Dawkins' Atheist Bus

[IdleRich]

"Even better, it's easy to envisage a putative post-apocalyptic world consisting entirely of blind humans (because some esoteric cosmic rays penetrated the eyes of the seeing, turning them into self-cannibalizing zombies who quickly then became extinct), the blind therefore surviving (the 'fittest') through 'natural selection' and having been best 'adapted to their environment', their sightless eyes also surviving through countless subsequent generations as 'redundant' appendages (with a future blind Damien Hirst-wannabe extracting millions of them from volunteers in an 'all seeing' formation for installation exhibiting along with all the other obsolete stuffed-animal junk?), anyone being born with seeing eyes treated as an exotic mutant with a great future career as a circus-act visionary."

Sounds (almost) like The Country of The Blind by HG Wells.

You remind me of one of those Bible-quoting fundamentalists with "But it states clearly here ...",

Well, if we were trying to answer a question about what was explicitly stated in the Bible then I think that would be a fairly reasonable way to go about it. As it is we're arguing about what was explicitly stated by Dawkins so I guess the best thing to do would be to look at what he stated (which was that there is no purpose to evolution). To continue the analogy; as usual you've got it the wrong way round, you were the person who based your argument on what you erroneously believed to be clearly stated in The Bible, I'm just the (non-fundamentalist as it happens) person who pointed out that you seemed to be quoting dogmatically from the Wicked "thou shalt commit adultery" Bible (although without the excuse of actually reading from it which makes it a bit weird).

and not forgetting Bush/Blair's "But I genuinely believe there are WMDs in Iraq"

I love the way this complete non sequitur appears between two (by your standards) relevant sentences like the verbal interjection of a Tourette's sufferer. Just added another element to my image of you.

"if anything is not instantly and self-evidently assimilable into your empiricommonsense, if it might need some further reflection (like placing the quote in context, or understanding how it is possible to 'know' something, while simultaneously disavowing it by believing something else, by believing the contrary), then the optimal response is to simply reject it from all further consideration."

That's a fairly good description of what you've been doing, cheers. Still no answer as to why you do it though.

 

[poetix]

I'm happy to accept "having a representation of some future state which is causally active in the bringing about of that state" as a definition of purposiveness. It may be at a slight distance from common usage but, you know, fuck common usage.

Still, we can have a go at finessing it a bit. Consider a fully deterministic, billiard-balls-in-space model of "the universe", the kind Dennett calls "Laplacean". This model at time T contains all the information needed to predict what the state of the model will be at any future time T' or T''. The final state of the system, at time Tω, is "contained" in the initial state, at time Tα (plus, externally to the system's "contents", whatever laws govern the transitions between its states). There is no gap, in this model, between one system state's "containing a representation of" some future state and entirely causally determining it; consequently, it doesn't seem particularly meaningful to talk about the system as being "purposeful" in any sense.

Remaining within the same kind of system, let the "space" be a two-dimensional grid, the "billiard balls" be strictly binary on/off states of cells in the grid, and the "laws" of the system be those of Conway's Game of Life. Now, there are certain local configurations in this system that will replicate themselves across a series of state transitions, either remaining stably identical, periodically cycling between two or more variants, or "gliding" across the grid so as to be reproduced every few steps as if they had been translated diagonally from their original position. These local patterns have the property that they are "causally active" (within in an overall deterministic causal scheme) in their own replication (although this can always be disrupted by interactions with other parts of the system). To what extent does it make sense to say that the "purpose" of a "glider" in this system is to glide? It certainly has no "choice" about whether to glide or not - its behaviour is totally causally determined - but, at the same time, the "glider" pattern "is" a replicator in a way that the F-pentomino pattern (say) is not. It is less computationally expensive to predict the behaviour of part of the system based on the fiction that "a glider" has a discrete identity and a degree of local causal autonomy than it is to have to compute the entire future state of the system based on its entire current state.

The kind of causal agency we're interested in, when we talk about purposiveness, is indexed to discrete parts of a larger system (which need not be totally deterministic, although it may not matter all that much whether it is or not - a point I think Dennett makes very well in Elbow Room) which have a degree of control over the future state of other discrete parts of that system, usually (but not always) in their immediate proximity. But that's not quite enough: a rock rolling down a hill satisfies those properties (and a "glider" in the Game of Life is arguably more like a rock rolling down a hill than it is like Sisyphus trying to push it back up again). The other attribute that interests us is that of an entity's containing an "image" of a future state that is not simply a set of causal antecedents for that state. The "image" must be "causally active" without simply being determining: it must govern the behaviour of other parts of the entity such that they produce the future state it to which it maps (crucially, there must be a correspondence between the image and the future state, such that changes in the one correlate - ceteris paribus - with changes in the other).

This is where the question of cybernetics, or "governance", comes in. I think "genetic determinism" is a terrible misnomer, because the type of causal activity demonstrated by genes is precisely not that of being a complete set of causal antecedents for the morphology and behaviour of organisms, but rather that of being a "governor" in their reproductive cycle. The twist is that the governer thereby governs its own reproduction; hence Dawkins's "selfish" gene.

For there to be governance (and, moreover, self-replicating governance) in this sense there has to be a both a split and a correlation between "image" (or "representation") and the realized "goal" the image represents - between genotype and phenotype, prepared purpose and achieved execution. The role of "the gene" in this schema is not to act as a purposeful entity in itself, but to be the image of a goal that includes the reproduction of that image (I can't help thinking of Althusser's discussion of ISAs here). For me the most interesting question is how this split/correlation schema arises: how, in matter, does this arrangement come about whereby one material thing "images" another?

 

[poetix]

One problem I think we have with discussing these kinds of phenomena is that there's a sharp division between the kind of language we use to discuss billiard balls knocking into each other, and the kind of language we use to discuss intentional agents going about their business. A lot of physical processes without anything resembling mammalian sentience nevertheless have complex autopoetic characteristics. If we start out talking about them in billiard-ball terms, we run into difficulties which then cause us to flip into talking about them in anthropomorphic terms. Hilarity of various sorts ensues.

 

[josef k.]

It is very odd that Dawkins (not just in this ad campaign, but also in his recent TV series <i>The Genius of Darwin</i> and before that with his book <i>The God Delusion</i>) should have such an obsessive emotional investment in 'exposing' his supposed theological enemies when he long ago amply demonstrated - and demolished - their erroneous arguments by the more rational means of evolutionary theory."

This point seems to me to put the finger on something important = namely, what is the status of a rational demonstration in the face of a mass media noise machine which vastly exceeds it in volume. Dawkins seems to have concluded that reason is not enough - so that one must engage in propaganda as well if one is to win-out in the so-called "marketplace of ideas." But there may well be formal reasons - connected to the problem of what exactly is transmitted by means of argument - for doubting that this strategy could ever be effective.

I feel like a shill for mentioning the New Yorker twice in a row, but there is an interesting line on this topic in a recent Adam Gopnick piece on John Stewart Mill. Gopnick says:

Whatever the subject, Mill surveys the ground, clears it of underbrush, builds a house of straw to demonstrate what a shoddy house looks like, sets it on fire, and in its place builds a house of brick, which he dares you to knock down. The house of brick is, as Victorian brick houses usually were, lacking in grace and lightness and charm, but it still stands. You don’t come away from Mill dazzled, as you do with Ruskin or Carlyle, but you come away with a place to live your life.

[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/10/06/081006crat_atlarge_gopnik?printable=true]

Irrespective of what thinks of the content of Mill's actual theories, this seems an interesting and important stylistic point.

The full text of the ads I've seen reads: "<i>There's probably no God. Now Stop Worrying. And Enjoy Your Life.</i>"

Apart from the consumerist banality of borrowing from a 1970s beer ad (Carlsberg), reducing/replacing long-standing metaphysical and theological concerns to an infantilist 'lifestyle choice', the ad is shamelessly ideological, substituting a humanistic theism for a divine one: slavishly obey the superegoic injunction of contemporary neoliberal capitalism - "NO MATTER WHAT, ENJOY YOURSELF!!! It is your duty to obey this command!"

Can we expect a follow-up campaign? Might I suggest "<i>There's probably no Market God, no Financial System, no Jobs, no Housing, no Future. Now Stop Worrying. And Enjoy Your Life.</i>"

I also used to believe this - that the ideological superstructure was engaged in a systematic and dedicated campaign of trying to convince people to enjoy, enjoy. I am no longer so sure. Individual products, certainly, whether belief systems or consumer electronics like to link their appeals to the possibility of happiness, or fulfillment, or some greater satisfaction ("If you had this, you would be having sex!") but is it really possible to abstract from this, and arrive at the notion that the system as such was interested in convincing you to enjoy stuff? All in all, does it really give a shit?

I note that Milton Friedman, arguably the intellectual architect of neoliberalism, doesn't base the appeal of his theories on the idea of enjoyment, but rather on the purity of information and the transparency of the price system. This is voodoo, of course, but there it is...

 

[Mr. Tea]

(shouldn't you be weeping over your banking shares?)

Haha, I don't think I've ever seen a question as relevant, pertinent and germane as that one. No, really.

in your literal-mindedness, if anything is not instantly and self-evidently assimilable into your empiricommonsense

Clearly, "common sense" is to be despised in favour of rarefied lunacy. I think it's telling, too, that you never used the word 'empirical' outside of the context of insult, usually in such bemusing coinages as "empiricofascist" - could your distaste for comparing ideas with facts stem from your tendency to make statements that are demonstrably false?

all the better to then hurl childish abuse at such nasty interlopers.

Pfft, I think the pot just called the kettle a carrier of the sickle-cell gene...

 

[jambo]

Even here, the function "Eyes see" may also seem dubious in evolutionary terms.

It's accidentally an interesting example for another reason because of course it would be more correct to say that it is not the eyes that do the seeing.

but I think the phrase "eyes see" is fundamentally a rather different kind of statement from "fire burns" or "stars shine", if you see what I mean.

Apart from the statement being more or less inaccurate as regards what it actually is that eyes do, don't you think it's interesting that you should find it appropriate to make a fundamental distinction of this kind? Is the difference really there or is it just that we are accustomed to seeing the presence of an active designing principle at work in some events but not in the others? All of these phenomena emerge as a consequence of the basic laws of the universe, so is this really any different from saying stars are 'designed' to shine and fire is 'designed' to burn as per your examples? The only difference I think is on the order of complexity.

 

[jambo]

This semantics works the other way too: we talk of the design of buildings and cars 'evolving' over time, as new demands are placed on them and new technologies are developed, even though this 'evolution' is occurring through the actions of conscious beings rather than blind natural selection pressures.

Likewise I think you can only really make a distinction like this between the actions of conscious beings and those of 'nature' if there is an assumption that those conscious beings themselves were 'intelligently designed.' I.e. can you really say that a car is 'intelligently designed' if it is designed by a being that is itself entirely the result of 'blind natural selection'?

 

[waffle]

Clearly, "common sense" is to be despised in favour of rarefied lunacy.

To be despised as a dogma, in favour of reason.

I think it's telling, too, that you never used the word 'empirical' outside of the context of insult, usually in such bemusing coinages as "empiricofascist" - could your distaste for comparing ideas with facts stem from your tendency to make statements that are demonstrably false?

It is empiricists who have a "distaste for comparing ideas with facts", as they don't actually believe that 'ideas' exist, much less that they could frequently dictate or construct what the facts might be, only believing instead in directly accessible, self-evident 'facts'.

 

[nomadthethird]

Just because biological organisms reproduce doesn't mean they have to, nor does it mean that this is the ultimate "meaning" (teleologically) of their existence. I'm sorry but I don't think the idea that self-replicating machines self-replicate is some kind of proof that there's a teleological basis for random genetic mutations that accidentally lead to changes in offspring over time.

Joseph K, it's not "the system" that tells you to enjoy things, it's the Superego.

 

[nomadthethird]

This place is so fucking ridiculous.

Why does disagreeing with someone have to be some sort of childish, playground caliber "since you don't believe like me you're crazy" game of "let's see who can get really worked up about people who don't believe the standard line of status quo bullshit".

Doch.

No you are!

Doch.

No you are!

Snore.

 

[Mr. Tea]

All I'm saying is that eyes see (or, if you prefer, allow animals to see) as a result of an adaptive process of selection by fitness - which cannot be said of fire or stars. Of course they've ultimately arisen from the same set of natural laws - I hope it's clear I'm not a supernaturalist - and you may be right that the level of complexity is the main difference here. The emergence of complex systems from a simple set of natural laws is, of course, an absolutely vital concept to the whole of evolutionary theory, genetics and ecology.

Oh, and computer science!

 

[jambo]

Doch.

Put a doch on it.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Put a doch on it.

*high fives*

 

[nomadthethird]

Also, the meaning of teleology is not up for grabs. It has a very specific meaning in philosophy. Telos and logos are the roots, they are both Greek words that have very precise meanings. There is a hundreds of years old tradition of using the term and it's not very difficult to understand what it means. Maybe looking it up would help some of the people here who don't seem to understand what it means.

Just because Dawkins claims that he doesn't believe evolution has a purpose, it does not follow that Dawkins doesn't often use teleologically inflected language to describe evolution as a process. In fact, he does, and often.

 

[nomadthethird]

Clearly, "common sense" is to be despised in favour of rarefied lunacy. I think it's telling, too, that you never used the word 'empirical' outside of the context of insult, usually in such bemusing coinages as "empiricofascist" - could your distaste for comparing ideas with facts stem from your tendency to make statements that are demonstrably false?

Which ideas are "demonstrably false"? Dawkins saying once that he didn't believe evolution has a purpose does not somehow erase or negate all the other times that Dawkins talked about evolution as a sort of self-directed process (which it isn't).

In fact, people often profess one set of beliefs while actually believing something else. It's not so uncommon that a person is blind to their own intellectual limitations or conceptual biases.

 

[waffle]

In fact, people often profess one set of beliefs while actually believing something else. It's not so uncommon that a person is blind to their own intellectual limitations or conceptual biases.

Yes, the 'objectively subjective': without it, capitalism (and commodity fetishism, and , and ... ) wouldn't have a leg, eh, bond, to stand on ...

 

[nomadthethird]

Sorry 3bnp, I'm not sure that'll wash, even if you can point to a technical definition of the word 'purpose' that specifically rules out any idea of intentionality, the fact is that it is still there in the language, that's what is interesting.

As for common definitions of 'purpose', it's quite clear overall:



I suppose you could say that the sense in which it can mean 'with good results' doesn't necessarily imply an intention, but it does suggest a basis for judgement on the quality of results. Hmm...

Teleology does not mean that things have a "purpose" in the simplest sense. Telos in Greek means "end" in the sense of goal, teleology is a term that describes anything that operates with specific ends in mind, with an ultimate goal. In my opinion this sort of process, a teleological one, would have to have consciousness, at least on a nominal level.

I don't believe evolution or the natural world has consciousness of a sort that would make it possible for the natural world to operate according to ultimate goals. Many people do believe this sort of thing. Spinoza, for example, believed that everything is basically made of God as a unifying force sort of like a universal consciousness but not in the sense of a mind. Maybe there's room in there somewhere for believing in the natural world becoming as a sort of teleological process...I guess it's debatable w/r/t Spinoza.

 

[nomadthethird]

Yes, the 'objectively subjective': without it, capitalism (and commodity fetishism, and , and ... ) wouldn't have a leg, eh, bond, to stand on ...

Why is it so threatening to some when others question the veracity of someone's publicly professed beliefs?

I suppose it has something to do with our right to our own subjective truths, sort of like Bill O'Reilly and Catholicism

 

[poetix]

Does the discussion change when we drop the word "ultimate" from in front of the word "goal"? Actually existing goals tend not to be ultimate. Part of what I was trying to suggest in the discussion of the Laplacean system is that if the terminal state is entirely determined by the initial state, there's no room for "purpose" conceived as local governance.

 

[IdleRich]

"Just because Dawkins claims that he doesn't believe evolution has a purpose, it does not follow that Dawkins doesn't often use teleologically inflected language to describe evolution as a process. In fact, he does, and often."

That's as maybe and it would be a different debate, but no-one has provided any example of this.

"In fact, people often profess one set of beliefs while actually believing something else. It's not so uncommon that a person is blind to their own intellectual limitations or conceptual biases."

Yes, very possible, and worth investigating, but that would be quite a different thing from Dawkins explicitly stating that evolution has a purpose.

"Likewise I think you can only really make a distinction like this between the actions of conscious beings and those of 'nature' if there is an assumption that those conscious beings themselves were 'intelligently designed.' I.e. can you really say that a car is 'intelligently designed' if it is designed by a being that is itself entirely the result of 'blind natural selection'?"

Well, that's the big question isn't it? Is it possible for "intelligence" or beings with "purpose" to come into existence where before there weren't such beings? I think that assuming that not to be possible is begging the question isn't it? In other words, what you're saying here is that there can never be a point or sequence of points before which intelligence did not exist and after which it did, and then we're back to the most basic "something can't come from nothing" arguments of religion. Unless you are simply saying that there is no intelligence now and never can be.
Either way, my guess is that most proponents of evolution would say that something which can possess a purpose can arise from "blind natural selection" and that the process by which this occurs is evolution and that is pretty weird. So basically they would say that the car is intelligently designed. Just my guess though.