Month: March 2018

Interesting listening to Andrew Copson – CEO of Humanists UK (HUK) – in this brief interview with Talk Beliefs. In part it talks about his excellent recent book “Secularism” which I briefly reviewed earlier, but also covers humanism and ethics more generally.

In summary he sees humanism defined by the naturalistic (scientific, non-supernatural) outlook on human (and wider ecosystem) ethics in particular and on the truth of beliefs in general. And, given secularism in general, he sees religion pretty much as identity politics by any other name and theism / atheism as not really that interesting an issue.

Seems fair enough.

Earlier on in describing the origins of humanist / humanism as an English language term – as well as the Germanic “humanismus” origins that eventually defined the take on humanism that he and HUK hold (above) – he makes a passing reference to a humanist defined as being a grammarian or language scholar in Johnson’s original dictionary entry. A definition that sounds quaint and antiquated here and now?

(Let’s leave aside for the moment that many pre-enlightenment religious traditions – supernaturally theistic or not – may have long espoused basic human dignity – say, individual freedoms and the golden-rule – as key tenets. This is more a matter who might claim to have “invented” humanism, than what we actually mean by it. Spoiler – humans did it.)

I actually think the received wisdom above holds an important issue missing in appearing to dismiss the grammarian from the naturalistic definition.

Many anti-religion / pro-science groups are nevertheless careful to indicate that their humanist outlook is pro science and reason or rationality. That is despite many individual adherents falling into the scientistic trap that science has some monopoly or priority over reason and rationality, in fact most public considered positions recognise the important linguistic nuance in that “and“.

The knowledge content of science may be objectively independent of humanity, but our reason and rationality are not. As Johnson captured, humanist reason and rationality is as much to do with language – and information and epistemology more generally – as it does with objective science. A naturalistic outlook must cover both (objective) science and (human) rationality. We do well neither to conflate these nor reduce one to the other.

Naturalistic is not as simple as scientific.

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[Post Note: Also linked by Andrew is a written interview with Conatus News. (Hat tip to Terry Waites for sharing.)

Good, is the recognition that exactly who invented humanism, where and when, is no big deal – empathic rational humans reinvented the idea over millennia, and having invented it had preserved the ideas in cultural (and religious) traditions before they were eventually captured by secular umbrella institutions like the UN.

I would take issue however, as a 60+ “secular, atheist, humanist, rationalist, free-thinker”, with his generalisation of “older humanists”. I think we’re beyond any post-9/11 surprise reaction to fears of “irrational” religion and threats to hard-won liberal freedoms. In this Post-Post-Modern (PoPoMo) world it’s about fixing the over-reaction to those perceived threats that have led to warlike polarisations between Political-Correctness and Intolerance, between Science and Religion, between Liberals and Authoritarians, between them and us generally.]

So far I’ve only seen the Simon Sharma first excellent episode of BBC2’s Civilisations, but plan on catching up. This morning I read Kenan Malik’s review piece from the Observer, and right now I’m listening to all three presenters with Andrew Marr on BBC R4 Start the Week.

Malik’s excellent piece sees a lot of tension between the “certainty” of Clarke’s original UK perspective, and the alternative perspectives of John Berger and the latest BBC series. Strangely he sees the inability to provide (definitive) answers as a weakness of the new series? (I’ll say more when I’ve digested the whole.) The Marr conversation also goes some way to correct any suggestion that Civilisations is a “corrective rebuke” to Clarke’s Civilisation. Far from it. There are many overlapping perspectives (cf Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”).

One question that struck me right from the outset – Clarke and Sharma – is why the land-grab for “art” as the cypher for civilisation as a whole? Marr asks the same question, and we get the sense that art is enabled by the technologies of the day, but art is the human pinnacle. I don’t disagree, simply question how uncontentious is this?

Holding thoughts …

[Deep and long-standing topic. Art & Craft – the “rt” Pirsigian root – even in Engineering / Ingenuity / Built-environment is key.]

[And talking of alternative perspectives, well done BBC R4 for following Start the Week with “An Alternative History of Art” – inspired.]

[In terms of “the greatest ever documentary” I’ve always seen Clarke’s Civilisation as being of a pair with Bronowski’s Ascent of Man. Never seen any need for one culture to launch a land-grab competing with the other. Good fences. A real third-culture.]

The idea of an intellectual dark web sounds subversively negative, but it is a term coined by economist Eric Weinstein I originally picked-up from Jacob Kishere in his Medium post “What is driving the rise of the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ ?“. A version of that same piece has also been published by Conatus News. I’ve linked and tweeted a couple of mentions to the former already.

It’s a topic close to my heart. So much would-be rational discourse falls into standards tropes of polarising binary debates in all forms of media (and polls and referenda!), compounded by the compression into rapid “bites” in social media memes and their click-bait headlines, and further moulded by PR and PC constraints on should-know-better “platforming” by academic institutions, institutions in the “market” for money and punters.

It’s a good thing that intellectuals do find their own space to have proper dialogue. Dialogue where not every statement is subjected to the glare of public “transparency” (*) and can simply be treated as part of the dialogue towards mutually beneficial learning. Sure, no learning dialogue should be confined to ivory towers, the learnings must hit the road as real rubber at some point, but difficult dialogue needs space for subtlety and nuance of differences to be integrated into workable knowledge and practical wisdom. It is reductive to insist that every step in discourse – in context – must stand up to instant scrutiny in some global objectivity. [It’s the same reductivity of scientism that presumes all wholes are determined only by their parts without the complex processes of their whole history (see ergodicity). And (*) Transparency in 2010 and most recently with Dan Dennett.]

However as Jacob points out, it is a sure sign of the bad state of things in the public intellectual sphere. Public debate on important and difficult topics simply cannot be conducted in the media and institutions that most people subscribe to. Proper dialogue needs curated boundaries, and trust must be able to exist both sides of such boundaries. Good fences make good neighbours.

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[Post Note: Is it any wonder people with something to say retreat to the intellectual dark web, when there are barbarians at the gate in the real world?]

Recent (26 Jan 2018) talk by Dan Dennett recorded in Warsaw and published by Polish Rationalists on the topic of his most recent “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” (B2BnB) book on the evolution of intelligent consciousness. I’ve written and talked much about B2BnB so not a great deal “new” in the presentation – and unfortunately the recording doesn’t capture his slides, just his words. Nevertheless a great talk on his key topics as well as a great book for the Dennett novice.

Other than the hardware plus software model of mind (consciousness, intelligence, the lot), like his book he doesn’t actually spend as much time on this as he does on words and memes as the basic tools and building blocks of everything, including intelligent conscious mind, and on the fact that these are information objects independent of any of their physical embodiments. As I said in my own reviews, Turing and Shannon (and Wiener) feature more centrally than Darwin in this story.

I’m already comfortable with the language of memes and memetics, and the fact that the word simply coined objectively what was already a clear subject of mimesis for centuries. It’s just a word for long established concepts, but a word – because of its seemingly reductive objectivity – that draws a lot of flak from art and culture and the humanities in general. The Q&A allows him to address many objections, as he does as well with his examples in the talk. He also incidentally makes many points I’ve made in my own interpretations of his work in my own. This is the real value for me in this particular talk.

Memetics is no less predictive than genetics and any complex systems science. It predicts that stuff will happen, the kinds of stuff and the explanatory how it will happen. Like all evolution, specific detailed objects and even creative genius exist – attract specific names in our ontology – only with hindsight. Memetics explanations are only as reductive and objectifying as you make them – culture and humanities really have nothing to fear. Dan himself always uses qualitative language sorta / kinda and “more like”. Worth understanding Dennett’s form of compatibilism – subjective stuff doesn’t reduce to objective components, even though they explain the processes. These processes and patterns may be “determined” by these objective component interactions, but the products of culture and creativity are not. This is as important for scientific objectors to understand – eg in the the reality of conscious will – as anyone concerned with the humanities.

Determinism, like transparency, is over-rated – a fetish of the scientistic. The humanities and humanists are right to fear scientism. Some scientists and philosophers have a lot wrong.

There is a strong acknowledgement of information science practitioners – systems developoers –  as one of the fields that takes true ontology of the real world – all of it, not just science – very seriously, and that philosophers ought to take information scientists more seriously. This was incidentally my route into this space.

Might be worth transcribing more of Dennett’s actual words from the Q&A … meantime, worth a listen.

[Hat tip to Terry Waites for the link.]

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Post Notes: topics in the transcript.

Evolution (hi-fidelity / hi-fecundity / lo-mutation – repeatedly emphasised here) is massively positive feedback loop. See also Maruyama on “second cybernetics”.

Transparency is a bad thing – fetishised in mass & social media. Need-to-know is better.

Fundamental Information.

No-brainer = brainless.