Tuesday, 20th of July, 2004

Here’s an excellent article on/interview with Dan Dennett from the Guardian: The semantic engineer.
On his own website, the author, Andrew Brown, rather charmingly publishes Dennett’s letter to him in response to the article, correcting a number of errors that appear (in true Grauniad fashion) throughout. Since Brown previously wrote The Darwin Wars, a perhaps less-than-bipartisan look at the disputes between the Gould-Lewontin-Rose and the Dawkins-Dennett camps, it’s nice to note that this is a sympathetic and delightful profile of a fascinating man.

I’ve always thought that Gould, Lewontin et al’s main problem with sociobiology, “neo-Darwinism” and so on was due to their far-leftist politics (and note that we can include Chomsky here, who’s more responsible than anyone else for giving a firm evidential basis for the innateness of certain properties of mind, and yet steadfastly refuses to admit to an evolutionary account for them). Upon recently reading the excellent politics chapter in Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate I’m even more convinced. A thorough following-through of the implications of Darwinism seems to challenge the leftist dogma that human nature is infinitely malleable, and admitting that the roots of any behavioural traits can be found in our genes seems intolerably close to the horrors of Nazi eugenics and Social Darwinism for these thinkers…

Relatively recently it’s become clear that Dawkins is firmly on the political left (to the extent of occasionally endorsing some less-palatable stuff, like the boycott of Israeli universities), and Dennett seems to me to be a straightforward liberal of some stripe or other, so I think it’s all the more important that the left takes science of all sorts seriously. Peter Singer’s A Darwinian Left is a great place to start, as is the chapter on politics (and much more) in the Pinker book mentioned above. As a good start to the ideas, you can read Jeremy Stangroom quizzing Pinker in an article linked to in my previous post, and I feel that Dennett’s Freedom Evolves has some helpful pointers in the right direction too.
It’s important that the left and Green movements base themselves in how the world really is rather than utopian idealism about how we wish the world to be. That’s the only way to make progress. A similar note concerning idealism-flying-in-the-face-of-the-facts could be made about free-market libertarians who believe (explicitly or not) in the Invisible Hand that will make everything wonderful if only we take away all those pesky regulations…

In addition, it should be made clear that whilst we have to take the empirical implications of Darwinism seriously (it simply is a fact that we’ve evolved from non-thinking robotic replicators, and our minds are a product of what our brains/bodies do), we are just as obligated to challenge any temptations to draw an ought from that is. Nature may be “red in tooth and claw”, but that doesn’t mean that we must follow suit. Indeed, as Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker and others have pointed out, we are entirely (and uniquely, in the world as we know it) capable of transcending our genetic heritage - by using our minds, dammit. So let’s get to it! I leave you with a great quote from Pinker’s The Language Instinct, found in Dennett’s brilliant Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life:

…the human brain works however it works. Wishing for it to work in some way as a shortcut to justifying some ethical principle undermines both the science and the ethics (for what happens to the principle if scientific facts turns out to go the other way?).

And here’s a review of The Blank Slate in The Nation, with a very similar political perspective to mine.

Phil Doré is a leftist who was part of the Stop The War Coalition in Britain up until shortly after the war actually broke out. In an article at Butterflies and Wheels he explains why he finally left the organisation, and points out the cold hard facts that many of us who still passionately believe in the anti-war position were uneasy about: the extreme-left sloganeering, and the prevalence of irrelevant (to the anti-war movement) anti-Israel/pro-Palestine placards and leaflets at the anti-war rallies, not to mention similar rhetoric from many speakers at those gatherings.

Rather than reading the article, it’s worth perusing his entire site, http://www.stopthecoalition.com/. Whether they’re unreconstructed Stalinists or Trots, or simply apologists for Palestinian terrorism, there are a lot of elements of the movement that make one less than happy to be associated with it, and “Stop the Coalition” is one voice that’s leftist and remains anti-war, without giving in to such extremism.

Of course, “Green Left Weekly”-type socialists (and sadly, plenty of member of the Greens and activist organisations) are well-known for an unquestioning anti-Israel stance that excuses or ignores Palestinian suicide bombings (and other abominations of Islamic fundamentalism) on the basis that an oppressed people can do no wrong… It’s not just right-wing Jews who find this unsettlingly close to anti-Semitism. Indeed it’s not just Jews of any colour (given that I’m *ahem* a left-wing Green atheist Jew), as I’m sure Doré isn’t Jewish, but he has a page on “The Stop The War Coalition and Anti-Semitism”, which details just what kind of people the extreme left (and perhaps even the not-so-extreme left) are willing to align themselves with.
I should point out that, as Doré is meticulous in saying, opposing much of what the state of Israel does is by no means anti-Semitic in itself. That’s the opposite sort of extremism: criticise Israel - at all - and you’re an anti-Semite. It’s a position that I find a significant stumbling-block in the mainstream Jewish community. As Doré outlines depressingly, moderates end up villified by everyone, but we must keep on drawing attention to the appalling acts - and appalling rhetoric - committed by both (all) sides, without ever succumbing to racism and simplistic generalisations about anyone.

And by the way, Doré’s 7-Step Rehab Program for the Stop the War Coalition (extend to Green Left Weekly types, Teachers Federation quasi-intellectuals and so on) is a beautiful thing. Here’s a brief quote from his summing up (which is basically “Support an organisation that’s doing something productive, rather than chanting meaningless slogans like ‘End the Occupation’, why don’t you?”)

It’s my experience that there are social as well as intellectual bonuses to associating yourself with these NGOs. Spend an afternoon campaigning with Oxfam, Amnesty or Actionaid and you generally find yourself working in a well-organised group of intelligent, motivated, broad-minded people. Go to a meeting of the Stop the War Coalition or the SWP instead and you’ll be stuck with a bunch of clapped-out Stalinists, paranoid Trotskyists, mediocre academics, tofu-brained hippies and borderline lunatics.

Too right!
While you’re at Butterflies and Wheels, have a read of this (old but great) interview with Peter Singer, about his fantastic book A Darwinian Left, and many other issues.

Friday, 9th of July, 2004

In the current issue of Scientific American, Michael Shermer’s column is particularly enjoyable. He draws our attention to a new entry into the science-of-religion genre, The Probability of God (Crown Forum, 2003), by Stephen D. Unwin.
In this book the author formulates a Bayseian equation to estimate the probability of God’s existence, iterating it through a number of steps to come up with the result that the probability that God exists is 67%.

Remarkable, hey?
Well he does admit that the particular figures (pretty hazily defined, but let’s generously assume that’s because they’re summarised in a magazine column) are subjectively chosen based on Unwin’s own assessment of the evidence. No kidding! Shermer goes on to demonstrate how it would turn out using his estimates of the quantities:

Indeed, based on my own theory of the evolutionary origins of morality and the sociocultural foundation of religious beliefs and faith, I would begin (as Unwin does) with a 50 percent probability of God’s existence and plug in these figures: recognition of goodness (D = 0.5), existence of moral evil (D = 0.1), existence of natural evil (D = 0.1), intranatural miracles (D = 1), extranatural miracles (D = 0.5), and religious experiences (D = 0.1). I estimate the probability that God exists is 0.02, or 2 percent.

That’s as good a demonstration as any that all “scientific” “proofs” of God’s existence come down to a statement of faith. This one just happens to be a little more honest than most. My own estimate would probably come out as something infinitesimal - whether using Unwin’s Bayseian theory or some kind of natural-language argument; hence my self-description as an atheist. I can’t exactly prove that God doesn’t exist, no more than I can prove that there aren’t little green Martians living on the opposite face of the moon, forever unobservable by us. So what?

Follow this link to read the article.

Tuesday, 6th of July, 2004

Well Ange has finally had a minute or two to do up her first real travel diary blog entry, so head over to AngeLog to read a little about her first couple of days after I left. Hopefully more coming soon!

She’s back in 2 weeks as of this morning, still a while but at least it seems in sight…

Sunday, 4th of July, 2004

John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants (one of my fave bands, although of late they’ve had more misses than hits) is organising a compilation CD called Future Soundtrack for America, featuring a bunch of pretty hig-profile artists (R.E.M., Tom Waits(!), the late Elliot Smith, Death Cab For Cutie, David Byrne, etc), to benefit progressive political organisations MoveOn.org, Music For America and Common Assets among others. The CD will also be available with with a publication of fine literary journal McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern called the Future Dictionary of America.
A definitely partisan venture aimed at mobilising voters against the Bush Administration, it sounds like a great idea. I don’t know whether the profits will do much, distributed among a number of different organisations like this, but hopefully it’ll generate positive publicity.

I’ve always felt that TMBG were on the right wavelength regarding lots of things (heck, one of their best songs from their best album (Flood of course, kids!) is called “Your Racist Friend”), but it’s good to see Flansburgh out there doing something. Just hope this doesn’t turn out like the hugely mobilised failure Howard’s End that Timmy Freedman of the Whitlams organised.

Oh - and speaking of great people doing political stuff, here’s the fabulous “FCC Song” by Monty Python member Eric Idle (download from link page). Warning - lots of lovely swearing at highly-deserving politicians and political organisations… Done in the style of Noel Coward (the Noel Coward from The Meaning of Life, that is).