Philosophical Topics
1. What is Life? - Lyn Margulis and Dorion Sagan [A book of
incredible insight in to life. A very appropriate title]
2. What is Sex? - Lyn Margulis and Dorion Sagan [This is not a
book on ordinary sex as most understand it. But an evolutionary
explanation of how sexual reproduction evolved from bacteria to
higher organisms over billions of years and how genders became
separated over time. Lyn Margulis is a distinguished scientist
with hundreds of publication and is affiliated with many Nasa
projects in exobiology. She has original ideas in biology and is
also in touch with Dyson and other physicists about the latest
research in life and evolution. By the way she was married to
Late Carl Sagan. Dorion Sagan is her son]
3. The Selfish gene - Dawkins. (An eye opener, take a gene's eye
view of life)
4. The Blind Watchmaker - Dawkins (Clearly shows how complex life
can evolve from simple through small natural steps)
5. Climbing Mount Improbable - Dawkins (up todate and more convincing
than above)
6. Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative - Christian De Duve(Nobe
laureate) . Written both in a scientific and philosophical way
7. Life's Other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World
- Ian Stewart. Below is a summary of a talk by Ian Stewart with
the same title as the book (On 4/23/98 at the Univ. of Minnesota):
What is life? Why is the world of living creatures so different
from the inorganic world? The discovery of the first secret of
life, the molecular structure of DNA, in the middle of this
century, showed that Life is a form of chemistry - but chemistry
unlike any that ever graced a test tube. Some secrets, however,
lie deeper that the genetic code. It is the mathematical law of
physics and chemistry that control the growing organism's
response to its genetic instructions. That is Life's OTHER Secret.
Its full understanding will come only when we combine the
mathematical and physical sciences with biochemistry, genetics,
and developmental biology. One of the most exciting growth areas
of twenty-first century science will be biomathematics. The next
century will witness an explosion of new mathematical concepts,
of new kinds of mathematics, brought into being by the need to
understand the patterns of the living world.
8. Seven Clues to the Origin of Life : A Scientific Detective
Story - A. G. Cairns-Smith [A pioneer in life's origin.
Originator of the clay theory of Life]
9. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-
organization and Complexity - Stuart Kauffman
10. The Fifth Miracle - Paul Davies (Speculates on life's
possible extraterrestrial origin)
11. Life Itself - Francis Crick(Nobel Laureate)
12. Steps Towards Life : A Perspective on Evolution - Manfred Eigen
(Nobel Laureate)
13. Physics of Immortality - Frank Tipler [An intriguing book that
postulates on the possibility of immortality based on pure physics].
For a review click on: http://niazi.com/resurrec.htm
or http://www.doesgodexist.org/JanFeb96/PhysicsOfImmorality.html
14. Web Link: http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/origlife.html
ON FREE WILL VS. DETERMINISM/PREDESTINATION
Are human actions result of conscious decisions based on free will
or due to a deterministic result of natural causes? This is an age
old question that has been debated for centuries by philosophers and
thinkers. Not surprisingly classical philosophers could never agree
on the answer to this question, just as they could not agree on the
nature vs. nurture question, due to their lack of knowledge about
modern scientific insights on neurology, quantum theory and
the science of complexity. Just as modern science has pretty
much settled the nature vs. nurture debate (Of course that required
a rephrasing of the question to make it scientifically meaningful),
modern science also has settled the dispute about freewill vs.
destiny. The verdict of science and scientists is that there is
no true freewill. Free will is an illusion!. I will try to elaborate
more on this. But the verdict of scientists does not seem to
trickle down to the popular level, majority of whom still believe
that we humans have free will, "we" are in charge of "our" actions,
echoing the view of the religious apologists, who insist that God
has given us free will, so we are accountable to God for what we
do, good or bad, etc. The libertarians also take this lofty view
of humans, crediting humans of an ability of freedom to choose
and act freely. So what is free will? The popular notion of free
will is that it means that that humans have an ability/attribute
external to the physical body of humans, which can control the
action of the human (via the brain) and choose between alternatives.
The ultimate implication is that free will is due to an agent uncaused
by natural laws, i.e not subject to the natural laws. Astute readers
will not miss the implication of this that this is nothing but the
old ghost in the machine idea, the idea of a "soul" directing
the body and action of a human from outside the body. So the
free will is ultimately attributed to the soul, which humans
refer to as "we", "me", etc. This illusion results from the
first person perspective. When a third person perspective is
taken of humans then it is the causal link between natural laws
(Acting on the billions of neurons) and human actions that is
seen and observed as obvious, and the illusion goes away. In the
free will view, human soul/self is viewed as an autonomous
entity, not caused by any natural laws, so it is endowed with
the ability to do anything not determined by natural laws. But
in the modern neuroscientific paradigm, where human actions are
seen as the sole result of natural laws acting on the human
brain, there is be no free will, there is no soul either, the
supposed provenance of free will. Modern neuroscience has driven
this long held human perception and belief to extinction. Just
as Nietsze declared centuries ago that God is dead, Tom Wolfe,
the author of the bestselling fiction "Bonfire of the Vanities"
declares in his essay "Sorry your Soul just died" :
(http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articlesprint/WolfeSoulDiedP.htm)
"Eventually, as brain imaging is refined, the picture may
become as clear and complete as those see-through exhibitions,
at auto shows, of the inner workings of the internal
combustion engine. At that point it may become obvious to
everyone that all we are looking at is a piece of machinery,
an analog chemical computer, that processes information from
the environment. "All," since you can look and look and you
will not find any ghostly self inside, or any mind, or any
soul."
The Time magazine, in its annual special feature on Mind and
Body on January 20, 2003 issue begins with this: "Mind and body,
psychologists and neurologists now agree, aren't that different .
. .. The thoughts and emotions that seem to color our reality
are the result of complex electrochemical interactions within
and between nerve cells....The mind is like the rest of the
body...."
Neuroscience also reveals that the self, which defines who we
are, lies in the synaptic connections (neural pathways) of the
neurons of the brain. Each individual brain has its own
distinctive synaptic connections (which is also ever evolving),
which imparts the distinctive self and the awareness of the self
that all humans possess. This is the basis of the book by
renowned neurologist Joseph Ledoux titled "The Synaptic Self:
How our brains become who we are".
Neuroscientist Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee in their book
"Phantoms of the Brain, page-256 writes: "our sense of having a
private, non-material soul ‘watching the world’ is really an
illusion".
A similar view is expressed by Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel
M. Wegner. He suggests that modern neuroscience reveals a
commonsense physicalism that the brain conducts business on its
own. It doesn’t need a further, non-physical agent to
orchestrate the immensely complex operations that constitute
awareness, cognition, and control of behavior. In his book,
"The Illusion of Conscious Will," he says that free will is a
feeling — merely a feeling of control over our actions. When we
think, that we are going to get up now," and when we do it a
moment later, we credit that feeling with having been the
instigating cause. But as is well known, correlation does not
equal causation."
Dr. Wegner debunks the free will myth using the example of
hypnosis, ouija board, dowsing etc. If truly there was free will
agent ouside the brain conrolling it, such examples of losing
conscious control of one's will would not make sense. He also
cites Psychologist Benjamin Libet's classic discovery thet our
conscious awarness of a willed act actually is preceded by the
act itself!
Human body or brain, are the products of natural laws (via the
process of evolution, dictated by the laws of Physics ultimately).
So a belief in freewill inevitably reduces to a belief in soul,
which is external to the natural laws and not bound by it. Many
secular humanists, who may brag about their rational mind
dismissing the idea of God and Soul, unwittingly betray their
belief in soul when they insist on the existence of a true human
free will. Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy, psychology,
and brain sciences at Duke University in his book, "The Problem
of the Soul: Two Visions of the Mind and How to Reconcile Them"
makes a strong and uncompromising criticism of both secular and
religious beliefs supporting their underlying notion of soul.
Flanagan blames this widespread erroneous belief on Descartes
He argues that the brain and its supporting nervous system seem
quite capable of doing all that the soul traditionally is credited
with.
So is there no free will at all?, one may ask in desperation.
Well, it is more a semantic question. As I mentioned earlier, in
the first person perspective, all humans are aware of a "feeling"
of being in control, of their brain, of their body, and thus of
any actions that results therefrom. So if free will is defined
as that feeling of being in control, then it trivially exists. I
must also add that this "feeling" itself is hardwired in humans
through evolution, i.e is also naturally caused. But free will
truly does not exist in the sense of any force or power
independent of the causal laws of nature. So why is it that the
verdict from science about the absence of true free will does
not seem to percolate to the ordinary mass? I can think of two
reasons. First of all only those scientific truths seem to catch
on that either have utilitarian values, like Superconductivity,
photoelctric effect, or are appealing to the human imaginations,
like the ideas of Quatntum uncertainty, relativity (both of
these also have utilitarian implications asw ell), black holes,
time warp etc. Any truth which is unapealing, or even seems to
be dangerous, would not only be not publicized enough by
scientists, but would also not be heeded to by the non-
scientific community. The non-existence of free will falls into
this latter category, just as the truth that human behavior is
largely genetically determined, and only partly environmentally
determined (even the environmental component is ultimately
genetically determined, since environment itself is created by
the propensities in human mind/brain, which is genetically
determined). If humans believed that they don't have freewill,
that they are robots then a chaos would result, the entire
fabric of morality in society would fall apart etc. Just as
evolution doesn't favour that all humans tell the truth, or that
all of them lie, it may very well be that evolution doesn't
favour that all humans realize and find out the unpleasant
truths. So it will not be surprising that many humans will
continue to believe in free will despite overwhelming evidence
to the contrary from science.
As philosopher Saul Smilansky argues in his chapter on "Free
Will, Fundamental Dualism, and the Centrality of Illusion" in
Robert Kane’s The Oxford Handbook on Free Will, that "although
we don’t have free will in the traditional libertarian, contra-
causal sense, a widespread appreciation of this truth would
constitute a dire threat to our moral commitments and practices.
Disbelief in such free will is a literally dangerous idea of the
second category. In order to protect our moral virtues, it's
better to have the false belief that we have free will."
As I argued above, belief in free will that is external to
the human brain is equivalent to belief in soul. Now it is
also the case that proponents of free will use the existence of
free will to justify accountability and personal responsibilty.
There is a fallacy in this view. The very insistence on the
existence of free will posits that the "self" controls the body
and brain, not the other way around, i.e the "self/soul"
is responsible for the free will. But invariably the consequence
of one's conduct is an effect on the body or brain(mind) of the
person (penalty in the form of fine, imprisonment, rebuke etc).
Now the "soul/self" is claimed to be beyond the human body and
brain, external to it, and is the ultimate agent for the action
of the human body and brain. The immediate consequence of this
view is that soul/self is not affected by any effects on the
body or brain. Then the question is how does this punitive
action on the body/brain can be meaningfully justified as
being a deterrentagainst an act supposedly the self/soul is
responsible for? If the punitive acts affects only the body and
brain, then the notion of self/soul is redundant as the raison
de etre for moral responsibility and accounatbility. Therein
lies the paradox of free will vs. moral responsibility.
So far I have been referring to the notion of free will in the
sense that human acts and decisions are not controlled by the
brain due to the causal laws of nature, but by an external
self/soul. In the scientific view, free will is defined as
an act that is not deterministically predicatble from natural
laws. In this sense the decay of a radioactive nuclues is an
act of free will by the nucleus. The ultimate example of free
will is the creation of the entire universe by a random vacuum
fluctuation.
It is known that at the Quantum level (microscopic world)
exact outcome of microscopic events are unpredictable.
That fact has prompted some to argue that since human brain
is ultimately composed of microscopic particles, hence human
brains also act non-deterministically like quantum events.
But the claim that human brain (Which is macroscopic) simply
amplifies the randomness at the microscopic level is debatable.
First of all, Quantum Mechanics itself is not a completely
non-deterministic law. That would imply a total lawless world.
Rather Quantum mechanics is a deterministic law that assigns
*precise* probabilities to quantum events at the microscopic
level. Let me digress a bit and clarify a common misperception
about Qunatum Mechanics. The perception is that Quantum
Mechanics implies that events at Quantum level are random,
unpredictable. But that is not what Quantum mechanics says,
rather Quantum mechanics acknowledges the unpredictability at
the Quantum level as a given fact of nature (i.e an axiom),
and assigns precise probabilitites to specific quantum events.
It is the assignment of these probabilities that is success
of Quantum Mechanics. Heisenberg's undertainty principle
only refers to the relative uncertainty between conjugate
varibales in a precise quantitative way. But Quantum Mechanics
does not itself from its own principle derive the fact that
individual microscopic events are random and unpredicatble. This
is a fact that we have to accept as given in nature and is borne
out by observations. Anyway getting back to the main point,
at the macroscopic level, when the number of particles
are large, the average behaviour of the aggregate, which we
observe, is actually a deterministic event, even though the
individual behaviour of particles in the aggregate are non-
determinsitic. Hence the brain, which is composed of billions
of neurons, where each neuron itself is a composite structure
may not be quite random in its action. The microtubules in
the neuron are claimed to be the quantum components of the
neuron. But that is not a settled fact yet. But one must be
reminded that even if brain turns out to be a quantum system
(thus random), in the absence of a soul, it still cannot
justify moral responsibilty of individuals, because in that
case a human (body or brain) still has no control of the
action of their brain either, since that is purely a matter
of random act due to quantum uncertainty.
Although the claim that brain is a Quantum system is debatable,
one thing that is not so debatable is that the brain is a
chaotic system, because it is a thermodynamic system in far from
equilibrium, and is composed of large number of particles. Such
systems always show inherent chaotic behaviour and thus
unpredictability. Even indivodual neurons are themselves complex
enough to be chaotic. In their book "Are we hardiwred?", authors
Clark and Grunstein says a single neuron may receive information
from a thousand or more other neurons, each of which was itself
impacted by a hundred or a thousand inputs in a feedback loop.
This massive complexity of the brain’s systems can produce
alterations whose impact on behavior would be as unpredictable
as the pathway of the hypothetical boulder down a mountainside.
But I still have to remind ourselevs that chaotic unpredictability
does not imply a true indeterminism, because chaotic systems still
obey the deterministic laws. It is the impossibility to enumerate
the almost infinite set of variables that makes the behaviour
of chaotic systems unpredictable, thereby making them practically
indistinguishable from truly non-deterministic systems.
Now let me go on to some simple nuts and bolts example to illustrate
the illusion of free will.
For example we hear often people saying that if you follow steps
1 through n, an intended result can be achieved. (Example studying
hard will yield good grades in an exam etc). There is no debate
on that. So why don't all achieve their desired objective even
though they all know the steps needed for this? Some decide to
follow the steps with firm resolve and achieve it, where others
are not as resolute and choose not to follow them with tenacity.
This temperamental difference between these two kinds of people
are inherently due to the difference in their genetic makeup,
causing one group to succeed and the others not to. In other
words it is a matter of destiny that some people are the way
they are. The brain of a human cannot alter its genetic makeup
or its environment, both of which determine it's behaviour. Lets
say you come to a point in life where you have to make a choice
of either 'A' or 'B', and your life can potentially take a
completely different turn depending on which choice you make.
You consider all the other factors available to you, along with
the long term memory in the brain as input data and make the
best choice for you. Here you made the choice with your "free
will power" and thus shaped your future life but the input data
on which you based your choice may not be all under "your"
control (i.e your brain). Even leaving aside the input data, the
choice made could be solely due to your genetic propensity,
which is hardwired. Let us imagine a scenario where you advised "
A" to make a certain momentous choice that you are quite sure is
the right one through some objective assessment. But A, even
though convinced by the objectivity of your assessment, picks
another option, not because he/she assessed your advice
carefully and concluded that you were wrong, but because of
certain instinctive impulse he/she feels inside which impels him/
her to take a different route. At the end it turned out that he/
she was wrong and regretted not having followed your advice.
This is a case where the "choice" was definitely made by A, the
choice being not to follow your advice but go with his gut
instinct. But A didn't chose to be a person of the type to be
driven by instinct and not by objective consideration, That
trait is inherent in his/her, leading to a certain destiny. In
other words the choice of taking a certain route is in turn
dictated by certain attribute which is not a choice by conscious
control. So no choice is ultimately self-caused.
Another example is that we all know if a blood pressure patient
eats salt, or a diabetic patient eats sugar etc then that will
speed up their death. Even knowing this, some defy these rules
and invite early death, whereas others are very particular in
following proper rules and thus live a longer life. These two
sets of people have very different mind/personality which is
inherited by birth (genetic code) and which causes them to act
or make choices in a certain way that affects their life and
future accordingly. So, ultimately the the decision one takes,
being controlled by the chaotic brain with a host of
environmental factors together with the historic contingencies
which are imprinted in the long term memory of the brain,
there is no basis of any human to act in a way that is not
caused inevitably by the natural laws acting on the brain itself.
So true free will does not exist. As mentioned earlier, believing
in Free will is a subjective perception or feeling for those who
believe in it. This feeling or perception remains until an action
is chosen and performed. Once the act is chosen and committed,
and if the act yields a significant positive or negative result,
the same act committed may seem to them as the inevitable result
of destiny in retrospect, i.e an act of free will in past may
appear to be a result of fate in retrospect, of course in these
cases the fate would also appear to be determined by some cosmic
force!, not by natural(material) causes.
While in the context of fate or destiny it may be wort
mentioning a popular but fallacious view about causality. Quite
often people who may or may not believe in predestination make
the statement "Thanks God you were/I was not in the flight"
after hearing the news of a plane crash in which he/she or
someone they know were supposed to be on, but cancelled for
some reason. By this they are implying that IF they were on
that flight, the plane would have still crashed. A close
examination of this would reveal an inconsistency of thoughts
or logic. Lets say the person in question is "A" and the flight
is called "X". there are four possible events:
1. A was in flight X and X crashed
2. A was not in flight X and X crashed
3. A was in flight X and X didn't crash
4. A was not in flight X and X didn't crash
Now in the above example case "2" happened and the opinion by A
or his/her friends was that if "2" didn't happen then only "1"
can happen and not "3" Now there is no logical reason to think
that way. The world just happened to end up in 2 because of the
infinite sequence of cause and effect at play. A different
sequence of infinite cause and effect relationship may have led
to any other events, like event 3. Event "2"'s not happenning
does not imply that only event "1" can happen. We have no basis
of making predictions about event 1, on the basis of event 2's
happenning. These two events can be linked only if everything in
the world is identical except A being or not being in a flight.
But once A is in the flight then that implies a different world
with its different cause and effect factor (an example would be
the total number of passenger, weight or load distribution on
the plane is differnt now, not to mention a host of differrnt
factors that led to A's being in X in the first place) than the
world where A was not in flight X. So we cannot make any
conclusion about the world with A in flight "X" based on the
knowledge about the world in which A was not in "X". That would
in effect be a case of predicting future, fortune telling. This
kind of statement like "IF "A" had been in flight "X", THEN A
would have been killed in the crash of flight "X", is called a
counter-factual statement in logic and is a meaningless one from
a rational standpoint, because it assumes a condition which can
never be tested, since we cannot go back in past and change a
past event to test the validity of the conclusion regarding a
future event. So such counterfactuals reflect a poor sense of
the both logic and reality.
7=========
SUBJECTIVITY IN ARTS
Artistic appreciation for many seem to be a result of extrinsic
factors, like influence of popularity, constant exposure to a widely
availabile and plugged art form, an urge to go with the going fad
or style, culturally inherited bias among many others. For few is it
due to a genuine desire to discover and appreciate the intrinsic
quality of the art, e.g by listening or reading all genre of music or
literature and selecting favourites discriminately as the ones that
appeal to their unique subjective criteria. Some do have a strong
individual sense of like and dislike which they use as a guide in
selecting art of their choice for their own pleasure irrespective
of how it is perceived by the vast majority. For most others this
intrinsic individual sense of like or dislike is absent or is so
weak that it is often succumbs to extrinsic factors mentioned above
and is primarily deteremined by them. This is what is known as
the "meme" factor, originally introduced by Sociobiologist Dawkins
(Elaborately discussed in Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine").
This meme effect can get so powerful that one loses the
discriminating ability of a true art connoisseur and blindly loves
ANY work of an artist and cannot discriminate between individual
pieces of work of that artist according to any subjective criteria,
nor do they care to. The artist to such a fan becomes a cult, a fad,
fashion, a symbol of prestige. And for them the liking for arts seem
to develop by broad categories like Classical, Jazz, Rock, Tagore
Songs for music. Or Science Fiction, Adventure, Romance etc for
literature, and they would like anything under those broad
categories with no exception. Although there may be variation
of intensity in the liking within a category but it would still
be a like, not a dislike. We can call art fans of these types
type "A" fans (fans subject to the meme effect). For a few
discriminating art connoisseurs this likes or dislikes may not
be defined by these broad categories but by certain individual
subjective criteria specific to each person. For them it is
possible that they may like some elements of art within a given
category but may find no appeal in some other elements inside
the same broad category, i.e their perception of nuances within
a category causes their interest in it to range from like to
dislike. We can call these minority art fans (not subject to meme
effect) as type "B" fans. It is observed quite
often that when someone,say "X", states his or her interest in
some art form of a certain category, others invariably assume
them as being a type-A art entusiast. The possibility of him/her
being a type "B" art enthusiast usually does not occur to them.
This is evident from their gifts to X of books, tapes, invitations
to concerts or recitals etc by ANY artists in that category, not
considering the possibility that X may be a type-B fan and may not
like that particular book, CD or artist in that category. This is
not to belittle or question the good intent behind suh gifts and
invitations, but to caution against any disappointment in finding
that "X" does not have any interest in the gift or in the invitation.
A further narrowing down of "X"'s interest by asking could have could
have averted this disappointment. But it will be wrong to conclude
from this lack of interest in a specific book, song, or concert under
that category, that X does not have any interest in that category at
all, since a type-B art enthusiast, interest and tastes are based not
just on broad category, but subkective criteria, and it is quite
possible X may be ver interested in another artwork in that category
The question of greatness and liking in art is purely a
subjective one. It is hard to come up with a universally
acceptable objective criteria to judge artistic greatness. Volume,
popularity (public raving), consensus of the critics are usually
the common criteria. The market usually decides what is great(est).
Public tastes are moldable by various extrinsic factor. But the
criteria for an individual's liking or disliking of an art(ist) is
purely subjective, unique to that individual for a type-B art
afficionado. But whatever that unique subjective criteria is, it
is certain that not ALL work of a given
artist or genre will be equally appealing to anyone, certainly
not to a type B fan. The fact is that famous musicians, poets,
novelists etc who have created volumes of artwork are bound
to create quite a few which are inferior in quality under any
subjective criteria. Not all their works can be equally evocative
to a discerning taste. Discrimination and selectivity is an
essential mark of type-B connoisseurs. Under some subjective criteria,
it is quite possible, that a specific artist or a piece of work by
specific artist "X" can appeal more than another artist, a specific piece
of work by another artist "Y". Although by the criteria of volume,
public raving or concensus of critics, "Y" may be much greater than "X"
(or their specific works), for example to a typeA art enthusiast.
Of course using some objective criteria, like volumes printed, number
of copies sold, critics' verdict, etc one can decide the greatest,
but such criteria cannot have any meaning to a type-B fan. To him/her
liking or dislike is internal, intrinsic, not influenced by polls,
numbers and statistics or any other extrinsic factors, objective they
may be.
Now coming back to the issue of greatness in art. How is it decided,
in case of an individual artist? If greatness of an artist is assesed
retroactively by the award of say Nobel prize, sure he is great by such
defintion. If assesed by the number of works, then also he/she may be
But all these are post hoc criteria, volume and popularity resulted
from the perceptuion of greatness. That leaves the question begging as
to what is greatness ? We have a circularity here. Greatness is defined
as that which leads to volume and popularity, whereas popularity and
volume itself results from greatness. There has to be some APRIORI
intrinsic criteria of greatness to break this circularity. There
ISN'T ANY! Art is inherently intuitive, subjective. Of course to an
individual, although the appeal is subjective, there can be deeper
objective factors deciding his/her tastes, like certain distinctive
imageries and metaphors to describe nature, human emotions, certain
choice of expressions, certain notes or chords or riffs (in songs),
etc (in other words, artistic styles). But these are not possible to
quantify and written down as criteria of greatness for ALL to agree
on. Such subjective criteria is appropriate for deciding greatness
at an individual level to a type-B fans. Even though there may be
many type-A art fans agreeing on the greatness of an artist, but that
agreement is a result of meme (i.e extrinsic influences), thay cannot
still write down subjective crirteria for each of them and prove that
all their criteria agree with one other.
Now good and bad in arts being subjective, use of such label is
improper and meaningless. Despite that people are seen to rave
about authors, stories, movies, music etc saying they are "great"
"outstanding" etc (Without qualifying it by "TO ME"). As indicated,
If these attributes of "great", "outstanding" etc are defined by the
"volume" and publicity of these works then it IS OBJECTIVE. If it is
due to their "quality" then it IS a SUBJECTIVE judgement and hence
requires an implicit "TO ME". Even in the case where "greatness' etc is
decided by fame and publicity one has to look carefully into how
this fame or publicity came about. If it came about by independent
AND simultaneous reading and judgement of their work by large number
of people then there will be some authenticity to it. But in many cases
it happens by an iterative reinforcement or snowball effect
whereby more and more people hear or read ABOUT the "fabulous" work of
an artist and are purely led to believe in the greatness of an artwork
or artists by this sheer publicity rather than by judging by
themselves it's intrinsic appeal (TO THEM) and they themselves then
act as a further propagator of this fame and adds to this publicity
by reinforcing it further (The ubiquitous meme effect). That is not
to say that the artists would not have appealed to them had they
not heard about its "greatness". But it is also possible the work
of someone not so famous may have appealed equally or more in the
absence of the meme effect which acts as an extrinsic agent of
influence and either completely forfeits or significantly impair one's
intrinsic faculty of judging likes and dislikes. If "X" mentions
to "Y" a line of a poem, a quote or precept, of a "famous" person
but claiming to be his/her own and if "Y" is not familiar with that
line or quote, then there is a good chance "Y" may not quite be
impressed by it, whereas if "X" had quoted it as being of a famous
person, then "Y" would immediately show an appreciative nod of
approval, an amen! The same is true about motivational speakers,
celebrities. When they address an admiring audience, all agog in
in hearing the speaker. The most trivially true statements seem to
create much more sense of awe on the audience than it would have
been, if told by some one ordinary without mentioning that they
were quoting those celebrities.
Interestingly, if someone KNOWS a certain symphony or classical
musical piece to be famous and "deep", he/she may listen to it
and rave about it while nodding head in awe, but if the same
music is played regularly as a background music for say a TV show
and didn't know or realize it to be a famous musical piece, he/she
may only identify the music with just the show and not feel any
interest in listening to the music itself but only will try to
reminisce about the show that it conjures up!
Tied in with the above discussion is the fact that artistic and
aesthetic sense or perceptivity is an intrinsic quality or
attribute of a person which is not created or increased by mere
READING or exposure to an art work. A person may be endowed with
this inherent ability to appreciate art and a sense of aesthetics
yet have not read a lot of artistic work by others but would
nevertheless be able to appreciate it more when they read it than
who has read a lot and can talk about them in a descriptive manner
yet doesn't have the same deep artistic appreciation or sensitivity
of it as the former. An art school education does not increase the
inherent artistic sense of a person but only helps to bring out
whatever is inside to its max. A given engineer or scientist or
whatever does not necessarily posses less inherent artistic sense
than a given artist, its just that the former has it latent,
undeveloped, while the latter has developed it into its max. It
is true that those who have "higher" intrinsic artistic sense
tend also to chose to become professional artist and develop
it but there are significant exceptions to that rule, as practical
constraints prevent one from pursuing that natural course.
Let me summarize the meme effects responsible for the fame of an
artist can be due to certain combination of factors, as follows:
(In the following "outstanding" and "mediocre" are judged mainly by
critics and to some extent by popularity, as reflected in media and
sales etc which may or may not be in sync with the critics always).
1. Some extraordinary work and a large volume of mediocre work
and the snowball effect of publicity, plug, hype generated by the
extraordinary ones. Then naive minds may "like" even just the
mediocre ones while never having read the extra-ordinary ones,
being controlled by the meme effects of the publicity/hype.
2. Large volume of work, none of extraordinary level, but due to
sheer large volume and a fortuitous condition of being at the right
place at the right time, gained publicity and fed into the hyp to
create an aura of fame around his/her name.
It is possible that some not so famous artists may have created
a similar number of extra-ordinary work as a famous one but not
having created large volume of average work didn't get the
benefit of snowball effect of mass or media hyp.
Now some thoughts on the connection of arts to real life. Here it
is observed that movies, novels which contain in its 3 hours/300
pages or so some cameos of deep philosophical, psychological
realizations of life, human emotions etc (expressible in few words
or sentences), attract rave reviews from viewers, readers for those
contents whereas the same people would dismiss reading or hearing
the same profound truths, realizations as boring and academic when
heard or read as isolated statements from an individual or in a
non-fiction book.
Just as kids only like to learn math if it is taught through fun
and entertainment some grown ups too retain this vestiges of
childish propensity and can only accept insights and truths if
adorned with extra layers of humour or romance, fiction and
verbiage etc. In most cases a much raved poem, song, story or movie
when stripped off its garnishings boils down to a trivial statement
of a fact of life that one may already know. So when touting such
poems, songs, stories or movies as a must read, must hear to others
one has to be clear about the message and the mode of the message
in them and draw a distinction. They have to be aware that the mode
part is subjective and may not appeal to someone else who may still
know or appreciate the message already, and thus not jump to the
conclusion that he/she doesn't have the "depth" to understand the
inherent message just because he/she didn't appreciate the mode of
the message. Often by making mode quite appealing some naive minds
can be made to elevate a trivial precept or paradigm to a sublime
level. On the other hand an enlightened but not so naive mind can
be moved by the sheer beauty or artistry of the mode of the message
and yet realize the trivial nature of the message (if any, an art
need not have a message always). One has to separate out philosophy,
psychology etc aspect from the entertainment aspect in an art and
if one is interested in the former then instead of wasting time one
can directly read core works on philosophy, psychology and if
interested in entertainment, then of course performing arts is the
appropriate avenue. In a combination, one must realize the
secondary aspect of the philosophy part in any art form. Certainly
one feels entertained to see certain human emotions and aspirations
powefully illustrated by some actors and performers through the
skills of writers and directors and of course their own artistic
skill. But whatever philosophical, social or psychological insights
or messages there are in a movie,poem, story etc, as I said, can be
reduced to few lines or minutes. And there is nothing in them that
has not been discussed, expressed or analyzed by Philosophers,
Psychologists etc over the centuries and even now in public and in
academia. One only has to take note of the fact that there exists :
1. An encyclopdia of aesthetics in 4 volumes each of 500 pages
2. An encyclopedia of Human Emotions in 2 volumes of 750 pages
total (McMillan'99)
3. An encyclopedia of Human Behaviour in 4 volumes each of about
700 pages. (Academic Press'94)
4. An encyclopedia of Ethics in 2 volumes of 1400 pages total
(Garland Publishers'92)
5. An encyclopedia of Applied Ethics in 4 volumes of 3000 pages
total (Academic Press'98)
6. An encyclopedia of Bioethics in 4 volumes of 2840 pages total
(Mcmillan'95).
And to think that all of the above are torn of any extra layers of
fictional or entertainment materials. One can imagine what their
size would have been if extra layers of fiction, entertainment were
added to the facts contained therein! Besides those, there are
innumerable scholarly books and journals on all aspects of life.
Some people mention certain poems, songs, fictions etc as having
influenced or changed their lives or seek inspiration to drive their
life from them. Poems, songs, movies etc are poor sources to seek
for inspiring truths and insights about life. Real life and nature,
when observed and studied with a reflective and analytical mind
is a much more reliable source or guide to truth. Reading works
on philosophy, psychology, biology, logic, ethics etc are better and
more cost-effective means and sources of learning about insights
of life than fictional works. Fictional works are more suited to
entertainment aspect of life, which is needed for a relief from daily
stress of life. We all yearn for words,rhythms, riffs, expressions,
music, pictures etc that evoke our very individual inner artistic
sensitivity and appeals to our mind. It helps to uplift our spirit
when we do come across a piece of artwork in which we see reflections
of those very emotions and feelings of our inner self. But we should
get beyond that when it comes to real life which should be guided
by real life factors and considerations and notdictated ed by
dreams, fantasies, poems, fictions. Depending on a movie or poem to
to seek inspiration from may be ok, but to understand facts and
truths of life, it is a unworthwhile avenue, and a mark of naivette.
Our external life has to be guided by reality independent of art.
One should not depend on a poem to decide their course of
action but should be guided by his/her own head (using knowledge
and experience) and instinct. Such dependency leads to self deceit.
Art is mainly to cater to our subjectuve need of our inner life, to
find an expression and reflection of our inner soul, to be inspired.
8=====
Objectivity in Morality
Moral subjectivism, alternately moral relativism is quite popular
with postmodernist thinking as well with sticklers of political
correctness. It was also advocated by early sophists, of course
with an agenda of their own, not that they actually believed
sincerely in the correctness of their position. Moral objectivism
or absolutism is touted by theologians, as well as by rationalist
philosophers from totally opposite viewpoints, the former from a
divine perspective, the latter from logic and basic human instinct.
Whether the theologian's view of divine source of moral
absolutism is justified is addressed in my article
Does Religion Define Morality?
The rationalists also recognize the fact that although absolute
right and wrongs do exist, SOME notions of right and wrong are
necessarily relative, not absolute. Postmodernists insist on total
relativism, whereas theologians insist on total absolutism. I
will try to discuss my own views on the subjectivity vs. objectivity
in moral perception from a rationalist perspective. Since
rationalist view acknowledges the existence of absolute wrong and
right, let me define what constitutes absolute right and wrong. I
will provide definitions of three wrongs that qualify as absolute. It
is possible that more absolute wrongs may be defined. But one
exception being enough to break a rule (The "rule" in this case
being the view that no definition of absolute wrong is possible), I
will stay content with three. In fact it will become evident that
many other acts can be judged to be absolute wrongs since those
acts can be shown to be ultimately derivable from or reducible to
these three basic abosolute acts of wrong. I must also mention
that regardless of how absolute wrong is defined, the fact
remains that absolute wrongs do exist as borne out by the very
fact that a instinctive conscience of right and wrong exists in
all humans across culture, religion and race, even before the
advent of religion of divine revelations. Modern sociobiological
insights also corroborate this fact by revealing that the
instincts of morality are hard- wired in human brain, through
evolution, originally as a strategy for survival, later
reinforced through the brain's (cerebral cortex to be precise)
ever increasing complexity through what is called gene-culture
coevolution. The fact that certain acts are characterized as
wrong (like self-evident truths) universally across cultures and
religions, provide a common sense proof of this fact.
The three morally wrong acts are described below in 1, 2 and 3 :
1. A COERCIVE perpetration of direct, intentional injury
to someone's body (either by inflicting wounds, pains, or
applying force on him/her body), WHEN the perpetrator
was not subjected to such act by the victim in past.
2. A COERCIVE or DECEITFUL perpetration of a direct, intentional
loss, deprivation or damage to someone's assets and possessions,
WHEN the perpetrator was not subjected to such act by the victim
in past.
3. Lying ABOUT someone, WHEN the perpetrator was not subjected to
such act by the victim in past.
NOTES :
The reason for including the WHEN clause is that doing so avoids
the possibility of a circular reasoning where one can justify a
wrong by saying that a wrong was done in response to another
wrong, which in turn was in response to a previous wrong...and
so on. Regressing backwards one will arrive at a point where a
wrong was first committed by one that cannot be unambiguously
tracked as a retaliation for any act against the perpetrator.
That's where the absoluteness of the wrong applies
unambiguously. So it follows that an act is not an absolute
wrong if it is an act of fair retaliation, i.e 1 for 1, 2 for 2 or
3 for 3 and only directed against the perpetrator, not anyone else.
The COERCIVE clause rules out the defense that the victim did
not resist such acts, so was willingly allowing such acts to be
committed on him/her. Because resistance is not possible when
coercion is enforced through superiority of might, and such
wrongs then become an accepted part of a tradition.
The lying referred to in 3 above means making a false objective
propositional statement (O.P.S.), not a false subjective
propositional statement (S.P.S). A propositional statement is
one which carries a true/false or yes/no implication. An
O.P.S is by definition a propositional statement to which an
absolute true/false attribute can be assigned, whereas S.P.S.
is one where no absolute true/false can be applied to it.
The difference between the two is explained through
examples of each below:
O.P.S. :
1. "A" is a male
2. "A" is a college drop out
S.P.S. :
1. A is stupid
2. A is dishonest
A false O.P.S. is necessarily a deliberate falsehood or at least
shows lack of integrity for not verifying its authenticity
(Objective statements can be verified).
DISCUSSIONS WITH EXAMPLES:
A subjective wrong (i.e an act which is not absolute moral
wrong as defined in 1, 2 and 3 above) may or may not be
legally permissible. On the other hand an absolute moral wrong
is invariably legally prohibited universally. For example
blasphemy is legally allowed in most societies, prohibited in
certain societies. Rape is universally prohibited by law.
Physically assaulting or robbing someone solely due to their
color, faith, etc are absolute wrongs. Killing of unarmed
civilians by suicide bombers is absolute wrong (Direct and
Intentional, and not a retaliation against the perpetrator).
Death of civilians in and around a military target in a bombing
raid is not an absolute wrong (Not intentionally directed).
The killing of civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima was absolute
wrong. Note that just because an act is not wrong in an
absolute sense doesn't mean it is automatically right. Being
subjective(relative) it can still be wrong in a certain legal
social context, but not another.
As mentioned earlier many absolute wrong acts can eventually
be reduced to or derived from the primitive wrongs defined above
by series of inferences. For example marrying off one's daughter
to a man of the parent's choice against her wish in a certain
culture is wrong since ultimately physical coercion will be
required to force her to comply if she persists in refusing to
do so. Another example is the act of suicide bombers killing
innocent noncombatant civilians.
The injury or loss being referred to in acts 1 & 2 is of "Doing TO
someone" type, not "Not doing FOR someone" type (i.e Intended
and direct, not unintended and indirect injury resulting from the
act). For example "A may refuse to do "B" a "favour" as a result of
which B may suffer some loss. B cannot accuse A of wrongdoing
since B was expecting a favour from A and A simply refused to
comply, but not necessarily intended any injury to B. Receiving
favours is a privilege, not a right. One should not lead their
life based on getting favours from others and should not stake
their life and property on the assumption of receiving a favour.
Also any damage to body or property has to be a direct and
intended result of a tangible action, not an indirect result of
one's thinking in a certain way due to one's belief,faith,
expectation etc. For example if "A" makes a critical remark about
"X" where X=faith/religion/race etc, and members of "X" feel
outraged and claim it has hurt them mentally enough to cause
physical and material loss, that would not make "A"'s critical
remark an absolute wrong. Because any damage to any member of
"X" is solely due to his/her conscious "thinking" and any sense of
outrage is of their own making in their mind, not intended by A.
In other words an act cannot be judged absolutely wrong simply
because someone believes it to be wrong. A wrongness of an act
should not be based on people's view or belief about the act.
Moreover, the criteria for the wrongness has to be objective and
A PRIORI , not an A POSTERIORI criteria, like the adverse
consequences of one's view or belief about the act and reacting
to it accordingly. Since the belief or views of any member of "X"
is not imposed by "A", so any damaging consequence of that
belief or view about the act of A has to be the responsibility
of the members of "X" not of A. This follows from the "direct"
clause in the definition of wrong-1. As a simple example, if
someone stronger than me overpowers me and stabs me with a
knife and I start bleeding, I cannot stop the bleeding by any free
will. But if someone made a critical remark about me, I have the
free will of not to loose control and engage in a destructive act
against him or anyone else or property. With an even stronger
free will I can choose not to be even bothered by such criticism
at all.
Another example is when "A" is rejected in love by "B" and the
resulting emotional distress leads to his/her physical or
financial damage (In extreme case may be a suicide). This also
will not qualify as absolute wrong by "B" since this damage is due
to "A"'s "expectation" being not fulfilled and "A"' and "B" did
not intend any damage to be done on "A". Any self-damaging act
like suicide by "A" is due to A's free will.
The definitions of absolute wrongs stated above emphasize the
fact that contrary to what many insist that no absolute right or
wrongs exist and that all wrong and right are inherently relative.
But as I argued above there are indeed some absolute wrongs
as stated above. Absolute, since anyone irrespective of
background without exception will feel hurt or offended if the
above is perpetrated on them (Certainly will not wish to be a
willing victim of such acts, hence "wrong").
A strongly held popular view is that rights and wrongs (more so
for wrongs) are cultural (cultural relativism). What is wrong in
one culture need not be wrong for the other, so one should not
declare anything in another's culture wrong by their standard.
There is a serious flaw in this view. First we can label a
culture (say A) as a group of "n" people sharing a common value
or trait. (to keep it general I use A and 'n'). Then by that very
same logic a culture cannot or should not call anything wrong
that apply to a specific subculture B of "m" people contained
within culture A (of course "m" is less than "n"). Continuing
this process a subculture B cannot label anything wrong about few
group of individuals comprising a sub-subculture "C" of "B", and
so on. Ultimately nobody as an individual can be wrong at all if
we can never judge the wrongness of a group as a whole. So
cultural relativism breaks apart by an reductio ad absurdum
fallacy.
Another popular view is to dismiss all wrongs as being equal.
There is a reason for the popularity of this view. Going into
the the finer details of the difference between wrongs require
some mental work. Lumping all as equal saves one from having to
take the effort to do that work. Human tendency (from inherent
laziness) is to minimize effort as much as one can with impunity.
Trying to portray the view that all wrongs are equal as a
politically correct or ethical one is nothing but an attempt to
hide the unfairness of that view and project it as a virtue. By
logic and fairness, if we equate a more serious offense with a
less serious one, that rather dilutes the culpability of the
more serious one, and it is a bit insensitive toward the less
serious offender to be treated equally with the more serious one.
One must recognize shades. It is a fair practice. Just as two
wrongs don't make a right, equating two unequal wrongs don't
make a right either.
13====
Often a judgement of unequal capability or skill between culture or
races is labelled as racism, discrimination, intolerance etc. But
It is the DENIAL of of equal rights or opportunities which should be
labelled as racism, discrimination etc,. Whereas an apriori judgement
not based on any objective criteria certainly is "prejudice" , but an
assertion of an inevitable fact of life that all are not or cannot be
equal, regardless of the criteria used is not racism, discrimination
or prejudice. Of course for a specific comparative judgement one must
use some objective criteria. We use such objective criteria to judge
individuals, thats why there are tests in life to choose the best and
to grade people , on the basis of their abilty, skill, talent etc by
some criteria. Note that a single person cannot excel others in every
category of skill, capabilty or talent. The same remarks can be made
about races or nations. One race/nation may be superior to another
(In an average sense) in certain category of traits by any objective
criteria. Such unequalness is inevitable. But to go a step further
and say that ANY person from race 'A' is superior to ANY person from
race 'B' is a racially prejudiced statement. Also care should be
taken in differentiating "rights" and "priviledges". Discrimination
applies to rights, not priviledges. There can be subjective criterion
in deciding when one bestows a priviledge to another. That cannot be
categorized as discrimination. But objective criteria must be used in
deciding rights. Often the results of a test/contest or judgement
about individual or groups are alleged to be influenced by bias of
the person or group evaluating the result even if the evaluation
method is demonstrably objective and fair. It is rooted in the
ingrained biased belief that no one can ever be truly unbiased. If a
group of people of different affiliation (race/ color/belief/gender
etc) are all subjected to a computerized test to assess their skill
or capability by some criteria (Which are race/color/belief/gender
neutral) then the outcome of the result will be very unlikely
labelled biased . But once humans are substituted for the computers
it is assumed that the cannot be objective at all. It is true many
people may not be objective but that does not mean it is automatic
that all judgements by human have to be biased. After all the it is
human who programs the objective criteria into the computer.
The fact of unequalness can be illustrated by a simple example. Let us
take two groups of people "A" and "B". Gropu A consist of five people
with grades 10,8,8,6,5 (The grade indicates some generic trait/
attribute left as a for discussion purpose) and Group B consists of
five people with grades 10,9,7,5,5. The average for group A is (10+8+
8+6+5)/5 = 7.4 and that of B is (10+9+7+5+5)/5 = 7.2. So group A has
a higher average grade than B. But both have a member with the
highest grade 10. Group B has a member with grade 9 which group A
doesn't. For two races it is highly unlikely that the average bewteen
them will be exactly same. So to say both race or nation are exactly
equal is a politically correct but logically absurd statement. It is
equally acceptable to ASSUME an unequal average one way or the other
in absence of any objective data. But again a race or nation being
better than another on the average doesn't mean that every member is
superior over every member of the other as is clear from the above
simple example. It is a well established scientific fact that many of
the human traits are biological variables which follow the bell-
shaped curve. So there will be a variability within any group, no
matter how the group is formed. Intra group variability is much
larger than intergroup variability. But certainly the mean or median
of one group will very unlikely be identical to another. One will
bound to have alarger mean or median than the other. The important
point that must be realized is that any comparative opinion or
judgement about cultures, races must not be apriori based on
perception. It has to be based on an objective scientific crietria or
a posteriori from evidence and/or observations. Also such judgement
has to be tentative and open to revision if evidence so suggests
later. Most importantly such judgement should only be limited to
theory or opinion, and should not be used officially as criteria in
real life to grant priviledges or to deny rights to individuals,
because as I mentioned earlier, avergae score of group of cannot be
an indicator of individual score . For such individual cases, only
objective criteria which does not take into account any comparative
judgement of the group (even when that judgement itself may be
supported by objective criteria) must be used, which is what for
example Equal Opportunity Employment symbnolizes in US where the
academia may have comparative theories about races, societies. And
thats what tolerance implies. Tolernace should not pre-suppose an
apriori equality between different cultures, or cultural relativism;
to assume beforehand equality, or unequalness one way or the other;
that is against scientific or rational thinking, Again to repeat,
any post hoc judgement of superiority or inferiority should NOT be
used to justify denying equal rights.
9=========
What is Rationalism?
Rationalism is defined as using logic and evidence as the reliable
basis for testing any claims of truth, seeking objective knowledge
and forming conclusions about reality, independent of (but not
necessarily excluding it) sense perceptions. Free thinking, which is
intimately related to rationalism, is defined as the forming of views
about reality independent of authority or dogma, be it from a divine
or human source. If we stick to the strict definitions, then
freethinking is not synonimous with rationalism. One need not be
strictly rational to be a freethinker. A freethinker according to
this definition is allowed the leeway to believe or form any opinion,
not necessarily logical, as long as it is not influenced by any
existing religious, cultural or traditional dogma or authority. A
postmodernist (Read intellectual anarchist) may claim to be a
freethinker according to this non-restictive definition. But
rationalism is much more restrictive. It enforces logic and reason
as the guiding principle in thinking and forming opinions. So although
rationalism invariably leads to freethinking, the reverse is not
necessarily true. Nevertheless I will adopt a loose broader meaning
of freethinking to be synonimous with rationalism and use them
interchangeably. I have attempted to provide my own definitions in
a precise way in the article
Faith, Philosophy and Dogma to help set the criteria for
freethinkers/freethinking.
Rationalism as a philosophy demands some strict mental discipline
that many find hard to implement in their thoughts and actions. Many
may not even be aware that they are not being strictly rational. The
reason for this is that some mistakenly associate rationalism with
certain ideals and outlook that do not necessarily follow from
rationalism. Rationalism as a philosophy inevitably leads to
scientific method through logic and critical thinking. Therefore a
rationalist cannot subscribe a priori to any ideology, political or
ideological, nor can a rationalist make statement of truth that is
not a strict proposition. So for example, a rationalist cannot claim
to be a strict atheist, i.e cannot assert that "God does not exist",
since God is not a logically well-defined and meaningful concept,
all defintions of God in any religious context runs into
contradictions and logical inconsistency. So the existence or
non-existence of God are both logically meaningless to a rationalist.
A rationalist can only take a NONCOGNITIVIST position in the God
context. For more details on this issue please carefully review
the following two articles at :
1. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/definition.html
and
2. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/incompatible.html
I have also discussed the problems of defining God in the article:
God,Atheism & Secular Humanism
Does it mean a rationalist cannot have any opinion at all about
anything? Of course not. If an opinion does not contradict logic,
evidence or observation, ratilonalism does not prevent one from
forming a tentative opinion. For example it is not against
rationalism to hypothesize about all the POSSIBLE causes of a crime,
when definite evidence is missing to point to the actual cause. Same
can be said about theories to explain certain facts of reality. Thats
what science is about. Scientific speculation is just that. Theories
are just possible explanation about facts and observations. Before
theories can become laws they are just scientific opinions. But the
important point to realize is that rational opinions, although not
yet proven, are nevertheless consistent with logic or observations (i.
e does not contradict logic or observations) and should not use ill-
defined terms. Rationalism also cannot subscribe to a political party
based on any dogma, since dogma is not based on logic, evidence or
objectivity. Nor can rationalism require an a priori affiliation or
support for a non-dogma based poltical party. From a rational view,
support for a political party should be based on policies,
performance, efficiencies and other objective criterion, thus need
not be a static one, but changeable based on an ongoing assessment of
the fulfilment of those criteria. There is no such concept as party
loyalty in a rationalist vocabulary. Some intellectuals believe that
certain political stand in an ideological, social or political
controversy is required by rationalism, e.g leftist ideology, pro-
choice stand in abortion, nurturist stand in nature-nurture debate,
etc to name a few. But such a priori biased stand is not consistent
with rationalism either. Rationalists should be prepared to accept
any viewpoint led to by scientific and logical reasoning, even if
that goes against the popular trend of thinking. Rationalism is
ruthless, it does not pamper to one's emotional needs or wishes, or
care about political correctness. In personal life, that means one
has to subject even one's near and dear ones to ruthless scrutiny of
rationalism and be prepared to acknowledge, and be critical of any
negative aspects of one's near and dear ones and close friends, if
evidence so suggests, even though one may wish they were not true. A
rationalist may therefore not always be a popular figure with his/
her close friends and immediate relatives and may be misunderstood.
A truly rational man is a lonely man! By the same token, a
rationalist has to acknowledge, and criticize the shortcomings of the
race, religion he/ she belongs to, in a detached way totally free
from bias, as well as acknowledge the superior qualities of another
race, religion in a certain aspect, if evidence so suggests.
Rationalism cannot make an a priori assumption that all bad or wrongs
are equal, just because political correctness says so. Rationalism
demands doing the required homework to quantify and recognize shades
in right and wrong in morality and shades of good and bad in
attributes by some objective criteria when applicable. This requires
intellectual courage as it can potentially incur one the wrath of the
majority, for whom the priority is loyalty, pride, nationalism,
patriotism etc. But rationalism does not recognize such mental
constructs, or sets such priority. It only cares for logic and
evidence. Rationalism does not allow taking a stand just because it
is politically correct or popular. But that does not mean that
rationalism cannot lead to a stand that coincides with patriotic or
nationlsitic stand. They may coincide. But sometimes it may not. A
German rationalist in the 30's would not be led to Hitler's
brand of nationalism for example. Many intellectuals associate the
terms liberal, progressive etc with freethinking. But for them,
liberal, progressive etc are usually understood and judged by the
stand one takes, viz, pro-choice, left ideology, nurturist stand, a
puritanic belief that all are equally bad or equally good etc (i.e
cultural and moral relativism). But rationalism does not require one
to adopt such positions, and in fact in some cases may lead to the
opposite stand by scientific evidence and logic. I will not dwell on
the specifics of those scientific evidences as it is a topic on its
own and I am only interested on the general aspects of rationalism in
this essay. Even humanism, is not strictly derived from rationalism.
Humanism follows from rationalism if the postulate: "we should put
priority on the welfare of maximum number of humans irrespective of
race, color, creed, ethnicity etc." is added to rationalism. It must
be noted that all religions and dogmas claim human welfare as their
goal as well. But what differentiates their view of humanism from
rational humanism is that for them, that goal is claimed to be
achievable only through the implementation of their dogma. So dogma
comes first for them. Not only that, the priority for welfare in most
religions and dogmas is reserved for their followers. Some apologists
of theocracy claim that their religion is fair to all and treat all
equally. But even in their interpretation, the equality is still a
secondary one, whose criteria is decided by them once the rule of
their religious dogma is implemented, since other faith and religion
members by not being a member of the ruling religion can never be
equal to members of the ruling religion, by the simple fact of
asymmetry that one religion has control of state affair, the other
does not. A strict equality would require a secular rule, which a
religious apologist opposes in principle. But rational humanism does
not make that distinction or discrimnation, since rationalism implies
secular rule. Once humanism is arrived through rationalism, the
notions of democracy and secularism follows as corollary.
Symbolically:
Rationalism+Human good-->Humanism-->Democracy-->Secularism
Another point that many may have already wondered is that how can we
decide who is rationalist or not? After all, doesn't every one (
religion, dogma etc) claim they believe in logic and reason? Doesn't
every individual and every religion have their own logic? So how can
one not be rational? This is a tricky question that can lead to a
slippery slope if not examined carefully. Cultural and moral
relativists, postmodernists exploit such slippery slope to argue that
all are equal, nothing is more valid than another etc. But the logic
and evidence referred to in rationalism, is shared by humanity with
an overwhelming consensus crossing race, religion and affiliation etc.
In other words they are universal. Modern logic finds much in common
with the logic of early Greek, Hindu and Buddhist philsophers, as
well as the early Muslim rationalists during the time of the House of
Wisdom in Bagdad. This logic has been perfected and improved by later
philosophers, like Hume, Kant and many Mathematicians and logicians
of the twentieth century. This is the logic that is taught with tax
payer's funding in public schools in most nations of the world as
well as secular private schools. It is also the logic most humans
from all background agree to intuitively. This is also the logic
that has WORKED. It has led to the scientific method that has changed
the world, made predictions about nature that was tested and verified
to be true. It is also leading humanity towards continued advancement.
It is no surpirse that this is the logic that people have staked
their money in teaching and learning. There are a set of unambiguous
rules for valid logical reasoning, both informal and formal taught
in elementary logic class that can act as guide to resolve dilemmas,
ambiguities, paradox. contradictions, disputes etc. Contrast that
with the "logic" that person "A" uses to rationalize his own belief,
or the "logic" of religion"X" to rationalize that religion. Such "
logic" is not shared universally, nor has it demonstrated its utility
by coming up with any predictions, inventions or innovations, nor to
the discovery of any fundamental truth about nature or reality. A "
logic" that has been invented as a dedicated ploy to justify one
dogma or belief over others, is no logic at all. Besides such logic
does not have universal appeal. And logic must be accompanied by
evidence and objectivity that also is lacking religious claim of
rationalism.
Rationalism also implies skepticism. Skepticism requires one to doubt
any claim to truth, unless proven by evidence and logic, and to suspend
belief or judgement in absence thereof, which clearly follows from
rationalism. In personal life, such skepticism forces one to refrain
from forming judgement or drawing hasty conclusions about a person,
or opinion. In the absence of any evidence or logic a skeptic should
stay in a "do nothing" i.e neutral mode. This "do nothing" neutral
mode is a level most minds cannot recognize and needs some effort
to become at ease with it. Most feel tempted to form an opinion one
way or the other, even in the absence of any supporting data. If
and when the evidence or logic is available only then a skeptic can
form an opinion, that is dictated by the evidence and logic, not by
their wishful desires or biases. A rationalist has to have the
intellectual courage to acknowledge unpleasant truths. A rationalist
never gained/gains materially or otherwise by being rational. It is
just a philosophy that they find intuitively appealing to their
conscience.
Let me now turn to some mistaken notions about rationalism that is
quite common among many. Many think that rationalism means an
arrogant claim to infallibility, that rationalism never admits of
ever being wrong, that it denies the posibility that logic itself
may be wrong! All these are due to a lack of careful reflection.
First, that one could be wrong is a trivial, self-evident
fact that is implicit. It is as self-evident like saying that
one cannot be sure that he or she will make it to the
destination as the flight may crash. Verbalizing that truism
about the limits and uncertainties in one' s knowledge is
a matter of humility. Humility is a personal trait.
Rationalism is a philosophy, not a trait. Rationalism does not
prevent one, nor does it mandate one to possess certain
personality trait. Secondly, to say that "logic" itself may be
wrong is to commit a fallacy. Because to judge something as "
wrong" needs a logic of its own. One cannot use logic to judge
the same logic as wrong! We have assumed that there exists
only one system of logic that works best. Until we find a
better system of logic, it is a fallacy to judge that logic as
wrong. But saying that the "logic" is not wrong does not
mean saying that one cannot make mistakes. Mistakes are due to
an individual's limit or flaw in applying logic, not due to
logic itself. That is not to say that logic does not have its
limit either. The limit of logic reflects limit of humans.
But there is no better way to overcome that limit than logic
itself. Anyway, that humility of the self-evident fact of
fallibility is built into the scientific method. Scientific
method, which is derived from rationalism is based on the
premise that there is no absolute or final truth, and that
any conclusion about reality is always tentative, subject
to continual revision in light of further evidence. But one
must not conclude that just because in certain instance one
could predict the truth correctly by non-rational (intuition
,guess) means that means intuition is superior to rationalism
as a means for seeeking truth. For example if a coin is
tossed, an intuitionist may intutively guess that the coin
will come heads up. A rationalist cannot predict the outcome
on the basis of logic and science (It is incredibly complex
calculation) If the coin does fall heads up, does it prove
that intuition is superior to rationalism? Of course not.
It is also mistaken to believe that rationalism can solve
all problems in life, or prevent them. It cannot. The
fact it cannot is because the truth in many situation in life
is not always known in advance for one to make the right
decision. Rationalism is limited by the knowledge or truth
that is needed in making an informed decision to solve or
prevent a problem. In an indeterminstic situation intuitive
guesses and judgement is inevitable. And the intuition
of rational person is not guaranteed to be right. So in those
situations in life where there are unknowns and uncertainties,
intuitive guesswork cannot be avoided. Rationalism is of no
help. For example, rationalism cannot guarantee one will
make the right choice in marriage or relationship. Rationalism
cannot prevent one from making mistakes in life. Gamble in
life cannot be totally averted through rationalism. Risk
cannot be either. More generally speaking, from an utilitarian
point of view, rationalism is no guarantee to material success
in life. Rationalism is a principle based on logic and evidence.
In an imperfect world, that is not always the sure route to
material success. Just like honesty is not.
Next, to many, rationalism means robbing one of the sense of
beauty, romanticism, love, compassion , i.e leaves one heartless
and devoid of emotions. This is a big myth. Rationalism stresses
separating the head from the heart, not REPLACING heart with head.
Certain things are intrinsically rooted in instinct, and thus
beyond rationalism. Love, fear, altruism, conscience (sense of
right and wrong), these are biologically rooted instincts.
Instincts are not controllable or influenced by rationalism.
Instincts are more or less rooted in our genes and manifested
through the workings of the limbic system of our brain. Whereas
rationalism results from the thought process determined by the
cerebral cortex. So a rational person can feel an instinctive fear
in certain environment, or can feel passionate love for certain
person. What differentiates a rational person from a less or non
rational person is the synaptic connectivities in their cerebral
cortex, not in their limbic system. So when it comes to primal
instincts controlled by limbic systems, for example self-
preservation, the difference disappears. In a life threatening
situation, like fight or flight situation, control is automaticaly
taken over by the limbic system from the cerebral cortex,
biological instinct of aggression may kick in, and at that point
whatever one does may not not dictated by rationalism anymore.
Taste is also instinctive. Rationalism has nothing to do with it.
Although rationalism does not decide or control our tastes and
emotions, it can however EXPLAIN (or at least try to through
scientific method) the basis of such emotions and likes or
dislikes. Rationalism cannot affect or control love. But
rationalism can ceratinly help explain the biological (in both
evolutionary and biochemical terms) origin of love, morality and
other human values and attributes. The same can be said about all
other instincts and emotions. So being rational does not by any
means deprive of those instincts, tastes and emotions and values,
because they are an integral part of being human, rational or not.
A neurologist does not lose his brain in trying to understand the
workings of the brain, nor does an evolutionary biologist ceases
to be a loving mate or parent in trying to explain and understand
the biological roots of love. Simply because we have no control on
our biological instincts, whether we are rational or not.
Another "reason" for viewing rationalism with cynical eyes by many is
because it is believed by them that humanitarian acts should come
from an emotional impulse, not from a rationalization process, which
does not take the compassion factor in the decision of such acts. On
first look, it may look like a noble view, putting heart before head.
But as I pointed out, compassion, humanitarian acts all are derived
from altruism, a biologically rooted instinct, so rationalism cannot
affect it. Although rationalism can certainly manage altruism in a
way that ensures optimum utilization of it. Impulsive altruistic acts
do not always lead to the best results. Rationalism can help to
channelize our altruistic instincts in the most optimal manner. At a
very personal level, of course even a rationalist can (and often does)
act out of an impulse in a humantarian act, since doing so is not
contradicted by logic. Rationalism is truly applicable in forming
opinions, judgements, learning the truth and solving problems, not
to instincts, or impulses that are non-judgemental or non-intrusive.
Lastly I will be remiss if I do not point out the challenge that
rationalism is facing from the postmodernist thinking that seems to be
gaining ground in recent years. Postmodernists are challenging that
very golden product of rationalism, namely scientific method by
insisting that scientific methoid is just one among many EQUALLY valid
route to truth and deserves no special priviledged status. This is
nothing but intellectual anarchism. Postmodernists are nothing but
armchair social scientists that have fallen much behind modern
scientific paradigms and are threatened by the scientific approach that
social science is adopting (rather being forced to adopt). They are
seeing with horror one after another social discipline is giving ground
to the exact sciences. Not being able to face upto the challenege of
the sciences some of them have chosenout of intellectual laziness,
the treacherous art of deconstruction and misapplying it to scientific
method. So rationalism now faces challenges from two fronts, religious
dogma (which medieval Europe successfully met during the
rennaissance), and postmodernism, which is a new challenge that
needs to be met. So the need to emphasize rationalism is more
now than ever.
9b===
Reflections on Rationalism - II
In my earlier essay [Rationalism - It's Meaning and Implications]
on the occasion of last year's rationalist day I attempted a
definition and explanation of rationalism. I wish to continue on
further elaboration and clarification of rationalism, particularly
the relationship of rationalism with idealism and personal faith.
As I mentioned earlier that rationalism as a philosophy inevitably
leads to scientific method, because scientific method is based on
logic and evidence, two necessary element of rationalism.
Scientific method (Or simply Science) is nothing but applied
rationalism. Consequently any idea or view that contradicts science
or logic cannot be consistent with rationalism. Having said that I
must emphasize that any personal faith or ideology which is not
supported by logic and evidence but which nevertheless does not
necessarily contradict logic or evidence cannot be considered
inconsistent with rationalism. It is important to understand fully
the implications of the previous statement. Rationalism does not
disallow personal beliefs and ideologies that are not supported by
logic or evidence. Its just that those beliefs and ideologies
cannot be considered to be necessary elements of rationalism. For
example belief in the existence of alien life is neither supported
by logic nor evidence but does not contradict logic or evidence
either. Thus scientists can be divided in two camps on the belief
in alien life with neither camp violating rationalism. It is not
against rationalism to hold a personal belief unsupported by logic
or evidence (but not contradicting it). What is against rationalism
is to assert such belief as a true statement (proposition in the
jargon of logic). In other words a rationalist can hold a personal
belief but allowing for the possibility of his/her being wrong,
thus refraining from asserting the belief as a proposition (Again
to it must be reemphasized that a rationalist belief should not
contradict logic or evidence). That is what distinguishes a
rationalists' belief from that of a dogmatist. A dogmatist asserts
his/her belief as absolute truth. As a trivial example, one can be
rationalist and for some reason believe that he/she will die at age
82. But as a rationalist he will be well aware of the fact that his
belief can be wrong and that there is no logic or evidence behind
such a belief. Usually the reason for beliefs unsupported by logic
and evidence is gut instinct, intuitions etc, something that all
humans (rationalist or not) are subject to, due to biological
evolution. For example a person may instinctively feel scared by
the presence of some people in certain neighbourhood (The fear
translates into a belief that those people will harm him). A woman
may feel threatened by some man, in both cases there being no
conclusive evidence or logic to justify that fear. Someone might
feel scared walking in a graveyard alone at night. But all such
fear will still not be inconsistent with rationalism as fear is an
instinct, instincts are biologically hardwired in the primitive
part of the brain, not generated by the thinking part of the brain (
cortex). Rationalism is a result of brain's cognitive process,
although whether a person's brain will generate rational thinking
or not may in part be genetically hardwired.
What characterizes a rationalist is that he/she can reflect on him/
herself from a third person perspective and recognize his/ her
belief as not being a truth statement (proposition), but only a
belief due to personal reasons and consciously aware of the
possibility of his beliefs being wrong. The same is true in forming
judgmental opinions of others. If any such judgment is not
conclusively supported by sound logic (people often justify their
opinion of others based with logic that contains fallacies in it)
then a rationalist will only take a tentative opinion of others, if
at all he/she has to. This may sound obvious but it is surprising
to see how many people forming opinions not based on sound logic
about others with smug conviction about their being right about it.
Even some "freethinkers" have been seen to jump to a conclusion
about someone using flawed logic. For example when a person A says "
B says that X is true", it will be a fallacy for C to conclude that
A is implying that X is true. It only means that A is saying that B
is implying that X is true. It also does not mean that A is
implying that X is true in order to offer it as evidence that Y is
true. Such fallacious opinions are not uncommon among freethinkers
as well. As I mentioned it
What about a belief in God and soul? The statement "One will die at
82" is a proposition, a statement that is unambiguously true or
false. There is nothing undefined or ill-defined in that belief. In
the case of a belief in God or Soul it is a bit more tricky. The
question is whether belief in God or Soul contradicts logic or
evidence. It depends on how one defines God or Soul. These words
have defied a unanimous, logical, objective definitions. Many
definitions end up in self-contradictions. In some definitions such
a belief does contradict logic and/or evidence (as in most
religions), in others they don't (Almost invariably in these cases
the definitions reduce to labeling some existing set of notions, no
new objective reality is discovered). One can define God in an
abstract sense as the first cause of the laws of physics and then
hold the belief that such a first cause exists, or one can hold a
belief that there is no first cause of the laws of physics, the
laws of physics are the very cause of everything (universe). Both
view would be consistent with rationalism.
How about belief in paranormal, UFOs, apparitions etc? Again it is
not against rationalism to admit the possibility that these
phenomena might be real, that these are not mere illusions of the
mind, but are unexplainable events. It is also not against
rationalism to believe that these are illusions of the mind or are
just hoaxes. But to assert one view or the other as absolute truth
or fact, and that personal testimonies provide an evidence for
asserting them as truth or fact is contrary to rationalism. As an
example I wish to refer to a debate in Mukto-Mona forum on
paranormal phenomena where Ali Sina suggested his personal
testimony as evidence for the existence of paranormal [Check Debate
on Rationalism in MM] . While it is perfectly consistent with
rationalism to hold personal belief in the existence of paranormal
due to personal testimony, it is certainly against rational
thinking to out the personal testimony as an evidence for the
existence of paranormal phenomena. On the other extreme it is also
against rationalism to assert as truth that these personal
testimonies are hoaxes, fraud or illusions. Another example is UFO.
Ufologists cite the sheer volume of personal testimonies (many of
which are from credible people) as conclusive evidence of
visitation of aliens. Whereas Physicist Michio Kaku only admits the
possibility that UFO sightings CAN POSSIBLY be due to aliens. There
is a clear difference.
Now let me focus on ideology and morality vs. rationalism. It
should be clear that science and rationalism does not have any
inherent value judgment in them. There is no normative element in
rationalism. Ideological beliefs are by nature value laden. Certain
ideological social views are not objective statement of facts, so
are not dictated by rationalism. Examples of such ideologies are
views on homosexual issues (like gay marriage), abortion rights,
communism versus capitalism (in the sense of economic systems) etc.
On many issues on morality and ethics, one cannot take a rational
stand without the help of some additional moral axioms. In logic
one draws a conclusion using valid rules of inferences starting
from one or more premises( axioms). So to form a rational
conclusion on an issue of morality one has to rely on some axiom or
premise. An example of a premise may be to adopt "it is immoral to
kill an innocent life" as a moral axiom. Is the conclusion "
abortion is immoral" then rational? If life is understood as
defined in biology then it certainly is. If life is redefined as a
human being after birth then it is not a rational conclusion. So
the problem reduces to unambiguously defining "Life" in the axiom "
it is immoral to kill an innocent life", to decide if the
conclusion is valid or not. Although science defines life
unambiguously, that definition will not be acceptable to those who
have adopted an a priori stand that abortion is not immoral, as
that definition will contradict their ideological stand. At least
we can see that taking either position on abortion is consistent
with rationalism. But it will be inconsistent with rationalism to
adopt one definition of life in one context and another definition
in another context. That will be a fallacy of equivocation, nd
rationalism is inconsistent with logical fallacies. In the case of
abortion we saw that because of the ambiguity of the word "Life",
it is not possible to assign a rational status on a stand on
abortion. But in cases where a moral axiom is expressed in
unambiguous terms and is universally accepted as an axiom, then it
is possible to decisively judge if a conclusion based on the axiom
is rational or not.
10=======
The Abortion Controversy - A Rational Approach
PRELUDE: This is an attempt to debate rationally what is really
an issue that generates strong emotion, which makes it difficult
if not impossible to turn it into a purely rational debate.
Nevertheless I will attempt to engage in a logical approach to the
abortion issue. I must issue a caveat for those who have taken a
strong position one way or the other and will only repeat their own
lines no matter what point or counterpoint is offered, they may
very well skip this thread, because at the end of the day they will
find that they have wasted their time, becaue arguments based on
emotion do not count in logic. If my discussion appears to be tilting
towards one side more, that has to be viewed as a consequence of
the logic itself, since rationalism doesn't guarantee that both
sides of the argument will be equally valid. Logical reasoning should
not be value laden. Axioms of logic can reflect certain value
judgement, but by definition axioms are such that they are accepted
as true by majority consensus. Ethical debate on an issue can be
rationalized based on ethical/moral axioms. Once moral axioms are
adopted then any moral judgement can be analyzed in terms of those
moral axioms to decide if it is valid(i.e consistent with the axioms)
or not. In my discussion I will not try to take any absolute
position based on any religious or sheer personal belief. My
approach will be more like arguing that since we (i.e society)
accept moral axiom "A", then argument "B" is invalid, since it
is inconsistent with axiom "A", or that if we accept ethical axiom
"A" then argument "C" is valid, etc. Any value judgment apparent
in my discussions also should be seen as reflecting the widely
accepted moral axioms. My analysis will primarily be focussed on
pointing out the flaws (as judged in terms of the widely accepted
ethical axioms) in the argument commonly offered in abortion debate
axioms.
The abortion issue has two unrelated aspects that are subject to
debate and often get mixed up. One is the bioethical question as to
whether the ACT of abortion should be considered unethical and the
other is the political question of whether the right to decide the
life and death of the fetus completely belongs to the mother, i.e
the father cannot have any say on that.
These two questions are unrelated and it is logically possible to
take any combination of stands on these two questions. I will
follow the widely circulated terminology and refer to those who are
morally opposed to the act of abortion as pro-life and those who
are not as pro-choice. In the context of the second aspect (right
of abortion decision), I will refer to those who argue that it is
the mother's sole right to decide abortion as pro-mother, and those
who believe it should be a joint rights of the father and mother as
pro-parent, although these are not offcially used terminologies, I
willuse them just as shorthands to dintinguish the two positions.
Here "father" and "mother" are used in the biological sense, they
need not be legally wedded to each other.
The first issue is gender neutral and is a question whose answer is
bedevilled by the problem of differing views of what life is and
differing views on the ethicality of ending life. The first problem
can be resolved objectively with a knowledge of biology, specially
molecular genetics, neuroscience and embryology. But even such
objective resolution may not be acceptable to those whom it will
not favour in such an emotionally polarized issue as abortion. The
second problem of the ethicality of ending life is harder to
resolve but even here in principle an objective answer is possible
by evolutionary biology by judging the best odds for the survival
of species and gene propagation in such a choice. After all ethics
and morality are products of evolution. But again such resolution
will not be acceptable to the mother for sure who has decided to
undergo abortion, due to the inherent biological instinct of self-
preservation(The selfish gene paradigm). In deciding on an abortion,
the mother is putting more value on her own life than that of
the embryo.
The second aspect of the abortion issue, being an adversarial one
between genders, any logical resolution of the question may not be
equally acceptable to both genders. Only if rationality is placed
above emotion and gender interest, can the solution, if any, be
agreed upon in principle (But may not be agreeable though) by both.
I will try to address both the aspects rationally. In my discussion
of the first aspect, I may seem to be defending a pro-life stand,
but in fact my arguments do not reflect an apriori stand, but only
serve to emphasize that to be consistent with reason and with the
values and principles that are widely accepted, the common pro-choice
arguments provided in defense of abortion can be responded with
more defensible counter arguments. In my discussion on the second
aspect regarding the right to decide abortion, I want to issue a
the clarification: IT WILL BE ASSUMED THAT THE PREGNANCY DID NOT
RESULT FROM RAPE, BUT FROM A CONSENTUAL ACT OF LOVE.
I must point out that arguments do not have gender. They should be
judged on their own merit, not by the gender of arguer. I also
should point out that any pro-life position (by men or women) does
not necessarily mean anti-woman or lack of sensitivity toward woman,
or mean a lack of understanding about the woman's feelings, as is
often alleged in the abortion debate. It is this very spin on other'
s views that complicate abortion debates with extra baggage to
handle. Also it would be wrong (And sexist too) to dismiss a pro-
life view of a male as anti-women but not the pro-life view of a
woman. "Arguments have no gender" is a figurative way of saying
that the gender of those making an argument has no relevance. The
arguments against abortion by pro-life women are no different from
those of pro-life men, just as it is in case of pro-choice men and
women. Arguments are right or wrong due to their own merit, not due
to the gender of the arguer. But gender has nothing to do in
abortion debate. Often It is forced to be about gender just to
deflect the logic. If it was about gender then men and women would
have been divided on the abortion issue. But they are not. The
ethics of killing fetus has nothing to do with gender. The fetus
can be a male or female, an abortion decision can be made by the
woman, or forced on her by a man. A pro-life view should not be
dismissed as anti-woman. No one is opposed to abortion just because
it is the woman who aborts. A pro-life view comes from a principled
opposition to taking away the life of a fetus(male or female). If
men could conceive, a pro-life advocate would still be opposed to
men aborting the fetus. The ethical question or the arguments do
not depend on the genders involved in all these possible situations.
Mother Terresa was against abortion, and quite a vocal opponent too.
But none characterized her as lacking feelings and sensitivity?
Many pro-life men are vocal advocates of equal rights for gender
and against gender discrimination. Many feminists women are also
pro-life. So there cannot be any room for stereotyping based on the
views expressed in abortion debate.
To reinforce this clarification, let me present some quotes.
As Jane Abraham, President of Susan B Anthony List says:
"Poll after poll shows women are more pro-life than pro-abortion."
Here's some more :
1. There is an organization called "feminists" for life founded
in 1972. Look at their site at:
http://www.feminsistforlife.org
their mission statement is at :
http://www.feministsforlife.org/who/index.htm
also read the article by Serrin Foster, President of Feminists for
Life at: http://www.feministsforlife.org/hot_topics/commonw.htm
2. There is an organization called "National Women's Coalition
for Life". It is 1.5 million member organization, representing
diverse cross section of women. Togther they carry with the
knowledge, experience of all the problems that are mentioned
in abortion debate. Their mision statement can be seen at:
http://www.sandwich.net/sehlat/lifelink/ffl/plgroups.html
4. Pro-life Emmy Winning Actress Patricia Heaton, honorory chair of
FFL says that "Abortion is a reflection that society has failed
women."
5. Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) of the famous "Roe vs. Wade" ruling that
legalized abortion in US turned pro-life. In fact she had filed a
motion in federal court to overturn the 1973 decision.
6. Susan B Anthony the early feminist pioneer called abortion child
murder. She further said:
"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire
to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully
guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in
life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is
he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the
crime!"
7. "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."
- Alice Paul, feminist, author of the Equal Rights Amendment
8. "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is
degrading to women that we should treat our children as property
to dispose of as we see fit." Elizabeth Cady Stanton, feminist, 1873
I quoted all these not to defend pro-life stand, as I am committed
on a rational stand, but to reinforce the fact that pro-life stand
is not divided on gender lines. And that it will clearly be a
sexist view to imply that only pro-life men are insensitive toward
pregnant women's problem, not the pro-life women.
Also pro-life/choice stand is not divided on political/religious line
either, democrats are also pro-life(http://www.democratsforlife.org/),
not just the replublicans. So it would be unfair to dismiss any
pro-life stand as rightwing/bigotted. An atheist can be pro-choice
too as the sense of morality is primarily dictated by biological
instincts, not by belief in God necessarily, belief in God itself
being rooted in biological instinct.
With that prelude, let me now move on to the core of the abortion
debate.
In dealing with the first aspect of the abortion debate we must
first resolve two questions, because teh answers to these two
questions lie at the heart of the abortion debate. The two
questions are:
(1) Can the embryo/fetus be considered as life?
(2) Is destroying life unethical?
All the knowledge from biology, genetics and embryology in
particular lead us to answer in the affirmative for (1). To a
biologist or those familiar with the facts of biology such question
as to where/when life starts is not an issue. The formation of life
starts at conception, the moment sperm and ovum combine to form a
zygote. A zygote is the earliest stage of any human life. It has
all the basic criteria of a living being. All the criteria of life
(specially genetic code, ability to self-replicate, metabolism etc)
are present in the zygote. We all were zygote at one time. But even
if all humans were zygotes at one time, not all zygotes end up as
humans. Zygotes evolve into blastocysts through cell division. The
blastocyst then journeys down the Fallopian Tube and into the
Uterus and successfully attaches(implants) itself on the uteral
wall through the placenta. But this process of implantation is a
hit or miss thing. Sometimes it fails to implant itself and is
flushed out of the uterus and no human is ever formed. But once it
succeeds in implanting itself the blastocyst developes very rapidly
into a human being, who can live to be ninety years old. So it is
accurate to say that a human life really starts as an embryo (
implanted blastocyst). In fact since 1965, the American College of
Obstetrics and Gynecology has held that "Conception is the
implantation of the fertilized ovum. I will be freely using the
terms embryo and fetus in the discusions not drawing the technical
difference between them (embryo<8 weeks, fetus>8 weeks) as that
does not really matter in the argument of the discussions.
A common criticism is that if zygote or embryo is considered life
then why not human cell culture, sperm or egg? Why doesn't anyone
consider it killing a life when a sperm or egg is destroyed? Well,
a cell does not become human naturally. Neither does a sperm or egg.
Only a zygote (or more precisely an implanted blastocyst or embryo),
which is a product of the cooperative action of a man and a woman,
naturally evolves into a human. An zygote does not require any
further action for it to become human.
There is no disagreement in biology on the fact that a fetus meets
all the criteria of life. It is not a matter of opinion or taste,
but scientific fact. In fact French geneticist Jermoe L. LeJeune,
testified before a Senate Subcommittee, saying this:
"To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken
place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter
of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being
from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention,
it is plain experimental evidence."
It is not without a good reason that billions of Chinese count the
age of a human from the time of conception, not from birth.
Humanity also overwhelmingly agrees to an affirmative answer to (2),
with some exceptions. This agreement is also a biologically rooted
one, as destryoing life is anti-evolutionary. The exceptions where
destroying a life is acceptable is when it is determined that the
particular life in question itself is harmful for society/humanity.
Let me digress a bit on the value of life. The religious right has
hijacked the issue on pure religious grounds. But there is nothing
religious (or exclusively religious) about the value of life. It is
a biological fact that fetus has life, and a scientific fact that
life symbolizes the greatest depth of information. It is a fact
that evolution has programmed human mind to value life because life
has the highest information content. Information is the most
precious commodity for humans. A human genome has the information
that reflects 3 billion years of accumulated history of success in
surviving through trial and error. It takes the equivalent of 30
volumes of Encylopedia Brittania to write out the entire human
genome sequence in paper. The genome of a fetus contains millions
of years of evolutionary track record of successful mutation and
natural selection of both of its parents which it will have
eventually passed on to its offspring, preserving the track record
of human evolution. It is the fact of Molecular Biology, not the
irrational notions of God, soul etc which should really make one
pause and reflect on the value of life.
So if we accept yes as the answer to both the two questions above
then the abortion debate boils down to settling whether an act of
abortion satisfies the criteria of exception. Some accept yes to
(1) but not to (2) by trying to distinguish between "Life" and a
"person". They are morally opposed to killing a person, but not
life, if the form of life is not a person. This is a semantic
jugglery to defend their apriori stand on abortion in a post hoc
fashion. Saying that a person is worth preserving but not the
embryo is like saying that a plant is valuable but not the seed
(Which produces the plant), so one can destroy seeds at will. It
seems logically strange to value an object, but not the source of
that object, without which the object would not have come about
in the first place. Moreover there is a continuity from embryo to
person. There is as much continuity from an embryo to a neonate
as there is from a neonate to a ninety year old human. So this
arbitrary drawing of distinction between an embryo and a person
in deciding the ethicality of abortion is a convenient personal
expedient to justify post hoc one's personal apriori stand on
abortion. Certainly biology, which ultimately arbitrates morality,
does not not distinguish between an embryo and a post-partum human.
It is interesting to note that to one who decides to abort, an
embryo is not life, but to one who wants the child, embryo is
very much a life. But an embryo IS life, regardless of whether
it is aborted or nurtured to parturition.
Besides it is highly debatable and is not subject to scientific
criteria when to assign "personhood" to life. Personhood is a
matter of perception and definition, and thus cannot be used to
determine the ethicality of abortion, which carries with it the
important implication of ending a potential future life. Just like
people cannot use their own definition of personhood to justify
killing a autistic child, patient of severe alzheimer disease etc.
Using one's biased definition as a post hoc justification for
abortion or simliar act that affects other's lives is nothing but
moral relativism misapplied. But more importantly, "when" life
starts or when personhood can be assigned to life is irrelevant in
determining the morality of an issue. Morality should depend on
facts themselves, not on definition or perception of words.
Definitions cannot determine morality, only factual consequences
can. Definitions can change, facts/factual consequences cannot.
So morality should be tied to facts and consequences, not to
definitions of words. So even if people can differ as to when life
starts, no one can disgree on the facts that (1) a fetus has all
the vital signs of life, (2) that it will eventually develop into a
full human, and (3) that aborting a fetus has the factual
consequence of ending the potential future of the human that the
fetus would have grown into. It will be a trusim to say that if the
fetus of the reader of this post was destroyed, then reader would
not be reading this post. Like it is said: "It's easy to be pro-
choice when you're not the one being killed." This may sound like a
emotional soundbite, but it does capture the importance of valuing
the life of a fetus. We often thank our lucky stars for being saved
from inevitable death by some life saving act of intervention by
someone (for example being saved from drowning, resuscitation etc).
Now why should we not feel thankful if we found out that we were
spared from am impending act of abortion by some intervention? Just
because we could not actually consciously experience the act of
intervention of in this case, we should not feel lucky and thankful?
By what logic? In fact killing a fetus by someone else is deemed as
murder by the pregnant mother if she desires the child. Killing
fetus by another is also a legally punishable as murder as the case
of Scott Peterson being convicted for killing the fetus of his wife.
It is also pertinent to state that that (female)feticide is banned
in India. Sometimes pro-choice advocates contend that a fetus
cannot have right to life like a person because a fetus does not
have the ability to exercize right, a fetus has no free will. Again,
the point is that a if right can only apply when a right can be
exercized then an infant also has no right and thus cannot have
right to live by this logic. But that is never accepted. The same
can be said about an unconscious person, or even a sleeping person.
On the surface that may seem like a farfetched analogy but it is
not. A sleeping person will regain his/ her ability of exercize
rights in matter of hours whereas a fetus will attain it in matter
of years. There is no apriori objectivity in saying that ending the
life when the abilty to exercize right is years away is ethical but
is not if it is hours away. That will be a totally arbitrary and
expedient criterion. In abortion context the "right" of the fetus
is irrelevant, the relevant question is that of the value of the
life of the fetus. Some pro-choicer argue that the "interests" of
a potential human being should never outweigh those of an actual
thinking, feeling person. But that is really twisting the issue.
The issue is not a symmetrical one of the conflict of INTEREST of
the fetus with the INTEREST of the mother, but the assymmetrical
one of the conflict of LIFE of the potential human (fetus) with
the POTENTIAL HEALTH RISK/INCONVENIENCE of the mother. The view
that the life of the fetus is not worth the risk/inconvenience of
the mother is that of those pro-choicers, not of the majority of
humanity.
Some argue that abortion should be ethical up to the 15th week of
pregnancy, because that is when the spinal cord and brain become
fully active in the fetus and so only after that can it become the
right to child's life issue. There is an ethical and logical
dilemma in this position. Setting the criterion to draw the line of
ethicality in killing a fetus to be a fully formed spinal cord/
brain as the is a flawed one. Aside from the fact that there is no
magic threshold for the nervous system from 14th to 15th week, it
is still a continuous transition, but first of all, the neurons,
the main player of the brain form and multiply continuously
througout the gestation. Secondly if one sets the criterai of
ethicality of killing based on the ability to feel the pain of
killing (via the nervous system) then for consistency by that
criteria it would be ethical to kill a person by painlessly
overdosing them with anasthetic (Or any other means of euthanasia).
So the 15 week threshold is only a convenient one for someone to
plan an abortion ahead and justify it by doing it before the 15th
week. It is not a meaningful ethical rationalization at all. If it
is 100% unethical to abort on the 16th week, it cannot be 0%
unethical on the 14th week, because there is a gradual evolution
(ontogeny) of the embryo. An ethical decision should be less
conditional.
A utilitarian pro-choice argument that is often offered is that the
fetus is that a fetus is not a functioning member of society and
actively contributing to it like a fully grown human is. That is
also not a convincing one. A healthy infant also hardly contributes
actively to society and the world. By that the same logic of
utilitarianism, an old and sick person does not contribute to the
society and may even become a serious liability for his or her
spouse or son or daughter. But humanity does not view killing such
persons as being ethically acceptable, although killing such
persons are not anti-evolutionary either. Also the analogy of
sleeping person may be invoked here too. A fetus will contribute to
society in matter of years vs. hours for a sleeping person, an
arbitrary distinction.
Another pro-abortion argument is often made by citing women's
financial hardship. We are excluding the case of rape here, only
focussing on pregnancy due to consentual act of love. If we agree
that abortion is taking away a life, then financial hardship cannot
morally exculpate one from the act of ending a life. If women
cannot avail of contraception resources, that is no excuse, she can
ask the man to take male contraceptive measures, which are cheap
and easily available. She can refuse to have any intimate
relationship if the man refuses to use them. Another common
argument of pro-choice advocates is that the woman has to go
through complications and travails of pregnancy, sometimes risking
her life, so she has the right to choose what she thinks is best
for her. Again, assuming the premise that ending life is considered
ethically unacceptable, this misery clause does not justify making
an exception in this case, particularly in the case of unintended
pregnancy, because such pregnancy could have been avoided by taking
appropriate birth control measures. Engaging in act of love out of
impulse without taking the necessary precaution and then killing
the fetus after pregnancy just to relieve oneself of all the pains
and tribulations of pregnancy or due to the anticipated hardship of
taking care of the child is an easy but irresponsible way of
solving one's personal problem. This can be no more justified than
the killing by drowning of two babies by their mother Susan Smith,
as the children appeared to be liabilities and getting in the way
of her relationship with her boyfriend. She chose an easy way out
of her problems by killing her babies instead of acting responsibly.
The responsible way to solve is by taking the steps to prevent
conception,or to undertake the responsibilty of rearing the child
by making whatever sacrifice necessary. Moreover if abortion can be
justified by citing such hardship clauses, then that can also be
applied to the case of spouse/son/ daughter of a seriously ill
person who may argue that he/she is suffering immensely in taking
care of the ill soul and hence has the moral right to take the old
sick person's life to bring an end to his or her own suffering,and
that no one should have any moral say on his or her decision. So
the case of justifying abortion with the utilitarian/hardship
argument is no more convincing for taking life in all these other
cases, if we value life using such an utilitarian point of view.
There is essentially no difference. But the latter is ethically
unacceptable by widely accepted values and principles. So for
consistency ethicality cannot be decided by a utilitarian argument
in abortion case only. That would be a personal expediency to
justify an end.
Another common argument to justify legalizing abortion is that
otherwise women will resort to unsafe abortion methods, citing
statistics. Once again if we agree that abortion IS taking away of
a (human) life, then the ethicality of remains the lingering issue.
It amounts to saying that abortion should be made legal because
then the life of a fetus can be taken away without any risk to the
mother. In other words the life of the fetus is not considered
worth the risk that a mother may face during childbirth. Apart from
that there is a problem in citing statistical reference for making
an ethical judgment. A statistical data is irrelevant in an ethical
question like ending a life. Second, the statistics itself is
subject to controversy. The claim that there were many abortion
related deaths prior to 1973 than after has been challenged.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson who was one of the original leaders of the
American pro-abortion movement and co-founder of N.A.R.A.L.
(National Abortion Rights Action League), and who has since become
pro-life admitted that he and other abortion rights activists
intentionally fabricated the number of women who allegedly died as
a result of illegal abortions. Yes, Dr. Nathanson was a liar,
as he himslef admitted, but I am not using his lies to make any
point here, but pointing out his confession of having lied about
the numbers of deaths due to illegal abortions. This is borne out
by the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics,according to which there
were a mere 39 women who died from illegal abortions in 1972, the
year before abortion was legalized, not thousands as the abortion
right activists had claimed.
Another point is made that what is true in one society/culture may
not be true in another, due to the social reality being different
in the two societies (for example US vs. India). Such pro-choice
advocates label a pro-life stand as being insensitive to the needs
and plight of the pregnant women unique to some societies. This is
an example of cultural relativism. But the ethicality of ending
life cannot be culturally relative. Cultural/moral relativism can
only make sense for non- universal (i.e relative) issues, where the
subjectivity of the moral value does not lead to adverse factual
consequences. A good example is the issue of whether informing the
sex of a fetus to the parent is ethical or not, as is sometimes
raised. That is truly a relative moral issue. Because knowledge of
the sex of a fetus in itself is never unethical in a absolute sense,
like ending a life is, becauuse a knowledge is never anti-
evolutionary, like ending a life is. So one is free to think if
such knowledge should be immoral (illegal to be precise) in one
context and moral (legal) in another. Because such definitions do
not legitimize an act that is unethical in a self-evident and
universal sense (like taking away a life). Anyway the important
point is that in unplanned pregnancy resulting from consentual act
of love, be it in or out of wedlock, pregnancy could have been
prevented by taking necessary measures. It is not proper to make a
post hoc rationalization of such an important ethical decision as
ending the life of a fetus. Point can be made that acting
preemptively is the moral imperative here. A defensive argument for
abortion citing the problems of social attitude toward childbirth
from unwanted pregnancy(social stigma, job discrimination etc),
amounts to adopting a defeatist attitude towards such evil social
attitudes and customs and resigning to it, where in fact it should
be questioning and challenging them, to stand up to them. Aborting
a fetus to avoid social disgrace amounts to condoning and
perpetuating those very social evils that the abortion is trying to
avert. Its like instead of condemning rape or rapist, one starts
advocating the right of parents to force their daughters to wear
veils (as would be the case in Muslim societies) to avoid getting
raped, which amounts to putting the burden on the victim to avoid
rape, not on the perpetrator. Rather the moral imperative should be
to strive against such social discrimination, create awareness about
the wrongness of such attitude, and to create awareness that single
parenthood is not wrong, create lobbies and organizations to
provide legal protection to victims of such discrimination, rather
than just advocate the right to abort a fetus, effectively putting
the burden of averting the consequences such social evils on the
fetus by killing it. Moreover, to justify abortion in this context
implies that the potential life of the fetus is dispensable enough
to end it in order to just prevent social disgrace of the mother,
or to prevent the mother from not getting a job etc. Abortion in
this context thus really amounts to committing an ethically
questionable act of ending of a life to AVERT, NOT SOLVE those
social evils. The issue of the ethicality of ending a future life
or abortion right cannot be contingent on the presence of social
evils. As an example, we do not focus on the right of poor parents
to rob or steal or justify it so they can pay the dowry for their
daughters' marriage to prevent their daugher from being tortured by
her in laws (and husband) for dowry, which is a realistic scenario
in India and Bangladesh for example. Many women face beating by
husbands for not persuading her parents to pay up dowry. Some
clever parent may start a "right to steal/rob" movement citing the
plight of daughters under pressure from in laws and husbands for
dowry. One can then retort to an opponent of such rights by the
same argument we are seeing here, you are being insensitive to the
daughter's plights, feelings etc. But this is not the case in
reality nor is that socially accepted. So by the same token, it
does not make sense to make abortion a women rights issue just for
solving anticipated social problems of pregnant women. It basically
boils down to the question, does the end justify any means? The
means here meaning ending a future life in the making, and the end
being to avoid a possible hardship. If ending the life of a fetus
was not ethically questionable we would not be debating.The
ethicality of ending a life is not contingent on the presence or
absence of other social evils. We cannot do much to reddress many
social evils. We cannot do much to end poverty. But that does not
mean we should not be morally against theft or defend theft as a
means of avoiding financial hardship. We cannot do much to end the
problems of pregnant women in India fpr example. But that does not
mean we cannot question the ethics of killing a future life,
specially when we do know that conception in many cases is possible
to prevent, and abortion in those cases is unjustified and
tantamount to trivializing fetal life. At least there needs to be
an acknowledgement by all that there is an ethical dilemma in
abortion, it will be disingenuous to pretent there is no ethical
dilemma in abortion. Another point that can be made is that there
are alternatives to abortion to solve these problems of unwanted
pregnancies measures like orphanage or adoption. The demand for the
number of adoptions globally is probably not less than the number
of abortions. And it should not matter that the parents seeking
adoption are from a different country or culture. For a pregnant
mother who does not desire to have her child it should hardly
matter who adopt their child. It should not matter to the fetus
either. Ask any grown up adopted child, would they rather been
aborted by their mother than adopted by a foreign couple? There
are many cases of an adopted child, who was a potential target of
abortion, growing up to be a fruiful member of society. We preach
the golden rule of giving the benefit of the doubt. If there is the
slighetst doubt that whether an unwanted fetus will grow up to be a
fruitful member of the society then the benefit of the doubt means
giving the fetus a chance to live. Adoption is a wordlwide demand.
In this age when the world is a village it should be no problem to
arrange adoption on a global cross cultural, cross national basis.
In fact there is so much demand for adoption that it has even been
suggested that it is lucrative area for private enterprise, just
like mail order bride has become. And certainly a better population
control strategies should be adopted as has been suggested.
The only situation that deserves special consideration is the rare
case of tubal or ectopic pregnancy, where the life of both mother
and fetus are at risk and abortion can help to save the life of one
(the mother in this case). Self preservation is the abiding
principle of biology, so at least the mother's wish to abort to
save herself in such cases is consistent with biological imperative
So there is less or no ethical dilemma in such cases.
Now let me address the second aspect of abortion relating to who
has the fetal right and thus the right to make the abortion
decision. I am assuming this to mean the right of the mother vs.
the father of the fetus. My points do not apply when it is meant as
right of the mother vs. the state or the society. It is not fair to
say without qualification that abortion is ONLY a woman's right to
choose. This also lumps the case of a rape by a stranger on the
same footing with consentual act of love between two lovers having
mutual feeling. Pregnancy can occur in both cases, but obviously
the situation that led to it are very different. Its only fair in
case of rape. A woman cannot conceive without a man and in a
pregnancy not resulting from rape they both have equal
responsibilty. Again as a reminder, all the discussion that follows
it will be assumed that the pregnancy occured due to a consentual
act of love. The common ground for advocating abortion as women's
right issue is that it is the woman who has to go through the
complication and travails of pregnancy. The travails of a pregnancy
is built in nature and its not a pain that one is voluntarily
taking over from another. A natural event cannot entitle one to a
greater right just by that fact alone. This becomes a human rights
issue (or an equal/ proportional rights issue). One entity's (
gender,race etc) right cannot be at the cost of another's. If
hypothetically lets say that conception could occur in both female
and male and could be chosen by some means and then if a woman
graciously agreed to volunteer to do it then she would have by that
very act deserved a higher rights over man or conversely the man
would be deemed to have relinquished his share of rights by not
volunteering.Granted, the woman goes though the travails during
pregnancy. But a woman's travail's should not disqualify a man' s
right. A person can be disqualified from rights only by his/her own
wrongful act or conduct. "A" cannot lose his/ her rights due to "B"'
s hardship. "A" can lose "A"'s rights due to "A"s own
irresponsibility or misconduct. Also person "A"'s right cannot be
curtailed or denied because nature happens to endow "B" with
certain biological characteristics. B's right cannot be at the
expense of that of A. In the present context, denying a man's share
of ownership of the fetus because nature happens to place the fetus
in the women's womb is nothing but gender discrimination(reverse)
in disguise.
It is also contended often by pro-choice advocates that a fetus is
part of a woman's body, and hence she should have rights on the
fetus to decide what she can do with it as her body part, no one
else should have any say as to what she can do with her body. The
counterpoint to this is:
A fetus is certainly not an organ or body part of the woman. Of
course no one can have right over anther's body. But an embryo is
not part of her body like her other organs are. A fetus is rather
UNLIKE all other body parts of the mother. The only fact that we
know for certain and is relevant here is that unlike all the other
body parts, the fetus contains genes (in the chromosomes) from both
the father and mother. Unlike all the other body parts, the fetus
requires the joint participation of both the mother and father for
its creation(birth). A fetus is not a body part but a sovereign
body of another human in the making. Unlike all the body parts,
which are permanent part of her body, the fetus will leave the
mother's body to become a separate human, carrying the genes of
both the parents. The reasoning that the woman should be the sole
owner of the fetus becasue it resides in her body is a post hoc
(after the fact) reasoning. Ownership has to be an apriori
principled decision, not based on a post hoc observation. Doesn't
the mother (and the father) agree(take for granted rather) that a
child AFTER birth belongs to both parents?. That is certainly not
because of the factual observation that the child is no longer
inside her body, rather because of a principled understanding of
the fact that the child is the fruit of a joint effort by both the
parents. That principled agreement should hold regardless of
whether the child is inside or outside the body of the mother.
Saying that a fetus belongs to mother only would be exploiting a
biological advantage of the woman, not a principled statement.
In determininig whose sole right it should be to take a decision of
such magnitude as to end or save the life of the fetus, one should
ask what is more relevant, the subjective definition of fetus as a
body part of the women, or the objective fact that the fetus is
made from the most vital ingredient of life, the gene from both
parents etc? The most basic urge of all life forms is preserving
and propagating the gene. It is a biological imperative. So it is
biologically fair to factor in the the sentiment of the father also,
whose gene the fetus is carrying as well.
We can cite another example to illustrate the problem of the
reasoning that the woman should be the sole owner of the fetus
because it resides in her body. Can a surrogate mother bearing the
fetus of a test tube baby on behalf of a couple suddenly claim
ownership of the fetus and decide to abort it, saying it is part
of her body, not the couple's? What logic will be invoked then? So
beyond that convenient definition the fact that should not be
missed is that a fetus is also the offspring or the sexual product
of the man and the woman temporarily attached to the womb of a
woman, during the first nine months of its life. A fetus is not
something that a woman acquires from birth but is an entity that
was created by a joint collaboration, so to speak between a male
and a female and hence it cannot be the sole property of one or the
other. Any common sense law says that anyone who is involved (In
whatever way, directly or indirectly) in an activity/project,
acquires rights on it proportional to his/her contribution to such
an activity/ project. Just because the embryo physically resides in
the mother's body cannot entitle her to a full ownership. Take an
analogy. If "A" and "B" jointly bought an article for use by both,
then even if the article (TV. etc anything) stays in "A"'s room,
it still is a joint property and "A" cannot lay full claim on it.
Only a property that anyone aquires solely on their own gets full
ownership. One may argue that if the TV becomes a hazard for A,
then A has the right to dispose of the TV. But if the hazards are
well known in advance, the agreement to keep the TV in A's room
should have already factored in the hazards. So it still does not
entitle A to a unilateral action. Only when a woman chooses to
become pregnant by insemination through sperms purchased or donated
through a sperm bank, then she has total ownership of the embryo.
And she can do whatever she chooses to with it. The sperm donors
effectively relinquished their rights on their sperm by donating/
selling it to the sperm bank. One can still call a fetus a body
part of the women if they insist as long as the definition is not
used to make an ethical decision on the fate of the fetus or
establising a sole right on the fetus.
Often pro-choice advocates argue that it is the mother who
sacrifices and nourishes the fetus, so a man cannot have any say on
abortion of the fetus. If pro-choice advocates argue that the fetus
is the sole ownership of the mother and not the father, then that
argument can be turned around and one can ask, will the pro-choice
accept that in case the mother does not choose to abort, should it
also be her sole responsibility to look after the fetus, that men
should have no responsibility (Like contributing to the maternity
care that the expecting mother needs), as he has zero ownership of
the fetus? The argument cuts bothways. But even the argument that
it is the mother alone who is nourishing and sacrificing to bear
the fetus is flawed. The mother is no doubt provides nutrition to
the fetus. But she only acts as the conduit. The food and care that
a pregnant mother herself needs is not necessarily self-provided.
The father contributes significantly. (Again we are excluding the
case of deadbeat father where the mother is forced to handle
everthing one her own, in which case he forfeits his rights on the
fetus). So the argument that it is the mother who is solely bearing
the burden of bringing up the fetus is not a convincing one.
The moot point is that a pregnancy is a joint rights and
responsibilities issue, not of one or the either exclusively.
Responsiblities and rights go hand in hand. Irresponsiblities
always forfeit a right. A criminal is forced to stay in a jail
forfeiting his/her rights to a free movement although he/she was
entitled to the right to move about freely like the rest, but the
criminal act forfeited it. If a man doesn't stand by the pregnant
woman and walks away from her after pregnancy then that would
amount to an irresponsible act and he effectively has relinquished
his right. So in this case all the right of abortion goes to the
woman naturally. But in all other cases its a shared right and the
decision of abortion has to be made jointly on a consensus basis.
So to say without qualification that a man has 0% right on abortion
decision period is grossly unfair and would be clearly equivalent
to saying that a man has 0% right and woman has 100% just because
of their genders and would thus be a highly sexist statement
(against men) in the same manner that so many sexist statements
are made (against women). Two wrongs don't make a right.
In conclusion the crux of the debate is the distinction that
pro-choicers draw between embryo/fetus and person. They agree
that both have life but since embryo is not actually a person,
and does not have a mind to feel or to exercize free will so
an embryo/fetus cannot have right to life like a person has or
that the value of the life of a fetus cannot outweigh the
problems of a person (the pregnant mother in this case) and
hence it justified to end of the life of the fetus if necessary
to solve the problems of the mother. My argument in this essay
has been to refute this argument by pointing out the inconsistency
of this view with the usual ethical values that we all adopt.
The only way such view can be self-consistent is if one abandons
any ethical position on the value of life and only adopts a
completely utilitarian position on life when ending or preserving
life valuing life is a matter of practical expediency, not ethics.
At the end, like all moral judgments in society the legality
of abortion would be decided by the democratic process in a
society, or determined by some mechanism representative of that
society, as dictated by evolutionary pressure, which is also
changeable. Individual opinions can vary over a wide spectrum,
My discussion was to dwell on the rationality of the arguments
presented in typical abortion debate. I do anticipate critical
responses from members. To save time for myself and the readers
I will not respond to any criticism/question that could be
answered/refuted from what is already contained in my essay.
Only if a criticism/question require points not covered in my
essay will be addressed.
12======
FAITH, PHILOSOPHY & DOGMA
Let me start with a definition of each of the terms and follow up
with detailed discussions of each.
1. FAITH: A PERSONAL belief of any kind that is not verified and
supported by logic and evidence. Some personal beliefs MAY
contradict the strict rules of logic (The classic example of an
omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator of the universe).
An important attribute of faith is that it has no implied
compulsion in it. It is not derived from some divine or human
authority demanding the belief. It is upto an individual to
believe or not. The belief is also held to be an absolute truth,
and no possibility of its being false is allowed. Faith, by its
definition, is non-intrusive. A faith of "A" does not force any
act or thought on "B". So it follows from the preceding attribute
that faith is harmless, since a faith by "A" does not in any way
affect "B".
Examples of Faith:
Faith in Pegasus, Santa Claus, round square, reincarnation,
An omnipotent/omniscient/omnibenevolent GOD etc.
2. PHILOSOPHY: A PERSONAL view or belief about reality which
may or may not be supported by logic or evidence, But unlike
faith, NEVER contradicts logic or observation, nor does it
insist on its being true in an absolute way.
Example:
Spinozza's nature God, Pantheism, Omega Point Theory,
Process theology, Socinism, platonism, humanism, atheism(Only
in the sense of not subscribing to theism), agnosticism
(defined anyway), humanism, secularism, rationalism, skepticism..
Note: Philosophy shares the attribute of non-intrusiveness (does
not affect or require participation of others ) and
harmlessness of faith as well.
3. DOGMA: A dogma is a belief or a system of beliefs, not based
on logic or evidence, but claimed as absolute and final, not
to be questioned or subject to any revision or affected by
any observation or facts of reality. A dogma is believed to
be directives from a divine or human authority and contains
imperatives of the type "SHOULD(NOT)", "MUST(NOT)", "HAS TO/
CANNOT" for all to obey, and not to be questioned. So a dogma
has a political aspect in it by its implied imposition of its
beliefs and directives on ALL, through threat and coercion. A
dogma thus necessarily interferes in the private life and is
intrusive in nature.
A dogma always invariably prescribes a set of rules and
conducts for its believers (often discriminating between
genders) as well as for the non-believers. Thus a dogma has
the potential to be harmful IF it is implemented puritanically
with zeal and vigour. Examples are the dogmatic part of
(i.e the political part) of Judaism, Islam, Chrsitianity,
Communism, various cults .
DISCUSSION:
Faith and Philosophy can sometimes be combined, e.g Buddhism,
Hinduism. Some organized religion can contain elements of all
three, like the three Abrahamic religions. A system of belief
based on dogma is not necessarily harmless, despite the presence
of the faith and philosophy part in it. It may or may not be
dangerous depending on how puritanically the dogma part is
enforced or implemented. A system of belief that does not
contain dogma is not dangerous per se. A follower or a group
of followers may subscribe to both a dogma "A" and a philosophy
"B", for example, A=communism, B=athesim. The classic fallacy
among many, as the quote below from an article demonstrates,
is to characterize the acts of extremism of such a person
committed in the name of "A" , as being due to "B":
"genocides have occurred for causes rooted in religion
as well as in other philosophies, including atheism"
This fallacy is often due a deliberate attempt to discredit
atheists, in defense of the theists. And the defense of the
theists, as I can understand from the article is due to an "
empathy" for the theists, as they are viewed as the victims, whom
the tyrant atheists are supposedly attempting to rob of their
only pain management tool (Read "belief in God") by trying to
debunk the notion of God!. And the atheists hardly deserve any
empathy in the face of the harshest personal attack (being
declared Immoral, inhuman etc), and intimidations by the theists.
I can't see how an atheist can ever hurt a theist by trying to
logically refute theism. Since theism requires a faith, how can
logic affect faith? So this empathy to me is misdirected. Whether
or not atheism is a less logical tenable notion than agnosticism
is an altogether different philosophical question, which has been
addressed in my article GOD,ATHEISM & SECULAR HUMANISM.
But I see no reason to imagine a paranoid state of theists caused
by atheists and to feel empathy out of that imagined paranoia.
The example of Stalin is a popular one touted by critcis of
atheism or secualrism to prove that atheism leads to atrocities.
But Stalin did not commit atrocities in the name of "atheism",
but in the name of communist dogma (Or his version of it : "
Stalinism"). One can never commit atrocities in the name of
atheism. Betrand Russell was an avowed atheist. He could not
have any committed any atrocities, no matter how hard he tried,
in the name of atheism, SINCE HE DID NOT BELIEVE IN ANY DOGMA.
No one can come up with any example of anyone committing
atrocities solely because of atheism. All attrocities are
committed by theocratic or communist regimes , to enforce their
dogma by coercion, or by an oligarchy (military or otherwise)
to crush any opposition to its rule.
REFERENCES & BOOK REVIEWS
SECTION-A. FIVE OUTSTANDING BOOKS:
Authors:
Paul Davies:
1. GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS
Here Paul Davies tries to answer or at least set the right tarck
of answering the ultimate questions about reality and existence,
using the findings and language of the new science of the 20th
century. He takes a scientific look at the questions previously
considered to be the domain of religion and traditional
metaphysics, like creation of universe and its fate, soul, free
will, consciousness, etc.
A listing of the contents will throw a glimpse of whats in store:
CONTENTS:
Science and religion in a changing world; genesis; did God create
the universe?; what is life? - Holism vs reductionism; mind and
soul; the self; the quantum factor; time; free will and
determinism; the fundamental structure of matter; accident or
design?; black holes and cosmic chaos; miracles; the end of the
universe; is the universe a " free lunch"?; the physicist's
conception of nature.
2. THE MIND OF GOD
Here Davies discusses the role of mathematics in understanding
nature's workings. Specifically the mystery about why mathematics
works so well in explaining nature. He also discusses and
speculates on the question if if life and intelligence are
inevitable result of the laws of nature at work, in other words
is it contingency or necessity etc. Here is the complete listing
of contents:
CONTENTS:
Part 1 Reason and belief: the scientific miracle; human reason
and common sense; thoughts about thought; a rational world;
metaphysics - who needs it?; time and eternity - the fundamental
paradox of existence. Part 2 Can the universe create itself?: was
there a creation event?; creation from nothing; the beginning of
time; cyclic world revisited; continuous creation; did God cause
the Big Bang?; creation without creation; mother and child
universes. Part 3 What are the laws of nature?: the origin of law;
the cosmic code; the status of the laws today; what does it mean
for something to "exist"?; in the beginning. Part 4 Mathematics
and reality: magic numbers; mechanizing mathematics; the
uncomputable; why does arithmetic work?; Russian dolls and
artificial life. Part 5 Real worlds and virtual worlds:
simulating reality; is the universe a computer?; the unattainable;
the unknowable; the cosmic programme. Part 6 The mathematical
secret: is mathematics already "out there"?; the cosmic computer;
why us?; why are the laws of nature mathematical?; how can we
know something without knowing everything?. Part 7 Why is the
world the way it is?: an intelligible universe; a unique theory
of everything?; contingent order; the best of all possible
worlds? beauty as a guide to truth; is God necessary?; a dipolar
God and wheeler's cloud; does God have to exist?; the options; a
God who plays dice. Part 8 Designer universe: the unity of the
Universe; life is so difficult; has the universe been designed by
an intelligent creator?; the ingenuity of nature; a place for
everything and everything in its place; is there need for a
designer?; multiple realities; cosmological Darwinism. Part 9 The
mystery at the end of the universe: turtle power; mystical
knowledge; the infinite; what is man?. An interesting quote from
part 7 (Under "a unique theory of everything?" ): "Even the
process of thinking involves the disturbance of Electrons in our
brains. These disturbances, though minute, nevertheless affect
the fate of other electrons and atoms in the universe."
3. THE COSMIC BLUEPRINT
Here Davies discusses the role of complexity and self organization
in complex sytems like life, weather, evolution, consciousness etc.
Explains how order arise out chaos. Discusses the question of whether
universe is designed by some kind of "comsic blueprint" or a result
of some random accidental process? Emphasizes holistic aspects of
emergent phenomena and the limitations of reductionist approach in
understanding complex systems.
4. THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: -- Frank Tipler
Here "God" has been discovered through laws of pure physics by
one no- nonsense Physicist of repute in the rank of Stephen
Hawking, Roger Penrose etc. A Caveat: The God in Tipler's Book is
very different from the Personal God of most revealed religions.
It is defined as the convergent point (Omega Point) of all the
possible quantum cosmological histories of SpaceTime (i.e
universe) into the c-boundary, where knowledge/information
assumes infinite extent and thereby becomes an omnipotent/
omniscient entity capable of resurrecting all finite past beings
by a simulation process from its stored history. The term
resurrection has to be understood in this very different sense
from the naive one. It is a Physicist's "God" and "Resurrection"
so to speak. I think Tipler has done his homework and paid all
the dues (It takes formidable cerebration to master the fields of
Global General Relativity, Quantum Cosmology, Particle Physics
etc.) before coming with such a dramatic original approach to
eschatology. He displays an awesome depth of diverse fields (Each
page of this 500 page book quotes/ cross references works of
scholarly nature on Philosophy, Theosophy, Logic etc) and builds
upon established scientific principles in an authoritative way
unlike those advanced by pseudoscientists who have a smattering
of scientific principles and take cues from Scientists'
quotations (without really understanding in depth Quantum
Mechanics, Cosmology etc) and adding it in a catchy way to their
ideas to propound their theories of "quatum healing", body and
mind etc. To fully understand Tipler's derivation of "God" one
has to master the most advanced concepts of Global General
Relativity, Cosmology, Particle Physics, Computer Science,
Evolutionary Biology etc. Otherwise just have to take his word
for it and be content with it. But at least accepting his theory
on faith is much preferable over accepting as faith preachings
made in a matter of fact way with no attempt to base them on
sound logic/knowledge by people with much less knowledge in
ancient past (all the reasons for existence of God was statements
like " How can there be mountains, sky full of stars, the miracle
of life, cows giving us milk etc without GOD? A simplistic
observation which any ordinary individual can make. no need of
any spiritual leader to point that out). In simple terms it is
human (or its descendents in whatever form or shape it assumes)
who will create GOD through the pooling of the immense cumulative
information database to be aquired over the lives of all humans
who have lived and will have lived over the next billions of
years until the end of the universe, and not the other way around
as in traditional religion where GOD creates all human.
Figuratively one can visualize this by a simple fact. A few human
with finite strength and brain can build very powerful nuclear
bombs that can destroy the earth by utilizing the combining the
knowledge gained by varoius scientists and engineers. So it is
not hard to extrapolate the power human as a species can achieve
after billions of years of cumulative knowledge and combining it
to build something very powerful and creative (in a posotive
sense) that can perform what a traditional GOD is capable of. The
Omega Point concept of GOD does provide an explanation, in my
view, of the mystery of behind the urge to procreate of all
species. First to create GOD human has to continue to exist, so
procreation is a necessary prequsite. For human to continue, all
other species need to continue as all of them are interdependent.
So procreation is the the necessary biological imperative for
Omega Point to be created. Tipler takes a global view of things
and doesn't really try to focus on or advance any given religion
and its eschatology (He makes it clear he doesn't subscribe to
any revealed religion and makes a critical study of all religions,
though he does point out purely incidental similarities between
his eschatology and those of the other major religions/
philosophies). After all his theory is purely a physics theory
and cannot be a respecter of any specific religion/culture/etc.
All speculations Tipler makes follow naturally from the most
advanced concepts of Physics, Evolution, Epistemology and Turing
Principle. But his eschatology can provide little help to diehard
religious fanatics who are dogmatic about their perception of
their own religion being only right with all its blind
revelations. Tipler also formally declares Theology (Justifiably
in my view) as a branch of Physics/ Cosmology (Specifically the
eschatological aspect of Theology. I can foresee "Quantum
Eschatology" or "Physical Eschatology" being added to Graduate
level course listings in Physics at many universities in the
early 21st century) with the writing of this book. Even if one
finds it hard to understand or does not find some pages in the
beginning to be interesting I strongly urge one to read on as it
gets very interesting in later chapters with cameos of
occassional humours, not to mention the inexhaustible references
to facts, insights and principles on all diverse fields as
researched by scholars. Lastly it must be mentioned that Tipler's
theory is a plausible and testable Theory. It is not an absolute
prediction. There are many sensible assumptions made (All physics
laws assume logical assumptions and when tests verifies the
theory the assumptions are vindicated. So Tipler's theory can
only become a law if and when its six predictions are tested to
be true. But physicists concede that Tipler's Theory/predictions
are possible/ consistent with Physics but just because it is
possible doesn't guarantee it WILL happen. Read the following
reviews (selected from amongst many) by others to get a broader
perspective.
- Review by Danny Rich 2. Review by Dr.Sarfaraz Niazi and
- Review by Christopher Hunt which is quite interesting.
5. SHADOWS OF THE MIND: -- Roger Penrose
Wow! This is an incredibly profound book about a cerebral giant's
ambitious endevour to understand/unravel the mysteries of mind
and consciousness and its inevitable link to quantum physics and
information theory via the brain (ala cytoskeleton/microtubule).
This book will put a clincher on the assertion that the true
understanding of this topic can only be achieved, if ever through
a proper understanding/extension/application of the fundamental
principles of Physics of the very small and very large (Quantum
theory and Graviatation) and not through vague and ill defined
discipline of mysticism. For reviews of this masterly work by
scholars in diverse but relevant disciplines see the
link above under the title. (Check this link
also for a very nice review)
SECTION B. INTERESTING ARTICLES, LECTURES, AND MORE BOOK REVIEWS
Physics and The Mind of God : Paul Davies
Paul Davies has a balanced view of Holistic and Reductionistic
belief. Although thoroughly versed in reductionist principles he
believes the whole is more than just the sum of the parts.
Although he still is a skeptic but keeps an open mind to the
possibilty of something beyond the bounds of science and
objectivity. Unfortunately laypeople/pseudoscientists misconstrue
this holistic leanings of genuine Scientists/Physicists like Paul
Davies and try to use it to back up their own belief in
pseudoscientific/cult/mystic ideas and views without having a
clue what these scientists really mean by their holistic
utterances. Thus we need ruthless reductionist scientists like
Victor Stenger to debunk them and put them on right track
Has Science Found God?: Victor Stenger
Mystical Physics: Has Science Found the Path to the Ultimate?
- Victor Stenger
A Physicist's view of Religion, God etc : Victor Stenger
Can God Be Found in Physics?: A Philosopher's view - Michael Dickson
UNIVERSE,LIFE,CONSCIOUSNESS - Andrei Linde
Articles on Mind-Matter Unification : Brian Josephson(Nobel Laureate)
Matter,Mind and God : Jack Sarfatti
Physics and Consciousnes: Links
The ultimate Link on Life,Universe..
(On the Meaning of Existence the author of above seems to echo my feelings)
Mind,Matter & Quantum: Links
Physics of Consciousness: Lecture By Stapp
Quantum Consciousness
The Fifth Miracle : Paul Davies
Mind,Matter, and Quantum Mechanics : Henry Stapp
In this well written book, holistic ideas are advanced (with
moral authority) by a leading Quantum Physicist from Berkeley.
The basis of this holism is of course is the 20th century physics
of Quantum Theory. Some quotes: 1. "The successor to Classical
mechanics, quantum mechanics, allows each man's consciousness to
be understood as an integral part of the world described in the
mathematical language of physics" (p-199). 2. "Quantum Theory
leads naturally to a rationally coherent conception of the whole
of man in nature. It is profoundly different from the sundered
mechanical picture offered by classical physics. Like any really
new idea this quantum conception of man has many roots. It
involves deep questions : What is consciousness? What is choice?
What is chance? What can scince tell us about the role of these
things in nature?" (p-210). 3. "If the world indeed operates in
the way suggested by Heisenberg's ontology then we are all
integrally connected into some not-yet- fully-understood global
process that is actively creating the form of the universe" (p-
214). Stapp discusses the role of Quantum process in brain and
its plausible link to consciousness and goes on to discuss the
profound implications/connections of quantum theory to issues of
values, morality etc. He builds up his ideas on those of the
nineteenth century Psychologist/ philosopher William James and
the 20th century ideas of Heisenberg Ontology to offer his post
modernist form of Cartesian Dualism armed with all the modern
ideas of Quantum Theory & Neuroscience to offer a better attempt
to explain mind and consciousness than so far attempted.
Origins:Cosmos, Earth and Mankind: Hubert Reeves
Our Cosmic Origins: Armand Delsemme
(Click here to read the Epilog of the book)
Doubt and Certainty : Rothman and Sudarshan
The subtitle certainly conveys the text's gist, but readers may
be interested to know that these witty authors are serious
physicists. Their Western and Eastern philosophies flavor these
dialogues concerning issues in modern physics and the clashing or
meshing of New Age ideals. In what they describe as a cross
between Plato's Republic and the 1001 Nights, Rothman and
Sudarshan reinvent Plato's academy, melding their thoughts with
those of their ancestors and contemporaries. Each section is
prefaced by background on its subject and is concluded with a
puzzle or exercise.
Paradigms Lost: John L. Casti
This is a very well kept secret and a gem of a book, published
in 1989. Its a unique yet extremely well written book by a PhD
Mathematician attempting to answer six most profound questions of
modern science and philosophy and providing an answer in the form
of a claim by the prosecutor and after jury deliberations
(Objective evidences from the work of reputed scientists and
philosophers) the verdict is issued as to whether the claims are
correct. In his sequel to this book published in 2000, called "
Paradigms Regained" some of the older verdicts were revised in
light of the further research work by scientists since 1989. The
final results after revision, the claims can be stated correctly
as: (1) Life Arose out of a natural Physical process here on
Earth, (2) Human behaviours are pimarily dicated by genes, (3)
Human language stems from a unique innate property of the brain,
(4) Computers can in principle literally think, (5) No evidence
of Extraterrestrial Intelligence exists in our galaxy with whom we
can establish contact and (6) There exists an objective reality
independent of the observer. I will let the reviews of 5
customers in Amazon tell the rest.
The Fabric Of Reality: David Deutsch
The Meaning of it All : Richard Feynman
Before the Beginning : Sir Martin Rees
The Self-Aware Universe : Amit Goswami
The Spritual Universe : Fred Alan Wolf
Elemental Mind : Nick Herbert
The Selfish Gene : Richard Dawkins
River Out of Eden : Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker : Richard Dawkins
Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative - Christian De Duve
(Nobel Laureate)
The Animal Within Us: Jay D. Glass
This is a well written concise book. Although the topic is old
but it takes on a refreshing look in the authoritative writing of
a PhD in neurobiology who has also been in the real world dealing
with humans and thus equipped with the knowledge of Neurobiology
and years of accumulated biological and social insights. There
are plenty of surprising insights to be gleaned from this concise
yet informative (Avoiding the usual verbiage of other authors and
articulating his thoughts/insights succintly) book. After reading
this book many other books on philosophy, sociology seem
redundant and playing with words and expressions. This book makes
one face the truth that so many of us are afraid to face. Most
cherish the thought that human's treasured traits like love,
feelings and emotions have divine or sublime (i.e non- biogical)
origin. The thought that they may be of (neuro)biological origin
is a terrifying prospect to may. But then truth is beauty.
The Astonishing Hypothesis : The Scientific Search for the Soul
- Francis Crick (Nobel Laureate)
The Physics of Consciousness: Quantum Minds and the Meaning of Life
- Evan Harris Walker
The End Of Certainty : Ilya Prigogine(nobel Laureate)
The Hour of Our Delight : Hubert Reeves
ZEN AND THE BRAIN: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness
- James H. Austin
Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience - Eugene D'Aquili
SECTION C. SOME BOOKS IN MY "TO BE READ" LIST:
Stairway to the Mind : Alwyn Scott
Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics :
Jean-Pierre Changeux, Alain Connes
THE "GOD" PART OF THE BRAIN : Matthew Alper
The Mystery of Consciousness : John Searle
How the Mind Works : Steven Pinker
Evolving the Mind: on the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness
- A.G. Cairns-Smith
Life's Other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World - Ian Stewart
Summary of a talk by Ian Stewart with the same title (On 4/23/98 at the
Univ. of Minnesota):
What is life? Why is the world of living creatures so different
from the inorganic world? The discovery of the first secret of
life, the molecular structure of DNA, in the middle of this
century, showed that Life is a form of chemistry - but chemistry
unlike any that ever graced a test tube. Some secrets, however,
lie deeper that the genetic code. It is the mathematical law of
physics and chemistry that control the growing organism's
response to its genetic instructions. That is Life's OTHER Secret.
Its full understanding will come only when we combine the
mathematical and physical sciences with biochemistry, genetics,
and developmental biology. One of the most exciting growth areas
of twenty-first century science will be biomathematics. The next
century will withness an explosion of new mathematical concepts,
of new kinds of mathematics, brought into being by the need to
understand the patterns of the living world.
Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature,Origin and
Fabrication of Life: - Robert Rosen
Steps Towards Life: A Perspective on Evolution -Manfred Eigen
(Nobel Laureate)
Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind:
- Gerald Edelman(Nobel Laureate)
Seven Clues to the Origin of Life : A Scientific Detective Story
- A. G.Cairns-Smith
The Mind's I: Douglas Hofstadter
Godel,Escher, Bach: Douglas Hofstadter
This has become a virtual epic of the 20th century. Some have
likened it to a scripture. Martin Gardner has never expressed
such an awe in praising a book. I am yet to read this book, as I
would like to leave the best for the last. One only needs to
browse through the 119 reviews of this book in Amazon to
appreciate the the sense of awe and wonder that it has generated.
The Life of the Cosmos: Lee Smolin
Between Inner Space & Outer Space : John Barrow
The Artful Universe : John Barrow
At Home in the Universe : Stuart A. Kauffman
Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists
- Ken Wilber
Brings together for the first time the mystical writings of the
world's great physicists - all of whom express a deep belief that
physics and mysticism are somehow fraternal twins. Written in non-
technical language. Wilber selects telling comments, in their own
words, from some of the key big names of modern physics. Well
edited and insightfully commented, Wilber presents a strong case
that these physicists were indeed not philosophical materialists,
and some were outright mystical.
Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness: An Introduction
- Mari Jibu, Kunio Yasue
Addenda:
A similar analogy of software running on a hardware is a nuclear
bomb. The spectacular mushroom cloud, the blast, the destruction
is just nothing but a materialization of an information or code
(The laws of nuclear physics and relativity) with some hardware
ingredients (uranium etc). Behind any natural or artificial
wonders are nothing but some code (ultimately reducible to the
laws of Physics) at work. Some programs need human intervention
to run (Like nuclear bomb), others (like life, snowflakes, stars
etc) are initiated by nature itself through chaotic effects. But
it is only a matter of perspective. If we take the big picture of
humans as being part of nature obeying laws of physics then every
materialization of code in nature is spontaneous, and human
intervention is also a result of natural laws at work. The
ultimate example of materialization of physical laws is the Big
Bang which created the entire universe together with all its life
forms and other structures. The Big Bang was the materialization
of the Physical laws (Software) using the hardware of tiny
quantum bubble created through fluctuations of quantum vacuum.
Thus a tiny Quantum Bubble ended up as the observable universe we
wonder at today, thanks to the laws of Physics. Big Bang is
certainly a speculation, albeit a scientific one. It is predicted
by the same principles of Physics that predicted nuclear bomb
which was also successfully tested(Any doubter?). Do we dare
question the reality of nuclear bomb? We cannot question the
validity of the laws of Physics while placing complete
unquestioning confidence in the reality of a nuclear bomb
whenever one is built, since the latter is nothing but a
materialization of the former. So Big Bang, or some possible
variation thereof in future (As dictated by Physics), which is
predicted by the same laws of Physics that gave rise to nuclear
bomb cannot be dismissed using non-scientific reasoning.
|
A lot of the debate on evolution is focused on whether evolution has occurred or not. Defenders of evolution take great pains to offer the evidence and logic in support of evolution and to refute the position of creationists. But even many of the subscribers to the notion of evolution do not grasp the full implications of the fact of evolution. That will be my focus in this essay. The FACT of evolution is beyond debate, the detailed mechanism is not. My essay assumes the fact of evolution as a given. The simple fact of evolution has profound implications that can have a tremendous impact on the way one looks at life and it's various aspects including morality, values, social customs and human behaviour in general. When I refer to evolution, it will mean all the detailed insights obtained through the research in the fields of evolutionary biology/psychology. The lesson of evolution is that all life forms including humans arose out of an incremental evolution from a primitive life form over billions of years by a purely natural process and that the primitive life form itself arose out of an incremental evolution of complex molecules in the prebiotic atmospheres of early earth through purely chemical processes, called chemical evolution. Since the laws of physics is the ultimate governing principle behind all natural processes, the conclusion we can draw is that evolution, and thus all life forms are results of the laws of physics. One is forced to conclude this by pure logic and evidence. Denying this simple fact is tantamount to positing a "vital or divine" force driving life forms, humans in particular. The temptation to deny this fact is strong, specially because of the consciousness of human mind, which is intriguing and difficult to explain precisely by natural laws. Even many freethinkers who claim to believe in evolution unwittingly deny this fact when they refer to "human spirit", and passionately champion many of the "humanistic ideals", saying that humans are not machines, that love, morality and "human values" are not subject to mechanical laws etc. We have seen in Mukto-Mona many freethinkers making the point that morality is not subject to science or that science cannot be used to formulate morality. While it is true that science cannot be used to formulate morality, but it is also not true that anything else can be used to formulate morality either. So that point cannot be used to propose one's own favoured moral views to counter the moral views putatively based on science that happen to contradict their favoured views. But one thing that can be stated with certainty is that the notion of morality, as a product of evolution, is certainly a consequence of scientific laws (physics). So even though humans cannot use science to formulate morality, morality itslef is a product of scientific laws. The cold, stark fact is that since all life forms are results of pure natural processes dictated by the laws of physics, hence all aspects of life, including consciousness, love, morality are necessary (evolutionary)consequences of the same natural laws. This simple, yet profound fact is hard to accept even by many secular humanists, let alone theists. To say that any aspect of life is not subject to the laws of physics is to say that that aspect is subject to an (ill-defined) "divine force", "soul" etc. Pure and simple. There is no in between. It is one of those either or cases. Any attempt to have it both ways, just because it sounds politically correct or appeals to one's taste will be intellectually disingenuous. Many nontheists argue that biology (thus evolution) is not subject to the laws of physics. That is a subtle manifestation of yet another attempt to retain some semblance of a divine factor (by implication, by denying the naturalness of biology). This position is taken by philosopher Nancy Cartwright. In the book : "The Large, the Small and the Human Mind" (based on a series of three lectures in Cambridge's Tanner Series on Human Values), she challenges the assertion by Stephen Hawking that chemistry is a consequence of physics, and biology is a consequence of chemistry and thus human mind is a consequence of the laws of physics. Of course professional biologist/chemists (Richard Dawkins, Peter Medawar and Peter Atkins for example) do not have this illusion and are fully aware of this epistemological chain from physics to biology. Suffice it to say that this epistemological chain from physics to biology should be fairly obvious to anyone with a moderate understanding of physics and biology and capable of critical thinking. One simple observation can help: Most chemistry books devote their first few chapters on the physics of atoms and molecules, and most biology books devote their first few chapters on organic chemistry The skeptical view questioning this epistemological chain is only expressed by non-scientists. Coincidence? Not at all. Let me belabor this point a bit more and cite some quotes from scientists on this physics-->biology chain. While it is true that any view cannot be justified by solely resorting to an argument from authority, nevertheless this citation helps to reinforce this assertion of the epistemological chain, because there is no similar example of scientists expressing a view contradicting this. Now let me cite some quotes of various scientists in support of the above epistemological chain. Nobel Laureate Watson of DNA fame said "In the last analysis, there are only atoms. There's just one science, Physics; everything else is social work" in his lecture at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1985. This view is also echoed by Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg. Hawking nicely summarizes this view as: Biology->Chemistry-> Physics, in the book "The Large, the Small and the Human Mind". Steven Weinberg says in his book "Facing Up", p-22-3: "No biologist today will be content with an axiom about biological behaviours that could not be imagined to have a more fundamental level. That more fundamental level would have to be the level of Physics and chemistry, and the contigency that the earth is billions of years old". Biologist Richard Dawkins (in "The Blind Watchmaker") states that Physicists have to come into the scene at the end of the long chain of reasoning to explain evolution of life to complete the last but not the least significant step. Molecular Biologist Franklin Harold says in his wonderful book "The Way of the Cell", p-4: "We have ample reason to believe that every biological phenomena, however complex, is ultimately based on chemical and physical interactions among molecules" and reinforces this in his epilog : "The bedrock premise of this book book is that life is a material phenomenon, grounded in chemistry and physics. Physicist Heinz Pagels wrote in his book "The Dreams of Reason", p-49: "Biological systems are extremely complex Quantum mechanical entities functioning according to well-defined rules". Zoologist and award winning science writer Colin Tudge says (Independent on Sunday, Jan 25, 1998): "There are no biological laws, apart from the underlying laws of physics, and technology might anything that does not break these bedrock laws". In the book "Our Living Multiverse: A Book of Genesis in 0+7 Chapters", alternately titled as "Origins of Our Existence : How Life Emerged in the Universe" author Fred Adams (Univ. of Michigan Physics Professor) writes: These same laws of physics instigate the development of life, including complex creatures such as humans, at least under favorable circumstances. (p-191) "We now know that the laws of Physics ultimately determine the behavior of chemical reaction and biological processes." (p-192) The consummate example of emergent behavior is life itself. In simple reactions, biochemical molecules behave according to known chemical pathways. When these molecular systems become sufficiently complex, they act in novel ways. After this emergent level of complexity reaches a critical threshold, the system becomes alive. But the details of this transition remain shrouded in mystery. In spite of this gaping hole in our understanding, however, biological processes are driven by the same laws of physics that describe stars and planets. The concept of vitalism -- the idea that biological laws are independent of physical laws -- has been safely relegated to the trash heap of outdated ideas. (p-193)From Back Flap: With so much talk about the frontier of biology these days, I welcome the occasional reminder that the laws of physics control the formation and evolution of life. - Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Director, Hayden PlanetariumAs a final example renowned biologist Earnst Mayr wrote in his book "The growth of Biological Thoughts ('82): "Every biologist is fully aware of the fact that molecular biology has demonstrated decisively that all processes in living organisms can be explained in terms of Physics and chemistry"(As cited in Weinberg,"Facing Up", p-19) Let me digress more into this issue as it is vital to the "Darwinian" view of life. By Darwinian I mean the view that life is a product of natural process (i.e processes governed by the laws of physics). It is now understood that the fundamental constituents of matter (electrons, quarks) follow the laws of physics. It is also understood that matter, living or non-living, are composed solely of these fundamental elements. No life forms (dead or alive) has been found to contain any element other than these fundamental elements. Now if we know that the individual elements obey the laws of physics then it stands to reason that an aggregate of these constituens must also be subject to the laws of physics. If one electron, quark or string obeys the laws of physics then a system of n electrons and quarks (n is very large, for a living object) must also act according to the laws of physics. To say that a human is not just a product of the laws of physics but more, is NOTHING BUT that old vitalism in disguise. There is no third possibility. Either physics or an unknowable entity (God/Soul..) dictates the actions of the system of electrons and quarks called humans. I am not saying that all is known about physics. The knowledge of physics itself is a continually expanding horizon. By Physics in this essay I will mean tht totality of known and yet to be known laws that govern the evolution of the universe. Now let me clarify a VERY important point. Just because life is governed by the laws of Physics, that doesn't mean that every aspect of life can be DERIVED by the laws of physics. Let me illustrate this point with a very simple example. We know particles/objects obey the laws of gravitation. Using the laws of graviation we can precisely predict how a two particle system (like a star with one planet) will move. The orbit can be predicted precisely, or conversely the observed trajectory of two particle system can be explained precisely by the equations of gravity. Now just add one more particle to this system. No one can PRECISELY predict the exact orbit that a three particle system. That is because the laws of gravitation are non-linear. A non-linear equation cannot be solved exactly. So the observed trajectories of the particles in a three particle system cannot be exactly explained/derived by the laws of gravitation. Do we then say that a miracle/divine force is governing the three particle motion? Obviously not. Even though the observed trajectories of the particles cannot be explained/derived by the laws of gravitation, the important fact is that they do not violate the law either. And since there is no evidence that a third unknown force enters into the picture as soon as a third particle is added to a two particle system, thus the fact still remains that the laws of graviation determine the trajectories of three or any number of particles, even though we can only derive the trajectories of only a two particle system. Now extend this argument to humans. A human is enormously complex system of trillions of particles interacting with not just gravitational force but electro-weak and strong forces as well. If we cannot even precisely determine the behaviour of three particle systems, it would be naive to expect to be able to explain the behaviour of a human being in terms of the laws of physics. There is no fundamental difference between living and non-living matter, the difference is due to the complexity and emergent effects. Laws of Physics do control the behaviour of all matter, living, or non-living. No vital prcesses of a living organism, viz. metabolism, reproduction etc, involve any mechanism that violates or does not follow any known laws of Physics, like the law of conservation of energy, law of entropy etc. And since no living object has displayed any property that has violated the known laws of physics, we can draw the conclusion that that any property (including emotions, beliefs etc) of humans are ultimately DUE to the laws of Physics. To deny that will clearly be tantamount to invoking some mysterious force somewhere (Like in some religious texts, a "soul" is said to be implanted into the embryo at some point). In the evolutionary paradigm, life and death of any life forms are different states of matter. No mysterious force enters into a living body and leaves the body after death. Non-living matter (including a corpses) are in thermodynamic equlibrium, living matters are in highly non-equlibrium thermodynamic state. Just as a piece of iron can be in a magnetized state or non-magnetized state with no change in its material composition. Or just as a computer running a program is one state of the computer and a computer shut down is another state of the computer, with nothing entering or leaving the computer. One can say that that a human started and stopped the computer. But that human is also a system governed by the laws of physics and the human+computer system is thus acted on also solely by the laws of physics which cause the human to start and stop the computer (Alternating between two states). EVERY PHENOMENA in universe is coded into the laws of physics. Our entire universe is a system of incredibly large number of systems of particles (of which a human is a subsystem). A human is a very specialized complex system, and the laws of complexity determines its state, including the state of being alive or dead. It is the laws of complexity that give rise to the action of death genes responsible for the natural death of humans. All this may sound like the much dreaded idea of reductionism, but reductionism or wholism is a term coined by arm chair philosophers, not scientists. There is no *scientfic* concept called reductionism or wholism. Science is about seeking and formulating statements of (tentative) truth about reality based on the best evidence available. The fact that even in physics sometimes the whole is not just the sum of its parts in the sense that the precise motion or properties of an aggregate is not exactly derivable in terms of the properties of the individual constituents, can be labelled wholism, but that labelling does not dismiss the fact that the properties of the whole is still ultimately due to the properties of the fundamental constituents, not something beyond the laws of physics. The motive behind coining those labels is the same, a subtle attempt to retain a semblance of some "divine" factor in life, a refusal to accept that life can be totally a result of natural process. By denying that biology is a consequence of physics, they wish to leave open a divine intervention on biological process (thus life) not explainable by or subject to natural laws. Now on to the main theme of my essay, which is the implication of this simple, yet profound insight. One immediate implication is the illusion of "I/me/we". When"we" say "we" there is an implied existence of an entity beyond our physical body, acting as a driver/engine of "our" body. "I" will stop quoting "I", "we"... from this point on for simplicity, but I will use these words in the sense of an identifying label. But as it should be clear now that there is nothing external or internal to the physical body dicating the action of human body that is not part of the body itself. In fact consciousness is an emergent property of matter, brain in this case. Emergent properties are manifestations of complexity in chaotic systems, i.e systems that follow non-linear equations and are composed of large number of elements. Such systems exihibit consistent patterns that can be described quantitatively (by the laws of complexity) but because of the inherent non-linearity of the underlying laws of physics, the laws of complexity cannot be derived in terms of the laws of physics exactly. Human brain is the prime example of a complex system. It is not just a random collection of billions of neurons, but an organ that is a result of millions of years of evolution, thus ultimately a product of the laws of physics. And the synaptic connections of the brain in the cerebral cortex is a result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. And it is the synaptic connections the brain that endows it with the emergent property called consciousness, unique to each individual because of the uniqueness of the synaptic connections of each human brain. This is what neurologist Joseph Ledoux calls The Synaptic Self. When we refer to I or we, we are really referring to the synapatic connections of the I/we. Our every action and thought (Which defines a person) is ultimately determined by the laws of physics through the medium of the synaptic connections of the brain. The implication of the above is that there is no intrinsic meaning of the notion of "Free will". Whatever act we commit or whatever we think/believe are the ultimate result of the laws of physics. If we carefully stare at the cliche "Yes, we can do whatever we choose to do, we have free will, humans are not robots, they are thinking, living beings with mind, emotions and sense of right and wrong and ability to choose between them" we will see the fallacy in it. All the "we's in those statements really refer to the person's brain. The free will itself is an outcome of the laws of physics working in the brain. Just because we have an illusory perception of free will, that does not change the fact that every act and thought are ultimately determined by the laws of physics. Yes, humans do have choices available, but which choice will be made in a given situation is ultimetely determined by laws of physics. We may have the illusions that "we" made the choice freely, but as I argued the "we" itself is a system that works according to the laws of physics. There is no player other than the brain and the laws of physics in the matter of choice. A free willed choice is an illusion inside the brain of the human making that choice. There is no will free from the laws of physics. We are truly puppets on a string. The string being the "Laws of Physics", or "string" theory (no pun intended). Some proponents of free will invoke the randomness inherent in in all of nature's processes to justify the existence of free will. That is a flawed position. For one thing randomness is a relative notion. With the entire universe being a large syetem with large number of elements, one part may seem to be random with respect to another part. But the entire universe as a whole is determinsitic, governed by the laws of physics. There is no random act that occurs violating or not required by the laws of physics. The timing of the individual decay of a quantum particle appears random and can only be predicted statistically by Quantum Mechanics, but that does not mean that the decay happened due to some non-physical cause. Randomness is an epistemological notion reflecting limitations in our complete understanding of the underlying reality, not a fundamental notion of physics. Secondly even if the randomness was beyond physics, the free will due to randomness will still be not determined by the brain/body of the person exercizing the free will. The free in that case may be free from physics, but not free from whatever is causing the randomness. So either way the notion of free will dissolves into meaninglessness, because the very notion of free will implies the existence of an independent driving force beyond physics that causes a human to make choices, essentially equivalent to proposing a "soul" hypothesis and the free will is then relegated to the soul of that person. Another implication of the natural view of life is that morality or ethics are also the result of the laws of physics and thus have no intrinsic meaning. The "should"s or "oughtta"s are instincts instilled into the brain by evolution, and thus by physics. We often hear the cliches "Morality is not subject to scientific laws", as if morality is subject to some "other" laws. This statement is vague in itself. But the simple fact that morality is due to an instinct instilled by evolution immediately makes it clear that the origin of moral instincts is coded into the laws of physics. The causal chain is : Physics-->Evolution-->Brain-->Morality. And it is evolution which instils a "should" in our mind. There is no intrinsic criteria of morality outside and independent of physics. Morality is the overall sense of right and wrong instilled into the brain of human species through evolution. There can be variation in that moral instinct in individual humans within human species, but statistically the morality among the species as a whole is such that it helps to preserve the species. And morality also can change and adapt due to evolutionary pressure. We often hear religious believers justify belief in God by raising the question that without a belief in God how can there be morality, and wouldn't humans and society in general slide into immorality and chaos? The fallacy in this argument is that morality will be there, regardless of religious belief, as morality is a product of evolution. In fact even religious belief itself is one form of evolutionary strategy for survival. Religious morality is rooted in the more fundamental evolutionary instinct of morality, although the religious believers have the illusion that their moral beliefs are due to a belief in God's commandments. The moral instinct, being a product of evolution, is present in theists and atheists alike in varying degrees. The only thing belief in religion adds is a set of ritualistic practices and behaviour peculiar to a religion. There can be individual variations of morality among humans, so there will be instances of individuals with no sense of morality, or different from the average. For many who do not believe in God (in the traditional religious sense) and understand that there is no objective basis of morality, they still feel a strong inherent instinct against committing certain acts. They cannot justify with absolute reason, why they should not commit those acts, but nevertheless cannot commit those act either. Even those who understand that their moral senses are due to evolution, also feel the instinct of right and wrong and act accordingly. It is a curious thing, but there is no contradiction, in fact it is all self-consistent. Again a stark reminder that each human is a system of particles obeying laws of physics, irrespective of their beliefs. Even if for some reasons all humans suddenly turned into atheists, humans species (via the laws of physics) will always find a way to enforce some standards of morality, purely for evolutionary survival. Human species will not allow itslef to self-destruct, physics does not admit of that solution of it's equation, figuratively speaking. A human is a very special system of particles having a property called consciousness capable of making a human appreciate that they are a system of particles run by the laws of physics. Not every human can realize this capabilty of appreciating this fact however. Philosophers of science have always been intrigued by this so-called consciousness loop : Physics-->Evolution-->Consciousness-->(Discovery of) Physics It is indeed intriguing to realize that this circular chain is due to the laws of physics (that human mind can discover laws of physics is also rooted in physics!). It is all internally self-consistent. The same is true for instincts of fear/anxiety. They are also hardwired by evolution in the primitive part of the brain. Rationalism, which is a byproduct of the evolution of human brain in the cerebral cortex and has no causal effect on those instincts. So one can be rational and but still have an instinct of fear, like afraid of staying alone in a deserted house, just as one can feel the instinct of morality without believing in God or on any absolute criterian for morality. Fear of the unknown is an evolutionary instinct. So is love, and in fact all emotions. Passionate champions of humans rights can refute religious beliefs and justify a secular approach to morality and human rights, using such expressions as "human spirit is noble" "love is supreme" etc. But at the end these are appeal to emotions, not a cold, hard, logical positions. All that matters is what evolution instills in the brain on the average. Of course evolution itself creates this necessary tension between two opposites. Tension is essential to stability. This fact has been acknowledged by scientists in the light of evolution and a detailed analysis of mathematical modelling of the evolutionary mechanisms. We know by this insight that if each member of human species were completely honest or dishonest, or kind and generous, or extremely violent or malicious that will not be evolutionarily stable and will lead to self destruction of human species. Evolution requires a stable and optimal distribution of evil and good. This is a purely mechanical/ natural consequence of physics. A simple example of that would be the hypothetical situation where there is barely enough food for one to survive and there are two starving good people. They will both die rather than one eating the food and letting the other die. Similarly a society with all liars or all truthful will also lead to an evolutionary instability. The most stable state is some liars but majority truthful in varying degrees. The fact that most people believe lying is wrong, and telling the truth is right, is also a consequence of evolutionary mechanism to create that stable state. Evolution will not allow all humans to become philosophers or religious extremists either. That stabilty requires a statistical variation is one of the most profound insights of evolutionary science. Evolution requires inequality for survival of some. If all are equally strong, they will mutually destroy each other. If all are weak, they also will eventually self-destruct also. A distribution of the strong and the weak is a necessary(evil) so that some may survive. This is the hardest lessons of evolution to assimilate. This fact of evolution, natural selection, was used by some in the past to promote social inequality and eugenics (started with Herbert Spencer in Victorian England). That was a fallacy of promoting an "is to an ought" also known as naturalistic fallacy. The fact is that what is in nature cannot be justified as right or wrong. Nature will be whatever it will be based on physics. The fact that such views of Darwinism didn't hold up only points to the fact that evolution does not favour eugenics, hence such views (called social Darwinism) got weeded out by evolution itself. We have to credit physics for the demise of social Darwinism, if we have to. The lofty talk about triumph of humanity or human spirit etc to explain that is just a metaphor of language. Humanists can passionately call for an utopian world of humans devoid of any ill feeling, full of love for all. But such utopian state of all ideal humans is not consistent with the laws of evolution i.e physics. But the yearning and passionate struggle to achieve that utopia is not. That urge is part of evolution itself Also just like the instincts of morality and fear, an appreciation that all such yearnings for idealism is produced by evolutionary forces does not result in a loss of that instinctual yearnings. That is the paradox, if you will, of evolution/physics. An understanding/discovery of the laws of physics cannot affect or alter the laws of physics!. One may get the feeling that all this talk about life and human emotions being nothing but the result of the laws of physics takes away the mystique, the romanticism of human imagination. Nothing is further from the truth. Alert reader may have noticed no mention has been made as to the origin/evolution of the laws of physics. With so much talk about the insights into the natural root of life and its various aspects, the fact remains that the origin of the laws of physics is not known or is knowable. That is the ultimate mystery. It is not knowable because the laws of physics are the only tool humans have at their disposal (tested and beautiful) to seek the truth about reality, the truth that can be shared among humanity that is independent of one's belief, affiliation, color, race etc. Obviously understanding the origin of the laws of physics is not possible using physics as a tool. So this very existence of an ultimate mystery will be a permanent source of a sense of wonder and mystical feelings among those who appreciate the beauty of the workings of the laws of nature. The laws which not only give rise to the fragrance of a flower, or the fascinating patterns of a snowflake, but also the ethereal quality of love in humans. The laws which create in the brain a sense of wonder at the working of the laws, and creates a sense of wonder at the creation of a sense of wonder at the working of the laws.... |
- Aparthib (aparthib@yahoo.com)Evolution and Love
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Since the publication of The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin, biologists have come a long way in their quest to understand human behaviour, building up on Darwin's original ideas and revising/perfecting it with new evidences and observations. Age old questions what is love?, where do human morality stem from etc are now understood reasonable well thanks to the research of sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists,specially in the last two decades of 20th century. Their work points to an entire gamut of human emotions being rooted in our evolutionary history. Love, like all other human emotions is also rooted in the evolutionry history. It should be noted that evolutionary psychologists use the term love and sex interchangeably to mean the feeling of romantic attractions, courtship, mating and and the act of sex between opposite sexes. The term love and sex will be used interchangeably in this greater sense throughout this writeup. This writeup is by no means a scholarly or a scientific essay. Instead my aim is to quote some of the scientists and science authors (in books and TV shows) with my annotations to provoke the readers to read up on these fascinating issues further. No attempt is made to organize or structure it in any way. Needless to say the findings of Evolutionary Psychology (EVP) will sound shocking to many. But science is about truth, not about political correctness.That's how it has to be seen. A slew of well written books and essays have been written by many experts in evolutionary psychology on this topic. The works of David Buss, Helen Fisher, Geoffrey Miller, Robin Baker and many others are worth mentioning. TV shows like the Science of Sex (TLC), Gender Wars (Desmond Morris) etc are also quite illuminating. What is the root origin of love? The surprising but simple answer is the urge for the survival of genes. And what is the basis of the survial of the genes? To put it rhetorically, its the laws of Physics (stupid). We may not realize this origin when reading or listening to a beautiful love poem or song. To quote from "Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality" by Margulis and Sagan('91): All our desires, passions etc, reflect inanimate tendencies already implicit before life in the second law of Thermodynamics. Sexual reproducers, living beings making more of them - selves, achieve not only biological ends, but those of physics as well. p-46: The survival of genes require the physical survial of an animal to reach reproductive to be able to choose a mate to pass off the gene to the offspring. It is the send step that lies at the origin of love, courtship of love to be precise. Darwin touched this aspect in the idea of sexual selection in the Descent of Man. But this idea find its fullest exposition in modern evolutionary psychology(EVP). Males and females choosing each other for specific attributes drove, through sexual selection the evolution of such human features as brain size increases, sexual organ characteristics and human behaviors in general. Many of modern courtship techniques have parallels in evolution, like the long tailbones of peacocks, which have grown large to attract peahens, since peahens in turn were attracted by long tails of peacocks. To quote Margulis and Sagan: Technology, civilization cannot distance us from our animal selves, but instead accentuate them. Trendy glasses, epaulets etc are similar to tailbones of peacocks (p-170) As revolting as it may sound, infidelity(cheating) in love, jealousy,rape etc are also rooted in evolution and evolutionary psychologists deal with these topics too in their research. In their book "The Natural History of Rape" Thornbull and Palmer explains the origin of rape as an evolutionary adaptive mechanism to maximize gene propagation. Quite predictably they evoked strong reactions form critics. But most of their critics committed the Is-Ought logical fallacy, believing that just because something has been classified as "natural," it must also have been implied as morally okay. But Thornbull and Palmer did not imply that. This linking of rape to evolutionary adaptation is cited on page 45 of the book "Sexing the brain" by neurobiologist Lesley Rogers quoting another biologist Matt Ridley:"Rape was evolutionarily adaptive" Cheating in love is also evolutionarily rooted. Cheating is in our genes, narrates Ms. Kathleen Turner in The Science of Sex(TLC). So it must have evolutionary advantage in our past. With huge quantity of sperms in men, its to their evolutionary interest to father as many children as possible. With one egg per month women has less advantage in infidelity, yet it does exist, so must have some advantage. More resources for her child through the extra mate is the explanation for female infidelity. It provided genetic advantages to both males and females in evolutionary past (and still does today). This fact of evolution is also cited in Joann Ellison Rodgers' tome: "Sex: A Natural History" on page 215: Deception appears to be necessary and therefore built into our sexual biologyAgain not to confuse IS with OUGHT. What nature prescribes, nature also proscribes (via conflicting urges). It is this conflicting forces (or instincts) within humans that act as the stabilizing force in evolution. Curiously, Evolutionary Biologists have found a correlation between degree of female infidelity with the quantity of sperm (testicle size) of the males of a species. Humans lie between the two extremes of Gorilla (least likely to cheat, small testes) and Chimpanzee (most likely to mate with multiple partners, largest testes). This correlation has been cited in the TLC TV show as well as on page-339 of "Sex: A Natural History": "Men's relatively large testes are a solid evidence that women in evolutionary history were promiscuous" Another insight from EVP is that humans are not evolutionarily adapted for strict monogamy. As biologist Meredith Small points out on p-17 in her book "What's Love got to do with it" that women, as well as men, might not be biologically designed for monogamy citing that only 14% of the 200 species among primates are monogamous. In her book "The Anatomy of Love" Helen Fisher writes: "From a darwinian perspective, however, there were advantages to serial monogamy millenia ago". From a darwinian perspective, having children with more than one partners often make genetic sense" (p-159). Polygamy is also roughly correlated with male to female body size ratio, which in case humans suggest a moderate polygamic tendency, as cited by Meredith Small (What's Love got to do with it) on page 20: Women are 80% of men physically,suggesting mild polygamy. Rodgers also mention this correlation on page-338 of her book. All this shows that humans are at least not designed for strict monogamy or strict harem system either. Jealousy also is evolutionary in origin. As David Buss points out in his book "The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is Necessary in Love and Sex" and also in the TLC show on Science of Sex that we are here because our ancestors were jealous. Those who were not did not leave any descendents. Needless to say that does not mean that TODAY EVERYONE has to be jealous. Apart from the fact that evolutionary traits are statistical, the evolutionary needs also change slowly over time as part of evolution. An important element in sexual selection is body odor. Each of us have unique odor like fingerprint, which serves as fitness marker in evolutionary paradigm. Margulis and Sagan mentions that on pages 179-80. They also mention body odor as a sign of healthy immune systems. They cite an experiment of sniffing effect of sweaty male T- shirts by women. As the evolutionary root of that they mention that our mammalian ancestors were nocturnal, so had to depend on sniffing as primary mate selection means. In the "Anatomy of Love", page-42, Helen Fisher writes: Male essence(sweat) helps maintain regularity of female menstrual cycle. Hence females's (unconscious) attraction to male smell may be evolutionarily caused. The reason males now use deodorants and women prefer them may be culturally conditioned by the aggressive selling/ advertizing of producers and making perspiration is equaled to uncleanliness.Joann Rodgers also mentions in her book on page-251 that women prefer men with the most dissimilar MHC genes (as observed through sniffing T-shirts soaked in armpit). Needless to say that these preferences are instinctually hardwired by evolution, not by conscious choice. Scientists have identified the hormone that carries this distinct odor in men (generically called pheromones) called androsterone and the detectors for that odor in women called VNO (Vomeronasal organ). This confirms that humans also use sniffing (but in a much more subtle way) like animals to check out their mates instinctively via their VNO. It should be pointed out that the pheromone sniffing is not consciously done, the usual stinking male sweat is not due to the male pheromone in his sweat, but due to the bacterial degradation in his sweat that is exposed to the atmosphere for some time. That smell is conscious and made through the usual olfactory nerve, the instinctual smelling of pheronome in sweat is through VNO bypassing the olfactory nerve. Why do women have cryptic estrus (Concealed ovulation)? The reason cited for that by Margulis and Sagan on p-197 of their book is that it helped male bonding with their women in the evolutionary past. The TLC series "The Science of Sex" narrated by actress Kathleen Turner also mentions that concealed ovulation helped pair bonding in our evolutionary past. Basically by hiding when she is infertile she forced the man to be always around her because he feared she would be mating with another man and sire child with him, and him having to take care of that child. That the feeling of love is triggered by some features in males and females which is perceived as beauty or sexiness is obvious to anyone. But these markers are programmed by evolution as markers of some fitness. This is the finding of evolutionary psychologists. The work of Devandra Singh of UT Austin pointing to Waist to hip ratio as an evolutionary marker for healthy pregnancy is cited by Rodgers. Men are sexually attracted to low waist-to-hip ratios in females, and a low female waist-to-hip ratio really correlates with youth, fertility, and health. On page 148 of "Why We Feel? The Science of Emotions" Evol. Psychologist Victor Johnston mentions that a hip/waist ratio of 0.7 signifies an ideal androgen/estrogen ratio required for fertility in women. So is lip-fullness. So the perception of beauty and thus sexual attraction is directly correlated with female fertility. For men one fitness marker is facial symmetry, thus women tend to prefer men with facial symmetry. Reference to this can be found on p-49-58 in Lesley Rogers' "Sexing the brain" quoting Randy Thornhill's theory of beauty and symmetry vs. fertility. In this context fitness should be understood as genetic fitness,good genes in simple terms. Again just to remind these preferences are instinctual and thus women will not be consciously aware of this. Artistic creativity like music and painting, aesthetic sense, humor,athletic ability, and intellectual activity has all been identified by some evolutionary psychologists as the product of sexual selection. In fact they attribute the relatively large size of human brain to sexual selection pressure. Costly organs (brain consumes a lot of heat) serve as fitness markers. The pioneering work in this are is by Geoffrey Miller who has written a highly readable book titled "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature". He contends that women view these abilities as markers of genetic fitness in men and that women's brain has also evolved to be able to discriminate these abilities in men. According to him, since all those qualities do not give them an obvious survival benefit, they must have provided and continue to provide a reproductive advantage to have survived and thrived. "Romantic" behavior like the making of complex art couldn't have aided our ancestors find more food or avoid predators. Thus it might have helped to serve as a marker of fitness of primitive men to primitive women with whom they wanted to mate. Of course the the romantic behaviours in primitive time were also primitive, and has evolved to its modern form. When it comes to love and sex mention must be made about the battle of the sexes and mate competition. Biologists have traced these to sperms. Robin Baker has done detailed study of how sperms compete with each other to fertilize eggs. That competition is a sort of miniature version of the competition among males for a mate. Matt Ridley in his book "Red Queen" traces the origin of the battle BETWEEN the sexes (and the resolution thereof) to the evolutionary battle between male and female gametes that led to sex differentiation in the first place. I have glossed over these fascinating new horizons of evolutionary psychology, which has taken up the most daunting task of humans trying to understand humans. Why are we the way we are. It is a dynamic new area of research and is sure to unravel age old mysteries of human behaviour nothwithstanding the stiff resistance from the PC police. |