REPORTERS, please post an assignment and a quiz (6+ quiz questions and at least a couple of discussion questions) ASAP prior to your presentation date so we can all add supplemental questions & comments. The assignment can be a reading selection, a YouTube video, a podcast etc.
Pending Chris's questions...
1. What did Dawkins recant from the 1987 1st edition, in 1996?
2. What does he say Darwnism encompasses?
3. How does he say anti-evolutionists are always motivated?
4. Darwin made it possible, Dawkins thinks, to be an intellectually respectable what?
5. Living complexity embodies the very antithesis of what?
6. How does Dawkins distinguish biology from physics, with respect to their respective subjective matter?
DQ
- Do you agree with Dawkins that Hume's critique of Paley's design argument is unsatisfying?
- Is there anything objectionable about reductionism, in the sense that Dawkins defends?
- Is it "infantile" to seek the meaning of your life from someone else?
- How would you account for the different receptions accorded Darwinism and "Einsteinism"?
Pending Chase's questions...
1. Why do the authors consider themselves lucky?
2. What is the "deep mystery" according to Nanrei Kobori?
3. We humans are like a what?
4. What's the "cost of coming of age"?
5. [See below] Human vanity cherishes what absurd notion?
6. The new replicators are not DNA, they're what?
7. What should we try to understand about "a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans"?
6. The new replicators are not DNA, they're what?
7. What should we try to understand about "a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans"?
DQ
- Are modern humans generally all lucky, compared to other species or earlier epochs, with respect to the degree of nurture we've received from our progenitors and predecessors?
- How many generations of your own family history are you familiar with, or even aware of?
- Do you agree with Samuel Butler's view of chickens and eggs? [see below]
- What do you think "the passionate resistance of so many of us" to the idea of being vitally related to all other lifeforms says about humans? Is it something we can grow out of?
“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
==
“…the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.”
==
“Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.”
==
“[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer.”
==
“Many of us have no grasp of quantum theory, or Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity, but this does not in itself lead us to oppose these theories! Darwinism, unlike ‘Einsteinism’, seems to be regarded as fair game for critics with any degree of ignorance.”
==
“[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer.”
==
“Many of us have no grasp of quantum theory, or Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity, but this does not in itself lead us to oppose these theories! Darwinism, unlike ‘Einsteinism’, seems to be regarded as fair game for critics with any degree of ignorance.”
==
“In the case of living machinery, the ‘designer’ is unconscious natural selection, the blind watchmaker.”
More quotes from The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins
"We were very lucky. We were raised by parents who took seriously their responsibility to be strong links in the chain of generations..."
'The hen,' said Samuel Butler, 'is the egg's way of making another egg.' It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. ... The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon--often within hours of spawning--they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic.
They've served their purpose.
Nature is unsentimental.
Death is built in.”
'The hen,' said Samuel Butler, 'is the egg's way of making another egg.' It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. ... The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon--often within hours of spawning--they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic.
They've served their purpose.
Nature is unsentimental.
Death is built in.”
==
“If the Earth were as old as a person, a typical organism would be born, live and die in a sliver of a second. We are fleeting, transitional creatures, snowflakes fallen on the hearth fire.”
==
“We are rendering many species extinct; we may even succeed in destroying ourselves. But this is nothing new for the Earth. Humans would then be just the latest in a long sequence of upstart species that arrive on-stage, make some alterations in the scenery, kill off some of the cast, and then themselves exit stage-left forever. New players appear in the next act. The Earth abides. It has seen all this before.”
==
“Even if we ourselves are not personally scandalized by the notion of other animals as close relatives, even if our age has accommodated to the idea, the passionate resistance of so many of us, in so many epochs and cultures, and by so many distinguished scholars, must say something important about us. What can we learn about ourselves from an apparent error so widespread, propagated by so many leading philosophers and scientists, both ancient and modern, with such assurance and self-satisfaction?
One of several possible answers: A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them--without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. With untroubled consciences, we can render whole species extinct--for our perceived short-term benefit, or even through simple carelessness. Their loss is of little import: Those beings, we tell ourselves, are not like us. An unbridgeable gap has thus a practical role to play beyond the mere stroking of human egos. Darwin's formulation of this answer was: "Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.”
One of several possible answers: A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them--without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. With untroubled consciences, we can render whole species extinct--for our perceived short-term benefit, or even through simple carelessness. Their loss is of little import: Those beings, we tell ourselves, are not like us. An unbridgeable gap has thus a practical role to play beyond the mere stroking of human egos. Darwin's formulation of this answer was: "Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.”
==
“Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.”
==
“So next time you hear a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans, for a moment at least see if you can understand his problem: He is heeding an ancient call that—however dangerous, obsolete, and maladaptive it may be today—once benefitted our species.”
More quotes from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
g'reads
Whenever scientists examine the best way to test a theory, or wonder how scientific models relate to reality, they’re doing philosophy. Via @aeonmag
Following up on last week's discussion of cosmic optimism/pessimism etc.-
MOTHER
(To the doctor)
He's been depressed. All off a sudden,
he can't do anything.
DOCTOR
(Nodding)
Why are you depressed, Alvy?
MOTHER
(Nudging Alvy)
Tell Dr. Flicker.
(Young Alvy sits, his head down. His
mother answers for him)
It's something he read.
DOCTOR
(Puffing on his cigarette and
nodding)
Something he read, huh?
ALVY
(His head still down)
The universe is expanding.
DOCTOR
The universe is expanding?
ALVY
(Looking up at the doctor)
Well, the universe is everything, and if
it's expanding, someday it will break apart
and that would be the end of everything!
Disgusted, his mother looks at him.
MOTHER
(shouting)
What is that your business?
(she turns back to the doctor)
He stopped doing his homework.
ALVY
What's the point?
MOTHER
(Excited, gesturing with her hands)
What has the universe got to do with it?
You're here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not
expanding!
DOCTOR
(Heartily, looking down at Alvy)
It won't be expanding for billions of years
yet, Alvy. And we've gotta try to enjoy
ourselves while we're here. Uh?
Dr. Flicker's right!
And so was William James when he told Henry Adams we don't need to be depressed about cosmic entropy:
Though the ULTIMATE state of the universe may be its ... extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the PENULTIMATE state might be ... a happy and virtuous consciousness. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer."
As Darwin said: "the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."
And that leads me to a question for you: should I offer an MALA version of my Philosophy of Happiness course next summer? Or, a course on peripatetic (walking) philosophy? Or, do you have other suggestions?
==
Playing here with the cloud audio embed feature, since my old podcasting platform ("Opinion") went away...
Playing here with the cloud audio embed feature, since my old podcasting platform ("Opinion") went away...
To follow up on Don's discussion of Dewey, and my closing question about what he might say of democracy and education in our time:
Democracy Is a Habit: Practice It - John Dewey on the culture democracy requires
...Is democracy in the United States really so robust? At the outset of World War II, American philosopher John Dewey cautioned against so easy a conclusion—and the simplistic picture of democratic society that it presumes. In Freedom and Culture (1939), he worried that democracy might succumb to the illusion of stability and endurance in the face of threats to liberty and norms of decency. According to Dewey, we must not believe
that democratic conditions automatically maintain themselves, or that they can be identified with fulfillment of prescriptions laid down in a constitution. Beliefs of this sort merely divert attention from what is going on, just as the patter of the prestidigitator enables him to do things that are not noticed by those whom he is engaged in fooling. For what is actually going on may be the formation of conditions that are hostile to any kind of democratic liberties.
Dewey’s was a warning to be wary not just of bad governance but of a more fundamental deformation of society. “This would be too trite to repeat,” he admits, “were it not that so many persons in the high places of business talk as if they believed or could get others to believe that the observance of formulae that have become ritualistic are effective safeguards of our democratic heritage.”
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