Monthly Archives: April 2013

Some Disconnect on Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

Juan Bernal

The following exchange resulted when a philosophical acquaintance, call him Pablo, asserted that “the Darwinian revolution in biology … only challenged orthodox religious explanations.”  He also objected to a few other statements that I made concerning Darwinian thought.

I offer them as examples of common misunderstandings – especially among some philosophers — of some aspects of Darwinian evolution by natural selection.
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Against the claim that Darwin only challenged orthodox religious explanations,  I pointed out that many historians and commentators on Darwin argue the contrary: namely, that Darwin’s work, Origin of the Species,  faced a variety of resistance,  only part of which stemmed from religious doctrine.  Undeniably, Darwin challenged orthodox religious accounts of life on earth (origin and maintenance); and religious doctrine was a big factor in the thinking of most people.  But more importantly to the history of biological science, Darwin’s evolutionary science also challenged prevailing theories and beliefs of secular scientists and other people who did not base their views on religion at all. The idea of fixity of life species was a far broader idea than just something gotten from religious doctrine.

To this Pablo replied that he disagreed and repeated his view that

most of the scientists before Darwin thought the fixity of species were fixed because of notions got from the Old Testament. Granted, there may have been some who were not biblically influenced, but, by far, most were. Give me a few examples of those who did not get there views on species from the Old Testament. I don’t think you will find many compared to the many who did.

But doesn’t it greatly oversimplify things to say that philosophers and scientists who continued to believe in the constancy of species and in some kind of intelligent design did so only because of their belief in the Old Testament account of creation?   The philosophical and scientific situations were much more complex than that.

As Ernst Mayr, Daniel Dennett, and others have pointed out, essentialism and finalism (teleological ideas) prevailed among many scientists of the time and surely among most philosophers (since Plato and the ancients advanced that perspective on reality) even after belief in the creation story of the Old Testament had largely been abandoned. Below I include some quotes from Ernst Mayr’s great book, The Long Argument – Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought.

“Even the geologist Charles Lyell, whose work profoundly influenced Darwin — was a theist who believe that species were created by God’s hand. In all the writing s of the naturalists, geologists, and philosophers of the period, God played a dominant role. (Mayr, 12,13) . . “The reason why Lyell, like Henslow, Sedgwick and all the others of Darwin’s scientific friends and correspondents in the middle of the 1830s , accepted the unalterable constancy of species was ultimately a philosophical one. The constancy of species – that is, the inability of a species, once created, to change — was the one piece of the old dogma of a created world that remained inviolate after the concepts of the recency and constancy of the physical world had been abandoned.” (op.cit., Mayr, 17)

Under the essentialist philosophy all living species were fixed and eternal. This philosophy had long been the prevalent one and had very little to do with religious belief in creation:

“Essentialism had dominated Western thinking for mare than 2000 years, going back to the geometric thinking of the Pythagorians. . . . Essentialism, as a definite philosophy, is usually credited to Plato, even though he was not as dogmatic about it as some of his later followers, for instance the Thomists. . . .
“All of Darwin’s teachers and friends were … essentialists. For Lyell, all nature consisted of constant types, each created at a definite time. “There are fixed limits beyond which the descendants from common parents can never deviate from a certain type. . . It is idle … to dispute about the abstract possibility of the conversion of one species into another … (Lyell 1835: 162) For an essentialist there can be no evolution: there can only be sudden origin of a new essence by a major mutation or saltation.” (Mayr, 40-41)
“Virtually all philosophers up to Darwin’s time were essentialists. Whether they were realists or idealists, materialists or nominalists, they all saw species of organisms with the eyes of an essentialist. They considered species as “natural kinds,” defined by constant characteristics and sharply separated from one another by bridgeless gaps. The essentialist philosopher, William Whewell stated categorically, “Species have a real existence in nature, and a transition from one to another does not exist.” (1840, 3:626) For John Stuart Mill, species of organisms are natural kinds, just as inanimate objects are, and [kinds are classes between which there is an impassible barrier.]”
“Essentialism’s influence was great in part because its principle is anchored in our language, in our use of a single noun in the singular to designate highly variable phenomena of our environment, such as mountain, home, water, horse, or honesty. . . The simply noun defines the class of objects. Essentialistic thinking has been highly successful, indeed absolutely necessary, in mathematics, physics, and logic. The observation of nature seemed to give powerful support to the essentialists’ claims. Wherever one looked, one saw discontinuities — between species, between genera, between orders and all higher taxa. Such gaps as between birds and mammals, or beetles and butterflies, were mentioned often by Darwin’s critics.” (Mayr, 40-42)

Although these ideas were consistent with Biblical accounts of the origin and nature of living forms, essentialism was not a philosophy gotten from Biblical accounts of creation at all. It developed apart from belief in the Old Testament account of creation. Many scientists and philosophers who held to it did so independently of any belief in Genesis. Hence, they were reluctant to accept Darwin’s claim that species changed and even gave rise to new species on the basis of philosophical and what they saw as scientific reasons, not the doctrine gotten from the Old Testament.

Among these philosophers and scientists we find: British philosophers of science: Wm Whewell, JS Mill, J. Herschel — other philosophers holding to teleological views of biology: Leibniz , J.G. Herder, I Kant — scientists: German biologists of the19th century: K E von Baer, Eduard von Hartmann held the teleological concepts of biology. Natural theology (study of nature to reveal God’s design leading to perfection), with its emphasis on design (leading to perfection) was strong in England at the time of Darwin, “all of Darwin’s teachers and peers particularly Sedgewick, Henslow, and Lyell were confirmed natural theologians. This was Darwin’s conceptual framework when be began to think about adaptation and the origin of species.” (Mayr, 55) None of these philosophies: essentialism, teleology, and natural theology were simple applications of the Old Testament.

Pablo also objected to my statement that many people in Darwin’s time could simply not accept the idea that human beings – with their great mental capabilities, moral,  and religious aspirations – could be explained as evolving from earlier forms of animal life. This difficulty which characterized much of the thinking of the middle nineteenth century, and which is still present today, did not always arise from religious doctrine.

Pablo remarked:

Well, I think you’re exaggerating a bit. There were some Greek thinkers who suggested evolution so it wasn’t really that new of a suggestion.

Of course, the idea of evolution was not originated by Darwin.  But I failed to see the relevance of this to the issue of the great difficulty that many people — not only religious people — have in accepting the idea that humans evolved from earlier species. Yes, the idea of evolution has been floating around, at least since the time of Empedocles and  Epicurus.  Many people, including the grandfather of Charles Darwin, had proposed a theory of evolution. But these were mainly just philosophical ‘theories’ which did not rise to the level of scientific hypothesis, supported by empirical evidence and subject to testing, as was the case with Darwin’s theory natural selection.
Pablo also asserted that “… the notion of Darwinian evolution is far simpler and inferior a hypothesis to what was accomplished by Einstein and the founders of QM. ”
Again, I did not see the relevance of these remarks. The issue at hand was one relating to biological evolution. What do Einstein’s relativity physics and QM have to do with that?
I had also stated that scientists of the time (naturalists, geologists, etc. and even skeptical philosophers like David Hume) simply could not accept the idea that a natural, material process like natural selection could explain the presence of human life and human reality. As an example of this reluctance to apply the theory to natural selection to human beings, I noted that even Wallace, co-founder of natural selection, who could comfortably accept evolution from earlier life forms in the case of non-human animals, balked at the idea that this also might apply to humans.

Pablo replied:

I find that surprising (if true). Perhaps he wasn’t familiar with the thoughts of Empedocles (5th century B.C.E.) and others.

Again, what was the relevance here?   Neither Hume’s inability to see natural evolution as explanatory of life forms nor Wallace’s difficulties concerning Darwin’s Descent of Man had anything to do with their alleged ignorance of the Empedocles or any other pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory (of which there were numerous). Wallace, like many others since Darwin’s book on the descent of humans, simply could not fathom how a natural, materialistic process like natural selection could ever give rise to human beings with their intellectual and moral capabilities. Wallace was comfortable with a naturalistic account of the evolution of non-human animals; but with humans, he drew the line, so to speak.

Meditation on Maternal Assertiveness – By Virginia Bernal

Meditation on Maternal Assertiveness Upon the Birth of Her Baby To be read repeatedly in preparation for the birth.

Research-based writing, by Virginia Bernal, IBCLC

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This life within me is my child

My body nurtures him, (you can replace with “her”.)

Protects him,

Keeps him warm.

At the time of birth I will still be the best provider

Of warmth,

Protection,

Nutrition.

I will firmly request that my baby be placed on my chest,

To nest here skin to skin,

Here to set his breathing rhythm,

So my baby can best transition to life outside the womb.

In my baby’s first hour I will remember, I am the best provider

Of warmth, Protection, Nutrition.

If a nurse wants to put the baby in a warmer,

I will say,

I will keep my baby warm

Next to my skin, covered with warm blankets.

My chest will respond to baby by getting

Warmer or cooler as baby needs.

My baby’s temperature will be more stable

Being undisturbed, skin to skin with me, his mom.

If a nurse wants to take baby away to weigh and give protective medications,

I will say,

Those procedures can wait an hour or two.

Now my baby needs the protection my body gives:

Protection against the stress of separation,

Protective exposure of his immune system to all my friendly germs,

Protection that will last many years because we grow

Strong bonds of love at this our first acquaintance.

If a nurse wants to feed my baby with a bottle,

I will say,

My body provides the best first food for my baby.

By allowing my baby to rest on my chest till ready to feed,

His blood sugar will be more stable,

My first milk, colostrum, will be more available

Once he starts his first attempts to suckle at my breast.

If a nurse says she must take the baby away because it is hospital policy,

I will remember,

The hospital custom of separating mothers and babies

Is fairly new—of about a hundred years,

And despite good intentions, there is harm in doing so.

But the need of physical closeness,

Of no separation,

Has been the health-giving practice of eons of time.

If a doctor says I am too tired or sleepy due to medications I received,

I will say,

My body has labored so much, it needs

To be rewarded by feeling my baby’s weight upon my chest.

My baby and my tired body do good things for each other.

We need each other to transition to our new life.

If I am too groggy, let my partner watch over us,

Be our protector, his vital role as we grow a family.

If my family members want to hold baby in the first hours after birth,

I will say,

There will be plenty of time for you to enjoy baby.

This first hour is important for baby and me.

We need to be together for baby’s warmth, protection and nurture,

And to grow our love.

If I were to need to birth by way of cesarean surgery,

I will ask,

To have my baby as soon as possible, in the recovery room.

If my baby were to be born with serious problems,

Such as trouble with breathing,

Or severe prematurity,

Then I will resign myself to a delay, till my baby is ready for skin to skin care.

But I will not forget that whatever my baby’s condition,

Vigorous and healthy (the most likely case),

Or needing intensive care (an unlikely event),

I will not forget that my baby is mine,

And providing for his needs will be my priority, my pleasure, and my right.

In my baby’s first hours and days I will be the best provider

Of warmth,

Protection,

Nutrition.

The best provider of Love.

Contra the Moral Utility of Belief in a Soul

Juan Bernal

A few weeks ago while discussing people’s belief in an immortal soul I declared that there wasn’t any evidence or good rational ground for affirming that belief.  An email correspondent  — who had previously asserted that there was good evidence for soul’s survival of the body’s death –- asked me, “Why did so many people, in the past and present, believed in soul?”  He also stated that nobody had any good grounds for thinking that people in the past, who believed in the reality of immortal souls, did not have any rational grounds for such belief.  He declared that, after all, we weren’t there when ancient cultures and peoples of past centuries adopted belief in souls; so we really could not say anything about the reasons, evidence underlying such belief.

By happenstance this very issue came up in another setting.  A book discussion group,  of which I’m a member,  has been looking at Steven Pinker’s recent book, The Better Angels of our Nature – Why violence has declined.   In chapter four (pp. 129-188), Pinker takes up what he calls the humanizing process in Western Europe and in the USA which mainly ended the routine brutality and killing of human beings that marked ancient and medieval periods.

In leading up to his account of the humanizing process that occurred in much of Western Europe starting the late 18th century, Pinker takes time to describe the incredible violence and bloodletting that often was based on irrational superstitious thinking and on religious doctrine.  These early sections of the chapter are titled “Superstitious Killing: Human Sacrifice, Witchcraft, and Blood Libel,” and   “Superstitious Killing: Violence against blasphemers, heretics, and apostates.”   Here Pinker recounts the genocides that resulted from the Catholic Crusades, and the great number of deaths that resulted from various long, bloody religious wars between European states and principalities; the high number of deaths brought about by the persecutions, tortures, and executions of non-believers by religious authorities —- all adding up to millions of people slaughtered, tortured, and executed, by the various “Reformations” (Catholic and Protestant); by the Inquisitions in Spain, Italy, and the New World.

Considering that all of this took place at a time when belief in an immortal soul was nearly universal, we surely are struck by a paradox.  Given all that brutality and bloodletting were  perpetuated by believers in an immortal soul, the question arises:  “Why do people think that belief is a good thing?  What ethical or moral value can such belief possibly have if cultures and ages in which that belief prevails are so bloody and violent, and dangerous to life and limb?

Pinker has some interesting things to say relevant to those questions. In his attempt to understand why people finally began to break the cycles of violence and death in the 17th century, and finally began to tolerated those who preferred to dissent from the prevailing religious doctrines, such as that concerning the value of an eternal soul.  He writes:

“What made Europeans finally decide that it was all right to let their dissenting compatriots risk eternal damnation and, by their bad example, lure others to that fate? Perhaps they were exhausted by the Wars of Religion, but it’s not clear why it took thirty years to exhaust hem rather than ten or twenty. One gets the sense that people started to place a higher value on human life. Part of the newfound appreciation was an emotional change, a habit of identifying with the pains and pleasures of others. And another part was an intellectual and moral change: a shift from valuing souls to valuing lives. The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence. Death becomes a mere rite of passage, like puberty or a midlife crisis.

The gradual replacement of lives for souls as the locus of moral value was helped along by the ascendancy of skepticism and reason. No one can deny the difference between life and death or the existence of suffering, but it takes indoctrination to hold beliefs about what becomes of an immortal soul after it has parted company from the body. The 17th century is called the Age of Reason, an age when writers began to insist that beliefs be justified by experience and logic. That undermines dogmas about souls and salvation, and it undermines the policy of forcing people to believe unbelievable things at the point of sword (or a Juda’s Cradle).”  [Page 143]

 

Of course, Pinker is not the first to so describe the nature of religious doctrine concerning the immortal soul.  Decades ago (1950s), the American philosopher, Walter Kaufmann, remarked  in various books  that the other-worldly nature of Christian doctrine de-valued human life on this earth, or turned attention away from the brutality, suffering, death, and gross injustice that characterized most lives when the grand other-worldly religion dominated, with its dogma of the immortal soul.

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So my reply to my email colleague’s question  –  Why do I think ancient people adopted the belief in an immortal soul?  —  is that the ancients and medieval people were generally  indoctrinated to believe the dogma of an immortal soul, along with other dogma about the fate of the soul after death.  In the Christian period, when they were not so indoctrinated or resisted the indoctrination, they were terrorized into believing (or at least outward assent to the belief).

Thus, I reaffirm my conviction that belief in an immortal soul is just the product of particular religious cultures and ages, and has never been grounded on rational evidence.

Mulling about some puzzles on ‘objective reality’

Juan Bernal

We occasionally hear what sound like daffy ideas from theoretical physicists when they unwisely encroach on hard philosophical problems: e.g., the notion that consciousness creates the universe, sometimes called  “biocentrism.”   Another is the  assertion that space-time is not an objective feature of the universe (world), but is something dependent on the cognitive faculties of the creatures like us.  This strikes some as being a bizarre claim.

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It seems that one could offer the following rebuttal:  It does not follow that that the spatial-temporal dimensions arise from the subject’s cognitive processing because we must presuppose the spatial-temporal dimensions to make sense of experience of the physical world.

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The starting point of our epistemological theories should not be a conscious subject isolated from the social, physical world. Ultimately this notion is an incoherent one.  The starting point should be a mindful, social and corporeal subject (a conscious animal), in a natural, social world, interacting with other like creatures and engaging in cause-effect interaction with the natural, social world.

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The epistemological tradition from Descartes through the classical empiricists — Locke, Berkeley, Hume — to Immanuel Kant is based on an erroneous idea that the possibility of knowledge of the external world (external to the subject) needs to be proven.

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There’s something terribly wrong with the claim that, for any ‘X’, we can say what ‘X’ really is only in terms of

  • a possible experience of ‘X’ (i.e., ‘X’ must be an object of phenomenal experience);  or
  • a description of ‘X’ in terms of (Kantian) categories of the understanding.

There something terribly wrong with the assertion that any question of the form [What is a real ‘X’?] has to be answered in terms of the notion of ‘X-in-itself, i.e., ‘X’ as other than an object of phenomenal experience.

Recall that for Kantian thought, ‘X as an object of possible phenomenal experience is an object describable in terms of

  •  the intuitions of space and time, and
  •  the categories of the understanding.

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Ordinarily when we try to say what ‘X’ really is we do not do so in terms of Kantian noumena, i.e., thing-in-itself.  Rather we state things carefully, after additional reflection, study, and investigation (after we carry on with empirical inquiry).

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The world of physical phenomena (objects, forces, energy) is a spatio-temporal world.

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According to Kant, our experience of the physical world is temporally and spatially ordered. The cognitive mind provides this spatial-temporal template by which our phenomenal world is ordered. The world independent of this ‘subjective’ ordering (i.e., noumena, world-in-itself) falls outside the scope of our knowledge.

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But there is nothing we can say about this putative world-in-itself. We cannot legitimately say it is the world-as-it-really-is.

At best, this notion of a noumenal world is a limiting concept.

To see noumena as the way things-really-are is to erroneously interpret a limiting concept as having metaphysical import.

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Insofar as we can coherently think or talk about it, the so called “phenomenal world” is the real world, i.e., the reality of human existence and human experience. We should not be confused by the fact that his notion of reality can be analyzed and refined.  Physicists, for example, can apply their theories and mathematical models to give us a refined, abstract picture of this world.  But that resulting picture (the scientific picture that science achieves) is a picture  (a model) of the world of experience.  It is not a picture of the world-in-itself.

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The world existed long before humans arrived on the scene. Can this be seen as the legitimate idea of the world-in-itself?

There is a world that humans inhabit and experience. When humans think about or conceptualize this world, they do so in terms of spatial extension, temporal dimension, and basic categories (concepts) like object, force, causal relations, etc. . .  (and in terms of transactions between the subject and the world).  We apply those basic intuitions and concepts to the world of experience in our conceptualization of that world.

That this is an appropriate application is something that flows from the nature of the real world, a nature characterized as a spatial, temporal, physical world.

 

Extra-Ordinary Claims & Miracles

Juan Bernal

To be credible someone making an extra-ordinary claim, e.g. my neighbor can levitate, we would ask for evidence sufficient to the claim.  It  wouldn’t do to go on mere hear-say or my sincere insistence that my claim is true.

Extra-ordinary claims call for extra-ordinary evidence, or as David Hume stated: “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

“Suppose .. that the fact which testimony endeavors to establish partakes of the extra-ordinary and the marvelous: in that the evidence resulting from the testimony admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact [purported ‘fact’] is more or less unusual.”

(David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “Section X  “Of Miracles,”  Part I”, 1748)

David Hume is regarded as  a classical empiricist.  Knowledge, if we have any, comes by way of experience.  Along with this is the assumption that there are regularities in experience and nature.

It is surprising to critical thinkers that anyone would question the principle that measures the status of a belief to the evidence supporting it.   The more extra-ordinary (marvelous, miraculous, magical) the purported event, the less weight carried by ordinary evidence (e.g., human testimony, reports, etc.).

It is not sufficient to well-grounded belief to affirm belief in miracles (e.g. a resurrection from death, or a feat of levitation) on testimony and reports of such events. Much more is called for if we’re to see such belief as rationally and empirically well-grounded.

Skepticism, not credulity, is the attitude of the rational person in the face of such extra-ordinary claims.

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What could possibly be a philosophical rebuttal to this position skeptical of miraculous claims?

Some might raise technicalities about Hume’s suggestion of an appropriate proportion of evidence to belief.  These would be questions as to the precise measured proportion: What objective standard could we apply to determine exact proportionality?

Some might object that supernatural possibilities that fall outside of human empirical knowledge are not judged in terms of evidence usually applicable only to ordinary events.

Some might bring up the fact that extra-ordinary claims in the sciences were not required to conform to a “proportionality of evidence” and were not rejected because of insufficient evidence for an extra-ordinary claim.

We can reply to each in turn.  First Hume did not propose an exact science (with precise method and measurement) for evaluating extra-ordinary claims.  Instead, he offered a practical, common sense guide for proceeding, i.e., a general “rule-of-thumb,” in a manner of speaking.

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Many events which are seen as miraculous can be shown to have natural explanation and may result from illusion or hallucination.  Those which cannot be readily explained do not automatically fall into the category of the miraculous.  On the one hand, they might be events that await further investigation.  On the other hand, they might be tagged (for now) as things we cannot presently explain.   But our inability to explain or understand the event does not imply that miracle or magical event has occurred.  All that is implied is that we do not presently have an explanation to give.

(Miracle:  The intervention of a supernatural being into a natural or social happening, many times a happening that is beneficial for humans.)