Shunya's Notes

Pinker, the Storyteller

Many evolutionary psychologists, including Steven Pinker, professor at Harvard, claim that our minds at birth are not a blank slate, and further, that evolution has endowed humans with a "moral instinct". In other words, we have evolved an instinct to act often from motives beyond narrow self-interest, and to make value judgments like right/wrong, just/unjust, etc.

This seems reasonable to me. We appear to be a complex mix of nature and nurture. But what is the relationship between our evolutionary programming and our everyday morality? Can a science of the moral instinct explain human morality? Or does the realm of culture and experience muddy up the waters too much?

First of all, it is worth noting that the moral instinct, like other instincts, is only a driving force; it is amoral by itself—just as our instinct for power is distinct from power itself, instinct for storytelling distinct from stories, instinct for sex distinct from sex. Morality comes into play when value is assigned to an act or idea, for e.g., robbing a rich landlord and calling it just, or declaring torture wrong. Our moral instinct, quite unbidden, simply drives us to weigh the impact of an act on others and assign to it a value. (Anthropological data suggests that, in addition to this moral instinct, certain aspects of our morality may also be universal and could be innate.)

Let's compare the moral instinct with another human instinct, say, hunger. When hunger kicks in, it wants to be assuaged. How it is assuaged generally varies by taste—snakes and strawberries could both satisfy, since both are nutritious, chewable, etc. Likewise, the moral instinct can be "assuaged" in multiple ways, a fact evident across space and time in the range of human moralities, which nevertheless share some common ground and bounds. The idea that a science of the moral instinct (or "moral sense") can explain human morality—perhaps even become the basis of a "scientific morality"—seems to me about as persuasive as the idea that a science of hunger can explain "taste". We can learn many facts about hunger, but can they explain the many "tastes" around the world (likewise for the musical instinct)? This simple distinction is often ignored, including, it seems to me, by Pinker, who believes that "much of what makes you you resides in your genome." *

The Relevance of JS Mill

John Stuart Mill, the great liberal thinker of 19th century Britain, is best known for his influential discourses on liberty and utilitarianism. But how relevant is he to our own age? David Marquand opines in the New Statesman.

There is no doubt that Mill was on the right (in other words, left) side in most of the great political battles of his time ... Social democrats of our day have much to learn from some of his less familiar writings. His long review of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, in which he insisted that strong local democracy was a precondition for democracy at the national level and emphasised the need for a diverse civil society, rich in what would now be called "social capital", resonates as powerfully today as it did when he wrote it. His insight that democratic citizenship is a practice, which has to be learned through strenuous activity in small groups, not a chocolate bar to be handed down from on high by a benevolent state, was widely shared in the early labour movement ...

But this, too, is irrelevant to Mill's claim to iconic status. "On Liberty" is the foundation stone of that claim; and despite its captivating panache and emotional force, I can't suppress nagging doubts about its value for the 21st century.

More here.

The Dying of Susan Sontag

David Rieff, the only child of Susan Sontag (essayist, novelist, filmmaker, and activist -- a rather overrated thinker in my estimate), has written a book on his mother's last days, Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir. Here is a review by Mark Greif:

Western thought records a long tradition of morbid interest in how philosophers met their deaths. Memorials, testimonies, and whole Platonic dialogues have been devoted to great thinkers' final hours. That's because, historically, the ability to face mortality with perfect equanimity, and fearlessly hold onto values higher than those of daily life, was considered the greatest part of wisdom. "And is not philosophy a practice of death?" Socrates asked in the Phaedo. It was, of course, a rhetorical question: Socrates drank his hemlock, calmed his disciples, and earned the amazement of posterity -- his death demonstrating how great a philosopher he was. Epicurus, who famously preached the doctrine that death must hold no fear because no person persists past death to suffer from it, proved his consistency by dying happily, drinking wine in a warm bath.

In modern times, too, philosophers' deaths have had great significance -- like that of David Hume, a notorious atheist. Christians across Europe prayed that he would be terrified into a deathbed conversion or betray some tiny hope for immortality. After visiting him in his final hours, however, the famous biographer James Boswell testified that Hume remained wholly consistent to the end, jolly and godless to his last breaths.

In light of this history, David Rieff's slim new memoir of the death of his mother, Susan Sontag, has significance apart from its contributions to two contemporary popular genres, the end-of-life narrative and the personal reflection on the death of a parent. Sontag will be remembered as a philosopher. Rieff chose to bury her in Paris' Montparnasse cemetery, steps from Simone de Beauvoir, and in the posthumous company of Jean-Paul Sartre, Emile Cioran, and Raymond Aron.

More here.

The Politics of God

Perhaps all that unites feminists today is their goal of making the world a better place for women. Approaches diverge from there: from hard-liners, who see all men as complicit in oppressing women, to moderates, who seek incremental changes by working with men. They rarely see eye-to-eye: the former call the latter anti-feminist sell-outs; the latter see the former as extremists damaging to the cause, etc.

The analogy is not exact but a similar dynamic exists in atheist discourse today. In response to 9/11 and the alarming role of evangelical Christianity in US politics, a host of loud atheistic voices have emerged. Most belong to concerned citizens driven by their secular ideals. But they seem united only by their goal of curbing religion in public life; in their approaches, they too range from hard-line to moderate. The former see most religion as noxious, worth getting rid of like the plague; the latter see it as a universal instance of irrational human nature, and only seek to reform and contain its moral excesses. 

Which stripe of atheists do we side with? We can evaluate them based on results (an amorphous exercise). More often, we evaluate them via their assumptions, analysis, and claims. A part of our answer, as always, comes from subjective and often sub-conscious factors: our culture, experiences, psychological makeup. Another part derives from the understanding we consciously gain about the beast -- religion in this case -- relying on a calm analysis of all relevant data available to us, from biology, history, anthropology, etc.

Understanding religion as practiced by the masses is a prerequisite for a sensible response to it. No science can yet prove that without an agreed-upon purpose or goal, secular values are objectively superior to religious ones (same can be said of the values of individualism and capitalism). With different goals, other values become superior. Secular values are a subjective choice some of us have made, a choice we need to convince others of -- others are not obligated to follow us. We need to sell our ideas, and as with all selling, it helps to understand our "target customers." Corporations do this rather well; pomposity, railing at target customers, and calling them irrational or stupid for patronizing a competing product is a sure way to go out of business!

What does religion provide some of us that is so hard to give up? Are some of us innately less predisposed to religiosity (I became an atheist at 13, without any sophisticated reasons)? What is the lure of fundamentalism? Why is it growing now, and why in the richest, most scientifically advanced nation on the planet? What is the link between fundamentalism and terrorism? What drives educated Muslims to blow themselves up, something they didn't do until a few years ago? Why is their ire directed against a nation that swears by another Abrahamic faith, rather than godless China? Is there a correlation between global capitalism and rising religiosity? What ingredients in a recipe can maximize the odds of turning children into responsible, secular adults? What kinds of reforming efforts have worked best in the history of religion? Etc.

Needless to say, people with significant insights are few and far between -- clarity of thought remains counter-cultural in every culture. It is one thing to be a fearless critic, another to be right or wise. Far easier to succumb to easy answers and to hysterically rage at all those who disappoint us so gravely (those "enemies of reason"?). Hardly the best way to show we're not like them.

One writer I've liked for years is Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University. He has written a book called "The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West." Here is a teaser from a long excerpt that should be required reading for everyone interested in religion and politics:

A little more than two centuries ago we began to believe that the West was on a one-way track toward modern secular democracy and that other societies, once placed on that track, would inevitably follow. Though this has not happened, we still maintain our implicit faith in a modernizing process and blame delays on extenuating circumstances like poverty or colonialism. This assumption shapes the way we see political theology, especially in its Islamic form — as an atavism requiring psychological or sociological analysis but not serious intellectual engagement. Islamists, even if they are learned professionals, appear to us primarily as frustrated, irrational representatives of frustrated, irrational societies, nothing more. We live, so to speak, on the other shore. When we observe those on the opposite bank, we are puzzled, since we have only a distant memory of what it was like to think as they do. We all face the same questions of political existence, yet their way of answering them has become alien to us. On one shore, political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption; on the other they are not. And that, as Robert Frost might have put it, makes all the difference.

More here. (Read a book review here.)

On Posthuman Dignity

Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at Oxford, defends posthuman dignity:

Abstract: Positions on the ethics of human enhancement technologies can be (crudely) characterized as ranging from transhumanism to bioconservatism. Transhumanists believe that human enhancement technologies should be made widely available, that individuals should have broad discretion over which of these technologies to apply to themselves, and that parents should normally have the right to choose enhancements for their children-to-be. Bioconservatives (whose ranks include such diverse writers as Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, George Annas, Wesley Smith, Jeremy Rifkin, and Bill McKibben) are generally opposed to the use of technology to modify human nature. A central idea in bioconservativism is that human enhancement technologies will undermine our human dignity. To forestall a slide down the slippery slope towards an ultimately debased ‘posthuman’ state, bioconservatives often argue for broad bans on otherwise promising human enhancements. This paper distinguishes two common fears about the posthuman and argues for the importance of a concept of dignity that is inclusive enough to also apply to many possible posthuman beings. Recognizing the possibility of posthuman dignity undercuts an important objection against human enhancement and removes a distortive double standard from our field of moral vision.

More here.  What do you think: dystopia, utopia, progress, endgame, destiny?

Scheper-Hughes on Liberty

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of social anthropology, wonders if it is natural for human beings to want personal liberty. Or is it a peculiarly Western concern?

Imagine a small clearing in the Ituri forest of Zaire. A band of Mbuti pygmies are returning from a hunt. The women have run ahead of the game nets carried by the men to beat the ground and the bushes, terrifying small animals so that they rush blindly and headlong into the traps. The game, collectively caught, is carefully redistributed at the base camp.

But one of the hunters, wily Cephu, has cheated. Running ahead of the group he captured some of the game before they ran into the nets, and Cephu and his wife enjoyed the advantage of an early meal. Found out, Cephu is punished, told that if he does not wish to behave like a human being, that is, like a Mbuti – he is free to go his own way...alone. In other words, Cephu is banished.

But before two nights pass the hunter crawls back to the base camp, shamefaced and repentant. He has learned the lesson: outside the band there is only the ‘freedom’ of hunger, fear and isolation. Mbuti conceptions of liberty paradoxically imply constraint. Here, liberty means the relative freedom from danger and scarcity through participation in a closed and demanding but reciprocal human community.

More here.

Berlin on Pluralism

Isaiah Berlin, political philosopher and historian of ideas, on pluralism:

I came to the conclusion that there is a plurality of ideals, as there is a plurality of cultures and of temperaments. I am not a relativist; I do not say "I like my coffee with milk and you like it without; I am in favor of kindness and you prefer concentration camps" -- each of us with his own values, which cannot be overcome or integrated. This I believe to be false. But I do believe that there is a plurality of values which men can and do seek, and that these values differ. There is not an infinity of them: the number of human values, of values that I can pursue while maintaining my human semblance, my human character, is finite -- let us say 74, or perhaps 122, or 26, but finite, whatever it may be. And the difference it makes is that if a man pursues one of these values, I, who do not, am able to understand why he pursues it or what it would be like, in his circumstances, for me to be induced to pursue it. Hence the possibility of human understanding.

More here.

Epstein on Secular Humanism

Greg M. Epstein, Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University, on the need for less anti-theism and more humanism:

While atheism is the lack of belief in any god, anti-theism means actively seeking out the worst aspects of faith in god and portraying them as representative of all religion. Anti-theism seeks to shame and embarrass people away from religion, browbeating them about the stupidity of belief in a bellicose god.

Anti-theists are often brilliant scientific thinkers. The ones I know tend to be passionately ethical in their personal lives. And as in the case of Hitchens, they can be ferociously eloquent. So why hasn’t anti-theism ever gained any real political or social power?

More here.

Beyond Belief, 2006

I ran into an exchange that captures my own reaction (esp. via Scott Atran's response) to the very stimulating Beyond Belief conference on science, religion, reason and survival held at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA (read additional views on Edge). I watched the whole event glued to my laptop for two days last year and I strongly recommend it.

Many brand name scientists had struck me then as total yahoos in their view of religion, religious people, and the human condition in general. They included Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, and Sam Harris (the Dick Cheney of the conference, whose ass justly got whipped by many). I saw them as not only unscientific, prejudiced, and ignorant, but also positively dangerous -- they descended into the same metaphysical swamp of fear, intolerance, and unreason that they purportedly criticized, all under the banner of science and truth. It you need illustrations on how even the most brilliant scientists can so readily abandon reason and evidence in matters outside science, get it here.

Fortunately, the conference was saved by Scott Atran and Melvin Konner -- the stars of the event for me -- followed by Susan Neiman, Lawrence Krauss, James Woodward, and Neil Tyson. They either evinced a more nuanced view of religion and human nature backed by empirical data, or proposed a more rational strategy for promoting the "constituency of reason" in the world. By the way, this year's conference has just concluded and the videos will be available online in the days ahead. This year's theme is Enlightenment 2.0 (no kidding!) and I intend to review the conference in some detail.

A Journey to the West

Journey to the West, "China's most beloved novel of religious quest and picaresque adventure," was published in the 1590s in the waning years of the Ming dynasty. The novel's hero, "a mischievous monkey with human traits ... accompanies the monk-hero on his action-filled travels to India in search of Buddhist scripture." * It is "an extended allegory in which ... pilgrims journeying toward India stands for the individual journeying toward enlightenment." * Indeed there aren't many books in which "go west, young man" would be a call to go to India.

The inspiration for this novel was a journey made by a 7th century CE Chinese man, Xuan Zang (or Hieun Tsang). Though raised in a conservative Confucian family near Chang'an (modern Xi'an), Hieun Tsang followed his brother into a Buddhist monastic life (Buddhism had come to China after the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 CE). A precocious boy, he mastered his material so well that he was ordained a full monk when only 20. Disenchanted with the quality of Buddhist texts available to him, he decided to go west to India, to the cradle and thriving center of Buddhism itself. After a year-long journey full of peril and adventure, crossing deserts and mountains, meeting robbers and kings, debating Buddhists on the Silk Road and in Afghanistan (where he saw the Bamiyan Buddhas, recently destroyed by the Taliban), he reached what is now Pakistan.

He spent 17 years in India, traveling, visiting places associated with the Buddha's life, learning Sanskrit, and studying with Buddhist masters, most notably at the famous Nalanda University. His erudition seems to have brought him fame and royal patronage in India when in a religious convocation "in Harsha's capital of Kannauj during the first week of the year 643 ... Hieun Tsang allegedly defeated five hundred Brahmins, Jains, and heterodox Buddhists in spirited debate." *

For his return, he gathered hundreds of Sanskrit texts (sutras), loaded them on pack animals, and set off for Xi'an. Many of them got destroyed en route but he still managed to bring back 657 books. It was the time of the Tang dynasty in China, best known for its cultural effulgence akin to the Guptas of India (not the least because Shunya came into being then :). The Tang were Buddhist and, like the Guptas, major patrons of Buddhism.

Upon his return and for the remaining 19 years of his life, Hieun Tsang worked with a team of linguist monks to translate many of the 657 books and wrote a commentary on them. He also published an account of his travels which is now a precious historical record. He founded the Faxiang school of Buddhism whose ideas live on in the Zen variant. When Buddhism died out in India, its texts lost forever, these translations would become the only version of the Indian originals -- like the many Classical and Hellenistic Greek texts we know only via Arabic translations made during the so-called golden age of Islam in Baghdad.

The Tang emperor, Gaozong, supported Hieun Tsang's enterprise. He even built a pagoda -- now called the Big Goose Pagoda -- to house his translations, many still in use and displayed in a small museum on site. Outside the entrance stands an elegant modern statue of the man. It is said that the emperor canceled all audiences for three days when he heard of his death.

Like Chinese food in India, Buddhism altered its flavor in China. The core ideas of Buddhism were threatening to Confucianism, which, above all, stood for hierarchical relations, social order, respect for authority, orthodox family values, practical success, and ancestor worship; it had evolved no sophisticated reflection on the meaning and purpose of life. The notions of an individual spiritual quest, self-knowledge, and monasticism -- so central to Buddhism -- were quite alien to Confucianism. What therefore arose in China was a "defanged", "Confucianized" Buddhism. And just as an intellectually deficient devotional Hinduism edged out Buddhism in India, Confucianism too would push back Buddhism in China only a few centuries after Hieun Tsang (though it would never disappear as completely as in India).
   

(Note: Xuan Zang is variously spelled Hsüan Tsang, Hiuen Tsang, Xuanzang, Hiouen Thsang, Hsuan Chwang, Hsien-tsang, etc.)