Richard Dawkins Writes About Human Responsibility In Light of Darwinian Evolution

EDGE -- World Question Center ^ | Richard Dawkins

[SirLinksalot]

Let's all stop beating Basil's car

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give "satisfaction' to the victims of the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as "atonement' for "sin'.

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me).

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

[Quix]

Excellent yet again.

Thanks much.

[betty boop]

Does eternal life remain on this side of eternity?

FWIW, I rather doubt it. What is meant by your term, "this side of eternity," cornelis?

It seems to me eternal life is "with God" (or not with God as the case may be). And God is not to be found as an existent bound by our spatiotemporal order.

[betty boop]

Thank you so much, FreedomProtector, for providing the details of Aquinas' arguments WRT to causation. He, of course, was a student of Aristotle (among other things).

Thank you also for the links to Dr. Craig! Will be visiting them soon.

[betty boop]

Thanks so much for your kind words, Quix!

[FreedomProtector]

But the LORD has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.

Psalm 94:22

You defend the fortress well, Alamo-Girl.

[cornelis]

The question makes sense if we know what the terms mean. If we reserve the concept of eternity belonging strictly to the divine and only divine--and there is some indication that A. Pole is going in that direction with the Greek--then the concept of eternal life as belonging to human beings suggests to us a possible secondary meaning of eternal. For the Platonist, a metaxy is necessary in a universe of plurality.

[metmom]

What is he comparing the universe to when he assumes that there's something wrong with it?

They just don't see it, do they?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

re: "As scientists, we believe..."

Mr. Dawkins needs to go back to college and take a good course in philosophy. Saying "as scientists, we believe" has no logical or sensible meaning even according to his own reductionist scientific materialism.

And there rests the problem with secular humanist dorks like Dawkins: his scientific atheology is not grounded in sound logic and cogent reasoning.

Always amusing to read the latest about the evolving "beliefs" of secular humanists and scientific materialists.

[cornelis]

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour.

When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.

[metmom]

Certainly if God wanted to create multiple universes "with the their own times and spaces or with other way of arranging them," my suspicion is that they would indeed be "unimaginable to us" for we are bound in our own spatiotemporal order. They could be "out there," but for us they would be unknowable -- at least, in this life.

But He did and He even told us about them and they would be unknowable except for divine revelation.

But calling them *heaven* and *hell* will only incur the mockery and disdain of the enlightened scientific elite. Better to call them *alternate universes* or *alternate dimensions* if you are going to believe in others than ours to at least give it the cloak of respectability.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"And yet, why must [genetically modifying non-human organisms by giving them human genes, or creating human-animal chimeras or hybrids] be inevitably immoral?"

Humans are, properly, a different and higher moral class than non-rational animals because we have the kind of consciousness that makes us morally responsible for our actions.

It is impossible for anyone to continuously exhibit the consciousness which makes us at once transcendent and rational and moral, and so we impute rights and responsibilities to others simply because they are like us (others of the same species, others with the same nature.)

If we brought into being quasi-human entitites which might or might not be truly persons, we would have to test each one to see if it (or he or she) were in the human community, or not. And this is impossible, because the required consciousness does not manifest itself unambiguously and continuously. It's not easily or perfectly testable.

The result would be, not to elevate new entitites to the human status, but to destroy the foundation for human identity and dignity, and thus degrade all.

I realize that every sentence I have written could be expanded into a paragraph or a chapter; and that each will be disputed by people who lack either the ability or the inclination to read paragraphs and chapters.

So, here's my shorthand argument: Aldous Huxley ("Brave New World") and C.S. Lewis ("The Abolition of Man") ought to be attended to carefully by anyone who want to think through the new humanism issues (post-, quasi-, and trans-humanism).

It encourages me that Huxley was an agnostic (though "mescaline mystic" or "humanist dystopian" comes closer to his belief); and Lewis a pagan-turned-orthodox-Christian; it makes me think that the pro-human-dignity argument really is universal, ultimately affirmed both by natural law and religious insight.

Excuse my rambling. Nuff said.

[hosepipe]

[ A big bang is just as possible as a Universe that always was. To ask what caused the bang is a good start at forming a hypothesis. ]

True.. The big bang however is a meme of Hinduism... not Judeo-Christian thought..

[FreedomProtector]

The premise of first cause arguments are well supported by observations and mathematical deduction made in 21st century:

The Nobel committee cited their work especially for lending further confirmation of the big bang model, and for refining the age of the universe. The universe has an age because it had a beginning: Thus the universe is not eternal.

Backing up to a point in time where the entropy of the entire universe was 0 (and the corresponding theoritical end "heat death" is a possible final state of the universe, where the entire universe has reached maximum entropy) is another well supported by observations/mathematical deduction made in 21st century which demonstates that the universe had a beginning, as the change in entropy of the entire universe is always positive dS/dt >= 0 if the entire universe is considered an isolated system. Entroy being negative is perhaps more far-fetched then imaginary time.

In the beginning, the entire universe was not an isolated system, it was open as God the first cause of thermodynamic order exported thermodynamic order aross the boundary.

[betty boop]

If we reserve the concept of eternity belonging strictly to the divine and only divine ... then the concept of eternal life as belonging to human beings suggests to us a possible secondary meaning of eternal. For the Platonist, a metaxy is necessary in a universe of plurality.

Thanks for elaborating, cornelis. It appears to me that the metaxy is some sort of juncture (if I might put it that way) between the human being as a work of becoming in time, and his true being in (timeless) Eternity -- an intersection between time and timelessness of which a human being can become aware. Still, this does not put God "in" the spatiotemporal order. Were this to happen, God would be reduced to a work of becoming. Moreover, if God were "in" time and space, then the metaxy would collapse.... (I think maybe Hegel was fiddling with this very idea.)

or so it seems to me. What do you think?

[betty boop]

...calling them *heaven* and *hell* will only incur the mockery and disdain of the enlightened scientific elite. Better to call them *alternate universes* or *alternate dimensions* if you are going to believe in others than ours to at least give it the cloak of respectability.

Interesting, metmom! I hadn't thought of heaven and hell as alternate universes. But it makes sense. And it seems they would be unknowable from our side of the spatiotemporal divide (if i might call it that) except for divine revelation....

Thanks so much for the fascinating suggestion!

[cornelis]

Thank you for your important reply!

[hosepipe]

[ One correction: the Eternity does not mean infinite time. ]

Eternity makes time irrelevant but not timing..
Timing is composed of the moment and is creative..

[hosepipe]

[ if God were "in" time and space, then the metaxy would collapse.... ]

thats Heavy...

[cornelis]

What do you think?

I think that there are several related questions and that they should be kept distinct and treated in some kind of order:

(a) eternity
(b) eternity in space and time (aeon is created)
(c) eternity as a strictly divine property (aeon as uncreated)
(d) eternity as a human property (created or uncreated?
(e) metaxy, or the human participation in divine properties
(f) metaxy, or the divine participation of human properties

I don't think the question for (e) and (f) will yield identical answers. But this is too quick a reply for a big topic. I just wanted to remark on the other meanings of aeon for A. Pole--I'm off now to bring my daughter to her violin lesson.

[hosepipe]

[ I hadn't thought of heaven and hell as alternate universes. ]

even elements of a Spiritual Dimension.. existing in tandem with this one(universe)..