Debate (2)

Someone else may attack the heart of my argument and use the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics to rebut what I say about determinism. Physicists tell us that because an electron exhibits properties of both a wave and a particle, then we cannot absolutely determine the particles position or momentum; we can only know them within a margin of error. Therefore, claims my opponent, I cannot use the determinism attack against naturalism, for quantum mechanics demands that one leave room for Heisenberg’s uncertainty.
However, this argument makes the grave mistake of replacing one faulty argument with another. Even if Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle ruined my argument for determinism, my opponent must replace determinism with blind chance as the universe’s guiding force. In that case human freedom – consequently, human creativity and ethics – cannot exist, for rational human decision would have to bow its knee to blind chance. Naturalism still would have no account of freedom, creativity, and ethics. Instead of fearing determinism, Wallace Stevens would have to fear blind chance taking responsibility for his writing. It would seem that monkeys, as the agents of chance, really did write Hamlet .
As another objection, some will accuse me of committing the genetic fallacy; they would say that I have judged the value of rational ideas, like ethics, by their irrational, animal source. They claim that I leave no room for synergy to inject meaning into life as it progresses from animal to civilized man. Even if nature does not include any prescriptive demands within her descriptive makeup, they say that I should not conclude that human culture cannot develop these important prescriptions. I give no room for emergence within my framework; and I ought to, for, as Dennett says, “Evolution is cleverer than you are” (451).
However, I do not commit the genetic fallacy, for my argument allows room for evolution to have shaped life from its inception to its pinnacle of humanity. My argument in no way attempts to disprove evolution, and my argument does not preclude emergence or synergy. I maintain my thesis against naturalistic evolution while still escaping the genetic fallacy, for, unlike Dennett or Dawkins, I am not a naturalist. While Dennett asserts that the physical reality is all that exists, I leave room for other realities. I argue that naturalistic evolution – evolution on its own – cannot account for the individual freedom, creativity, and ethics of humanity.
As a final objection, some may set up a straw-man of my argument and claim that I try to prove that God exists or that humans did not come from primates. My thesis is much more modest, as I focus my attention only on the beliefs of naturalistic evolution. A corollary to my argument may be that one must believe in a divine being to explain distinctive human faculties. I will not argue for or against that claim here. But the existence of things like free choice and goodness lead many to induce that some divine being must be out there as the highest expression or the ground of that belief. They believe, with Dante, that “the good, the object of the will,/ is fully gathered in” the God beyond the universe (XXXIII 103-04). Nevertheless, this paper does not attempt to answer whether that Being exists or not.
Moreover, I do not pretend to have debunked the evolutionary theory. I will not rule out that evolution developed artistic freedom or ethical validity from less complex forms. However, evolution by itself could not have developed them. Darwin’s theory does show signs of what could be intermediate forms of ethics or rationality. Social animals exhibit something like fidelity by hunting together and grooming each other. The meerkat even exhibits something like altruism, for it stands on its hind legs and exposes itself to predators for the sake of its group’s survival (Goodman lecture). These behaviors may be precursors to real selflessness, but Darwin goes too far when he tries to portray them as the real thing.
And Darwin himself reveals the weakness in his theory when he tries to trace the development from animal to human, for he speciously bridges the animal-to-human gap using two shaky arguments. First, he uses what Professor Goodman calls an ‘accordion trick’ to push animals upward to humans and humans downward to animals. He anthropomorphizes animals by giving them human emotions – lions are ‘courageous’ and puppies are ‘happy;’ and he degrades some humans – the ‘savages’ – by considering them to be intermediate species that are inferior to the civilized European. Second, Darwin elides the chasm between animals and humans caused by the existence of ethics. Using the phrase ‘Moral Sense,’ he depicts ethical thought as emotional rather than as rational. He also belittles the inherency of ethical rules by depicting them as relative, for, if we were rational hive-bees, “our unmarried females would . . . think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers” (Darwin i. 73). Such fallacious argumentation on Darwin’s part reveals that his theory simply has trouble accounting for the existence of things like ethics.
The final conclusion, therefore, is that naturalistic evolution falls short. Evolution may be able to account for the emergence of complex organisms from simpler ones. But it cannot justify the three distinctively human capacities for freedom, creativity, and ethics. These qualities are fundamental; without them, humanity loses its dignity, for it loses rationality and culture. In the end, Dennett was wrong, for “what remains” after naturalistic evolution is not “more than enough to build on” (Dennett 521). To be a comprehensive theory, evolution must be able to account for these qualities, but it cannot. It is deficient and needs to be augmented; what will augment it does not concern me now. What does concern me, though, is Dawkins’ belief that evolution can leave him, a naturalist, “intellectually fulfilled” (Dawkins, 1996 pg. 6). Since naturalism cannot justify three fundamental qualities of human dignity – freedom, creativity, and ethics – the naturalist should not presume that evolution answers Adam’s original question, “how came I thus, how here?” (Milton VIII 277).

Bibliography

Dante. Paradiso. trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam, 1986.

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton:
Princeton U Press, 1981.

Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. ??? pg 6?

———–. River out of eden: a Darwinian view of life. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Quoted from pg. 114 of Zacharias, Ravi. Jesus Among Other Gods. Nashville: Word, 2000.

Dennett, Daniel. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Goodman, Lenn E. Information taken from lecture on 25 March 2004 from the class
“Humanity, Evolution, God.”

Lentricchia, Frank. The Gaiety of Language. Berkeley: U of California, 1968.

Lewis, C. S. “The Abolition of Man.” The Essential C. S. Lewis. Ed. Lyle W. Dorsett

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman, 1998.

Plato. Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

I do not argue that evolution cannot explain freedom, ethics,and creativity; I argue that it cannot account for them, i.e. validate them. Darwin provides a moderate explanation of ethics in his Descent which I do not intend to refute. He explains that social instinct lead to forms of altruism which led, eventually to self-reflection and consciousness.
Group fidelity eventually led to fame and then to remorse within the group. Remorse caused it to regret its mistake, which led to self-reflection, for the self-reflecting being would want to improve its behavior to avoid making the same mistake again.
To support his case further, Darwin uses what Professor Goodman calls an ‘accordion trick’ to elide the distinction between animals and humans. He pushes animals closer to humans by anthropomorphizing animals, and he pushes humans closer to animals by reducing the dignity of the humans in the anecdotes he tells. For example, he says that his dog, when asleep, exhibits a kind of self-consciousness. His dog often kicks and twitches its legs while asleep, and Darwin says that the dog dreams about hunting and thereby reveals its inner self-consciousness. The dog’s twitching leg indicates self-consciousness. He imputes pleasures and virtue onto animals: he claims that a puppy has what the human pleasure of happiness, and he claims that lions have the human virtue of courage. Also, Darwin pushes humanity downward to make the jump from animal to human appear smaller. He cites anecdotes from what he calls “savage” people to claim that the “intermediate” races exhibit animalistic behavior that points to their animalistic origins. For example, he recalls a story he heard of a father who killed his son by smashing the boy’s head against a rock just because the son forgot to pack lunch. Also, he mentions a woman he met who could not count above the number four, and he asks whether anyone can believe that she was capable of abstract thought.

THE EXCESS OF MEANING LEADS MANY TO CONCLUDE THAT GOD MUST HAVE DONE IT – USE CSL EXAMPLE FROM PAIN?

Confutatio:
Circular Reasoning Objection: Others have objected that value can exist as a characteristic of a thing. In a personal conversation, Professor Teloh made this objection to my thesis, and he used the role of the Sea Captain to illustrate. I objected to him that, in this conversation, atheism cannot validate value and, consequently, any ought. Professor Teloh objected, noting that a Sea Captain can be an atheist and still have oughts that he must follow. Sea Captains exist to guide a ship safely from point A to point B.
Therefore, if a sea captain notices rocks or an iceberg ahead, he ought to avoid it for safety’s sake, for that defines Sea Captain-ness.
Unfortunately, Professor Teloh’s objection amounts to either circular reasoning or ___________, for it includes an imperative within the premises without justifying that imperative. He can give no premise that justifies his imperative, for he must begin only with indicative premises. When asked why sea captains avoid rocks, he will say either that that is what sea captains, by definition, are supposed to do, or he use a rational approach and justify it in terms of a more fundamental premise. If the former, then he uses circular reasoning. For he first defines a sea captain as someone who steers a boat to avoid rocks, then he says that sea captains avoid rocks because that is how one defines them. He never answers why they avoid rocks to begin with. What premises led him to that conclusion?
At this question MORE MORE MORE

MORE
One may object that self-preservation rationally validates ethics and value. For example,

Peroratio:

give nowdescribe physical processes They do not describe; they prescribe. They use the imperative grammatical mood to demand behaviors among societal groups: (e.g. “Thou shalt not murder.” “Thou shalt not commit adultery”).

components is art Earlier, he says that natural selection works as an algorithm, and it builds upon itself to create the brain which solely constitutes the mind. The mind, therefore, is an algorithmic process.
MORE MORE Dennett appeals to culture to provide meaning, but, unfortunately,

First I must define terminology. A decision recognizes the

I concede that evolution can adequately explain the value necessary for these types of decisions. The personal tastes mentioned are exactly that: tastes. Firstly, they carry no ethical consequence: I prefer a Wendy’s double-stack to a bacon cheeseburger, but that has no ethical relevance. Secondly, they can have an evolutionary function. For instance, many poisonous plants also have a bitter taste. So evolution, via natural selection, passed on the genes that associated poisonous plants with bitter taste, for no species can survive on a diet of plants that poison and kill it. MORE ABOUT NO ETHICAL RELEVANCE?
RESPONSE TO DETERMINISM – I must qualify the phrase ‘decision-making’ to avoid the objection of determinism. Given the assumption of biochemical determinism, decision-making, as I have defined the term, does not exist. The decision maker evaluates one or more options to decide, according to that decision maker, which option has the superior value. Rational thought, therefore, interrupts the flow of mechanistic cause and effect processes. Biochemical determinism states that nothing interrupts the mechanistic cause and effect process; rational thought is merely a black box that, when opened, reveals another, only this time more, complex mechanism, namely biochemistry; it does not reveal a chain that free choice can interrupt. Hence, by using the phrase decision-making, I freely admit that I assume free choice exists, that human rational choices are not biochemically predetermined.
Also, I admit that ethical choices are context specific. I do not argue for a categorical imperative in which I can say one always should behave in a certain way. The Hebrew Bible provides an excellent example, for it acknowledges the importance of context in ethical issues. (Rabbi Davis) The seventh (???) commandment of the Decalogue states, “Thou shalt not murder” (Exo ???). In the Hebrew language, two verbs exist to indicate one person taking another’s life: to kill and to murder; Judaism considers killing just and murder unjust. The Decalogue emphasizes context, for one can kill – e.g. in self-defense – but one cannot murder – killing an innocent, e.g. the Holocaust. Hence, ethics are context specific.
Ethics are context specific, but they are not relative. During one philosophy class, Professor Teloh distinguished between contextualism and relativism. I do not endorse relativism by emphasizing context, for the relativist has already concluded that no truth exists. The contextualist merely admits that one must know the specifics of the context to determine if an action was ethically right or wrong.

Not Ethics: selflessness just social instinct manifested in different context
I will argue that naturalistic evolution does not provide a valid baseline premise on which to justify any conclusions about value of any sort.
Dennett lambasted the use of skyhooks, saying that they were unnecessary and logically incoherent. I argue that Dennett has no foundation on which to begin stacking cranes. He may logically conclude something about ethics, but he does so only after assuming a faulty premise. He presupposes that the universe contains ethical and cultural value; he simply assumes that the world contains value, period. Naturalistic evolution gives him no rationale for believing that way.
Naturalistic evolution maintains that the physical reality is the only reality; cranes exist only in the physical universe. A crane is simply a premise regarding physical matters (EXAMPLE HERE). The spiritual reality – the non-natural, the supernatural reality – is a skyhook and unnecessary to explain the components of the universe. Dennett refuses skyhooks; to him, they are invalid. However, ethics are not a physical phenomenon. Physical phenomenon concern what “is,” what exists. They are facts about the universe’s physical structure. Naturalistic evolution describes the physical universe; it is descriptive. However, ethics are not physical phenomena; they are behaviors; they are immaterial. To justify ethics, one must begin with non-physical premises; one must assume that degrees of value exist in the universe.

TO EXPLAIN MORALS, DARWIN MUST LOWER THE STATUS OF MAN AND RAISE THE STATUS OF ANIMALS

CANNOT EXPLAIN CONCEPTS OF GOOD, BAD – CONCEPTS OF VALUE.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY/FREEDOM/CHOICE –

Evolution deprives humanity of free will and free choice. By ruling out ethics, naturalistic evolution rules out personal responsibility. Whenever someone breaks an ethical norm, when [wash DC sniper] killed eight people in Washington DC, one expects the perpetrator to receive punishment. For instance, 12 jurors in the Malvo case sentenced Malvo to capital punishment because they thought he deserved it. Any form of punishment results from a belief in deserts for wrongdoing. Without ethics, though, all forms of punishment become unjust. Unjust unjust unjust unjust unjust We punish someone because we believe that person made a conscious decision to violate the particular ethical law. However, evolution does not provide a basis on which ethics are justified and, therefore, binding. Hence society has no reason to punish lawbreakers. Any attempt to punish someone for breaking a non-binding ethical rule is unjust; evolution provides no rational reason for denunciation or punishment of lawbreakers. Any punishment, therefore, is irrational and based on no reason.

If I include human dignity, creativity, then I can avoid the instinct, self-preservation crap objections altogether.

Theme: Dennett builds his house upon the sand; he should have built it on the rock.
One must posit a supernatural being as a reality to rationally explain value.

One must posit the concept of a supernatural being to explain and validate ethics, creativity, and human dignity.

If not rational to the core, to the fundamental premise, not rational at all. – but how explain idea of God as rational fundamental premise

Many consider Evolution to be the death knell of religion. To most, belief in God after Darwin is unbelievable and impossible. No one needs God anymore because evolution explains everything. Furthermore, anything that evolution cannot explain is not worth explaining. Once humanity has reduced and explained everything to its most basic components, no one can explain the thing further. Things are explained by their simplest components; no room for synergy exists. Dennett’s argument is correct under certain conditions. Namely, from a materialistic viewpoint, Dennett correctly assumes that no value can exist for an object beyond the value of its component parts. Under materialistic conditions, synergy does not exist.
How, though, can Dennett explain the value of the irreducible parts. How does he justify their value. For if he cannot, his worldview holds that no value whatsoever exists in the universe.
Dennett concluded that one no longer needs God to explain the origin and development of all things, as evolution does so satisfactorily. Therefore, one can eliminate belief in God as a superfluous idea that evolution undercut. However, for one to explain and validate the phenomena of ethics, one must posit an idea of a supernatural being. I must qualify the phrase ‘supernatural being,’ for I do not want to confuse the general idea I have with specific manifestations of it in religions. In short, I do not argue in favor of the God of Christianity versus Allah of Islam versus the Brahma of Hinduism. Instead, I mean a general pluralistic being; this paper does not consider whose version of the supernatural is correct.
This being is ontologically beyond the natural world. It is, in the traditional usage of the word, a spirit, unbound by matter.

I must acknowledge credit to Professor Goodman for the following paragraph.
Dennett depends on cranes; he rejects any explanations that introduce an unexplained skyhook. His position is rational in that he believes that a cause-effect relationship explains all things. Furthermore, he grounds the original causes in a naturalist outlook; he leaves no room for supernatural explanations, for they are unnecessary skyhooks. Therefore, all extant things must ground their existence and validity in an explanation of cranes that stand one atop the other.

First, Prove that Evolution only concerns naturalistic phenomena.
Second, explain

Evolution: Evolution, as a theory, explains the origin of biological life and the development of speciation among living organisms.
Materialistic evolution, as opposed to theistic evolution, maintains that no supernatural element exists in the universe. Only the physical exists and has validity.

Materialism: The doctrine of materialism asserts that matter is all that matters. Physical
For materialists to

Philip Storey’s story about no reciprocal murder
Self-preservation example
VALUE/ETHICS SELF-CONTAINED

Explain evolutionary development of ethics; then show how doesn’t validate (‘is’ but not ‘ought’)

Standard and Authority from first debate: Platinum standard in Paris

DISTINGUISH BETWEEN INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL/INSTINCTUAL REASONS

DEFINE ‘DECISION-MAKING’:

DEFINE NATURALISM/SUPERNATURALISM DISTINCTION
methodological vs. ontological naturalism
I attack the premises and conclusions of the naturalist. Before attacking that position, allow me to identify whom I attack. So-en-so So-en-so defines two types of naturalism: methodological and ontological. I attack the ontological. The methodological naturalist says, as Professor Goodman put it in lecture, “whatever science says there is, is.” I agree with that statement: if science says p, then p. However, the ontological naturalist makes a non sequitur and states, “if science does not say p, then not-p.” For instance, the ontological naturalist believes that no supernatural reality exists, for science has not observed it. Since science has not observed it, he concludes that sciences has consequently disproved it, for only that which science can validate is valid. The methodological naturalist does not go so far as to say that if science cannot observe it, it must not exist.
Some people believe that if Darwinism cannot explain a phenomenon, or explain what exists, then that phenomenon does not exist. These people are ontological naturalists. The ontological naturalist is, essentially, a materialist; matter is the only reality. I will grant Professor Goodman’s observation in lecture that some natural processes exist that do not involve matter, namely radiation. However, I use the term ‘materialist’ to indicate that the person does not think that any reality exists ontologically above the material or natural realm. In short, no supernatural reality exists. She, the ontological naturalist, does not think that anything exists beyond what evolution has produced. Natural processes are the only processes that shape and define the universe. USE MIRACLES DEFINITION TO EXPLAIN NATURALISM
I argue that evolution cannot validate the existence of what we call ethics or value.
Ethics determine human behavior.
ADMIT THAT EVOLUTION CAN EXPLAIN ETHICS BUT IT CANNOT
VALIDATE
DEFINE ETHICS

EVOLUTION CAN EXPLAIN DEVELOPMENT OF ETHICS:
Can Darwinism sufficiently explain what we mean when we say ethics?
I do not ask if God is the necessary missing piece that explains ethics; in this paper, I do not want to attempt to prove God’s existence by showing that evolution does not suffice. Although the concept of God may or may not be a necessary corollary from my thesis. Furthermore, I certainly do not argue for any particular ethic or religion; this paper will avoid parochial polemics among comparative religions and simply argue that Darwinism, by itself, cannot validate ethics.
Furthermore, I do not contest that evolution explains ethics sufficiently; I argue that it cannot validate ethics. These issues differ greatly. The explanation Darwin provides in The Descent of Man may or may not sufficiently explain the evolution of human ethics; this topic does not concern my argument. Explaining and validating are distinct issues that one must not confuse. To explain, one describes how things came about; explanations remain in the indicative mood and describe what is. To validate, one rationally justifies something’s truth or existence. Something’s truth or particular state depends upon the truth of something else. If A, then B, or B because A. Consequently, ethics locates itself in the imperative mood, for it describes how one ought to behave or think.

INCLUDE CREATIVITY, AESTHETIC, SPIRITUAL SENSE, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM?

Evolution can only take us so far.
I don’t think that because we have ethical responsibility we cannot be a product of evolution. I think that we may be a product of evolution, but we are not a product of evolution by itself. Something must have augmented it, for it does not suffice to explain all that constitutes humanity. It explains our biological development, but it does not explain and justify ethical responsibility, human creativity (intellectual and artistic), aesthetic ideas and impulses.
Human creativity – Wallace Stevens example
Aesthetic ideas and impulses –
Notice that I have not argued that evolution cannot explain ethical responsibility, for I believe evolution can make a good case for it. for evolution can explain the development from
513C Plato mentions “first principle of everything”

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 the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. (quote directly from Dawkins Out of Eden 133).

???????If Darwin instructed a savage woman to choose if the number 6,000 or the number 7,000 had the greatest value, the savage woman could not do it. As Darwin said, she cannot count above 4, so she has no concept of the value of numbers greater than 4. Because she does not know the value, she cannot decide. The same holds for any decision, for one must be able to determine an option’s value to make a decision.
Before moving on, I must distinguish between different types of value. One type regards non-ethical. These values include tastes regarding food, hairstyles, books, athletic teams, among others. These values are not ethical-dependent, for there is nothing ethically wrong with disliking mashed potatoes or the Tennessee Titans (funny footnote). I can go to Wendy’s and use a cost-benefit analysis to choose a baked potato over a Caesar salad; however, I have made no ethical decision, for not all value depends upon ethics.
HOW PROCEED?

Works Cited

Lewis, C. S. Anthology