Kingdoms of Either and Or

Something really worth taking note of, from Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch (p. 231-232):

Currently most evolutionists regard the possibility of speciation among neighbors as unorthodox, even though Darwin himself proposed it. The standard model of speciation requires geographic isolation. That has been the canonical pattern for half a century, and many evolutionists belive it is the universal pattern. But evolutionists are forever dividing and subdividing into schismatic sects, kingdoms of Either and Or. Do new species arise in archipelagoes, like Darwin's finches, or do they arise among neighbors? Is the origin of species fast or slow? Is the mechanism natural selection or sexual selection? And so on. None of these questions really have ot be framed either-or. It is almost a law of science: the more indirect the evidence, the more polarized the debate. Evolutionists sometimes catch themselves sounding like the Little-Endians and Big-Endians in Gulliver's Travels, fighting tooth and nail over the proper way to crack an egg. Meanwhile, the more direct the evidence, the less the answers look either-or.

This 'law' of indirect - or poor - evidence resulting in more polarized debates seems to work in other areas of science as well. For example, in sedimentary geology, there is (was?) a strong debate about whether most thick-bedded sands deposited in the deep sea are due to deposition from turbidity currents or debris flows. Probably the only positive outcome of the debate is that some people are paying more attention to the evidence and they are starting to realize exactly that "the more direct the evidence, the less the answers look either-or". Debris flows can easily become turbulent flows - and the other way around: in their final, depositional stages, turbidity currents can transform into predominantly laminar flows. To claim that 99% of deep-water sands result from debris flows rather than turbidity currents just because many depositional features suggest laminar behaviour is a perfect example of thinking in terms of black-and-white or kingdoms of 'Either and Or'. It is analogous to calling cars 'frictional machines' because they use friction to stop.

Igen, teljes "evilágiság"

Jakab Gábor irja >Se fejkendô, se kereszt, se fejfedô — avagy teljes "evilágiság?"< cimü cikkében (Szabadság, 2004 március 10):

Amikor elôször hallottam Jacques Chirac francia köztársasági elnök törvénytervezetérôl, amelyben azt indítványozta, hogy az 1789-es forradalom óta közismert "szabadság, egyenlôség, testvériség" jeligéjét kiegészítve mintegy az "evilágiság" elvével, tiltassék meg a címben szereplô vallási szimbólumok használata a franciaországi közintézményekben és iskolákban (azóta 494 IGEN, 36 NEM szavazat és 31 TARTÓZKODÁS eredményeként megszületett a parlamenti határozat, amely várhatólag ôsztôl emelkedik majd a törvény rangjára), eszembe jutott a közismert népi mondás: "nem a ruha teszi az embert". Úgy látszik azonban, negatív értelemben persze, hogy "az is teszi" (!), hiszen— lám — a szóban forgó esetben egy ruhadarab lenézôen minôsíthet egy embercsoportot, igazságtalanul hátrányos helyzetbe taszító jelképpé válhat.

Eszembe jutott persze egyéb is. Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) dán filozófus neve, illetve az ô Vagy-vagy címû mûve. Ebben egyebek mellett szerepel egy tanulságos történet. Eszerint valamelyik színház raktárában a papírból és deszkalemezekbôl készült kulisszák váratlanul tüzet fognak. Az egyik beöltözött színész, egészen pontosan a bohóc szerepét játszó komikus (természetesen bohóc ruhában!) a megdöbbenéstôl kétségbeesetten, lihegve rohan be a színpadra, hogy a fenyegetô veszélyt a publikum tudtára adja és a nézôtér azonnali elhagyására felszólítsa. A közönség azonban nem mozdul, a bohócöltözet láttán tréfának véli a dolgot, önfeledt kacagásba tör ki, sôt, a bohóc-színész rimánkodásának az egyre drámaibb hangvételûvé fordulásával párhuzamosan mind felszabadultabban szórakozik és könnyeket fakasztó jókedvvel mulat. Végeredmény? A színház leég, a "hitetlenek" ott lelik halálukat a lángok között.

A cikk azt sugallja, hogy minden bohócot holt komolyan kell venni, mert hanem baj lesz. A baj csak ott van, hogy nagyon sok bohóc ellentmond egymásnak, és gyakran önmagának. Hogyan döntsd el, hogy mikor bohóc a bohóc? Mikor kell hinni neki, és mikor nem? A cikk szerzőjének magától értetődőnek tünik, hogy mindenkinek, aki vallásos, az "igazságát" el kell fogadni; a hitetlenek pedig vessenek magulra, ha a "lángok között" lelik halálukat. Az teljesen mellékes, hogy általában nem a szabadgondolkodók röpitenek repülőt a World Trade Centerbe; hogy nem az agnosztikusok robbantgatnak Észak-Irországban; és nem az ateisták szövetsége követ el tömeges öngyilkosságot.

Hajrá, franciák, hajrá, felvilágosodás.

Going back to the last subject: of course, the other side of the coin is that our inborn moral intuitions can only serve as safe guidance in situations that were not uncommon in times when our brains formed -- that is, a long time ago. To rely on these intuitions in issues as complicated as bioethics is a big mistake, as it is more than convincingly pointed out on Carl Zimmer's weblog.

Hardwired morality

Carl Zimmer has an article in the April issue of Discover Magazine about how neuroscience is providing more and more evidence that morality is hardwired into the human brain. For example, there are two variants of a famous moral dilemma about saving the lives of five people who are about to be hit by a train. In the first version, you can throw a switch and thus kill one person (he or she would be hit by the redirected train; in the second, you can push a fat guy off a footbridge, who would fall on the tracks and thus stop the train. Most people tend to say they would throw the switch, but they would not push the guy to his death. It just does not feel right. The two versions of the dilemma also light up different areas of the brain, as shown by MRI imaging: we tend to use logic to reach a conclusion in the first case, but emotions play an important role when it comes to killing somebody without the indirectness of some intervening machinery. The reason for this probably is that evolution has hardwired our brains for the latter case, but there are no hardcoded, visceral responses to throwing a switch, even if we know that it leads to the death of another human being.

Such findings should be serious food for thought for those who argue that morality can only originate in the brains or souls or hearts (whatever, pick your favorite) of true believers, and you must be an immoral animal if you do not believe in some supernatural power. But I guess somebody who rarely thinks does not like too much food for thought.

No design, no purpose, no evil and no good

Great Saturday morning -- one of those rare moments when sunshine somehow manages to get into our livingroom (fortunately, this shadowy environment is going to change soon... in a couple of weeks we will be in our new home).

Stumbled upon a good old Richard Dawkins text that appears in River Out of Eden:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.

Theologians worry away at the “problem of evil” and a related “problem of suffering”. On the day I originally wrote this paragraph, the British newspapers all carried a terrible story about a bus full of children from a Roman Catholic school that crashed for no obvious reason, with wholesale loss of life. Not for the first time, clerics were in paroxysms over the theological question that a writer on a London newspaper (The Sunday Telegraph) framed this way: “How can you believe in a loving, all-powerful God who allows such a tragedy?” The article went on to quote one priest’s reply: “The simple answer is that we do not know why there should be a God who lets these awful things happen. But the horror of the crash, to a Christian, confirms the fact that we live in a world of real values: positive and negative. If the universe was just electrons, there would be no problem of evil or suffering.”

On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Yes, it almost sounds like he is advocating that it is OK to behave with 'pitiless indifference', it is OK not to try to differentiate evil from good, and it is OK to live a life without a purpose. But, again and again, let's not fall in the trap of the naturalistic fallacy and let's follow Hume's guillotine: what is true is not necessarily ought to be true. From the statement that nature has 'nothing, but blind, pitiless indifference', it does not follow that this state of the world is awesome and we should be indifferent and selfish.