The New Atheists on Morality

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once. Moreover, there would be nothing immoral then, everything would be permitted. 

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880, p. I, 2, 6 (p. 69 in the 1990 translation).

Should this statement give the “New Atheists” pause? Do they have a good philosophical answer to Dostoevsky’s challenge? Sam Harris believes that he can navigate through these stormy seas by pointing to increases in happiness and decreases in suffering. He states that “questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures.”[1] Thus, for Harris, the foundation of morality comes down to caring for the well-being of all sentient creatures. This has led Harris, and other atheists similar to him, to a Vegan-like diet because they believe that it is wrong to cause pain and death to animals. Harris calls the source of this basic moral knowledge “moral intuition.” He also suggests that being moral tends to contribute to one’s happiness.

One must concede that there is a degree of logic to the Harris argument, even as it seems to argue in circles. The degree to which a creature is sentient is difficult to determine. Is a lobster more or less sentient than a chicken, sheep, or steer? What about studies that suggest plants have feelings? Does a tree “know” that it is being felled in the forest? Does it care? As the “Arrogant Worms” sing in one of their comedic songs, is carrot juice murder?

Comedic references aside, what about sentience and consciousness in general? The same atheists who argue that we should care about conscious animals, will also argue that consciousness is nothing more than chemical processes in a brain, consisting of atoms that came together through many processes, stemming from the Big Bang of the universe’s beginning. In the philosophy of the New Atheists, are the chemical processes in the brain-stem of a sheep more important than the chemical processes in the circulation system of a turnip, or an ancient White Oak tree, or a human child who is not even aware she is alive?

Does Harris ever question his own happiness? Why should he feel happy at not eating a lobster; or happy at giving money to a street survivor in New York; or unhappy with himself for not giving money to a person on a New York street? How is his happiness affected by whether I walk past or contribute to that same street person in New York?

Dostoevsky makes the stronger case and ultimately speaks the greater truth. It is easier to see Dostoevsky’s words coming to fruition than the hopeful, but ultimately, groundless words of Sam Harris. I can appreciate that Sam Harris is an intelligent person and is trying hard to create a plausible system, but the system falls shorts and ends in the circle within which it began. Without a foundation in a moral Creator, morality based on our emotions will never triumph and the best laid plans of Harris and others will most often go very far astray.

Works Cited

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "The New Atheists." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 07 27, 2016. http://www.iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/ (accessed 07 27, 2016).

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[1] Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The New Atheists." http://www.iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/, viewed 2016-07-27.

Follow-Up to Ghost in the Machine

Two quotes from David Chalmers express the importance of studying the concept of consciousness.

Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with.1

I think [consciousness] provides plenty of grounds for reorientating our view of how the world might be. We think 'OK it's nice and simple' - there's biology, there's chemistry, there's physics and so on but one thing we learn from studying science is that the more and more you study science, the more and more you realise just how strange the world is. Quantum mechanics is fundamentally strange, what it tells us about the basic nature of reality. Studying consciousness tells us more about how the world is fundamentally strange. I think we have a few revolutions to go yet before we get to the bottom of it.2

1 David Chalmers, http://machineslikeus.com/biographies/david-chalmers
2 David Chalmers, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/david-chalmers-on-the-big-conundrum-consciousness/3546288

Ghost in the Machine

For some time I have been a fan of Kyler England. I love her solo work but she has also written and performed with "The Rescues" and most recently has teamed up with former "Rescues" member, Adrianne Gonzalez, to create the duo: "The Fire and the Sea." Their lyric video, The Ghost in the Machine, can be seen and heard here.

Ghost in the Machine
(from the lyric video by "The Fire and The Sea") 

You are the ghost in the machine
Flickering
And I don't know what it means
You trouble me 

Behind the smoke
And the screen
I'm hiding, I'm hiding
But when the secret's out
And the wounded sing
What's lost is found
You trouble me
And it's troubling 

In the light you follow me
Shadowing
In the dark you're all I see
Surrounding
In a sweet unwanted dream
Trouble needs a place to sleep
But when the secret's out
And the wounded sing
What's lost is found
You trouble me
And it's troubling 

When the secret's out
You are the ghost in the machine
Flickering
When the secret's out
And the wounded sing
What's lost is found
You trouble me
And it's troubling

The concept of "the ghost in the machine" is a well-known philosophical term which refers to the separation of mind and body. Some, like British philosopher Gilbert Ryle1, suggest that it is a false concept while others would suggest that the difficulty we have in explaining "consciousness" indicates that there is a "ghost in the machine" or perhaps a "soul in the body." Consciousness may be a candidate for a distinction between the pure chemistry of the mind and perception; but, is consciousness sufficient to suggest a ghost in the machine?

Regarding consciousness and perception, Alva Noë has said,

Consider this; we are conscious of both more and less than affects our nervous system. Let me give you an example. I look at a tomato. It’s sitting there on the counter in front of me. It’s red and bulgy and three dimensional and I experience all that visually. I have a sense even visually of the back of the tomato, but I can't see the back of the tomato. It’s out of view and yet it’s part of my experience of the tomato that it has a back. It’s present in that sense to me, but note it doesn’t strike my retina. It’s present. It informs. It structures my visual experience without actually being an element that stimulates my nervous system.2

N.T. Wright points out that Neo-Platonic concepts of dualism have influenced our concepts of body and soul, brain and mind, and heaven and earth.3 He suggests that the Bible is much more holistic in its presentation and argues for a holistic view of body and being. David Chalmers suggests that a machine could indeed be "all machine and no ghost."4 Others speak of the Holy Spirit of God and how it interacts with humans as the "ghost in the machine." What is the truth? This question is certainly troubling.


1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_machine
2 http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-ghost-in-the-machine-unraveling-the-mystery-of-consciousness
3 http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_SCP_MindSpiritSoulBody.htm
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Brain Gymnastics

I gave myself a brain workout the other day. A song came on the radio and I thought about who the singer was. His first name made me think of another singer with the same first name and I thought about the second singer's first and last name; then I thought about songs sung by the second artist. This made me think of songs with the same title by another artist and the location in which that artist resided. This led to me thinking about a holiday I took in that location and the music I enjoyed while traveling. The mind map1 looks like this:

Surrounding all of this process is the consciousness which allowed me to see this as it happened and now analyze it again two days later. It is a consciousness that allows me to analyze not only the logical steps but the emotions of the process as well. At a further level, I find myself thinking about the neurons which must connect to make this whole progression work. What would that look like in my brain? Where are the various bits of information stored? How are they retrieved? At certain points I used conversation with my wife and the internet as external inputs to speed along the process. How does the brain assimilate all of this material and pull it together in a logical package?

These and others are the questions being asked in contemporary brain science investigations. Consciousness, and why it exists, is still a great unexplored territory. This kind of consciousness appears to be unique to humans. We seem to be the only species on the planet capable of thinking about thinking and being aware of our understanding and our limitations. At some point we may have a more complete answer to some of the questions posed; yet, we can expect that there will always be a degree of mystery. This mystery rightly points to the Creator who has made humans a project unique among all created things.

1. The mind map also illustrates the limitations of the brain. In my mind, the last name was spelled "Holme" but my brain had stored it with an incorrect spelling. It is really spelled  "Holm."