Month: April 2015

I mentioned earlier last week looking forward to today’s BBC R4 Something Understood “Deserts“.

Seeing fatally sunned sandy deserts through western, male, blue eyes (Laurie Lee’s Scott in the Desert) as a contrasting preface to the native female story of Hagar and Ishmael, highlighting of course that the sandy kind are not the only deserts.

Poetic thought in old testament literature. We watch the sun set fire to the sea … Neil Hannon … I might add to the thoughtful and thought-provoking selection. The fear of human (rational) arrogance turning our seeming progress back to post-apocalyptic natural wilderness – letting the desert back in.

Great use of radio to paint images with sound, words and music. Also a feature of the series to let the content speak for itself, without an explicit message or agenda – what is understood is something, not any particular thing. Good stuff.

An interesting irony reading Julian Baggini’s 2015 “Freedom Regained“. Baggini was famously underwhelmed when he attempted to interview Robert Pirsig back in 2006 given that Grayson Perry quoted Pirsig in his 2013 Reith Lectures on the creativity of art.

Baggini quotes Perry’s use of the Pirsig passage – creative ideas as small timid furry creatures, easily scared away into the undergrowth – and continues to use the same metaphor over the subsequent paragraphs on artistic freedom as a better model of freedom than consumer choice.

[More on Pirsig?]

Strong parallel between Perry’s freedom as the rails on which we run, and the John Gray / Heinrich von Kleist metaphor in the freedom of a marionette – not to mention an antidote to the “trolleyology” of moral choice. What are real constraints on freedom – the freedom to run on one’s own tramlines?

For this to be freedom [in the understood sense], there must be some reflection on, control over and endorsement of the desires, beliefs and values you have. But there is no need whatsoever for us to be the originating author of any of these.

Money, resources, practical rather than metaphysical.
“The biggest constraint on any human being is time.”

This is why I say, most recently below, real freedom is about standardisation for efficiency reasons. We can’t spend all our time deciding every decision to act from first principles, although we are “free” to do so.

 

Struck by two references to E. M. Forster in a couple of days. Reading John Gray, as I was last week, as I was intrigued by reference to E. M. Forster that I clearly need to follow-up. Now I’d previously been no fan of Julian Baggini, having described him as the “darling of British philosophy”, wheeled out for media-friendly quotes, and the book of his I’m currently reading came with blurb I’d already bought. Namely that free will is real, and the tendency of science to accuse it of being “merely” an illusion is a failure of science. Free will is alive and well.

I’m resisting the temptation to skip straight to Baggini’s conclusions in “Freedom Regained” – the varieties of free will worth having, worth believing in and worth striving to defend. Having implicitly maligned him, I’d like to do his writing justice. I’m only into the second chapter, and already we’ve covered mis-interpretations of Libet, having started with Laplace’s demon and looked at why neither determinism nor materialism, nor even reductionism, need be nails in free-will’s coffin.

“How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?” as E. M. Forster perceptively put it. We should not [never did] need neuroscience to tell us that our conscious minds are often the last to know what we’re thinking.

And referencing Buddhist [mindfulness]:

[We] do have some conscious control over how much we attend to [our thoughts], but we do not control their happening.”

Many more of the usual references, Kant and Hume, Dawkins and Harris, with more Spinoza and Dennett to come, but looking promising for some new avenues of thought. Not entirely an exercise in philosophology.

Sam Harris comes in for some analysis, as I’ve done here before:

Even Sam Harris, the most fervent denier of free-will, says:
“The fact that our choices depend on prior causes does not mean they don’t matter.”
“Human choice … is as important as fanciers of free will believe.”

Earlier, Baggini points out Harris’ failure to emphasise the second clause here:

“we are not the authors or our thoughts and actions
in the way that people generally suppose.”

Though Harris seems to fit the provocative mould of the worst of the “shrill” scientistic types, I have maintained he wins out because like Dennett, he really is a philosopher first. Though he “denies” free will in simple declarative statements, to fall in line with the crusading anti-superstition armies, he clearly and carefully qualifies what he says, even if what he chooses to emphasise is driven by his personal marketing choices.

Baggini’s suggestion of  99% subconscious vs 1% conscious processing of previous experience is to my mind pure standardisation – with the same efficiency and consistent quality basis as standardisation in any industrial context. If we had to design every chosen solution to every context, we’d never have time to live creatively, or indeed live life.

Well beyond the Forster reference now, so far as I know, I also noticed the Hofstadter “meta” connection in Baggini’s use of the Tom Stoppard “Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead.” Once we raise issues of “fate” to conscious thought, we have changed fate. By slipping side-ways we create new levels, and leave category errors in our wake. Thinking about thinking is something different to thinking, and we’re free to repeat, to pile on the meta-levels ad infinitum. That’s what humans do.

And finally for now, at the end of chapter 3 “The Genticist” in which the nature vs nurture arguments are played out with the natural conclusion that either/or is misguided, I hear the following passages in the context of the most celebrated freedom of will, the freedom of thought and expression. Baggini makes these points in reaction to the emphasis on complete freedom of choices when we assess freedoms:

If we become accustomed to thinking of freedom as completely unfettered, anything more limited will, at first sight, look like an emaciated form of liberty. We might even dismiss it as mere wiggle room: the ability to make limited choices within a framework of great restraint. But that would be a great mistake.Unfettered freedom is not only an illusion; it makes no sense. It would not be desirable even if we could have it. Choices are not meaningful unless they reflect values, and values cannot be meaningfully chosen unless we already have some.

The scientific world view, therefore, destroys only a strawman version of free will, a naive conception that would crumble under rational scrutiny long before scientists could get there hands on it. Quite simply, the commonplace idea of free will we have lost was always wrong. Good riddance to it.

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[Post Notes : I did finish Baggini and found him entirely positive, if a little restrained in his positive conclusions – cautionary principle at work ? Also saw, after comparing Baggini with Gray at the outset (above), that shortly after this post, Kenan Malik had a review piece on both Baggini and Gray published in New Humanist. Malik emphasises their difference; I have to say despite noting Gray’s overly generically-pessimistic line of warning compared to Baggini’s more conservative cautionary lack-of-specific-optimism, this difference was really one of style, of the politics towards action. Both seems to be highlighting the same current issues – same evidence and logic – with overly arrogant received (scientistic) wisdom. Doubly spooky, now reading Dick Tavern’s “March of Unreason” (2007 paperback edition), I find the same agenda – filled with political warnings from the would-be rational (and cautionary principle) side of the debate, yet another E. M. Forster quote. More later, when I’ve finished Tavern.]

A little microcosm today of why I find myself (as an atheist) arguing in defence of religious theists, particularly more sophisticated theologian types, when they’re confronted with the stereotypical “flying spaghetti monster” or Dawkins / Krauss  attack formations.

You know the kind, since god is clearly a ridiculous supernatural invention, everything you believe or say you do based on those values is fair game for criticism – ridicule – because that core assumption is ridiculous, obviously, right?

Sure the values captured and conserved within religions are neither exclusive to either any one religion or even the theistic religions in general, nor are they even invented by those religions, more co-opted from civilised experience – wisdom. (And further co-opted by national cultures as a result – think of the current tiresome “there are no such things as British values” mantra. Zzzzz.)

And obviously, does it even need saying, neither do such beliefs represent “objective truths” to a rationalist, whether hard-core or merely wet-apologist.

Clearly if you come up against some naive believer, simplistic arguments based on the ridiculousness of some literal aspect of their belief – preferably with a little wit, irony and satire if ridicule is your wont – then the potentially offensive risk of the ridiculous is a fair – attention-grabbing maybe even though-provoking – choice of weapon.

If your interlocutor’s attention is already there – say a theologian or scholar who’s studied the topic – then this tactic serves little purpose other than to make the point about yourself – you find the idea ridiculous (yeah, we get that) – and, depending on how well you know your interlocutor and /or how witlessly you deliver the criticism, other than to offend for offense’s sake. There’s a lot of it about.

It would need a separate thread – a book – on how best to conduct constructive criticism with a more sophisticated interlocutor – from which you might both learn something, but today I learned something.

Samira Ahmed tweeted a blog today about her upcoming “Something Understood” (Sunday 19th on BBC R4), and I exchanged a couple of comments with her.

I was hooked at the mention of T E Lawrence and the allure of the desert, Ozymandias too. Lawrence of Arabia was a boyhood favourite, and since acquiring David Lean’s cut on DVD, I do indeed sit in anticipation each time of the dot of Omar Sharif’s approach from the horizon – an expectation extended both musically and visually in that edition. (And as she commented, the effect works even through the musical score alone – Post-note the Sharif entrance is actually done in silence – no musical background – interesting. Anyway.)

Ishmael is a motif I’ve referenced several times, as used by many authors post Melville’s narrator in Moby Dick, seeking to discover the (tiny) leviathan in the vast inhospitable desert of the sea. The story of Ishmael is the core of Ahmed’s piece. The story of Hagar and Ishmael that is, banished to the desert wilderness in the bible story. A story I’d forgotten until Ahmed’s tweet reminded me:

It’s like a whole parallel narrative in Genesis.
Why the OT is such a great literary work.

Worth understanding. Literary value is as real as any. This really struck home back in 2002 when I was reading Dupuy on the original 1976 Macy conference on Cybernetics and Cognitive Science – in the days when these subjects were about evolving human systems of self-governance, before being usurped by the AI & Tech fraternity (*). Dupuy described the problem as:

The schizophrenia between the need for formal models
… and the nevertheless deeply held belief that ….
… literature is a superior form of knowledge to science.

I shall be listening to Samira Ahmed on Something Understood this Sunday.

[(*) Coincidentally (!) I was clearly reading Melville at the time I blogged about Dupuy.]

My southbound East Coast (Virgin) (06:32 Darlington to Kings Cross) was delayed this morning for around 40 minutes, halted and slow-running until we got past Retford. Apparently some chav had nicked the signal cables.

Anyway, the extra 40 minutes on board meant I could listen to Start-the-Week following on from Today on BBC R4 before we pulled into KGX. A good one – despite guests from 4 different fields – the focus was altruism and the good life. Worth a listen.

The take-away for my agenda was more group-level evolution – what’s good for the group is good for the individuals, even if each and any individual takes a cost hit – small or large – for the benefit of the whole. Good to hear Sloan-Wilson pointing out Dawkins disagreement. The key was communication and group sizes. Too public do-gooding in too large a group makes if difficult to keep real account of whether the doing is really investment justifying less-good deeds less-publicly later. With many groups across multi-levels any “utilitarian” cascade of accounting is not really an objective matter.

John Gray is one of those philosopher / social commentators that has been dawning on me slowly. Positive mentions since 2008, and that was a link to a “Straw Dogs” post from 2005, and again in 2009 with “Gray’s Anatomy”. Increasingly frequent notices of Guardian pieces picked from social media – including this recent long read “What Scares the New Atheists” – until I eventually went to hear him speak in interview with Will Self a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have for the first time read more than an article, reading his “The Soul of the Marionette“.

First impression is somewhere between Zizek and Eagleton – in the sense of pricking received wisdom on the big issues – unconventional, laconic and erudite, but less flamboyantly so as perhaps befits his surname. Easier to miss until you sit up and concentrate. Until now I’d forgotten my own pre-2014 references already recorded here.

I like what I read. A good read, dead pan as if he’s stating the obvious. If as I do, you already buy what’s wrong with received wisdom – our objectively rational arrogance – as I’ve been calling it for 15 years – then it is obvious. What I don’t buy though is the cup half empty (more like 99% empty) pessimism of his main conclusions – that we are not just misguided and mistaken in our freedoms and competencies to affect the world for mutual benefit, but we are practically helpless and hopeless. Get over ourselves! We are the problem, not part of the solution. Not surprisingly he is accused of the nihilism he naturally denies. We’re doomed, he doesn’t actually say.

His main theme is to sow the seed that a string puppet is more free than we are – a theme he borrows from Heinrich von Kleist. A puppet doesn’t need to expend any effort counteracting gravity, that’s already been taken care of in its puppet world and is therefore free to participate in positive activities. We on the other hand are beset with maintaining and dealing reactively with the infrastructure of living more than acting creatively.

I say main theme, because although it recurs from beginning to end, the main chapter contents are quite distinct topics. Some quite disturbing, by design of course.

In The Puppet Theatre – Roof Gardens, Feathers and Human Sacrifice, he is describing the logic of human sacrifice in Aztec civilisation, obviously perverse to received wisdom. You can’t help develop that uneasy feeling that talking reasonably about positive benefits of such activities is dangerously close to potential supporting arguments for ISIS – a point he eventually makes. It’s an exercise in getting the reader to confront how foreign accepted practice could be.

In Dark Mirrors, Hidden Angels and Algorithmic Prayer Wheels, he contrasts that routine consumption of a small selection of human lives, in an otherwise stable society, with human lives lost in conflict in the mainstream world as we know it. You can’t help feeling he’s unpicking the comfortable arithmetic of Stephen Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature – which of course he is. He’s written critical articles on that work before. Life is more complicated than arithmetic, and arithmetic based on inevitably selective data at that, can lead to unintended consequences.

I like the assured style of declarative writing without pausing to insert supporting references. Maybe it appeals to my “knowing” mentality, but the book is properly referenced, in page-numbered notes at the end of the text.

Two connected topics, where I disagree with his apparent conclusions. Sure, looking at cybernetics as a machine view of systems, and then hoping to use such a view to find free-will and some privileged form of human consciousness in the mechanistic functioning of our brains is a fools quest. But, cybernetics is only a machine view to the computer geeks who’ve come to dominate our tech-driven world. In reality how information is organised and processed to govern our decisions is independent of machine based systems, independent of any physical substrate – or at least it was when Wiener and co developed the idea. It was exploitation of the idea by the “military-industrial machine” – to fund the same people who invented it – that channeled it into computer systems technology.

Some great stuff on conspiracy theories and the quest for meaning. And a dozen other references – in the end notes – that I need to follow-up, not least E M Forster and Nassim Taleb. A thoroughly worthwhile and disconcerting, though-provoking read.

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[Post Note : Hadn’t noticed this 2014 piece by Gray on Dawkins’ closed mind. A man after my own … purely Darwinian evolution of mental models (eg science) tends to mediocrity, a series of lowest common denominators, enough to survive (survive falsification) but not anything fundamentally true or excellent. Apparently Balfour had pointed this out already.]

Picture this:

(1) A is a Christian, but …

(2) A is a Christian who is also a theologian, a Christian who’s given it some thought, and been able to show at least some level of intelligence, and …

(3) A is a theologian whose belief motivated them to heroic courageous acts that culminated in their death at the hands of the Nazis.

Now consider that:

(4) Some people “criticise” Christians satirically in general for believing in a god like anyone might believe in a “spaghetti monster” – which would be seen as a stupid thing to do – but this is irony, right? so most Christians would accept such a criticism without personal offence – turn the other cheek, etc. (Though there is no actual “argument” in this criticism, other than to make the “and that would be stupid” point. It’s a free country n’all that.)

(5) Another theologian B points out the historical heroism of A (point 3 above), and ends with the footnote that FSM’s (flying spaghetti monsterists and like people) should take that as “a point of reference” – something to think about – no specific message. That’s it. End of.

Then, digressive twitter debate ensues. ie interminable in short bites, because each bite introduces a new topic, without ever agreeing conclusion of any existing topic. So what were the topics?

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Deliberately paraphrasing, to home in on intended issues, maybe this is the assertion from one side : Believing in god or spaghetti monsters is stupid or at least irrational, but this is needn’t be ad-hominem criticism, insulting such people as stupid, unless their personal beliefs in this regard interfere with their public actions.

(Obviously, people hold many beliefs and are motivated to many actions – so apart from some general concept of self-consistency – not all actions are motivated by all beliefs. We’re talking about specific individual beliefs, motivations and related actions.)

So, do individual beliefs form part of their motivations?
And do such beliefs and motivations therefore affect individuals public actions and their intended outcomes?

If no. STOP (Start separate discussion on the individual and free will, etc.)

So, yes, in general actions are motivated by belief:

But do we believe A’s actions specifically were motivated by their Christian belief,
And do we agree A’s – very public – actions were indeed, good, virtuous, courageous and/or heroic say?

(ie not just Christian belief and believers in general, but an individual theologian whose heroic life was very much defined by this fact.) Note there’s nothing exclusive in these statements, about all good actions necessarily being attributed to Christian belief, nor that equally good actions are motivated in others with other beliefs. Just a fact in this individual case.

Yes?

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C : I don’t see the connection [between spaghetti monster criticisms and recognising the goodness of A’s actions]. Criticising religion doesn’t equate to disrespecting individuals such as this, does it?

This is the point – not seeing the connection – does affect the ability to see the relationship between the belief and the “good” action of the individual. The nature of the criticism does affect the view of the individual and the relationship between their beliefs motivations and actions.

So how do we join up the nature of criticism of someone’s beliefs, with opinions (more beliefs) about the quality of them and their actions.

We have a (at least) three things – qualities of people, their beliefs and their actions – individually and collectively, whole and in part. [Now this discussion is 3000 years old. Virtue and the virtues. Old, and knotty too.]

Clearly, objectively, with hindsight, we judge the quality of people in their actions.

At that point we may say their motivations and the beliefs that underpin them are not relevant, so long as their actions appear “good”. (Though even this depends on how much the quality of consequences are indeed apparent at any given viewpoint in time – but for now we may hold that belief and motivation – and any other qualities of the individual – are irrelevant.)

So why then, does anyone criticise anyone else’s beliefs?
Why does anyone care if such criticisms cast aspertions about qualities of the individuals that hold them?

Well, because we do care and we do value them. Beliefs are NOT irrelevant.

We judge historical actions (and expressions of beliefs and motivations, verbal or otherwise, are simply more actions) as a stock of resource in the person – qualities and values – their “virtues”. And we value them because we have to judge who to support, ally with, vote for, be seen having a beer with, now and in the future. A “stranger” about whom we know nothing empirically is either given the benefit of the doubt or treated with caution and suspicion, or typically some combination of the two, until more “objective” evidence emerges. But we value the emerging stock of virtue(s).

C : People “are” – all a mass of countless beliefs and actions. Criticising part is (obviously) not criticising the whole.

Absolutely – individually we are is simply the collection and organisation of the information patterns we hold to date. [Meme theory of individual cognition & consciousness. We ARE our resource of human virtues.] And, before we act, or speak, these are “in our heads” (and hearts).

We can’t criticise (or appreciate) people’s ideas (and their stock of motivations and virtues) independent of the person. They are them. If we care about the person, we must care how we criticise their ideas.

Now for most people with a wide range of beliefs and ideas, it’s perfectly possible to criticise an individual idea (or action or motivation) distinct from a wider complex of ideas. To criticise a part but not the whole individual. Note however for both subject and critic there is some sense of necessary consistency in that complex as a whole. How consistent, and how much effort and competence is put to developing and rationalising that consistent whole, varies enormously – hence the knotty twists of virtue and the virtues, and the examined life. Not all Christians can be theologians. Not all cyclists can be trick-cyclists.

So what is the point of the original footnote.

All beliefs are open to criticism, and criticism includes ridicule (though see separate restraints on gratuitously offensive ridicule beyond the context of satire and irony).

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM) is of the ridicule variety – suggesting the belief (in spaghetti monsters or supernatural gods) is so ridiculous, it’s a ridiculous – stupid – belief to hold. And of course it’s very general, aimed at the belief and believers as a whole. I’ve not seen FSM make any subtle distinctions between belief, motivation and action; simply that the belief is, and hence believers are, ridiculous. [Interesting development re PZ Myers yesterday.]

If the only thing you know about someone (or care about someone) is their theistic (Christian or other) belief or, in the case of A (and possibly B), that belief is actually their defining belief – FSM ridicules the whole of the person you know. As criticism goes, it’s a very blunt instrument.

If you want to criticise someone’s belief by generic ridicule, you better know a bit more about them, their motivations and actions, before implying insult to the whole person. Criticise with care.

Better still, why not try constructive criticism with someone you do have some respect for. But that’s another story.

C = Clive Andrews @CliveAndrews

B = The reverend Richard Coles @RevRichardColes

A = Dietrich Bonhoeffer #SorrydonthavehisTwitterhandle.

[Footnote – B’s own footnote was click-bait of course, but nowhere did it suggest criticism was out of bounds, nor did it suggest any exclusivity of Christian good. It simply said before you criticise – ridicule – Christian beliefs in general, spare a thought for this individual case.]

Post from Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, disowning any association with PZ Myers. (Hat tip to @AMDWaters) I’ve had my run-ins with PZ Myers via his Pharyngula blog several times in the past often, if you look at the links, trying to give the positive benefit of the doubt that the rhetoric is worse than the bite, but most frequently giving up in the face of the baying mob argumentation style stirred up in his comment threads.

In fact it’s quite some time since I’ve looked at anything PZ has said or written – so it’s interesting to read Nugent’s piece. Sounds like PZ is single-handedly taking-up the absence of anyone’s right not to be offended, by offending anyone and everyone gratuitously – even erstwhile allies. Highly irrational (and offensive).