11 Comments

Ray Ingles
January 17th, 2012 | 3:20 pm

If we look at Dennett’s argument with critical distance, however, we can see that it follows the typical contradictory pattern of scientific materialism: it combines dogmatic materialism in describing a universe that is indifferent to man (it’s all just “frozen accidents”) with idealistic moral principles that presuppose the unique status of man and an ultimate purpose to human existence… In other words, Dennett claims that the universe has no purpose but man still has a moral purpose.

Humans can be a unique accident, surely? There’s no contradiction there.

And an ‘ultimate purpose to human existence’ could arise from the nature of what humans are and what they want – which would dictate things about what means were best to reach them, regardless of how that nature and those wants arose.

Even if the universe doesn’t have a purpose, humans have purposes, no? Even a lot of purposes in common.

Whenever his materialism seems to undermine morality and justice, he turns to notions of dignity that are unsupported by his metaphysics and cosmology, with statements such as “there is a huge difference between our minds and the minds of other species, a gulf wide enough even to make a moral difference.”

Surely the ‘huge difference’ part isn’t in question, right?

In so doing, he implicitly embraces a dualism of substances that divides not only nature but human beings themselves into two orders of causality — matter and mind, or nature and freedom — which are incompatible with his Darwinian materialism.

Or maybe he’s been making a long argument that they are compatible.

arty
January 17th, 2012 | 5:23 pm

I’ll second Knippenberg’s evaluation of Kraynak’s essay, it is really good. Among other points, I think Kraynak’s essay raises the issue that, like Rorty, we might simply choose to adopt a set of values we dub “humanitarian.” However, we might well choose to adopt some other, less savory set of values, at which point, all we’ve got is a war of value systems/truth regimes that will itself be settled with “guns” (literal or metaphorical) rather than reasons. Lots of food for thought here.

David Nickol
January 17th, 2012 | 8:14 pm

With the waning of religious belief in the West, I am not quite sure why the dwindling number of religious people are so eager to convince the growing number of nonreligious people that atheists really ought to be amoral.

Sergio Méndez
January 17th, 2012 | 9:16 pm

Well, I agree that there ought to be moral foundations for the idea of “human dignity” or rights. The question of course is: How is belief in God (and the idea we are made in her image) a good foundation for moral claims like the “human dignity”? If the God whose image we are made is evil or lacks the qualities that are appreciated as part of the idea of “human dignity”, how useful is the argument at all? Of course, if God has those qualities (the ones that are associated with the idea of “human dignity”), it means that those qualities in themselves are what gives us our “human dignity”. In other words, it matters more which qualities we identify with our moral claims and why, and not if they came or not from some entity even if it is a God. So the issue is not that we are animals with a “rational soul”, but that we are rational creatures (regardless if we have or not a soul); and rationality in itself is what grants us a special moral status (us, or any other creature that has or achieves it).

Lewis
January 17th, 2012 | 10:32 pm

I agree that the demand for respecting human rights and dignity are increasing even as many philosophers and the culture itself are eroding the prior foundations are eroding, but I fail to see what the problem is. The increase of respect for rights and dignity is marvelous to behold.

Perhaps the real question is why we thought we needed religion or philosophy.

kristan
January 18th, 2012 | 12:09 am

hi lewis,

the problem is that, in the absence of a moral foundation, what we regard as human rights and dignity are simply a matter of strength and will. which usually bodes well for blood and misery.

best,
kristan

Michael
January 18th, 2012 | 2:31 pm

But apparently it is not merely a matter of strength and will. Increasingly. people are demanding rights and respect, and increasingly, people are receiving them.

You might see a philosophical problem with a lack of some common moral foundation, but it seems increasingly that we don’t need one. You are speculating some hypothetical blood and misery that doesn’t exist and might never exist for the reasons you suppose it will.

Fred
January 18th, 2012 | 5:21 pm

Michael, I think you, Ray, and some other commenters here are being rather short-sighted. Zarathustra runs across atheists in the marketplace who make much the same arguments the two of you make. Nietzsche, rightly, ridicules them. They pretend to believe there is no god, but they behave as if god still lives. Eventually, the inertia of two thousand years of Christianity will run out. At that point, it will become clear that without the Christian god there is no Christian morality. There will only be der wille zur macht. The two of you and the other commenters blithely dismissing the necessity of religion for morality are simply indicators that we are still in the “market place atheism” stage. Believe me, the aforementioned inertia _will_ run out. Even now, there is very little of it left. And when it does, we will live like the pleasure-maximizing, self-interested, amoral animals recognizing only the exercise of power that one would expect from materialist philosophy.

arty
January 18th, 2012 | 6:51 pm

Fred’s comment get’s me to thinking about something I’ve often wondered about, which is the extremely large place that the second world war and the holocaust seems to occupy in the minds of academic historians (of which I am one, in the interest of full disclosure). Obviously those events are of sufficient historical significance to warrant a great deal of historical inquiry, but the somewhat hysterical tone of the incessant debates over defining “fascism” as an interpretive term, over explaining the holocaust, and over the “never again” trope cause me to wonder if there isn’t something deeper at work. One possibility I’ve considered, is that the decibel-volume and redundancy of the profession’s obsession with the holocaust (witness that it is impossible to find a mention of Herbert Spencer that isn’t focused on his Social Darwinism, for example) masks a deeper fear that our reasons for doing so might be a bit shaky, thus necessitating a rise in the volume level to make up for our philosophical lack or reasons as to why such a things as innate human dignity exists.

My inclination is to side with Fred, that our “inertia” as he puts it, is about to run out, but history being my own area of interest, I’ll leave the prognostications to the prophets.

kristan
January 18th, 2012 | 11:01 pm

hi michael,

I agree with fred: you’re being remarkably shortsighted. furthermore, I would add that your viewpoint reflects obtuseness to such a degree that it hovers near intellectual dishonesty.

rather than talking about “hypothetical blood and misery,” let’s talk about the historical fact. in the absence of a common moral foundation, how would you, michael, address and condemn the holocaust? I contend that the only intellectually consistent argument you can offer (in the absence of such a common foundation) is isomorphic to “well, I certainly wouldn’t do things that way.”

and of course we could go on. what’s fundamentally wrong with the gulag? with genocide? with rape? or less intensely, with discrimination? with racism?

this is not some hypothetical word game. how many millions of people have been slaughtered, relocated, or unjustly imprisoned in the past century alone? do you think there is a fundamental benefit to being western that makes our culture impervious to being swept away in the madness that so recently engulfed germany? russia? cambodia? china? angola?

this (in the absence of a common moral foundation, the very definition of “rights”, “good”, and the like is a matter of choice and therefore subject to the decisions of the strong) has been well understood for hundreds of years. it’s one of the few points of agreement between intellectually honest atheists (see fred’s reference to nietzche above) as well as Christians, perhaps most efficiently summarized in the mouth of ivan karamazov, “without immortality, everything is permitted.”

Michael
January 19th, 2012 | 9:18 pm

“Eventually, the inertia of two thousand years of Christianity will run out. At that point, it will become clear that without the Christian god there is no Christian morality.”

Maybe, maybe not. You sound awfully sure for someone who doesn’t know one way or another but is merely speculating. At least, I admit that I’m merely speculating.

“And when it does, we will live like the pleasure-maximizing, self-interested, amoral animals recognizing only the exercise of power that one would expect from materialist philosophy”

Maybe, maybe not. Some of the materialist philosophers you disdain supported raw exercises of power, but others haven’t. Some of the postmodernists that are routinely mocked on sites like this are vocal supporters of human rights. You keep telling them that they’re being contradictory, but they keep right on fighting for human rights just the same.

“furthermore, I would add that your viewpoint reflects obtuseness to such a degree that it hovers near intellectual dishonesty”

Well, if my intellectual dishonesty is leading to such obtuseness, then I might as well just shut up. I will remember your hospitality, however, and your interest in thoughtful, civil discussion.