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In Nature vs. Nurture, A Voice for Nature
MIT ^ | 5/5/04 | Nicholas Wade

Posted on 05/05/2004 11:31:33 PM PDT by tpaine

In Nature vs. Nurture, a Voice for Nature

By NICHOLAS WADE

Who should define human nature? When the biologist Edward O. Wilson set out to do so in his 1975 book "Sociobiology," he was assailed by left-wing colleagues who portrayed his description of genetically shaped human behaviors as a threat to the political principles of equal rights and a just society.

Since then, a storm has threatened anyone who prominently asserts that politically sensitive aspects of human nature might be molded by the genes. So biologists, despite their increasing knowledge from the decoding of the human genome and other advances, are still distinctly reluctant to challenge the notion that human behavior is largely shaped by environment and culture. The role of genes in shaping differences between individuals or sexes or races has become a matter of touchiness, even taboo. A determined effort to break this silence and make it safer for biologists to discuss what they know about the genetics of human nature has now been begun by Dr. Steven Pinker, a psychologist of language at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a book being published by Viking at the end of this month, "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature," he seeks to create greater political elbow room for those engaged in the study of the ways genes shape human behavior. "If I am an advocate, it is for discoveries about human nature that have been ignored or suppressed in modern discussions of human affairs," he writes.

A principal theme of Dr. Pinker's argument is that the blank slaters — the critics of sociobiology and their many adherents in the social sciences — have sought to base the political ideals of equal rights and equal opportunity on a false biological premise: that all human minds are equal because they are equally blank, equally free of innate, genetically shaped, abilities and behaviors.

The politics and the science must be disentangled, Dr. Pinker argues. Equal rights and equal opportunities are moral principles, he says, not empirical hypotheses about human nature, and they do not require a biological justification, especially not a false one. Moreover, the blank slate doctrine has political consequences that have been far from benign, in Dr. Pinker's view. It encourages totalitarian regimes to excesses of social engineering. It perverts education and child-rearing, loading unmerited guilt on parents for their children's failures.

In his book he reproaches those who in his view have politicized the study of human nature from both the left and the right, though in practice more of his fire is directed against the left, particularly the critics of sociobiology. They have created a climate in which "discoveries about human nature were greeted with fear and loathing because they were thought to threaten progressive ideals," he writes.

He accuses two of them — Dr. Richard Lewontin, a population geneticist at Harvard, and the late Dr. Stephen J. Gould, a historian of science — of "25 years of pointless attacks" on Dr. Wilson and on Dr. Richard Dawkins, author of "The Selfish Gene," for allegedly saying certain aspects of behavior are genetically determined.

And he chides the sociobiology critics for turning a scholarly debate "into harassment, slurs, misrepresentation, doctored quotations, and, most recently, blood libel." In a recent case, two anthropologists accused Dr. James Neel, a founder of modern human genetics, and Dr. Napoleon Chagnon, a social anthropologist, of killing the Yanomamö people of Brazil to test genetic theories of human behavior, a charge Dr. Pinker analyzes as without basis in fact.

With this preemptive strike in place, Dr. Pinker sets out his view of what science can now say about human nature. This includes many of the ideas laid out by Dr. Wilson in "Sociobiology" and "On Human Nature," updated by recent work in evolutionary psychology and other fields.

Dr. Pinker argues that significant innate behavioral differences exist between individuals and between men and women. Discussing child-rearing, he says that children's characters are shaped by their genes, by their peer group and by chance experiences; parents cannot mold their children's nature, nor should they wish to, any more than they can redesign that of their spouses. Those little slates are not as blank as they may seem.

Dr. Pinker has little time for two other doctrines often allied with the Blank Slate. One is "the Ghost in the Machine," the assumption of an immaterial soul that lies beyond the reach of neuroscience, and he criticizes the religious right for thwarting research with embryonic stem cells on the ground that a soul is lurking within. The third member of Dr. Pinker's unholy trinity is "the Noble Savage," the idea that the default state of human nature is mild, pacific and unacquisitive. Dr. Pinker believes, to the contrary, that dominance and violence are universal; that human societies are more given to an ethos of reciprocity than to communal sharing; that intelligence and character are in part inherited, meaning that "some degree of inequality will arise even in perfectly fair economic systems," and that all societies are ethnocentric and easily roused to racial hatred. Following in part the economist Thomas Sowell, he distinguishes between a leftist utopian vision of human nature (the mind is a blank slate, man is a Noble Savage, traditional institutions are the problem) and the tragic vision preferred by the right (man is the problem; family, creed and Adam Smith's Invisible Hand are the solutions).

"My own view is that the new sciences of human nature really do vindicate some version of the tragic vision and undermine the utopian outlook that until recently dominated large segments of intellectual life," he writes.

With "The Blank Slate," Dr. Pinker has left the safe territory of irregular verbs. But during a conversation in his quiet Victorian house a few blocks from the bustle of Harvard Square, he seemed confident of dodging the explosions that have rocked his predecessors. "Wilson didn't know what he was getting into and had no idea it would cause such a ruckus," he said. "This book is about the ruckus; it's about why people are so upset." "It's conceivable that if you say anything is innate, people will say you are racist, but the climate has changed," he says. "I don't actually believe that the I.Q. gap is genetic, so I didn't say anything nearly as inflammatory as Herrnstein and Murray," the authors of the 1994 book "The Bell Curve," who argued that inborn differences in intelligence explain much of the economic inequality in American society.

Despite his confidence, Dr. Pinker is explicitly trying to set off an avalanche. He compares the overthrow of the blank slate view to another scientific revolution with fraught moral consequences, that of Galileo's rejection of the church's ideas about astronomy. "We are now living, I think, through a similar transition," he writes, because the blank slate, like the medieval church's tidy hierarchy of the cosmos, is "a doctrine that is widely embraced as a rationale for meaning and morality and that is under assault from the sciences of the day."

Dr. Pinker is not the fire-breathing kind of revolutionary. He has a thick mop of curly brown hair, edged respectably with gray, and a mild, almost diffident manner. A writer for the Canadian magazine Macleans described Dr. Pinker, who was born in Montreal, as "endearingly Canadian: polite, soft-spoken, attentive to what others say." Teased about this description, he notes that Canadians also gave the world ice hockey. Born in 1954, he grew up in the city's Jewish community, in the neighborhood described in Mordecai Richler's novel "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz." He was caught up in the debates of the 60's and 70's about social organization and human nature, but found his teenage anarchist views of the nobility of human nature dealt a sharp empirical refutation by the Montreal police strike of 1969; in the absence of authority, Montrealers turned immediately to lawlessness, robbing 6 banks and looting 100 stores before the Mounties restored order. Trained as an experimental psychologist at Harvard, Dr. Pinker took up the study of language and became convinced that the brain's linguistic ability must rest on built-in circuitry. This made him think other faculties and behaviors could be innate, despite the unpopularity of the idea. "People think the worst environmental explanation is preferable to the best innatist explanation," he says.

Dr. Pinker first became known outside his specialty through his 1994 book "The Language Instinct," an approachable account of how the brain is constructed to learn language. He followed up that success with "How the Mind Works," in which he shared his enthusiasm for the ideas of evolutionary psychology. "The Blank Slate" further broadens his ambit from neuroscience to political and social theory.

Like Edward O. Wilson, who began as a specialist in ants and mastered ever larger swaths of biology, Dr. Pinker has a gift of summarizing other specialists' works into themes that are larger than their parts. Synthesisers are rare animals in the academic zoo because they risk being savaged by those whose territory they invade. "Everything in the study of human behavior is controversial, and if you try to sum it up you will ride roughshod over specialists, so you've got to have a strong stomach," Dr. Pinker said.

The critics of sociobiology caricatured their opponents as "determinists," even though few, if any, people believe human nature is fully determined by the genes. Could Dr. Pinker's description of the Blank Slate similarly overstate their views? He says he shows at length how critics like Dr. Lewontin have made statements that "are really not too far from the collection of positions that I call the Blank Slate," with Dr. Lewontin and others having even written a book called "Not in Our Genes."

Though Dr. Pinker believes the politics and science of human nature should be disentangled, that does not mean political arrangements should ignore or ride roughshod over human nature. To the contrary, a good political system "should mobilize some parts of human nature to rein in other parts." The framers of the Constitution took great interest in human nature and "by almost any measure of human well-being, Western democracies are better," he says.

Dr. Pinker believes that human nature "will increasingly be explained by the sciences of mind, brain, genes and evolution." But if political and social systems should be designed around human nature, won't that give enormous power to the psychologists, neuroscientists, and geneticists are in a position to say what human nature is?

"It's a game anyone should be able to play if they do their homework," he says, "so I hope it wouldn't become the exclusive province of a scientific priesthood."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: genetics; naturevsnurture; psychology; science
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To: Rightwing Conspiratr1
Dr. Pinker believes that dominance and violence are universal; that human societies are more given to an ethos of reciprocity than to communal sharing; that intelligence and character are in part inherited, meaning that "some degree of inequality will arise even in perfectly fair economic systems," and that all societies are ethnocentric and easily roused to racial hatred.
He distinguishes between a leftist utopian vision of human nature (the mind is a blank slate, man is a Noble Savage, traditional institutions are the problem) and the tragic vision preferred by the right (man is the problem; family, creed and Adam Smith's Invisible Hand are the solutions).

"My own view is that the new sciences of human nature really do vindicate some version of the tragic vision and undermine the utopian outlook that until recently dominated large segments of intellectual life," he writes.

_____________________________________

Rightwing Conspiratr1 wrote:

Of course it does. Socialists and communists are wrong. We knew that.

______________________________________


Only rational men know that..

-- As we see by this thread, there are many who believe in the 'ghost within', and insist that we order our society around their religious & social beliefs.
Ain't gonna happen, constitutionally.
141 posted on 05/11/2004 7:05:25 AM PDT by tpaine (In their arrogance, a few infinitely shrewd imbeciles attempt to lay down the 'law' for all of us.)
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To: Alamo-Girl; Ronzo
Ronzo wrote;

To believe naturalism as a correct worldview, you must embrace three logical absurdities:

1) The universe created itself out of nothing.

It's absurd to make this claim about 'naturalists'.

2) Organic matter created itself out of inorganic matter.

Organic matter is made up of inorganic matter. Where is the 'ghost within'?

3) A rational being, man, was created from of a series of non-rational causes.

Begging the question. Once #2 is acknowledged as being possible, #3 is rational.

-----------------------------------

Alamo girl:
IMHO, Western science has narrowed down its worldview to the point that it will fall behind for the same reason all applications of "political correctness" create a false sense of "reality" and stunt knowledge or understanding.
For instance, rewriting American history to give proportionate ethnic representation to current population distribution belies what actually happened.
The pivotal events of history become diluted in the political interest of inclusion.

Could you expand on these pivotal events? What are they?
And why are they an instance of where -- "applications of "political correctness" create a false sense of "reality" and stunt knowledge or understanding"?

142 posted on 05/11/2004 7:37:24 AM PDT by tpaine (In their arrogance, a few infinitely shrewd imbeciles attempt to lay down the 'law' for all of us.)
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To: tpaine
Could you expand on these pivotal events? What are they? And why are they an instance of where -- "applications of "political correctness" create a false sense of "reality" and stunt knowledge or understanding"?

Sure, I'd be glad to. Following are some examples of the influence of multi-culturalism on textbooks regarding American History. The last link illustrates the result.

Islam and the Textbooks: A Report of the American Textbook Council - Middle East Quarterly – Summer

During the last decade, for good reasons, world history textbooks have rapidly expanded their coverage of non-Western civilizations. European political history, educators agree, is not a sufficient curriculum. State frameworks from California to Massachusetts have acted as incentives to improved scope and sequence. But what constitutes the right balance between Western and non-Western lessons continues to vex curriculum experts. Multi-cultural activists, academic scholars, and textbook editors, in the words of historian Gary B. Nash, University of California, Los Angeles, are determined to "redistribute historical capital" and politicize historical content. As a result of revisionist demands made during the 1990s, students today are likely to obtain a rose-colored version of African, Middle Eastern, and Asian history. Textbook editors routinely adjust perspective and outlook to advance the illusion of cultural equivalency and demonstrate cross-cultural and global sensitivity.

The Council on Islamic Education, based in Orange County, California, rides the diversity movement in social studies. It presents itself as a mainstream Muslim organization, linking itself to established educational associations, and it claims to act as Islam's liaison to the nation's public schools. The Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service roster of recognized tax-exempt organizations (501c3) does not list the Council on Islamic Education. No form 990 is on record. The Council on Islamic Education is funded by domestic Islamic donors perhaps aided by foreign support. The self-declared "resource center" is in fact a political advocacy organization.

The Council on Islamic Education's board members make no bones about their view of United States history: "American children need to know that genocide was part of the birth of this nation," wrote board member Ali A. Mazrui of the State University of New York at Binghamton, commenting on the New York state social studies curriculum in the early 1990s. "The Holocaust began at home."[9] Council on Islamic Education founder and director Shabbir Mansuri declared in a 2001 interview that he took calls for improved American history and civic education after 9/11 to be a personal attack. He boasted that he is waging a "bloodless" revolution, promoting world cultures and faiths in America's classrooms.[10] The Council on Islamic Education has staged displays of Muslim prayer for television cameras at California textbook hearings. It has warned scholars and public officials who do not sympathize with its requests that they will be perceived as racists, reactionaries, and enemies of Islam.

Lies My Teacher Told Me

James Loewen spent two years at the Smithsonian Institute surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American History. What he found was an embarrassing amalgam of bland optimism, blind patriotism, and misinformation pure and simple, weighing in at an average of four-and-a-half pounds and 888 pages.

In response, he has written Lies My Teacher Told Me, in part a telling critique of existing books but, more importantly, a wonderful retelling of American history as it should - and could - be taught to American students.

Beginning with pre-Columbian American history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the My Lai massacre, Loewen supplies the conflict, suspense, unresolved drama, and connection with current-day issues so appallingly missing from textbook accounts.

Justice: September-October

Textbooks in American schools have not treated Italians and Italian-Americans fairly. Unfair treatment takes many forms. In addition to blatant distortions and inaccuracies such as those found in one New York State textbook which indicated that Italian-Americans were in favor of an Axis victory in World War II, there have been many instances of stereotyping ("Mafia" types) and sins of omission. For example, few if any of us learned from our textbooks that John Cabot who discovered the North America continent was Giovanni Caboto. Which of us ever read about Fra Marco di Nizza who discovered Arizona, or Enrico di Tonti who explored the midwest. There are many others.

In order to actually combat this problem, meetings have been held with the Association of American Publishers. The publishers requested that the Commission prepare a set of guidelines which would address the problem.

The CSJ Education Committee completed a set of textbook guidelines on the treatment of Italian-Americans in American history texts. They will be sent to the Association of American Textbook Publishers who will distribute them to the over 50 members of the Association representing the major textbook publishers in the country.

Reviewing the textbook 'America: Pathways to the Present' (2000; Prentice Hall)

In every respect -- in the "big picture" that it paints, the facts that it presents, and the concepts that it teaches -- Prentice Hall's America: Pathways to the Present is unacceptable. Like most of the other American-history books that the major publishers produce for use in public schools, Pathways is essentially a propaganda tract that has been designed to inculcate young students with a particular ideological perspective. In attempting to promote ideological consciousness, Prentice Hall's writers distort and falsify the story of America.

Chapter 1 of Pathways is devoted to the notion that America arose from a blending of Amerindian, West African and European cultures. "In time," the Pathways writers say, "this cultural exchange would form the foundation for a new nation, the United States of America." The writers are repeating a familiar canard that was promoted several years ago in National Standards for United States History, a document produced by a team of left-leaning academics from the University of California at Los Angeles. National Standards for United States History was discredited as soon as it was published [see note 1, below].

What the Pathways writers are teaching is simply false. The American nation was not formed through a "cultural exchange" among people from three continents. Even Marxist historians recognize that the United States -- in language, law, government, philosophy and religion -- is a product of European, mostly British, influences. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the common language that unified America was English. American law was based upon British common law, the overwhelmingly predominant religion was Christianity, the most widely read book was the King James Version of the Holy Bible, the most popular secular author was Shakespeare, and the architecture of public buildings was consistently European.


143 posted on 05/11/2004 8:13:32 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Right Wing Professor
you can't have a society where the average prospects for identifiable groups are hugely different.

If you've accurately represented his argument, he's a pretty weak thinker.

144 posted on 05/11/2004 8:41:26 AM PDT by edsheppa
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To: tpaine; Ronzo
Oops, I was in such a hurry to answer your last challenge (post 143) - I forgot to address the first ones (which were actually challenges to Ronzo’s statements):

To believe naturalism as a correct worldview, you must embrace three logical absurdities:

1) The universe created itself out of nothing.

It's absurd to make this claim about 'naturalists'.

We got into this subject at some length on another thread concerning a sidebar discussion of the 1948 Russell debate Here are some of my views from that thread:

In 1948, it was still strongly believed by most that the universe had no beginning (steady state). Although the Big Bang (inflationary model) had been predicted in the 40's, it wasn't established as the most accepted theory until confirmed by the cosmic background radiation observations in the 60's. Big Bang I wonder what Bertrand Russell's response would have been, had he known... LOL!

There is always a beginning - whether the cosmology is the inflationary theory, imaginary time, many worlds, multi verse, ekpyrotic cosmology, other higher dimensional dynamics or cyclic cosmology.

Without a steady state - infinite opportunity - the plenitude argument (everything that can happen, did) fails. The anthropic principle does not dismiss the fact of a beginning.

Thus, I aver that to believe that "all that there is" arose without causation takes great faith.

A Freeper responded that a large number is as good as infinity (to support the metaphysical naturalist worldview) I responded:

A large number does not infinity make. And none of the cosmologies – including cyclic cosmology – have been able to rationalize infinite “hypertime” (emphasis mine):

In new theory, time never ends

While existing theory states that galaxies and large clusters of galaxies developed from lumps and filaments that formed in the otherwise smooth fabric of space and time shortly after the Big Bang, Steinhardt thinks the seeds of galaxy formation were created by instabilities that arose during the last contraction, before the crunch that led to "our" bang. The new model "turns the conventional picture topsy-turvy," he says.

The cyclic universe has roots in even more complex thoughts like so-called superstring theory, which suggests there are as many as 10 spatial dimensions, not just the three we know of. The seemingly inexplicable physics of a big crunch and a big bang might be explained with the aid of these extra dimensions, which are otherwise invisible to us, several theorists believe.

In fact, Steinhardt, Turok and others proposed last year that our universe might have sprung from the collapse of an extra dimension, an idea they called the Ekpyrotic Universe. The cyclic universe builds on this former work but, Steinhardt says, does a better job explaining observations of our present universe.

Other theorists are not quick to give up their standard model, so the concept of a cyclic universe faces an uphill battle for prominence. Even Steinhardt acknowledges that the prospect of unseating a well established cosmological theory "would seem extremely dim." Meanwhile, the new concept is not free of cracks, either: Even the cyclic universe does not address when the cycles began, so "the problem of explaining the ‘beginning of time’ remains," the researchers say.

My point of course is that a beginning rules out infinity and thus the plenitude argument, that everything that can happen, has. You said:

First, a finite-but-sufficiently-enormous time can contain enough time for practically anything you name, no matter how unlikely, to occur, even if it's not actually infinite.

Time - no matter how great the length of it – as long as it is finite - cannot explain its own cause. That is the point.

Second, I don't see how you get from Russell's comment to "the plenitude argument". His comment does not seem based up on it.

The steady state universe – which was the accepted cosmology at the time Russell made his comments – said that time (and thus, space) was infinite. Thus any scientist or philosopher of that day could effectively appeal to the anthropic principle (“it just is”) because of the plenitude argument (“anything that can happen, has”).

The fact of a beginning, first confirmed by the observations of the cosmic background radiation in the 60’s, destroyed this argument.

Interview with Jastrow

JASTROW: Oh yes, the metaphor there was that we know now that the universe had a beginning, and that all things that exist in this universe-life, planets, stars-can be traced back to that beginning, and it's a curiously theological result to come out of science. The image that I had in my mind as I wrote about this was a group of scientists and astronomers who are climbing up a range of mountain peaks and they come to the highest peak and the very top, and there they meet a band of theologians who have been sitting for centuries waiting for them.

You continue:

And I'm not sure why one can not believe that "all that there is" (which is not the same as "all that there could be") could not arise from natural causation of some sort without needing to invoke the plenitude argument.

The point is that natural causation requires the pre-existence of a nature, at the very least, space/time. Infinite pre-existence (plenitude) is required to appeal to the anthropic principle. But, hey, believe whatever you wish – it’s your life.
The conversation continued, but this is the gist of my response to him and here, to you.

Your challenge to Ronzo continued:

2) Organic matter created itself out of inorganic matter.

Organic matter is made up of inorganic matter. Where is the 'ghost within'?

It is not that simple. That which separates life from non-life is information. H.H. Pattee

But there is another type of subjective feeling about understanding life that motivated Pearson's question, the same, I think, that motivated Lucretius' and von Neumann's questions. It is a feeling of paradox, the same feeling that motivated Bohr, Wigner, Polanyi, the skeptics, and somewhat ironically, the founders of what is now reductionist molecular biology, like Delbrück. They all believed that life follows laws, but from their concept of law, they could not understand why life was so strikingly different from non-life. So I find another way of asking this type of question: What exactly does our view of universal dynamical laws abstract away from life, so that the striking distinctions between the living and the lifeless become obscure and apparently paradoxical?

My first answer is that dynamical language abstracts away the subject side of the epistemic cut. The necessary separation of laws and initial conditions is an explicit principle in physics and has become the basis (and bias) of objectivity in all the sciences. The ideal of physics is to eliminate the subjective observer completely. It turned out that at the quantum level this is a fundamental impossibility, but that has not changed the ideal. Physics largely ignores the exceptional effects of individual (subjective) constraints and boundary conditions and focusses on the general dynamics of laws. This is because constraints are assumed to be reducible to laws (although we know they are not reducible across epistemic cuts) and also because the mathematics of complex constraints is often unmanageable. Philosophers have presented innumerable undecidable metaphysical models about the mind-brain cut, and physicists have presented more precise but still undecidable mathematical models about quantum measurement. But at the primeval level, where it all began, the genotype-phenotype cut is now taken for granted as ordinary chemistry.

My second answer is that if you abstract away the details of how subject and object interact, the "very peculiar range" of sizes and behaviors of the allosteric polymers that connect subject and object, the memory controlled construction of polypeptides, the folding into highly specific enzymes and other functional macromolecules, the many-to-many map of sequences to structures, the self-assembly, and the many conformation dependent controls - in other words, if you ignore the actual physics involved in these molecules that bridge the epistemic cut, then it seems unlikely that you will ever be able to distinguish living organisms by the dynamic laws of "inorganic corpuscles" or from any number of coarse-grained artificial simulations and simulacra of life. Is it not plausible that life was first distinguished from non-living matter, not by some modification of physics, some intricate nonlinear dynamics, or some universal laws of complexity, but by local and unique heteropolymer constraints that exhibit detailed behavior unlike the behavior of any other known forms of matter in the universe?

The question is, where did the information come from or how did it arise from inorganic materials?

Your final challenge to Ronzo:

3) A rational being, man, was created from of a series of non-rational causes

Begging the question. Once #2 is acknowledged as being possible, #3 is rational.

And conversely, once #2 is acknowledged as impossible, #3 fails.

145 posted on 05/11/2004 9:06:40 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
Those are all "pivotal"? Big deal. --

I see your point as just another example of the 'ghost within' position, -- that our nation must acknowledge a religious basis for our constitutional rule of law.

We are guaranteed a Republican form of government. Individual liberty is incompatible with a theocracy.


146 posted on 05/11/2004 9:15:25 AM PDT by tpaine (In their arrogance, a few infinitely shrewd imbeciles attempt to lay down the 'law' for all of us.)
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To: Alamo-Girl
As is typical of your style, you are attempting to inundate me with the volume of your mostly inane cut & paste "answers"..

Thanks but no thanks, - you can do this all day. -- Feel free to imagine you've made your point.
147 posted on 05/11/2004 9:26:28 AM PDT by tpaine (In their arrogance, a few infinitely shrewd imbeciles attempt to lay down the 'law' for all of us.)
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To: tpaine
Thanks but no thanks, - you can do this all day. -- Feel free to imagine you've made your point.

Will do! Thanks for the conversation.

148 posted on 05/11/2004 9:56:36 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: tpaine
My own pathetic experience suggests Nature cannot be compensated for by Nurture. If a kid's born a lazy pr**k, he pretty much stays that way for life.
149 posted on 05/11/2004 10:09:01 AM PDT by Cyber Liberty (© 2003, Ravin' Lunatic since 4/98)
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To: tpaine
While ignoring my rebuttal to you at #125 that I have a 'faith' in the ~fact~ of my conscious minds existence as a physical organ.

Cat got your tongue, or are you once again unable to reply? -- Most of my posts to you on this thread are unanswered.

Why is that? Is this a new ploy where you 'answer' your critics with silence?

Odd game.

Dear tpaine, what is the point of answering? You dismiss virtually anything I say straight out of hand, but never give me a substantive counterargument. You assert, but do not demonstrate.

I flat-out reject your notion that your brain and your consciousness are one and the same thing, and have attempted to show why I have reached that conclusion. Beyond that, what can I do?

I'm not taking a shot at you here. Just making an observation about how our conversations usually go. I don't know what to say to you -- what would you like me to say?

150 posted on 05/11/2004 10:09:05 AM PDT by betty boop (The purpose of marriage is to civilize men, protect women, and raise children. -- William Bennett)
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To: Alamo-Girl
In the larger sense, Western science avoids all supernatural explanations like the plague – even by default, such as in the fact of a beginning applicable across the board in cosmology. Thus, by not making a statement (or by appealing to the anthropic principle) science actually is making a statement – in this case, a statement for metaphysical naturalism and thus, a statement against a Creator God.

I respectfully disagree, in some subtle ways. First (I know I've made this point before), I don't know how many scientists are actually metaphysical naturalists. That is, people who believe that the natural world is all there is, and -- they would firmly declare -- there is literally nothing else. I'm sure such people exist, but that kind of viewpoint is unnecessary for science, and I don't know how anyone could ever demonstrate that such a viewpoint is correct.

However, all scientists are, of necessity, procedural naturalists. That is, their work is limited to observable (or objectively detectable) matter and energy; and their work doesn't involve spirit. The reasons for this exclusion of spiritualism are obvious: we can't perceive spirit in such a way as to be able to measure it, describe it, demonstrate it, etc. So given the strictly limited techniques available to science, spirit is procedurally irrelevant to the work they are doing.

We know that there are many religious scientists. Thus, what you disapprove -- metaphysical naturalism -- isn't a necessity (or a bar) for being involved in science. Good science can be done by a religious person, or by an atheist. Similarly, good science can be done by a man or by a woman. Although statistically I suppose most scientists are men, gender is just as irrelevant as the presence or absence of religion. So I think you're being unnecessarily harsh in your judgment of science for a worldview that isn't (strictly speaking) a part of science.

151 posted on 05/11/2004 10:26:44 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Thank you so very much for your reply!

My statement was worded perhaps a bit too softly to make its point. IOW, it doesn't matter what is in the heart of the scientist or his intent. It is simply this - by not making a statement at all concerning metaphysics (e.g. the answer to question "A" lies beyond observation or measurement) - or by appealing to the anthropic principle (it just is) ... the scientist supports the metaphysical naturalist (atheist) worldview.

Albeit inadvertantly, such failures to clarify (or appeals to the anthropic principle) become fodder for metaphysical naturalist (such as on infidels) view of "reality" and thus their corresponding ideology.

152 posted on 05/11/2004 10:53:13 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: PatrickHenry
"Blue" is something we can objectify. What literally goes on in your mind when you see blue is something experienced only by you, but it can be demonstrated that you're reacting to a very real something. And this kind of objectification is lacking when we are experiencing only the functioning of our own minds.

Yet ideas are very real somethings, Patrick. And they can be "objectified" as words that can be communicated to establish shared meaning. We don't get spectography read-outs; the output we get is language, theories, poetry, etc. Which are empirically real enough.

153 posted on 05/11/2004 10:55:54 AM PDT by betty boop (The purpose of marriage is to civilize men, protect women, and raise children. -- William Bennett)
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To: Alamo-Girl
It is simply this - by not making a statement at all concerning metaphysics (e.g. the answer to question "A" lies beyond observation or measurement) - or by appealing to the anthropic principle (it just is) ... the scientist supports the metaphysical naturalist (atheist) worldview. , such failures to clarify (or appeals to the anthropic principle) become fodder for metaphysical naturalist (such as on infidels) view of "reality" and thus their corresponding ideology.

To literally satisfy your objection, all scientific papers would require a disclaimer of metaphysical naturalism, lest the paper become grist for some atheist mill. ["I'm not claiming that God didn't cause this chemical reaction ..."] I think this is an unrealistic expectation. Science is what it is, not what some people might like to spin it.

154 posted on 05/11/2004 11:05:15 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: betty boop
Yet ideas are very real somethings, Patrick. And they can be "objectified" as words that can be communicated to establish shared meaning. We don't get spectography read-outs; the output we get is language, theories, poetry, etc. Which are empirically real enough.

Yes. But that's not what I'm trying to say. To go back to my Joan of Arc example ... she heard her voices. She acted on what those voices told her. She could have kept a diary and transcribed the content of her conversations with her voices. So the experience she was having (hearing voices) could have been converted into something objective. No problem. Anyone can write about his mental activities, and thus generate something objective. My point was that the voices themselves couldn't be objectified, which is very different from the stimulus that causes us to see blue. Her voices were a purely subjective experience. Only Joan could hear them, so one else could be persuaded by objective evidence that they were more than a delusion. This is the essence of the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity.

155 posted on 05/11/2004 11:13:04 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: betty boop
Dear tpaine, what is the point of answering? You dismiss virtually anything I say straight out of hand, but never give me a substantive counterargument.

How can ANYone make an argument of substance against your own ethereal 'ghost within' assertions?

You assert, but do not demonstrate.

Pot - Kettle. -- As I wrote at #120, and you typically failed to reply.

I flat-out reject your notion that your brain and your consciousness are one and the same thing, and have attempted to show why I have reached that conclusion. Beyond that, what can I do?

How bout admitting that your mystical/unprovable theories, -- ones that men like Pinker are showing to be flawed, -- are not a valid basis for constitutional government?

I'm not taking a shot at you here. Just making an observation about how our conversations usually go. I don't know what to say to you -- what would you like me to say?

If you disagree with my question above, tell me why it is important to you that all citizens of the USA honor your God as the creator of our rights.

156 posted on 05/11/2004 11:26:08 AM PDT by tpaine (In their arrogance, a few infinitely shrewd imbeciles attempt to lay down the 'law' for all of us.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Thank you so much for your reply!

I wish I had more time on the previous response to word everything better, but I was rushing to a dentist appointment. You might think that talking to me is like pulling teeth, but truly I have someone who does exactly that. LOL!

I'm not asking for a disclaimer on everything science publishes. I would venture to say that 90% or more of published material doesn't tap dance on the metaphysical boundary. But when it does, I would rather it included some kind of disclaimer. Math and physics are usually very helpful in doing just that.

157 posted on 05/11/2004 12:10:42 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: tpaine
...tell me why it is important to you that all citizens of the USA honor your God as the creator of our rights.

First of all, tpaine, God is not my God. There is only one God and He is the God of everybody, whether they choose to acknowledge Him or not. Different traditions may speak of Him differently; but still there is but One God.

Second He is the very "Creator" cited by our great "secular saint," Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, as the Source of our inalienable rights of "Life, Liberty, and Happiness" ("happiness" being TJ's translation of John Locke's "property" in the Lockean context of unalienable human rights).

In that document, Jefferson states that our unalienable rights are the GIFTs of the Creator to the human person. Because they are God's gifts to man, they are sacrosanct, meaning that no man or political state can ever have any legitimate right to violate these rights except potentially in punishment of a crime for which an individual has been convicted by a jury of his peers in open court. Whereupon the convicted individual is understood to have "forfeited" his natural rights as the just price to be paid for his criminal behavior.

Knowing the history of our country as you do, I know you are aware that the Founders of our nation, the Framers of our Constitution, received their ideas about the sanctity and inviolability of the rights of the human person, and their ideas of justice, from the Judeo-Christian tradition which formed their characters and intellects.

America is a secular nation, and I do believe she ought to remain that way. I believe in the separation of church and state, the separation of the secular (the "profane") from the "sacred"; that one should "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's."

But our historic values, or national philosophy if you will, at bottom is rooted in the Judeo-Christian (and classical) philosophy that deals with God, man, nature, and society. That philosophy justifies us in resisting collectivist, totalitarian sociopolitical forms. Indeed, these days it is not only the best protection against such anti-human developments; it may be the last protection we have that is still standing (though somewhat wobbily these days, unfortunately).

I'm not here to proselytize or indoctrinate you or anybody else. All I want to do is to point to certain facts about our culture, our society, and our political order -- and then invite you to go look, if you want to.

I'm not here to "tell you what to think" or to "tell you what to believe" -- merely to show you where to look. Then -- you have to look for yourself, and draw your own conclusions.

This is not the deal you get from Professor Pinker. He literally wants to "indoctrinate you" into his theory, to have you accept it as the one and only valid truth about mankind. Or so it seems to me. I explained why I have come to that conclusion in a recent post that you (apparently) had no use for....

The "truth" he wants you to accept is that all a man is, is the neural activity of his brain. There is no "self," no soul, no spirit in man; just chemical and physical reactions. But where have you ever heard our Framers say that unalienble rights inhere in "brains" or in physicochemical reactions?

Thanks for writing, tpaine.

158 posted on 05/11/2004 2:34:55 PM PDT by betty boop (The purpose of marriage is to civilize men, protect women, and raise children. -- William Bennett)
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To: betty boop
I flat-out reject your notion that your brain and your consciousness are one and the same thing, and have attempted to show why I have reached that conclusion. Beyond that, what can I do?

How bout admitting that your mystical/unprovable theories, -- ones that men like Pinker are showing to be flawed, -- are not a valid basis for constitutional government?

I'm not taking a shot at you here. Just making an observation about how our conversations usually go. I don't know what to say to you -- what would you like me to say?

If you disagree with my question above, tell me why it is important to you that all citizens of the USA honor your God as the creator of our rights.

First of all, tpaine, God is not my God. There is only one God and He is the God of everybody, whether they choose to acknowledge Him or not.

Yep, you insist on your vision of God whether I "choose to acknowledge Him or not".

Different traditions may speak of Him differently; but still there is but One God. Second He is the very "Creator" cited by our great "secular saint," Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, as the Source of our inalienable rights of "Life, Liberty, and Happiness" ("happiness" being TJ's translation of John Locke's "property" in the Lockean context of unalienable human rights). In that document, Jefferson states that our unalienable rights are the GIFTs of the Creator to the human person.

Jefferson literally didn't write it that way. You know better, Betty.

Because they are God's gifts to man, they are sacrosanct, meaning that no man or political state can ever have any legitimate right to violate these rights except potentially in punishment of a crime for which an individual has been convicted by a jury of his peers in open court. Whereupon the convicted individual is understood to have "forfeited" his natural rights as the just price to be paid for his criminal behavior. Knowing the history of our country as you do, I know you are aware that the Founders of our nation, the Framers of our Constitution, received their ideas about the sanctity and inviolability of the rights of the human person, and their ideas of justice, from the Judeo-Christian tradition which formed their characters and intellects.

You bet. They also received their ideas on the rights of man and their ideas of justice, from other traditions.

America is a secular nation, and I do believe she ought to remain that way. I believe in the separation of church and state, the separation of the secular (the "profane") from the "sacred"; that one should "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's." But our historic values, or national philosophy if you will, at bottom is rooted in the Judeo-Christian (and classical) philosophy that deals with God, man, nature, and society.

You always reserve that big 'BUT', Betty. Telling.

That philosophy justifies us in resisting collectivist, totalitarian sociopolitical forms. Indeed, these days it is not only the best protection against such anti-human developments; it may be the last protection we have that is still standing (though somewhat wobbily these days, unfortunately). I'm not here to proselytize or indoctrinate you or anybody else. All I want to do is to point to certain facts about our culture, our society, and our political order -- and then invite you to go look, if you want to.
I'm not here to "tell you what to think" or to "tell you what to believe" -- merely to show you where to look. Then -- you have to look for yourself, and draw your own conclusions.

Yet you insist, just above, -- on your vision of God whether I "choose to acknowledge Him or not". -- Confusing message..

This is not the deal you get from Professor Pinker.
He literally wants to "indoctrinate you" into his theory, to have you accept it as the one and only valid truth about mankind. Or so it seems to me.

Your charge is without support, it seems to me. He's just another theorist, who supports his books with the facts as he sees them.

I explained why I have come to that conclusion in a recent post that you (apparently) had no use for....

Because you attacked the man, not his fact based theories.

The "truth" he wants you to accept is that all a man is, is the neural activity of his brain. There is no "self," no soul, no spirit in man; just chemical and physical reactions.

Betty, thats a gross oversimplification of his position, and you haven't even tried to justify your rancor. I'm disappointed in your attitude..

But where have you ever heard our Framers say that unalienble rights inhere in "brains" or in physicochemical reactions?

Seeing they wrote the whole constitution without mentioning that we owe God for our liberty; -- and in fact made it a principle that no religious test shall ~ever~ "be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States"; -- I'll take the framers opinions on the matter over your's Betty.

Thanks for writing.

159 posted on 05/11/2004 5:19:55 PM PDT by tpaine (In their arrogance, a few infinitely shrewd imbeciles attempt to lay down the 'law' for all of us.)
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To: PatrickHenry; Alamo-Girl; marron; Diamond; Ronzo; Heartlander; beckett; cornelis; xzins; MHGinTN
Patrick, I gather you want to know about puzzling, inscrutable Joan -- Jeanne d’Arc, Joan of Arc, Saint Joan of Arc where I come from. What can we say about Joan?

What information we have about Joan consists of a multiplicity of historical accounts of her life, she herself not being available for interviews. Based on this record, we can say that she was a peasant girl, of humble origin and straightened condition, not formally educated, acculturated in the Roman Church. She was also reported to be passionately devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Probably she had little sense of the world outside her own rural community. France was then at war with England. Yet there is no information about what Joan thought regarding this war prior to around age 15, when she got her first public notice. In any case one suspects that a girl of her background and opportunities must have had a pretty limited notion of “country”; the war, if she knew of it at all, was someplace else; and her village was her universe, for all practical purposes.

Then the English attacked her village. By some accounts, Joan lost close kin in what was a concerted attack on civilians.

Then Joan began to hear “voices.” She said she was hearing the Voice of God, directing her to put on armor and go lead armies.

Think about that proposition and what it would require at the practical level. Here you have a mere slip of a girl with absolutely zero knowledge of the art of war, of military strategy and tactics. As a “divinely-designated” general (according to her Voice of God), she would be required to ride a fully armored battle charger – yet in all probability, her only experience with the horse was from the back of a plow, or maybe riding a placid draft animal back to the barn after a hard day’s work in the fields. And weaponry – what training had she had in the state-of-the art implements of her day?

Good grief, Patrick! She was probably some 15 years old, an ignorant “pastoral maid” (euphemism for rude country bumpkin of the female persuasion) – and she goes and arms herself. Eventually she finds an army to lead, with royal support. Against all odds she leads this army from victory to victory in battle, suffering injury in battle, and living to fight another day. When the troops under her command are flagging, she leads the charge personally, thundering ahead, screaming for the others to catch up. And thus inspired, they do. She seems unstoppable, until a treachery of the worst kind – a disgustingly egregious political collusion between Church and State – brought Joan down, got her tried as a witch, and burned alive as a heretic.

What do you think all this means, Patrick?

In the words of Don Imus, that inestimable philosopher of the morning drive-time, "You can't make this stuff up."

Did you want me to validate Joan’s Voice? Or would you prefer I argue that she was certifiably insane, and should have been institutionalized?

I have my own ideas about Saint Joan of Arc, but they are “speculation,” where you seem to want “certainty” -- that is, something that can hold up under empirical test, according to the time-tested and eminently useful methods of the natural sciences.

Good luck. Joan and her “mystery” simply do not live at that level of reality.

Or so it seems to me. FWIW.

While we figure out how to take this analysis/argument/or whatever it is to the next level, may I make an observation? This would be it:

Whether Joan was “crazy” or “sane,” the fact is: She changed history.

Thank you so much for writing, dear Patrick. You ask such penetrating questions. I’m truly grateful for your correspondence.

160 posted on 05/11/2004 6:36:41 PM PDT by betty boop (The purpose of marriage is to civilize men, protect women, and raise children. -- William Bennett)
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