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the.bricoleur
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Chiding Dennett for Evangelical Atheism
« on: 2003-07-28 16:47:22 » |
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"Don't Make Me Come In There!"
J. Wyatt Ehrenfels Chides Prominent Professor Daniel Dennet for Evangelical Atheism
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
http://www.fireflysun.com/book/brights.php
College Park, MD --- A New York Times op-ed piece authored by prominent academic Daniel Dennet was circulated across three American Psychological Association listserves today, including TIPS, the Division 32 (Humanistic Psychology) listserv, and the Division 24 (Theoretical Psychology) listserv. In the article, Dennet calls on the all educated atheists everywhere to embrace their minority status and seek relief in the awareness of the atheist pride group, Brights (see text of circulated post).
While Dennet has been hailed as courageous for coming out in the New York Times, I am inclined to believe he could leave the mace at home when he strays into the conservative Medford, Massachusetts streets for a twilight walk to the local Blockbuster video. Courage? Is it courageous to use your reputation as scientist as a springboard into the broadest theater, the public domain, as a political pundit jabbing at the Republican juggernaut. Of course, I am glossing over the obvious point that his op-ed piece is not one of those long-overdue works of great social import or historical necessity. For those of you who are disposed to view him as the atheist's equivalent of Robin Hood or Martin Luther King, Jr., let me remind you that he lives in a community where atheism is as fashionable a label as Jordache. And as the already long list of professionals and entertainers whose public criticism of the White House and the religious right continues to grow, the likes of Dennet becomes considerably less trailblazing.
If Dennet is anything like those who hold him up as the standard bearer (and that is a big IF; Jung was always fond of saying he was glad he was not a Jungian), then he resents the public immensely for not loving him. Meanwhile, people like me have to hide from people like him. So while he is attempting to expand the pie of his prestige, his handmaidens in the psychological community are emboldened to sanitize their ranks of anything remotely spiritual and phenomenological. In this community, he is preaching to his choir and having a lot of fun rallying his captive audience of likeminded colleagues. Meanwhile, they keep me chained up in the confessional.
Those who consider atheistic communities an exotic natural law world free of illusions and defense mechanisms might be surprised to learn that people like Dennet have their own "God," and all that repressed spirituality ends up elevating other things to the level of supreme principle. This is why I often refer to the Procrustean paradigm within psychology as 'methodolatry' as opposed to 'methodology,' where a paradigm twice as asphyxiating as any Church observe and preach patrician, arbitrary, and superfluous norms with an almost liturgical rhapsody. Our gaping holes in the psychological research literature bear the field's true stigmata. I have already forgiven myself for thinking that this is all in the same vein as Nazi Germany and Communist USSR, where spiritual repression accompanied the deification of the State. There is an alter here and it is not immune from charges of corruption, discrimination, and intimidation.
-- full text available here - http://www.fireflysun.com/book/brights.php
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Kharin
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Re:Chiding Dennett for Evangelical Atheism
« Reply #1 on: 2003-07-29 08:55:13 » |
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There have been various objections to the concept, of which this is a pretty feeble example. More serious are the points that gay rights (which seemed to be the model as far as Dawkins was concerned) was concerned with establishing equality with the rest of society, something echoed by Dennett. However, equality seems an uncertain agenda when displacement of religious ideologies is also a concern. Another point, was that the notion of naturalistic ethics runs afoul of the naturalistic fallacy, i.e. that an ought cannot be inferred from an is.
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Hermit
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Re:Chiding Dennett for Evangelical Atheism
« Reply #2 on: 2003-07-29 12:19:17 » |
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[Kharin] There have been various objections to the concept, of which this is a pretty feeble example. More serious are the points that gay rights (which seemed to be the model as far as Dawkins was concerned) was concerned with establishing equality with the rest of society, something echoed by Dennett. However, equality seems an uncertain agenda when displacement of religious ideologies is also a concern. Another point, was that the notion of naturalistic ethics runs afoul of the naturalistic fallacy, i.e. that an ought cannot be inferred from an is.
[Hermit] Perhaps "gay rights" rather than "establishing equality" should be seen as establishing "that which is good", where "good" as usual, covers a multitude of sins (happiness, equity, rationality, etc)? In which case, this objection is, I suggest, logically superceded by the next and, superficially at least, more rationally founded objection.
[Hermit] I say, "superficially", because I never really liked Moore's arguments on the 'naturalist fallacy'. They seem to me to leave us reliant on an apparently not biological and thus sourceless, non-verified and non-verifiable "ghost in the machine", supposedly providing us with a noetic sense of "goodness of ought" - unless we irrationally decide that "ought" has nothing to do with "good" and simply accept the "oughts of consensus" without evaluation (in which case I would argue that we are not competent to be "good" and when we disagree with the consensus (as "gay rights" did and in some places still do) we have no grounds for our rejection of the imperative of the majority). See also [ "Hermit, "Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics", 2002-03-06 ] .
[Hermit] As I suggested in [ Hermit, "Virian Ethics: The Soul in the Machine and the Question of Virian Ethics.",2002-03-05 ] : 3.1.3 (...) [We should not differentiate between] Questions of the classes of "why do we do?", and "what ought we to do?". I suggest this largely because it is difficult to achieve conviction that there is a meaningful line between them. We work the way we do for many reasons and have conceptions of what we ought to do which are very much related to the way we function.(...)
3.1.4 (...)[We should attempt] to discover a biological justification for the establishment of a general principle and then extending from this into more specific systems until an ethos, which we can agree is rational, has been developed. The areas where we have difficulty may then be explored and restricted until we isolate areas of difficulty and can examine them clearly. This would clearly conform to the Descartian principles of investigation.
[Hermit] In other words, a pancritically rational positivist or even purely empirical approach to the question of "what ought we to do" leads inexorably to the "what is it good for us to do", and I argue (and suspect Dennet takes the same approach) that "being happy appears to be good" and thus, if we "seek to do good" then, "we ought to do that which appears to make us most happy." Being fundamentally social creatures, this suggests that we "ought" also to do those things which will make our associated hierarchy happy, or at least, those which minimise unhappiness. Aspirations which arguments for "equality", "gay rights" and "brightness" all appear to share - but, which, being based in UTism, conventional dogmatic religion (and as we see here, NeoCon politics), does not.
Kind Regards
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Kharin
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Re:Chiding Dennett for Evangelical Atheism
« Reply #3 on: 2003-07-30 04:17:43 » |
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Quote:| "Perhaps "gay rights" rather than "establishing equality" should be seen as establishing "that which is good", where "good" as usual, covers a multitude of sins (happiness, equity, rationality, etc)? " |
Quite possibly, though I'm not sure that was the frame Dennett used, given the use of terms like tolerance. However, the question still doesn't particularly apply; for example, religious toleration of any kind raises precisely the same question (Attempts by any religion to claim to be as worthy of respect to rival religions rarely prevents them regarding conversion of people committed to rival religions as being desirable). Quite why this is fine for religions and not atheist groups, I couldn't possibly comment.
Quote:| " I say, "superficially", because I never really liked Moore's arguments on the 'naturalist fallacy'. " |
It might help the question to invert it, and establishing how the inference barrier functions in religious ethics where the extra-natural source posits an ought irrespective of an is. Which is why Bertrand Russell said that; "moral rules are broadly of two kinds; there are those which have no basis except in a religious creed, and there are those which have an obvious basis in social utility." Utilitarianism, of various stripes, is as you indicate a fairly clear example of the possibility of a naturalistic ethic.
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