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While I too am no fan of Sarah Palin, Nussbuam’s article about misusing psychological diagnoses to tar people we don’t like is quite a good reminder:
Call it narcissistic diagnosis disorder, a compulsion to dog-ear The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in search of scientific backup for what (back in high school) used to be known colloquially as “thinking you’re so great.” Although the American Psychiatric Association estimates that one percent of the population has NPD, other recent studies have put the figure as high as 10 percent, expanding the DSM’s pincers to include stars both reality and old school; anyone under 25; CEOs and Ponzi schemers; anyone who uses MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter—at times, it seems, anyone who speaks in the first person at all.
Now, I’m not denying that clinical narcissists exist. But perhaps it’s time to call a moratorium on casual use of the phrase, which has become nothing more than a fancy way to diagnose people we don’t like, a long tradition in America. There was borderline-personality disorder in the nineties, applicable to all crazy ex-girlfriends; repression in the seventies, good for anyone who wouldn’t sleep with you; not to mention frigidity in the fifties, the handy label for all women unhappy with marriage or babies. These are moral judgments cloaked in a white lab coat.
Instead, I propose reviving the flat-out insult. Call Palin or Governor Sanford or Perez Hilton whatever you think they are: vapid, a blowhard, a repulsive self-promoter who wraps himself in the rainbow flag. There’s a rich vein of invective we’re neglecting for fake science, with its patina of compassion. (Get help, you egotistical schmuck!)
Don’t use scientific language as a euphemism for an insult when an insult will do just fine.
So this is what happens with people are known some scientific facts, but don’t understand the scientific process. When this happens you get hybrid idiocy based on super strange speculation that appear to be based on scientific fact. This odd one adds: String-theory, time distortion, 2012, Mayan cycles, that the planets are just time locked versions of themselves, etc.
Science is not just aligning facts together and overlaying them on a hodgepodge of ancient cultures doesn’t even really create a coherent message. Perhaps keeping knowledge of ancient cultures in the context of the centuries they were formed would be more respectful and more meaningful. Furthermore the ancient conception of knowledge was different in most cultures.
Martin R at Aardvarcheology gets to this crucial point in a recent blog post:
. . .I’m struck yet again by the difference between knowledge “on good authority” and scientific knowledge. Throughout the European and Islamic Middle Ages, throughout the millennia of Chinese civilisation, ancient texts were preserved and copied largely because they were believed to contain valuable timeless knowledge about the world. In a few cases, like those of Euclid on geometry and Ptolemy on geography and astronomy, this was true to some extent. But in most cases the old authors, like Galen on medicine, did not actually have anything truly useful to say about how the world works. Before the scientific revolution of the 17th century, though, people had no good way to test that. They believed in the best authorities.
The radical proposition at the heart of empirical science is that there are no good authorities. It doesn’t matter what anyone said about the world a hundred or a thousand or five thousand years ago, except in the rare case when someone observed a nova in the 11th century. Observation rules.
I have a slight disagreement with Martin R about the importance of ancient texts–what was said did matter, it just wasn’t probably close to the truth. Nor do I agree with Martin R about the development of science being somehow unique to the time after the 17th century (Ibn Zakariya al-Razi comes to mind). Still Martin R is right that the whole conception of valid knowledge as different prior to the widespread acceptance of scientific methodologies. So the point remains, the entire framework of knowledge from time period to time period is different and mixing the two frameworks is bound to lead to half-cocked theories like the one in the above Youtube video.
Other problems with the above video: the planets he posits as time locked versions of each other are not the same size. Mars is significantly smaller than earth for example.
Prof. Massimo Pigliucci critiqued on transhumanism as stated by Kyle Munkittrick at the Institute for Ethic and Emerging Technologies. Before I discuss Professor Pigliucci’s response, I want to point out that even transhumanists at the IEET have some reservations about the particular framing that Munkittrick makes. I also wish to disclose that I am philosophically aligned with post-humanists, but I understand the various moral arguments that should moderate one’s position on the implications of many of these technologies or possible technologies.
Now Pigliucci does state his own reservations pretty early on:
Transhumanists think of disease, aging and even death as both undesirable and unnecessary, and think that technology will eventually overcome them all. I must confess that — despite being a scientist always fascinated by new technologies (hey, I am writing this on a MacBook Pro, I carry an iPhone with me at all times, and I read books on the Kindle!) — I have always been skeptical of utopias of any kind, not excluding the technological variety.
I too am skeptical of utopias or teleological thinking. Indeed, I often think many people ignore trade-offs in technological developments. I do not, however, think all transhumanist thinking is necessarily Utopian.
Life extension or physical augmentation or genetic alteration may have some severe limitations that we aren’t aware of yet, but does not justify taking a conservative line on developing these technologies or not try to anticipate how these technological changes will affect society. In that I am mostly in line with the IEET’s goals. So framing transhumanism as Utopian may not be fair.
However, the dichotomies that Munkittrick sets out are based on even more unfair framing and Pigliucci points that out:
Munkittrick begins his own response to critics of transhumanism by stating that if anyone has a problem with technology addressing the issues of disease, aging and death then “by this logic no medical intervention or care should be allowed after the age of 30.” This, of course, is a classic logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy.
Munkittrick’s arguments do look fairly rational at first. Munkittrick’s rejection to the morality being useful for the benefit of children seems fairly sound:
The logic here is a double-bind. Children are (primarily) valuable because of aging and death, so curing aging and death would be terrible because it would reduce the value of children. But children are valuable for lots of other reasons, so reducing their value is bad! You can’t have it both ways: either children are only valuable because of aging and death, so curing aging and death removes the need for children OR children are valuable independent of aging and death, meaning curing aging and death will have not have a totalizing impact on how society views children. Of course, I subscribe to the latter and, furthermore, once the survivalist value of children is diminished, then their other values will be brought to attention and heightened.
Yet, Massimo Pigliucci gets to an addressed problem:
There are several problems with the pursuit of immortality, one of which is particularly obvious. If we all live (much, much) longer, we all consume more resources and have more children, leading to even more overpopulation and environmental degradation. Of course, techno-optimists the world over have a ready answer for this: more technology. To quote Munkittrick again: “Malthus didn’t understand that technology improves at an exponential rate, so even though unaided food production is arithmetic, the second Agricultural Revolution allowed us to feed more people by an order of magnitude.” Yes, and how do we explain that more people than ever are starving across the world? Technology does not indefinitely improve exponentially, and it must at some point or another crash against the limits imposed by a finite world. We simply don’t have space, water and other prime materials to feed a forever exponentially increasing population.
This gets to my point about the teleology again: generally any assumption that some is always better because of some sort of goal blinds one to the downsides of an argument. Munkittrick hasn’t really addressed the reason why people fear immortality with the ability to reproduce. Indeed, there may be a reason no life forms of evolved not to die. However, Pigliucci’s arguments are not without some minor elements that I quibble with:
As for post-industrial societies having negative population growth, this is true of only a very few countries, and certainly not of one of the most massively polluting of them all, the United States. It is true that birth rates are dramatically lower in post-industrial countries in general, but this is the result of education not technology per se. It happens when women realize that they can spend their lives doing something other than being perennial baby factories.
As Stewart Brand pointed out, its not just “education” or even “wealth” that lowers birthrates, it strongly correlates to Urbanization. Secondly, the increase in population in the United States is largely from immigration not birth rates and the higher birth rates are generally amongst the lower class, so the framing here is somewhat misleading as population shifts does not add to the worldwide population. Also population density in the US is low, which actually leads to huge inefficiency. Does this invalidity Pigliucci’s point? No. I just don’t know that these points actually really address the rather complicated issues in population and environmental degradation.
Still Pigliucci’s point is well-taken even if I think some of his arguments are not as strong as they could be when you actually break them down:
Technology can surely help us, but it is also (perhaps mostly) a matter of ethical choices: the problem will be seriously addressed only when people abandon the naive and rather dangerous idea that technology can solve all our problems, so that we can continue to indulge in whatever excesses we like.
On this Pigliucci is exactly right: technology is only as good as the morality of the hands directing it, and there is NO REASON to assume that technological innovation will automatically lead to one outcome or another when the innovation’s context are not yet completely known. I have never heard anyone at IEET or H+ contract this.
As a critique of transhumanist searches for immortality, I think Pigliucci is right. As a critique of life extension, I don’t know that we know enough yet to make these definite arguments about the implications but Pigliucci gives us much to think about in a such a short post. As a critique of all of transhumanist thought: I don’t know that Pigliucci’s critique touches enough of it, but as someone attracted to transhumanist thought, Pigliucci does remind me not let optimism override rationality.
Jennifer Ouellette writes a fascinating piece on how science may out pace science fiction. Ouellette article at the Washington Post. For either positive or negative implications of technology aside, it has grown faster than many people can contextualize.
It,however, is not faster than anyone can imagine, and this gets to my hope: if science beats out science fiction, I hope science fiction can catch up to inspire those dreams that lead us to reason. Human innovation is tied to material circumstances as all things are, but lots hope imagination keeps that innovation up.
Another thanks to George D. for introducing me to Jamais Cascio. This is valid point about geo-engineering and why it may be useful. Here’s the link:
Frank McCourt has passed away. I sometimes read his book to remind myself why I continue to teach.
Thanks to George Dvorsky for pointing out this TED talk:
People easily fall into teleologies without even realizing that they are doing it. Early interpreters of Charles Darwin such as H.G Wells and Herbert Spencer who took that view to confirm their own racial, social, and economic views as part of “Progressive” policies. Certain Transhumanists have a positive teleology that we must technologically progress towards a singularity and it will automatically be positive for us. (Note: I believe in most of the goals of transhumanists, but I by no means think this is inevitable). Certain religious naturalists, a term that is confusing even if many would say I belong to that category, have kept positive teleology of moral extension as a guiding principle. Robert Wright goes so far as to posit it as something akin to G-d.
How are these teleologies? Well, let’s start with what working definition of teleology. Now, I actually caution against using dictionaries to arrive at anything beyond a merely normative meaning, but let’s start with Merriam-Websters:
1 a: the study of evidences of design in nature b: a doctrine (as in vitalism) that ends are immanent in nature c: a doctrine explaining phenomena by final causes 2: the fact or character attributed to nature or natural processes of being directed toward an end or shaped by a purpose 3: the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena
So starting from these definitions we can back track. What did teleology mean in its early context? Teleology really stems from Plato’s Phaedo:
Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause from that without which the cause would not be able to act as a cause. It is what the majority appear to do, like people groping in the dark; they call it a cause, thus giving it a name that does not belong to it. That is why one man surrounds the earth with a vortex to make the heavens keep it in place, another makes the air support it like a wide lid. As for their capacity of being in the best place they could possibly be put, this they do not look for, nor do they believe it to have any divine force, but they believe that they will some time discover a stronger and more immortal Atlas to hold everything together more, and they do not believe that the truly good and ‘binding’ binds and holds them together.
I know this may make thus of us who value Plato as one of the primary philosophers a bit nervous: Plato’s implication makes him something akin to one of the first philosophical advocates of creationism/intelligent design. Aristotle rejected the primary creator arguments of Plato, but kept the design element. However, if we look at the layman’s source, Wikipedia, we see this development in teleology:
Hence Plato and Aristotle agreed that all lesser causes were in the service of an ultimate good (for Plato the good of the whole cosmos, for Aristotle the good of each individual living thing) while Democritus and Lucretius were supporters of what is now often called metaphysical naturalism, or accidentalism:
Nature adapts the organ to the function, and not the function to the organ.
– Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium
(On the Parts of Animals)[2]Nothing in the body is made in order that we may use it. What happens to exist is the cause of its use.
– Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
(On the Nature of Things)[3]However, in the Physics Aristotle rejected Plato’s assumption that the universe was created by an Intelligent Designer using eternal Forms as his model. For Aristotle, natural ends are produced by “natures” (principles of change internal to living things), and natures, Aristotle argued, do not deliberate: “It is absurd to suppose that ends are not present because we do not see an agent deliberating.” (Physics 2.8, 199b27-9; see also Physics 2.5-6 where “natures” are contrasted with intelligence) Aristotelian teleology, then, offers us the idea of natural design without a Designer.
So once we have Aristotle taking the explicit theistic designer out of the argument, but kept the purposeful elements. However, we don’t have the “progressive”–take note that I do not mean political progressivism here–elements that I mentioned in the above “secular” teleologies. In Aquinas, we find Aristotle’s teleology made fit into a Christian framework, but since eschatologies of the Abrahamic religion require progressive fulfillment of “G-d’s plan.” Now, we can see that this conflicts with Aristotle’s teleology, but can be reconciled by making the design of the universe “progressively” closer to the revelation. In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas sets this up as follows:
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
Now, it would be too easy to say that since many of the secular thinkers come from Christian cultures, therefore they keep this sort of Christian faith in progress? Or, it could be easy to say that this comes from some innate human trait spanning from evolutionary development? Honestly, I don’t know but I do find similar teleological arguments made in non-Abrahamic religions and philosophies, so it may be the later. The crucial point is people assume the inevitable has some sort of moral design or purpose, one has fallened into a teleological trap.
Obviously, most of human thought has been teleological, but what’s wrong with theology? It generally confuses a current or wished-for trend with design and then deduces that an outcome is the natural or inevitable consequence. It is based on confusing “is” with “ought” or ignoring contrary trends so that the design model fits. Teleologies invite confirmation bias and make certain conclusions “inevitable” to the holders whether or not they are justified.
I believe this is why contrary to what Kenneth Miller and Teilhard de Chardin say in an explicitly religious context about the nature of evolution or the way Robert Wright says about the way “progress works” in his various books about the development of morality, Dennett and Dawkins insist that there is no ultimate purpose to the development of life. Things can develop into rapid complexity without positing intention or inevitability EVEN in a DETERMINISTIC universe. A talk by Dawkins recently gave at the 92nd St Y was released in part by radiolab: There is no purpose to the development of species and probably not to the development of the universe.
So while one cannot discount that there are some laws that somehow dictate progressive “morality” or that some natural element explains all of “moral progress”–we must realize the implications of “progress” here. I am not advocating we stand aloof and reserve all moral judgment, but progress implies a goal. I think imposing a goal or an inevitability unto the development of the universe opens us up to modern cherry-picking and bias confirming that accepting that the world can be beautiful without being designed or purposeful or have any long term goal.
In evolution, its not the fittest who survive in some abstract sense: its the fittest for a specific environment at a specific time. We are not necessarily becoming more “fit” through that process because the various things that create a life environment are so complex as to be currently unknown. So if the context changes, so thus the factors that contributed to the prior “inevitability” and banking solely on something happening because “it is the purpose of reality” for it to do so removes any responsibility from ourselves to do so individually.
