Debate Debate Debate!

 I know a lot of you have been asking, “Where’s my Bum been?”

Well here I am. I’ve had an insanely busy past few weeks.

News: I have a debate on Tuesday night where I’m going to argue against the guy who says that evolution, and a naturalistic outlook cannot account for ethics, etc.

He actually sent me his entire argument, and since I’m debating against it, please feel free to help me pick it apart.

His argument:

Naturalism’s Deficient Idea
A chasm of difference separates animals and humans. Judging only physical characteristics, though, one may not think that animals and humans really are so different. That is because the primary difference lies within the human mind. Humans have qualities such as freedom, creativity, and ethics that separate us from the less advanced forms of life. People treasure these qualities, for they validate our belief in individuality, genuine creativity, and human culture. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, argues that when one views humanity in terms of, and only in terms of, Darwinian evolution “we are left with stronger, sounder versions of our most important ideas. Some of the traditional details perish [but] . . . What remains is more than enough to build on” (521). Using only the premises of naturalistic Darwinism, Dennett believes that evolution can fully account for what distinguishes humanity from lower forms of life.
A naturalist like Dennett would hope that evolution can fully account for these qualities, for without them, Shakespeare was not a creative genius but rather an ineluctable product of biochemical determinism; without them, your decision to love thy neighbor was no real choice of yours. This argument has much at stake, for it determines if humanity is what we think it is, if the distinctively human traits are really ours at all.
In Paradise Lost, when Adam first awakes he says
. . . fair creatures, tell,
Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here?
Not of myself; by some great maker then . . .
Tell me, how may I know him, how adore . . .VIII 277-280.

Surely Milton makes a good point: humans have speculated about their beginnings as long as speculation has been possible. Aristotle considered matter and the universe to be infinite; he believed that there was no start time to creation. Christian doctrine teaches that God created the universe ex nihilo, and much of Protestant Christianity taught, and some continues to teach, that God created the world literally according to the pattern in Genesis chapter one. Many in the West believed this explanation until in 1859 Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species, arguing that the mechanism of natural selection formed the different living species over many million years. With evolution, the dilemma that Adam faced in Paradise seemed solved. In fact, Richard Dawkins admitted and welcomed that solution when he said that evolution allows him to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist” (Dawkins 1996 pg. 6). To him, evolution explains all the different aspects of human reality so that one, unlike Milton’s Adam, need not wonder anymore.
I will argue that naturalistic evolution, i.e. materialistic evolution by itself, does adequately account for many distinctly human characteristics that most define human existence: free choice, human creativity, and ethics. One can equate my use of ‘naturalism’ with the idea many associate with the term ‘materialism;’ I, however, do not use ‘materialism’ because not all physical processes consist of physical matter, e.g. forms of radiation: gravity or an electromagnetic wave. Nevertheless, the naturalist believes that only natural processes, processes that physics, chemistry, biology, etc. can explain, are valid; to the naturalist, other ontological planes of reality are invalid – e.g. the spiritual – because they smack of, what Dennett calls, skyhooks.
To begin, I will explain how naturalistic evolution necessarily leads to determinism, proving that evolution cannot account for human freedom. Then, by applying the conclusions of determinism to creativity, I will show how evolution cannot validate artistic creativity. Continuing, I will show how evolution fails to justify ethics on two fronts. First, its conclusion of determinism does not account for ethical decision-making. Second, evolution cannot provide an imperative on which one can justify ethical rules; one cannot derive an ought from an is. Next, I will respond to various arguments against my thesis, and I will conclude with a discussion of the implications of naturalistic evolution’s shortcomings.
The naturalist believes that the universe operates via cause and effect. Every motion of an object has a cause; every state in nature exists because of a prior state causing it to come about. The naturalist, as already stated, also insists that the physical reality is the only reality; therefore, any effect must have a physical, and only a physical, cause. The universe then becomes an enormously complex and interlocked chain of cause and effect events. The causes and effects have no mind or personal choices; the physical causes are mindless, and their corresponding effects are predictable, for they operate according to fixed laws. Whenever this chain encounters more than one option, a fork in the road, it uses mindless, predetermined calculations that decide which path to take. Therefore, everything physical operates predictably; one can use physics to calculate a billiard ball’s velocity and determine if it will fall into a pocket.
Freedom, however, allows for a person – a physical being with mind – to interrupt this predictable stream of cause and effect and insert her own choice, possibly changing the stream’s course. Whenever given more than one option, a person uses her freedom in order to make a decision, which recognizes the superior value of one option over others. Given naturalistic evolution’s assumption that only the physical exists, and given the nature of predictable cause and effect processes, naturalistic evolution would have a difficult time reconciling itself with freedom.
Dennett unequivocally admits that the human mind is a physical artifact, for “Of course our minds are our brains, and hence are ultimately just stupendously complex ‘machines’ ” (Dennett 370). Following his naturalistic viewpoint, he insists that our minds consist only of our physical brain; his naturalism allows no room for what the ancient understanding of the ‘soul.’ If the mind is just the physical brain, then it must operate according to unchanging laws. If unchanging, then the mind can have no freedom and, hence, no free choice. Furthermore, Dennett admits that intentionality, what I have called free choice, is “an effect of millions of years of mindless, algorithmic R[esearch] and D[evelopment]” by natural selection (370). He reinforces the fact that naturalism does not account for free choice, for an algorithmic process is, by definition, mindless; it has no freedom: Dennett himself defines an algorithm as “underlying mindlessness” (51). Dennett’s mentor, Richard Dawkins, sheds light on the issue:
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNAjust is. And we dance to its music. (Dawkins 1995 pg. 133).

Dennett tries to rescue naturalism from determinism by asserting that free choice is “none the less real;” he asserts that “you can transcend your genes, using your experience, and in particular the culture you imbibe, to build an almost entirely independent . . . locus of meaning on the base your genes have provided” (426). He claims that the ‘cranes of culture’ can create meaningful freedom for a person. Unfortunately, he has no rational basis for his assertion; in fact, he has dug himself a hole that he falls into later when he mentions culture.
He claims that culture allows the person to transcend determinism, but naturalistic evolution cuts his legs out from under him, and Dennett knows and later – as the reader will see, only 25 pages later! – implicitly admits it. Culture consists of many components, but art – in its various forms – is one of its fundamental ones. Naturalism leaves no room for culture because it leaves no room for creativity. The determinism runs so deep that it roots out creative acts as freely chosen. Naturalism reduces creativity to a mindless algorithmic process. Dennett rhetorically admits the determinism when he writes, “If Darwin’s dangerous idea is right, an algorithmic process is powerful enough to design a nightingale and a tree. Should it be that much harder for an algorithmic process to write an ode to a nightingale or a poem as lovely as a tree?” (451). Remember that Dennett defined an algorithm as “underlying mindlessness” (51). Hence, a mindless algorithm created Keats brilliant poem, not Keats himself. Dennett wants it both ways: he wants culture to give free choice – what he calls ‘intentionality’ – but the determinism of his belief in naturalism invalidates the artistic creativity so necessary for culture to exist. Some post-Darwinian poets have feared this conclusion about culture and determinism, and their reaction reveals the devastating force of naturalistic Darwinian assumptions on culture and the mind.
The American poet Wallace Stevens responded to determinism in his writings; literary critic Frank Lentricchia records Stevens’ dilemma: “Basically, and most destructively, deterministic materialism denies the artist creativity because it denies him freedom. All along Stevens (like Yeats) was aware of this tyrannizing force within his own naturalistic vision . . . [that] could conceivably destroy him as a poet by enslaving him to a secretarial function” (128-129). Lentricchia writes that Stevens responded to this determinism with the essay “The Irrational Element in Poetry.” In the essay, one would expect Stevens, a committed naturalist and artist, to argue for the compatibility of naturalism and artistic freedom. Instead, “Stevens does not argue for freedom; he just asserts it” (ibid 129). “He simply assumed that the act of writing poems was a free act” (ibid 129). Stevens refused to attribute creativity to a mindless mechanism, but he could not reconcile both naturalism and freedom, so he merely asserted both. In a naively triumphalistic way, a contemporary and ardent supporter of Darwin named John Tyndall sums up the situation well: “all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, all our art – Shakespeare, Newton, Raphael – are potential in the fires of the sun” (131).
The determinism of naturalistic evolution creates further problems when applied to another important component of culture – indeed, a component of all cultures: ethics. Determinism and ethics cannot coexist, and the following explanation of ethics will substantiate my claim. Ethics prescribe human behavior, delineating boundaries wherein human action must remain. One can understand ethics better when one contrasts ethical rules with natural laws. Ethical rules demand that a person be honest, but that person has the option not to obey. Therefore, ethics concern statements of ought and ought not; little Susie ought not to plagiarize her paper, but, physically speaking, she can. Natural laws, however, must be obeyed. One cannot choose to disobey the law of gravity. Whereas ethical rules prescribe behaviors, natural laws describe them. Natural laws concern the statements of is and is not, and, unlike ethical rules, one has no option to obey or not to obey them. Therefore, a person must have the freedom to choose for ethics to be valid; otherwise, the causal chain of naturalism will have already determined whether little Susie will cheat or not.
With free choice also goes personal responsibility. When determinism eliminates the possibility of ethical choices, it also eliminates personal responsibility. In life, whenever someone does not follow an ethical rule, someone else generally punishes that person. Whenever I would disobey my mother – by, for instance, lying – she punished me; she believed that I had free choice and that I exercised it by disobeying an ethical rule. She believed I could have chosen to tell the truth, and she held me responsible by punishing me. However, the determinism inherent in naturalism throws a wrench into the concept of responsibility and punishment, for it eliminates the ability to choose wrong acts. Therefore, I had no choice when I cheated on that test in fourth grade; my mother should not have punished me. One may rebut that my mother was predetermined to punish me – fair enough. She had as little choice to punish me as I had to disobey. Regardless, determinism still leaves no room for personal responsibility. If both I and my mother had no choice but to disobey and punish, respectively, then we still must discard responsibility as a concept, for it cannot exist in a world with no freedom to choose to obey or disobey, to punish or not to punish.
Naturalistic evolution has further trouble accounting for ethics regardless of the determinism inherent within it. Even if determinism were not a fact of naturalism – even if humans had the freedom to choose – naturalism has another fault, for it cannot rationally validate ethical choices. I do not claim that naturalistic evolution cannot explain the development of ethics from non-rational to rational beings; instead, I argue that it cannot, on its own, validate the imperative demands of ethical rules. To explain I must return to the definition of the word ‘decision’ I made previously. A decision recognizes the superior value of one option over one or more other options. Whenever a person encounters more than one possible option – a fork in the road – that person does a cost-benefit analysis and chooses the option with the greatest value. Therefore, determinism and decision-making are mutually exclusive, for the rational thought used in decision-making interrupts the flow of the mechanistic cause and effect chain.
Also, without value, decision-making is impossible. A person cannot rationally determine which option is superior, for a cost-benefit analysis measures relative value. Otherwise the person would either be stuck at the fork in the road, or she would have to depend on chance, the flip of a coin, to decide. For some decisions, a coin flip will suffice; for instance, a coin flip can pick who kicks off at the Super Bowl or choose where the family will eat dinner. These types of decisions are not ethical-dependent and do not concern this argument. Ethical decisions demand more than chance; they depend on standards of value that one can rationally evaluate.
For an ethical imperative to be rational, it must justify its conclusion using premises, and the conclusion – in the case of ethics, the ‘imperative’ – will be explained in terms of the premises. Continuing the thread, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. However, to prove that a premise is true, we must either i) use another premise to justify the first one, or ii) we can assert that the premise exists for its own sake. If the second option, the premise has no reason for existence, and we cannot attempt to justify it. Unfortunately for the rationalist, if a person asserts that one of his premises does not have a reason, he has officially given up a rational explanation. Therefore, he must justify his first premise with another premise and begin the process all over again. To illustrate, if someone told me that N is good, I would naturally ask why N is good. To continue to be rational, that person would have to say that N is good because it leads to O, and O is good. Then I would ask why O is good, and he would have to say that O is good because it leads to P, and P is good. Being annoying, I would ask why P is good. Eventually, the person would have to say that P, or Q or T or Z or something, is good in and of itself. That premise, premise P, would be the baseline or foundational premise; there is no explanation of it, and all other conclusions are explained, ultimately, in terms of premise P. Also, and importantly, if baseline premise P is not true, then all the conclusions are not true. Like any other foundation, if premise P falters, then all the conclusions will fail.
Naturalistic evolution must provide a fundamental premise P that can validate imperative conclusions for it to validate ethical rules. However, naturalism cannot provide a single imperative premise – an ought premise – for naturalism concerns itself with is statements. As previously stated, ethics are prescriptive while science is descriptive. Science observes natural phenomena and describes its properties and the processes that led to the phenomena. Grammatically speaking, ethics lie in the imperative mood and naturalism remains in the indicative, for ethics give commands while naturalism says what is and is not. C. S. Lewis succinctly stated the dilemma when he said that the naturalist “is trying to get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premises in the indicative mood: and though he continues trying to all eternity he cannot succeed, for the thing is impossible” (Lewis 440).
In an effort to patch up naturalistic evolution against my arguments, one may object that self-interest is what validates ethical behavior. Take, for example, Vanderbilt’s strict rules against academic dishonesty. If cheating on a test became ethically acceptable, then everyone would begin cheating in order to improve grades and GPAs. However, the value of a Vanderbilt degree would deflate into worthlessness. No one attending Vanderbilt wants to graduate with a valueless degree, so the administration strictly enforces rules against cheating to preserve prestige.
This objection fails because it does not justify ethics as such; it does not justify doing a right action for its own sake. So if one can disobey the ethical rule without letting others in the agreement know – in short, if one can be a successful hypocrite – then the ethical rule is no longer binding. In other words, if I can cheat on a test and not cause a domino effect of other cheaters, cheating is ok. Such a view of ethics is skewed. The entire discussion of Plato’s Republic begins because someone wants Socrates to prove that ethics is valuable “because of its very self” and not because of any reward one receives for following ethical rules (Plato 367c, d, e). Also, in the Gorgias, Socrates tells Callicles to “see whether what’s noble and what’s good isn’t something other than preserving and being preserved” (ibid 512e).
The objection of self-interest takes on a subtler, more sophisticated form in ethical pragmatism, for one can argue that the justification of ethics lies within the context of a society. A society agrees to live by certain ethics norms, and within the society those norms are binding. The members of the society can have a standard by which to make value judgements, for the accepted societal norms are the standard. Therefore, ethics have validity.
The objection fails because it is not completely rational: it begs the question of why the society formed the values by which to live. A society forms values because the values are, for whatever reason, ‘good’ for the society. They deliberate to determine what is just. However, this objection fails to explain the criteria by which the society deliberates and initially forms values. Granted, a society – or any group – can deliberate to determine that X will be ‘good’ and Y ‘bad.’ However, they must have a preexisting standard by which to evaluate X and Y. Evolution seeks the origin of things, but pragmatism stops the train at the formation of society and does not explain the ‘why’ of that formation. It begs the question and presumes that society is the starting point.
To provide another evolutionary validation of ethics, someone may try to base ethical rules on our instincts. Since evolution certainly can account for instincts, then it can account for ethics. For example, one ought not to be a coward on the battle-field, for our immediate animal ancestors had a social instinct that caused the herd to defend itself as a team. Unfortunately, this objection assumes that I ought to obey my instincts; it presumes, and does not prove, an imperative. Hence instincts do not validate ethics because no prescriptive command exists demanding I follow them. The objector may retort that an instinct does not prescribe, it forces. Instinct causes the biochemistry of our brains to control our behavior so that rationality has no room to enter. However, if we define instinct as determinism, then no form of ethics can exist. Therefore, evolution still would not have validated ethics, for ethics depend upon the freedom to choose. Therefore, if the instinct explanation is true, then ethics do not exist.