He does single out certain fundamentalist religious ideas about life and death, but it doesn't attack all religious people with it; rather, it goes after a certain kind of thinking that can be applied to religious and non-religious people alike—including him, from time to time, ironically enough.
Are you talking about the quote Aliroz posted?
About the article in general, in reference to what Al said.
"Essentialism rears its ugly head in racial terminology. The majority of "African Americans" are of mixed race. Yet so entrenched is our essentialist mindset that American official forms require everyone to tick one race/ethnicity box or another: no room for intermediates. ... We are still infected with the plague of Plato's essentialism."
... go to Hell, Richard Dawkins. A braying little nebbish like you is unworthy to unlace Plato's pankration gloves. There is no causal relationship between Plato's theory of forms and racism, and you're "plagued" with essentialism whenever you use the number pi, you puffed-up halfwit.
Direct causal relationship in that it creates racism? No. But essentialism is the keystone behind a lot of specious defences of things like racism, and as a mindset tends to lead to really reductive thinking. Not so much the idea of Platonic ideals, per se, but the idea that something can only be one thing or the other: A belief in absolute states.
To elaborate on the pi thing... a nominalist has to argue what we call 'pi' is only an approximation of a ratio, not a number that we have access to, while still claiming that there is no materiality-transcending object called 'pi'. Obviously, that's not something that's going to sit well with most mathematicians, but that doesn't make Platonism automatically true.
Dawkins might not agree with me here, since he seems perfectly willing to grant that Plato was correct with regards to geometry.
But geometry is not morality, or biology, or sociology. They are certainly connected in small, interesting ways, as most things are, but equating the laws or precepts of one with the other is just begging for trouble.
i see your point, but mathematicians occupy the same universe as sociologists. To be clear, though, i'm not arguing for Platonism, nor even that the principles behind mathematics must be those behind sociology. Quite the opposite.
What i am saying is that the use of the constant pi does not mean committing oneself to Platonism. This is important if we're going to claim, as Darcy has done, that scientists should be more philosophically aware.
today i read something by dawkins that didn't make me groan. first time probably ever
well, skimmed
If he's talking about actual science or evolutionary biology -- like, the things he's actually qualified to talk about -- he's not really that bad. Just don't start in on philosophy.
today i read something by dawkins that didn't make me groan. first time probably ever
well, skimmed
If he's talking about actual science or evolutionary biology -- like, the things he's actually qualified to talk about -- he's not really that bad. Just don't start in on philosophy.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Essentialism has absolutely everything to do with racism, whether you want to attribute that to Plato or not.
And while irrational constants like pi do present challenges for non-Platonist mathematics, i don't think it's right to suggest that they're intrinsically Platonic.
No, it most certainly does not have everything to do with racism. While some racist arguments have been essentialist, scientific racism was based on "a continuous spectrum of intermediates." Ever read Gould's Mismeasure of Man? Does Dr. Carleton Coon comparing the ranges of H. erectus, Aboriginal Australian and Chinese braincases in cubic centimeters ring any bells? Does The Bell Curve?
And yes, realism is not strictly speaking Platonic. It can be Aristotelian or Cartesian or what have you. But in mathematics, Platonism is the common term (har har) for upholding realism like Whitehead and Russell*. Probably because Plato was there first.
Tachyon: Also, wow, you really like Plato, don't you?
Well yes. Not necessarily more than Aristotle or Leibniz, but a myopic little person like Dawkins is unqualified to insult any systematic philosopher, when all he has is an intellectual apprehension of biology, without even its practical applications like a strong body (Aristotle's student Dicaearchus provides the biographical detail that Plato had been a martial arts champion) or large family.
*I therefore find Russell's atheism baffling. Whitehead seems to have been so much of a Platonist that he held up the Timaeus as being in some sense true inScience and the Modern World.
Well yes. Not necessarily more than Aristotle or Leibniz, but a myopic little person like Dawkins is unqualified to insult any systematic philosopher, when all he has is an intellectual apprehension of biology, without even its practical applications like a strong body (Aristotle's student Dicaearchus provides the biographical detail that Plato had been a martial arts champion) or large family.
No, it most certainly does not have everything to do with racism. While some racist arguments have been essentialist, scientific racism was based on "a continuous spectrum of intermediates." Ever read Gould's Mismeasure of Man? Does Dr. Carleton Coon comparing the ranges of H. erectus, Aboriginal Australian and Chinese braincases in cubic centimeters ring any bells? Does The Bell Curve?
You are right, of course. 'Absolutely everything' was a gross exaggeration, and i apologize for it.
What i do maintain is that much of today's bigotry (and a great many bad arguments) are attributable to an unquestioning essentialism which is extremely common in today's thought.
Well yes. Not necessarily more than Aristotle or Leibniz, but a myopic little person like Dawkins is unqualified to insult any systematic philosopher, when all he has is an intellectual apprehension of biology, without even its practical applications like a strong body (Aristotle's student Dicaearchus provides the biographical detail that Plato had been a martial arts champion) or large family.
And i don't think this is at all fair. The sciences have moved on considerably from when Aristotle or even Leibniz was writing, and to devote one's time to breadth is to sacrifice depth. Dawkins is an accomplished evolutionary biologist. He could certainly benefit from some humility, but i don't think it's at all reasonable to dismiss him as a myopic nebbish when i don't believe there's been a true polymath in the Renaissance sense since goodness knows when. Henri Poincaré, at the very latest.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Odradek: "wut" is the benefit of specializing in knowledge of biology? Is it abstract knowledge (but a materialist would say that abstracts are figments of our imagination), or also practical?
"wut" is the benefit of specializing in knowledge of biology? Is it abstract knowledge (but a materialist would say that abstracts are figments of our imagination), or also practical?
you say "figments of our imagination" like it's a bad thing.
"wut" is the benefit of specializing in knowledge of biology? Is it abstract knowledge (but a materialist would say that abstracts are figments of our imagination), or also practical?
you say "figments of our imagination" like it's a bad thing.
...and now I feel absolutely useless to this conversation, because everyone else is making good points or funny remarks and I'm just intellectual dead weight, nodding my head. Hell, I may totally disagree with what Mr. Darcy is saying for the most part, but at least it's generating interesting responses.
I think the important thing to remember is that this thread is primarily about Richard Dawkins being a douche, so unless we're giving examples of him being a douche, or generally just calling him a douche, this thread is off topic.
...and now I feel absolutely useless to this conversation, because everyone else is making good points or funny remarks and I'm just intellectual dead weight, nodding my head. Hell, I may totally disagree with what Mr. Darcy is saying for the most part, but at least it's generating interesting responses.
Even if you can't add anything now, you might add something later! Like atomic theory except with less people dead, hopefully.
I think the important thing to remember is that this thread is primarily about Richard Dawkins being a douche, so unless we're giving examples of him being a douche, or generally just calling him a douche, this thread is off topic.
I think the important thing to remember is that this thread is primarily about Richard Dawkins being a douche, so unless we're giving examples of him being a douche, or generally just calling him a douche, this thread is off topic.
on the other hand, actual science is far more interesting than Richard Dawkins' doucheyness
*I therefore find Russell's atheism baffling. Whitehead seems to have been so much of a Platonist that he held up the Timaeus as being in some sense true inScience and the Modern World.
There's an interesting passage in Process and Reality that compares and contrasts Newton's Principia and the Timaeus.
anyhoo @fitzwilliam, you seem to be implying that materialism is flawed because it would mean that ideas without practical applications would be imaginary figments? (*am i totally off-base here?*)
if i'm not off base, how would you define a "practical application" for an idea, and what is the problem with a purely imaginary construct/figment/whatever?
The Timaeus of Plato, and the Scholium of Newton-the latter already
in large part quoted-are the two statements of cosmological theory which
have had the chief influence on Western thought. To the modern reader,
the Timaeus, considered as a statement of scientific details, is in comparison
with the Scholium simply foolish. But what it lacks in superficial detail,
it makes up for by its philosophic depth. If it be read as an allegory,
it conveys profound truth; whereas the Scholium is an immensely able
statement of details which, although abstract and inadequate as a philosophy,
can within certain limits be thoroughly trusted for the deduction of
truths at the same level of abstraction as itself. The penalty of its philosophical
deficiency is that the Scholium conveys no hint of the limits of
its own application. The practical effect is that the readers, and almost
certainly Newton himself, so construe its meaning as to fall into [143] what
I have elsewhere 6 termed the (fallacy of misplaced concreteness.' It is the
office of metaphysics to determine the limits of the applicability of such
abstract notions.
The Scholium betrays its abstractness by affording no hint of that aspect
of self-production, of generation, of cp60l~, of natura naturans, which is
so prominent in nature. For the Scholium, nature is merely, and completely,
there, externally designed and obedient. The full sweep of the
modern doctrine of evolution would have confused the Newton of the
Scholium, but would have enlightened the Plato of the Timaeus. So far
as Newton is concerned, we have his own word for this statement. In a
letter to Bentley, he writes: ((When I wrote my treatise about our system,
I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for
the belief of a Deity; ... " 7 The concept in Newton's mind is that of a
fully articulated system requiring a definite supernatural origin with that
articulation. This is the form of the cosmological argument, now generally
abandoned as invalid; because our notion of causation concerns the relations
of states of things within the actual world, and can only be illegitimately
extended to a transcendent derivation. The notion of God, which
will be discussed later (cf. Part V), is that of an actual entity immanent
in the actual world, but transcending any finite cosmic epoch-a being at
once actual, eternal, immanent, and transcendent. The transcendence of God is not peculiar to him. Every actual entity, in virtue of its novelty, transcends its universe, God included.
In the Scholium, space and time, with all their current mathematical
properties, are ready-made for the material masses; the material masses are
ready-made for the (forces' which constitute their action and reaction; and
space, and time, and material masses, and forces, are [144] alike readymade
for the initial motions which the Deity impresses throughout the
universe. It is not possible to extract from the Scholium-construed with
misplaced concreteness-either a theism, or an atheism, or an epistemology,
which can survive a comparison with the facts. This is the inescapable
conclusion to be inferred from Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
Biology is also reduced to a mystery; and finally physics itself has
now reached a stage of experimental knowledge inexplicable in terms of
the categories of the Scholium.
In the Timaeus, there are many phrases and statements which find their
final lucid expression in the Scholium. While noting this concurrence of
the two great cosmological documents guiding Western thought, it cannot
be too clearly understood that, within its limits of abstraction, what
the Scholium says is true, and that it is expressed with the lucidity of
genius. Thus any cosmological document which cannot be read as an interpretation
of the Scholium is worthless. But there is another side to the
Timaeus which finds no analogy in the Scholium. In general terms, this
side of the Timaeus may be termed its metaphysical character, that is to
say, its endeavour to connect the behaviour of things with the formal nature
of things. The behaviour apart from the things is abstract, and so are
the things apart from their behaviour. Newton-wisely, for his purposesmade
this abstraction which the Timaeus endeavours to avoid.
I think the important thing to remember is that this thread is primarily about Richard Dawkins being a douche, so unless we're giving examples of him being a douche, or generally just calling him a douche, this thread is off topic.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
You are right, of course. 'Absolutely everything' was a gross exaggeration, and i apologize for it.
What i do maintain is that much of today's bigotry (and a great many bad arguments) are attributable to an unquestioning essentialism which is extremely common in today's thought.
And i don't think this is at all fair. The sciences have moved on considerably from when Aristotle or even Leibniz was writing, and to devote one's time to breadth is to sacrifice depth. Dawkins is an accomplished evolutionary biologist. He could certainly benefit from some humility, but i don't think it's at all reasonable to dismiss him as a myopic nebbish when i don't believe there's been a true polymath in the Renaissance sense since goodness knows when. Henri Poincaré, at the very latest.
First part: if you were to disasscociate "today's bigotry" from the theory of forms and call it something like "binary thinking", we wouldn't be disagreeing. That's a well-known cognitive bias (innate and not a social construct of today, if the structuralists were right).
Second part: Well yes, and the most necessary thing for a deep, narrow thinker to remain a well-rounded human being is exactly humility. You can't act like a know-it-all when you're a specialist. Case in point: Dawkins ignoring all psychological research and acting like what psychologists need is a biologist like him to replace it with "memetics", which is totally a true paradigm equivalent to Darwin's breakthrough and not just a geneticist's Homeric simile.
Assassin: "you say 'figments of our imagination' like it's a bad thing.
you seem to be implying that materialism is flawed because it would mean that ideas without practical applications would be imaginary figments? (*am i totally off-base here?*)
if i'm not off base, how would you define a "practical application" for an idea, and what is the problem with a purely imaginary construct/figment/whatever?"
Think God. Nominalism and materialism reduce all universals to the same ontological status that atheists think God has.
If the abstractions scientists study aren't real, then isn't science's value only in medicne and engineering applications? Contemplating universals like numbers is akin to contemplating God: nominalism and materialism undermine the value of both.
Think God. Nominalism and materialism reduce all universals to the same ontological status that atheists think God has.
If the abstractions scientists study aren't real, then isn't science's value only in medicne and engineering applications? Contemplating universals like numbers is akin to contemplating God: nominalism and materialism undermine the value of both.
if you were to disasscociate "today's bigotry" from the theory of forms and call it something like "binary thinking", we wouldn't be disagreeing. That's a well-known cognitive bias (innate and not a social construct of today, if the structuralists were right).
In that case, we needn't be in disagreement; i simply don't know enough about the history of these ideas to say whether Dawkins is correct to identify it with the theory of forms or not.
Well yes, and the most necessary thing for a deep, narrow thinker to remain a well-rounded human being is exactly humility. You can't act like a know-it-all when you're a specialist. Case in point: Dawkins ignoring all psychological research and acting like what psychologists need is a biologist like him to replace it with "memetics", which is totally a true paradigm equivalent to Darwin's breakthrough and not just a geneticist's Homeric simile.
I think it's possible to believe that ideas have value while still believing that they are elaborate patterns of electrons, protons, and neutrons.
Agreed.
Even if you do attribute to ideas an existence independent of the material processes that give rise to them, though, i'm not seeing how this is supposed to endow them with any additional utility which they lack when considered as mental constructs. If numbers are constructs, they were constructed for a purpose, and the reason we still use them is because they get results.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Richard Dawkins argues that the universe is uncreated because creationists read Genesis 1-2 literally, which contradicts the science of biology.
for someone complaining about misrepresentation of religious beliefs I'm pretty sure this is a massive oversimplification of Richard Dawkins' beliefs on the matter
So getting back to this: could you clarify, spinor? Where does Dawkins contrast his position to the Argument from Casuality, rather than to Biblical literalism?
Really, the Big Bang seems like a hard problem for atheism. Every thing that comes into existence has a cause. If a causal loop cannot exist and a causal chain cannot be of infinite length, there must be an eternal First Cause. The eternal universe ("Steady State") has been empirically falsified. Unless you invoke a causal loop, it's either a First Cause or turtles all the way down.
But a "first cause" can't really be proven either. The only solutions to it rely on faith, which for scientific purposes is insufficient. It's not that science disproves the existence of a creator-god, but that it cannot prove such an existence--which, as John Scotus Eriugena so wisely put it, would be beyond our definition of the word "to be" anyway.
You can chart everything back to a certain point. Before that, time and being are meaningless. Therein lies the unknowable. We can say that natural physical laws would bring about such things, but where do those laws come from? Nowhere that we can define reasonably without entering the realm of unscientific speculation.
^ Yep. One could call that God, though, albeit a different sort of God.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
But a "first cause" can't really be proven either. The only solutions to it rely on faith, which for scientific purposes is insufficient. It's not that science disproves the existence of a creator-god, but that it cannot prove such an existence--which, as John Scotus Eriugena so wisely put it, would be beyond our definition of the word "to be" anyway.
You can chart everything back to a certain point. Before that, time and being are meaningless. Therein lies the unknowable. We can say that natural physical laws would bring about such things, but where do those laws come from? Nowhere that we can define reasonably without entering the realm of unscientific speculation.
A First Cause can be proven deductively. Of course a valid syllogism can be false due to a false premise. For example:
Every thing that comes into existence has a cause.
The universe never came into existence.
Thus the universe can be the uncaused cause of each thing that comes into existence in it.
The minor premise is a falsifiable empirical claim, and has been falsified.
You are correct that it's not that science disproves the existence of an Eternal Creator (I'm capitalizing definitions here to avoid equivocal use of the word God), but that it cannot prove such exists. But science is not the sole source of epistemic certainty: indeed it's supported by numbers and rules of logic, which can only be known by reason/deduction rather than by science/induction itself.
You can chart everything back to a certain point. Before that, time is meaningless, but being is not. Eternal beings are logically possible. Again, we can define things reasonably by entering the realm of unscientific logic.
Comments
Dawkins might not agree with me here, since he seems perfectly willing to grant that Plato was correct with regards to geometry.
i see your point, but mathematicians occupy the same universe as sociologists. To be clear, though, i'm not arguing for Platonism, nor even that the principles behind mathematics must be those behind sociology. Quite the opposite.
What i am saying is that the use of the constant pi does not mean committing oneself to Platonism. This is important if we're going to claim, as Darcy has done, that scientists should be more philosophically aware.
No, it most certainly does not have everything to do with racism. While some racist arguments have been essentialist, scientific racism was based on "a continuous spectrum of intermediates." Ever read Gould's Mismeasure of Man? Does Dr. Carleton Coon comparing the ranges of H. erectus, Aboriginal Australian and Chinese braincases in cubic centimeters ring any bells? Does The Bell Curve?
And yes, realism is not strictly speaking Platonic. It can be Aristotelian or Cartesian or what have you. But in mathematics, Platonism is the common term (har har) for upholding realism like Whitehead and Russell*. Probably because Plato was there first.
Tachyon: Also, wow, you really like Plato, don't you?
Well yes. Not necessarily more than Aristotle or Leibniz, but a myopic little person like Dawkins is unqualified to insult any systematic philosopher, when all he has is an intellectual apprehension of biology, without even its practical applications like a strong body (Aristotle's student Dicaearchus provides the biographical detail that Plato had been a martial arts champion) or large family.
*I therefore find Russell's atheism baffling. Whitehead seems to have been so much of a Platonist that he held up the Timaeus as being in some sense true inScience and the Modern World.
You are right, of course. 'Absolutely everything' was a gross exaggeration, and i apologize for it.
What i do maintain is that much of today's bigotry (and a great many bad arguments) are attributable to an unquestioning essentialism which is extremely common in today's thought.
And i don't think this is at all fair. The sciences have moved on considerably from when Aristotle or even Leibniz was writing, and to devote one's time to breadth is to sacrifice depth. Dawkins is an accomplished evolutionary biologist. He could certainly benefit from some humility, but i don't think it's at all reasonable to dismiss him as a myopic nebbish when i don't believe there's been a true polymath in the Renaissance sense since goodness knows when. Henri Poincaré, at the very latest.
Anyway, Dawkins's expertise lays in the study of evolution and it's effect on living organisms, not on the human body.
Honestly whenever the topic turns to these kinds of philosophical matters i feel entirely out of my depth.
Lemme see if I can find it.
Like everything in Process and Reality, it fits together with his big overall system, but I thought it might add something. Or not.
First part: if you were to disasscociate "today's bigotry" from the theory of forms and call it something like "binary thinking", we wouldn't be disagreeing. That's a well-known cognitive bias (innate and not a social construct of today, if the structuralists were right).
Second part: Well yes, and the most necessary thing for a deep, narrow thinker to remain a well-rounded human being is exactly humility. You can't act like a know-it-all when you're a specialist. Case in point: Dawkins ignoring all psychological research and acting like what psychologists need is a biologist like him to replace it with "memetics", which is totally a true paradigm equivalent to Darwin's breakthrough and not just a geneticist's Homeric simile.
Assassin: "you say 'figments of our imagination' like it's a bad thing.
you seem to be implying that materialism is flawed because it would mean that ideas without practical applications would be imaginary figments? (*am i totally off-base here?*)
Think God. Nominalism and materialism reduce all universals to the same ontological status that atheists think God has.
If the abstractions scientists study aren't real, then isn't science's value only in medicne and engineering applications? Contemplating universals like numbers is akin to contemplating God: nominalism and materialism undermine the value of both.
In that case, we needn't be in disagreement; i simply don't know enough about the history of these ideas to say whether Dawkins is correct to identify it with the theory of forms or not.
As to this, i agree entirely.
Agreed.
Even if you do attribute to ideas an existence independent of the material processes that give rise to them, though, i'm not seeing how this is supposed to endow them with any additional utility which they lack when considered as mental constructs. If numbers are constructs, they were constructed for a purpose, and the reason we still use them is because they get results.
So getting back to this: could you clarify, spinor? Where does Dawkins contrast his position to the Argument from Casuality, rather than to Biblical literalism?
Really, the Big Bang seems like a hard problem for atheism. Every thing that comes into existence has a cause. If a causal loop cannot exist and a causal chain cannot be of infinite length, there must be an eternal First Cause. The eternal universe ("Steady State") has been empirically falsified. Unless you invoke a causal loop, it's either a First Cause or turtles all the way down.
A First Cause can be proven deductively. Of course a valid syllogism can be false due to a false premise. For example:
Every thing that comes into existence has a cause.
The universe never came into existence.
Thus the universe can be the uncaused cause of each thing that comes into existence in it.
The minor premise is a falsifiable empirical claim, and has been falsified.
You are correct that it's not that science disproves the existence of an Eternal Creator (I'm capitalizing definitions here to avoid equivocal use of the word God), but that it cannot prove such exists. But science is not the sole source of epistemic certainty: indeed it's supported by numbers and rules of logic, which can only be known by reason/deduction rather than by science/induction itself.
You can chart everything back to a certain point. Before that, time is meaningless, but being is not. Eternal beings are logically possible. Again, we can define things reasonably by entering the realm of unscientific logic.