Developmental Theory of Positive Aging[image error]. As Tornstam put it:

Gerotranscendence is the final stage in a natural process moving toward maturation and wisdom. The gerotranscendent individual experiences a new feeling of cosmic communion with the spirit of the universe, a redefinition of time, space, life and death, and a redefinition of self.1

Here is another definition:

The theory of gerotranscendence describes a … perspective shift from a more materialistic and rational view of life to a more transcendental [one] … leading to significant changes in the way of perceiving self, relationships with other people and life as a whole …2

According to Tornstam, growing older and “into old age has its very own meaning and character, distinct from young adulthood or middle age.” In other words, there is ongoing personality development into old age. Interviews with individuals between 52 and 97 years of age confirmed this idea and led to his theory of gerotranscendence. Gerotranscendent individuals are those who develop new understandings of: 1) the self; 2) relationships to others; and 3) the cosmic level of nature, time, and the universe. Specific changes that occur include:

Level of Self

A decreased obsession with one’s body
A decreased interest in material things
A decrease in self-centeredness
An increased desire to understand oneself
An increased desire for inner peace and meditation
An increased need for solitude

Level of Personal and Social Relationships

A decreased desire for prestige
A decreased desire for superfluous, superficial social interaction
A decreased interest in conforming to social roles
An increased concern for others
An increased need for solitude, or the company of only a few intimates
An increased selectivity in the choice of social and other activities
An increased spontaneity that moves beyond social norms
An increase in tolerance and broadmindness
An increased sense of life’s ambiguity

Cosmic Level

A decreased distinction between past and present
A decreased fear of death
An increased affinity with, and interest in, past and future generations
An increased acceptance of the mysteries of human life
An increased joy over small or insignificant things
An increased appreciation of nature
An increased feeling of communion with the universe and cosmic awareness

According to the theory of gerotranscendence, people should surrender their youthful identity in order to achieve true maturity and wisdom. This view of aging stands in contrast to the view that successful aging is a kind of perpetual youth where people try to remain active, productive, independent, healthy, wealthy, and sociable.

But an 80-year-old differs from their 50-year-old self, just as the latter did from their 30-year-old self. Your 80-year-old mother may not want to party, play golf, make money or be very much engaged, not because she’s sick or depressed, but because she now prefers painting, reading, writing, meditating, walking, gardening, or listening to music. We are often so enamored with activity that we forget that Mom may enjoy sitting in her rocking chair sometimes. None of this implies that this is the only way to successfully age, just that it is a reasonable way.

 

[image error]

Now just growing older doesn’t mean that one will become gerotranscendent, although aging does bring existential questions about death and the meaning of life to the forefront. So how does one become a gerotranscendent? The process is mostly stimulated by experiencing hardships, challenges, transitions, and the losses of living, combined with a continual reflection about one’s life, the life of others, and universal life. Still, there are a number of obstacles to becoming a gerotranscendent including:

job preoccupation (or ego differentiation): the inability to let go of your earlier careers. Gerotranscenders are able to transcend the way that their identity was tied to their previous work.
body preoccupation (or body transcendence): the inability to let go of obsessing about bodily ailments. Gerotranscenders care about their bodies but transcend identifying with them.
ego preoccupation (or ego transcendence): inability to let go of obsessing about the ego. Gerotranscenders transcend the ego by accepting the inevitability of death, and by living more unselfishly.

Some of the weaknesses of the theory include the fact that gerotranscendence: 1) isn’t precisely defined; 2) is limited to old age when there are some younger persons who possess the above qualities; and 3) is considered from an individual perspective without much thought about the social and biological factors that influence successful aging. It also seems to conflict with the fact that “the prevalence of depression in old age” is quite high.3

Still, there is substantial evidence that gerotranscendence captures the essence of aging successfully. Much of this research is described in “Theory of Gerotranscendence: An Analysis,” by Rajani and Nawaid. Some of the highlights of this research show that those who have faced life crises have higher levels of gerotranscendence, and that there is “a positive relationship between gerotranscendence and life satisfaction.” Furthermore, research has shown “a significant correlation between the cosmic transcendence and feeling of coherence and meaning of life. Transcendence in life promotes health, harmony, healing, and meaningfulness in the life of older adults. Studies have also attested the fact that people who find meaning in life tend to experience better physical health.”

Reflections – I like the gerotranscendent theory of aging. It reminds me of the idea of being “weened away from life” in Thorton Wilder’s  play “Our Town.” It also brings to mind this profound statement about aging from Bertrand Russell in his essay, “How To Grow Old.”

The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, +without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

So I agree with Dr. Hively’s that there is a connection between age, and the wisdom to transcend the self and its concern with body, prestige, material possessions. Maslow’s self-transcendence is closely aligned with Tornstam’s gerotranscendence. This kind of wisdom and change of heart is hard to achieve without having lived and loved and suffered—the wisdom of the heart seems largely based upon time. This isn’t to say that older people are always wiser than younger people of course but, all things being equal, the achievement of wisdom is aided by time.

Yet, having said all this, I still believe that death itself is an evil that we should try to defeat. As I’ve written elsewhere, death should be optional. But for those of us who must age and die, Tornstam has shown us a noble and enlightening way to travel that road.4

 

_______________________________________________________________________

1. “Transcendence in late life.” Generations, 23 (4), p. 11.
2. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerotra...
3. Rivard TM, Buchanan D. National Guidelines for Seniors’ Mental Health: The Assessment and Treatment of Depression. 2006.
4. I was led to Tornstam’s work when I encountered Maslow on self-transcendence.

I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Jan Hively for introducing me to Tornstam’s work.

Comments

Dear Readers:

I appreciate your comments but asked that you limit them to, at most, a few sentences. I’m responsible for the content on my blog but I don’t have time to read and thus can’t publish long comments. Thanks,  JGM.

Longfellow’s “Morituri Salutamas”

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In 1875, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882) accepted an offer from the American Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain to speak at Longfellow’s fiftieth reunion at Bowdoin College. There he read his poem “Morituri Salutamus.” (The title of the poem means, “We who are about to die, salute you.”) The poem begins with a Latin quote by the Roman poet Ovid which reads: “Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis, Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.” (“The times slip away, and we grow old with silent years, and the days flee unchecked by a rein.”) (Here is a link to  Chamberlains’s letter inviting Longfellow.)

The poem expresses Longfellow’s belief that while we cannot stop the inexorable march of time, we can mitigate its effects by learning as we pass through life—for maturity allows for insights unachievable in youth. He also voices his belief that there is much left to do in old age. While it is true that most of us won’t do our best work in old age, perhaps if we have learned something in life we will become better people as we age.  And while many criticized the simplicity of Longfellow’s simple rhymes, I find them comforting.

The final stanzas of Longfellow’s poem exhort his fellows to continue to work and dream even as they age.

But why, you ask me, should this tale be told
To men grown old, or who are growing old?
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.

Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his “Characters of Men.”
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.

As the barometer foretells the storm
While still the skies are clear, the weather warm
So something in us, as old age draws near,
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.

The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,
Descends the elastic ladder of the air;
The telltale blood in artery and vein
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.

It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon;
It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,
But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,
The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of embers spent,
In which some living sparks we still discern,
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but begin;

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

My Lifelong Search for Meaning

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Wandering around my backyard when I was about 7 or 8 years old I climbed a small mound behind our garage when suddenly it hit me: “Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?” Little did I know then that I had stumbled across perhaps the greatest question in philosophy. I remained inquisitive throughout childhood, especially about religion and politics, constantly badgering my father for answers to my questions. He replied as best he could, and I thank him for his efforts, but eventually, I outgrew his answers.

In my early teens, I fell briefly under the spell of the New England transcendentalists, the first intellectuals I had ever encountered. From Thoreau, I learned the value of non-conformity and of hearing “a different drummer,” while Whitman taught me to travel my own road in search of truth. His words still resonate within me,

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from
the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

But what principles should guide my search for truth and meaning? Here Emerson showed me the way with an insight that has informed my journey for more than fifty years,

[Life] offers every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, — you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations, between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his being.

I now felt that an intellectual voyage lay ahead and that I might never anchor intellectually. Then, as I was about to enter college, discussions with a friend and philosophy major further awoken me, as Kant said of encountering Hume, from my dogmatic slumber. It was as if a dam had broken within me, making apparent the parochialism of my childhood indoctrination. I now wanted to live and die with as large a mind as possible and an irresistible desire to explore the mindscape swelled within. I had fallen in love with philosophy becoming, in Dostoyevsky’s words, “one of those who don’t want millions but an answer to their questions.”

Next, as a college freshman, I eagerly enrolled in “Major Questions in Philosophy,” taught by a newly minted Ph.D. from Harvard, Paul Gomberg. He introduced me to Descartes’ epistemological skepticism, Hume’s demolition of the design argument, and Lenin’s critique of the state. Wow! Knowledge, the gods, and the state all undermined in sixteen weeks. Subsequently, I took the maximum number of philosophy courses allowable in pursuit of my B.A. including Existentialism, Hume, Kant, Ancient, Medieval, Modern, American, and Asian philosophy; as well as philosophy of religion, science, mind, and law. Holding all these strains of study together was a deep and passionate concern about life’s meaning.

As a graduate student, I focused mostly on the history of western philosophy, theoretical ethics, game theory, and evolutionary philosophy, while teaching my own classes in ethics, Greek philosophy, and the philosophy of human nature. But it was in a series of seminars with Richard Blackwell that my thoughts began to coalesce. In “Concepts of Time,” I first contemplated a mysterious and yet fundamental aspect of reality. In “Evolutionary Ethics” and “Evolutionary Epistemology,” I came to understand that knowledge and morality must be informed by evolution, and in “The Seventeenth Century Scientific Revolution,” I encountered a dramatic example of intellectual evolution.

Then a careful reading of “Aristotle’s Metaphysics” led me to wonder if his view of teleology—that reality strives unconsciously toward ends—could be reconciled with modern evolutionary theory (which is decidedly non-teleological.) This led to my discovery of Piaget’s Conception of Evolution[image error] with its concept of equilibrium, the biological and epistemological analog of the quasi-teleological approach I had been seeking. I now saw how evolution could be characterized as a non-deterministic orthogenesis. Perhaps evolution and progress could be reconciled after all.

So, as a result of six years of graduate study, I had come to believe that evolution was the key to understanding everything from the cell to the cosmos, that biology largely explains the minds and behaviors of human beings, that there was (some) evidence that reality unfolds in a progressive direction, and that cosmic evolution was a key to understanding if life had any meaning. Naturally, this led me to wonder if the cosmos becomes increasingly meaningful as it evolves or whether there really is a direction to cosmic evolution.

It was also as a graduate student that I first thought about teaching a meaning of life course so as to better ascertain if there was a deep connection between evolutionary philosophy and my existential concerns. Then, shortly after receiving my Ph.D., I got a chance to teach that class, resulting in my becoming conversant in the contemporary philosophical literature surrounding the issue of life’s meaning. However, to my dismay, none of the philosophers I studied were much interested in evolution.

At about the same time I was regularly teaching a class in bioethics. What I found especially interesting there was the potential of genetic engineering to transform human beings exponentially faster than biological evolution ever could. If technological evolution can transform humanity, I thought, surely that was relevant to questions about meaning in and of human life. So the question of the meaning of life had to be connected with both past and future evolution, especially cultural and technological evolution.

Subsequently, I began teaching a course on the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence and robotics. There I learned to think about the future and human transformation in a new light. We could go well beyond manipulating our genome—changing our wetware if you will—we could potentially become cyborgs, robots, or upload our consciousness into a computer—we could change the hardware on which our consciousness ran. Perhaps we could even be as gods. Now the question of the meaning of life appeared again in a new light. Is the meaning of life to become posthuman or even godlike?  All these strands of thought came together in my 2012 book: The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Transhumanist, and Scientific Perspectives[image error].

Concerning my insights about questions of meaning, I offer the following caveats. My thinking is slow, my brain small, my experiences limited, and my life short. At the same time, the universe moves incredibly fast, is inconceivably large, unimaginably mysterious, and incredibly old. We are modified monkeys living on a planet that spins at 1600 km an hour on its axis, hurls around the sun at more than 100,000 km an hour, as part of a solar system that orbits the center of its Milky Way galaxy at about 800,000 kilometers an hour. The Milky Way itself moves through space at more than 2,000,000 km an hour and the galaxies move away from each other faster than the speed of light! (Yes, although nothing can move through space faster than light speed the space between galaxies expands faster than light speed. That’s why we eventually won’t see any other galaxies from the earth.)

And there’s more. Our galaxy contains more than 100 billion stars and there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. All this in a universe that is almost 100 billion light-years across and almost 14 billion years old. And there may be an infinite number of universes or the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics may be true or we may be living in a computer simulation. Needless to say, all of this is largely incomprehensible to me.

Against this immense backdrop of speed, space, time and mystery shouldn’t we be humbled by our limitations and apparent insignificance? Who, other than the ignorant or delusional, would claim to know much of ultimate truth? I make no such claim. Like all others I am fallible, and my answers are, at best, applicable only to a certain time, place, and perspective. Ultimately they are mine alone. 

I’ll end with the quote that best summarizes my sentiments about the search for meaning,

All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console [humanity]. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

A Brief History of My Search for Meaning

[image error]

Wandering around my backyard when I was about 7 or 8 years old I climbed a small mound behind our garage when suddenly it hit me: “Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?” Little did I know then that I had stumbled across perhaps the greatest question in philosophy. I remained inquisitive throughout childhood, especially about religion and politics, constantly badgering my father for answers to my questions. He replied as best he could, and I thank him for his efforts, but eventually, I outgrew his answers.

In my early teens, I fell briefly under the spell of the New England transcendentalists, the first intellectuals I had ever encountered. From Thoreau, I learned the value of non-conformity and of hearing “a different drummer,” while Whitman taught me to travel my own road in search of truth. His words still resonate within me,

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from
the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

But what principles should guide my search for truth and meaning? Here Emerson showed me the way with an insight that has informed my journey for more than fifty years,

[Life] offers every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, — you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations, between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his being.

I now felt that an intellectual voyage lay ahead and that I might never anchor intellectually. Then, as I was about to enter college, discussions with a friend and philosophy major further awoken me, as Kant said of encountering Hume, from my dogmatic slumber. It was as if a dam had broken within me, making apparent the parochialism of my childhood indoctrination. I now wanted to live and die with as large a mind as possible and an irresistible desire to explore the mindscape swelled within. I had fallen in love with philosophy becoming, in Dostoyevsky’s words, “one of those who don’t want millions but an answer to their questions.”

Next, as a college freshman, I eagerly enrolled in “Major Questions in Philosophy,” taught by a newly minted Ph.D. from Harvard, Paul Gomberg. He introduced me to Descartes’ epistemological skepticism, Hume’s demolition of the design argument, and Lenin’s critique of the state. Wow! Knowledge, the gods, and the state all undermined in sixteen weeks. Subsequently, I took the maximum number of philosophy courses allowable in pursuit of my B.A. including Existentialism, Hume, Kant, Ancient, Medieval, Modern, American, and Asian philosophy; as well as philosophy of religion, science, mind, and law. Holding all these strains of study together was a deep and passionate concern about life’s meaning.

As a graduate student, I focused mostly on the history of western philosophy, theoretical ethics, game theory, and evolutionary philosophy, while teaching my own classes in ethics, Greek philosophy, and the philosophy of human nature. But it was in a series of seminars with Richard Blackwell that my thoughts began to coalesce. In “Concepts of Time,” I first contemplated a mysterious and yet fundamental aspect of reality. In “Evolutionary Ethics” and “Evolutionary Epistemology,” I came to understand that knowledge and morality must be informed by evolution, and in “The Seventeenth Century Scientific Revolution,” I encountered a dramatic example of intellectual evolution.

Then a careful reading of “Aristotle’s Metaphysics” led me to wonder if his view of teleology—that reality strives unconsciously toward ends—could be reconciled with modern evolutionary theory (which is decidedly non-teleological.) This led to my discovery of Piaget’s Conception of Evolution[image error] with its concept of equilibrium, the biological and epistemological analog of the quasi-teleological approach I had been seeking. I now saw how evolution could be characterized as a non-deterministic orthogenesis. Perhaps evolution and progress could be reconciled after all.

So, as a result of six years of graduate study, I had come to believe that evolution was the key to understanding everything from the cell to the cosmos, that biology largely explains the minds and behaviors of human beings, that there was (some) evidence that reality unfolds in a progressive direction, and that cosmic evolution was a key to understanding if life had any meaning. Naturally, this led me to wonder if the cosmos becomes increasingly meaningful as it evolves or whether there really is a direction to cosmic evolution.

It was also as a graduate student that I first thought about teaching a meaning of life course so as to better ascertain if there was a deep connection between evolutionary philosophy and my existential concerns. Then, shortly after receiving my Ph.D., I got a chance to teach that class, resulting in my becoming conversant in the contemporary philosophical literature surrounding the issue of life’s meaning. However, to my dismay, none of the philosophers I studied were much interested in evolution.

At about the same time I was regularly teaching a class in bioethics. What I found especially interesting there was the potential of genetic engineering to transform human beings exponentially faster than biological evolution ever could. If technological evolution can transform humanity, I thought, surely that was relevant to questions about meaning in and of human life. So the question of the meaning of life had to be connected with both past and future evolution, especially cultural and technological evolution.

Subsequently, I began teaching a course on the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence and robotics. There I learned to think about the future and human transformation in a new light. We could go well beyond manipulating our genome—changing our wetware if you will—we could potentially become cyborgs, robots, or upload our consciousness into a computer—we could change the hardware on which our consciousness ran. Perhaps we could even be as gods. Now the question of the meaning of life appeared again in a new light. Is the meaning of life to become posthuman or even godlike?  All these strands of thought came together in my 2012 book: The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Transhumanist, and Scientific Perspectives[image error].

Concerning my insights about questions of meaning, I offer the following caveats. My thinking is slow, my brain small, my experiences limited, and my life short. At the same time, the universe moves incredibly fast, is inconceivably large, unimaginably mysterious, and incredibly old. We are modified monkeys living on a planet that spins at 1600 km an hour on its axis, hurls around the sun at more than 100,000 km an hour, as part of a solar system that orbits the center of its Milky Way galaxy at about 800,000 kilometers an hour. The Milky Way itself moves through space at more than 2,000,000 km an hour and the galaxies move away from each other faster than the speed of light! (Yes, although nothing can move through space faster than light speed the space between galaxies expands faster than light speed. That’s why we eventually won’t see any other galaxies from the earth.)

And there’s more. Our galaxy contains more than 100 billion stars and there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. All this in a universe that is almost 100 billion light-years across and almost 14 billion years old. And there may be an infinite number of universes or the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics may be true or we may be living in a computer simulation. Needless to say, all of this is largely incomprehensible to me.

Against this immense backdrop of speed, space, time and mystery shouldn’t we be humbled by our limitations and apparent insignificance? Who, other than the ignorant or delusional, would claim to know much of ultimate truth? I make no such claim. Like all others I am fallible, and my answers are, at best, applicable only to a certain time, place, and perspective. Ultimately they are mine alone. 

I’ll end with the quote that best summarizes my sentiments about the search for meaning,

All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console [humanity]. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Should We Argue?

[image error]Agreeable Burden (William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1895)

A previous post “On Belief and Skepticism,” elicited this response from a reader:

… I too am a dedicated skeptic, but find it difficult sometimes to “disagree without being disagreeable.” Many people I disagree with most fundamentally are the ones I love most profoundly. Do you maintain close relationships with people holding drastically different beliefs? It’s hard to separate the person from the ideas they hold especially when there is so much vested emotionally in those ideas. I hate the idea of “agreeing to disagree.” I’m not going to dance around the issue; We are adults and honesty is important. How do you approach these relationships?

That comment elicited another post, “How Far Should We Go in Agreeing with Others.” There I distinguished between insidious and trivial beliefs, the former worth arguing about and fighting against, while the latter should usually be ignored. Next, I considered disputes about relatively settled scientific issues. Here is an excerpt:

Now suppose I encounter a gravitational, germ, or evolutionary theory denier. In such cases, I should be willing to enter into a polemic because any educated person knows these are well-established scientific ideas. Furthermore rejecting these ideas might entail someones jumping off a building and thinking they’ll fly; not washing their hands before handling food, or counting on last years flu shot to work this year … Of course, you probably won’t change their minds since so many persons are willfully ignorant.

Now suppose you encounter a climate change denier. You can tell them that the intergovernmental panel of climate scientists now claim with 97% certainty that humans are the main cause of global climate change. But you probably have to leave it at that. The fact that they are mistaken when they don’t believe in it, (and arrogant to think they know more about the subject then the world’s experts), probably doesn’t matter that much. True you might convince them not to vote for a climate change denier, but one vote isn’t that significant anyway and their mistaken view is unlikely to change anyway. And again that’s because you rarely change people’s minds because of the emotional attachment they have to those ideas as you mentioned earlier.

In retrospect, I’m not sure why I thought you should let some false beliefs about a scientific consensus slide and not others. In fact, denying climate change has more potentially catastrophic consequences for the species than denying more abstract theories. At any rate, the main point was that it is important for the species to have well-founded beliefs inasmuch as they often determine our actions. (In a future post I hope to address the source of many false beliefs—cognitive bias.)

Conclusion – Still I find that disagreement about abstract issues, including scientific truths, less important as I age. I often resign myself to the world’s fate, as well as to human ignorance, including my own. On the other hand, important truths seem worthy of my entering into a polemic. Thus we arrive at a paradox of life. If we engage in it, if we are active, we fight a seemingly unwinnable fight, frustrating ourselves in the process. If we disengage, if we are passive, we give up the fight and our lives become seemingly irrelevant. I don’t know what we should do or whether it matters what we do.

I do know that as I age I find myself, as Thornton Wilder said, being weaned away from life. Still, I remain hopeful that new generations will continue the fight for truth and justice. And that the future will be better than the past. That is something to live for.