DIARIST MARCH 8, 2013
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Is there a greater gesture of intellectual contempt than the notion that a tweet constitutes an adequate intervention in a serious discussion? But when Thomas Nagel’s formidable book Mind and Cosmos recently appeared, in which he has the impudence to suggest that “the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false,” and to offer thoughtful reasons to believe that the non-material dimensions of life—consciousness, reason, moral value, subjective experience—cannot be reduced to, or explained as having evolved tidily from, its material dimensions, Steven Pinker took to Twitter and haughtily ruled that it was “the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker.” Fuck him, he explained.
Here was a signal to the Darwinist dittoheads that a mob needed to be formed. In an earlier book Nagel had dared to complain of “Darwinist imperialism,” though in his scrupulous way he added that “there is really no reason to assume that the only alternative to an evolutionary explanation of everything is a religious one.” He is not, God forbid, a theist. But he went on to warn that “this may not be comforting enough” for the materialist establishment, which may find it impossible to tolerate also “any cosmic order of which mind is an irreducible and non-accidental part.” For the bargain-basement atheism of our day, it is not enough that there be no God: there must be only matter. Now Nagel’s new book fulfills his old warning. A mob is indeed forming, a mob of materialists, of free-thinking inquisitors. “In the present climate of a dominant scientific naturalism, heavily dependent on speculative Darwinian explanations of practically everything, and armed to the teeth against religion,” Nagel calmly writes, “... I would like to extend the boundaries of what is not regarded as unthinkable, in light of how little we really understand about the world.” This cannot be allowed! And so the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Secular Faith sprang into action. “If there were a philosophical Vatican,” Simon Blackburn declared in the New Statesman, “the book would be a good candidate for going on to the Index.” I hope that one day he regrets that sentence. It is not what Bruno, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Voltaire, Hume, Locke, Kant, and the other victims of the anti-philosophical Vatican had in mind.
I understand that nobody is going to burn Nagel’s book or ban it. These inquisitors are just more professors. But he is being denounced not merely for being wrong. He is being denounced also for being heretical. I thought heresy was heroic. I guess it is heroic only when it dissents from a doctrine with which I disagree. Actually, the defense of heresy has nothing to do with its content and everything to do with its right. Tolerance is not a refutation of heresy, but a retirement of the concept. I am not suggesting that there is anything outrageous about the criticism of Nagel’s theory of the explanatory limitations of Darwinism. He aimed to provoke and he provoked. His troublemaking book has sparked the most exciting disputation in many years, because no question is more primary than the question of whether materialism (which Nagel defines as “the view that only the physical world is irreducibly real”) is true or false.
And so scientists are busily animadverting on Nagel’s account of science. They like to note condescendingly that he calls himself a “layman.” Yet too many of Nagel’s interlocutors have been scientists, because Mind and Cosmos is not a work of science. It is a work of philosophy; and it is entirely typical of the scientistic tyranny in American intellectual life that scientists have been invited to do the work of philosophers. The problem of the limits of science is not a scientific problem. It is also pertinent to note that the history of science is a history of mistakes, and so the dogmatism of scientists is especially rich. A few of Nagel’s scientific critics have been respectful: in The New York Review of Books, H. Allen Orr has the decency to concede that it is not at all obvious how consciousness could have originated out of matter. But he then proceeds to an almost comic evasion. Finally, he says, we must suffice with “the mysteriousness of consciousness.” A Darwinii mysterium tremendum! He then cites Colin McGinn’s entirely unironic suggestion that our “cognitive limitations” may prevent us from grasping the evolution of mind from matter: “even if matter does give rise to mind, we might not be able to understand how.” Students of religion will recognize the dodge—it used to be called fideism, and atheists gleefully ridiculed it; and the expedient suspension of rational argument; and the double standard. What once vitiated godfulness now vindicates godlessness.
The most shabby aspect of the attack on Nagel’s heterodoxy has been its political motive. His book will be “an instrument of mischief,” it will “lend comfort (and sell a lot of copies) to the religious enemies of Darwinism,” and so on. It is bad for the left’s own culture war. Whose side is he on, anyway? Almost taunting the materialist left, which teaches skepticism but not self-skepticism, Nagel, who does not subscribe to intelligent design, describes some of its proponents as “iconoclasts” who “do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met.” I find this delicious, because it defies the prevailing regimentation of opinion and exemplifies a rebellious willingness to go wherever the reasoning mind leads. Cui bono? is not the first question that an intellectual should ask. The provenance of an idea reveals nothing about its veracity. “Accept the truth from whoever utters it,” said the rabbis, those poor benighted souls who had the misfortune to have lived so many centuries before Dennett and Dawkins. I like Nagel’s mind and I like Nagel’s cosmos. He thinks strictly but not imperiously, and in grateful view of the full tremendousness of existence; and he denies matter nothing except the subjection of mind; and he speaks, by example, for the soulfulness of reason.
96 comments
Heresy isn't heroic because you happen to agree with it. It's heroic when it's right and the prevailing orthodoxy wrong. In order to show that your heretic is heroic, therefore, you have to show why the heresy is right and the orthodoxy is wrong. Ah, but that's the job of philosophers, systematic thinkers, and other people who can be bothered to do more than muse about the cut of the heretic's jib. This column is a verbose tweet, devoid of substance, utterly lacking any serious or honest engagement with the issue supposedly at hand. In other words, I'm rubber, you're glue, Fuck him? No, fuck you! In other words, I don't believe in all this superficial picking of sides, so I pick his side. Nagel's harsh comments and sweeping statements are "calm." The other guy's harsh comments and sweeping statements are crudely dismissive. This is all airy characterization, and totally beside the point. Meanwhile, as Wieseltier notes, the book has been the subject of intelligent and lively debate. But only elsewhere. Not here, not for these delightfully ornate column inches, decked out in all their Latin finery. That would be too on the nose, I guess. It might detract from the real thesis, which is that These Kids Today Have No Souls, Like Me. So, we're left with nominal and obviously false point that this fellow is being persecuted. But it's not persecution when a lot of people disagree with you. Nagel's critics can't win. When a critic says in reviewing the book, in a respectful fashion, "We don't exactly know what's going on, consciousness is a bit of mystery," Wieseltier pounces on this "dodge," comparing it to the defense of religion and God's seemingly incomprehensible agenda that, well, He works in mysterious ways. Wieseltier's comparison here *is* "shoddy reasoning." Because, the defender of the faith is defending *faith* -- it's mysterious, but we magically know the answer anyway. We don't know, *so we know*. That's the religion game, and that's why it's "ridiculed." Is that what Orr was saying? I don't think so. Then he says, it's not who says it; it's whether it's right. Yes, and many think it's wrong. The rabbis didn't say, "Accept bullshit whomever utters it."
- JakeH
March 8, 2013 at 2:39am
The point I take from Wieseltier's piece is not that he is taking sides between Nagel's views and those of his critics, but that there is indeed an almost religious dogmatism with regard to Darwinist evolutionary theory and materialism that causes Nagel's critics not only to disagree with him but to denounce him. I have not read Nagel's book not the critiques of the book, so I cannot agree or disagree wiht Wieseltier in this particular case. But I have certainly noticed myself the dogmatism of which he speaks. That we can reject the creationist account of the Bible does not mean that Darwinism provides the answer to the origin of life, or even, for that "matter," for the origin of matter.
- NR143296
March 10, 2013 at 12:07pm
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The tyranny of the objective point of view among inherently egoistic creatures leads to . . . insanity. How can Paul Krugman and Michael Boskin co-exist? They can't; one must be insane. [Okay, it's a trite example, but my subjective point of view limits my capacity to reason.]
- rayward
March 8, 2013 at 7:14am
Warriors for determinism unite! Don't Nagel's Lilliputian tormentors sound just like any angry mullah anywhere? What do they care if the universe turns out to have more than two or three dimensions?
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 8:01am
"it is entirely typical of the scientistic tyranny in American intellectual life that scientists have been invited to do the work of philosophers." Au contraire. For most of human history philosophers have usurped the work of scientists.
- walderman
March 8, 2013 at 9:09am
Great point Walderman - in this case, these academics are indeed in a silly, meaningless tiff. But I can't think of a time when scientific tyranny in American life has ever been an issue, don't I wish.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 9:15am
Walderman: LW wasn't writing of "most of human history" -- he was writing of American intellectual life. And he was right on that point.
- CMSMW
March 8, 2013 at 11:20am
CMSMW - I'd love to see you support that one. I'm quite open to hearing your thesis, but skeptical. First off, I'd say that "American intellectual life" would need to be defined briefly for your purposes and whatever is left out (art, literature, architecture, public policy, philosophy - just as examples I'd leave in), justified. Also - it would probably help to define scientific tyranny too. However you cut it, I just don't think it exists.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 12:10pm
I was replying specifically to Walderman's (unwarranted in my view) expanding of the scope of LW's comment. But your question is a fair one. We don't need to define all of the boundaries of American intellectual life because art and literature, for example, aren't really relevant to this discussion. What I mean here is public, serious discussion of philosophical issues that are best handled by trained philosophers rather than people trained in other fields. (This isn't to say that these issues aren't usefully informed by other fields, just that they're primarily philosophical ones.) My primary example is the legitimacy and role of religion in the twenty-first century. Related to that, but separate, is the existence or non-existence of a deity. Science can supply material evidence that informs philosophical investigation of these issues, but it doesn't by itself provide satisfactory or complete answers because it's limited to investigating questions about the material universe that depend, at least in principle, on experimental or observational repeatability. The scientific method has nothing to say about the value of religious practice or the existence of a deity that inherently transcends the physical laws that are needed to make science work. And yet, with a few exceptions, the primary public intellectuals on these questions are mostly scientists, and these questions are treated by the public largely as scientific ones. Frankly, it's remarkable how ignorant Richard Dawkins is about academic theology, at least in his public writing and speaking, and yet he's widely considered by the intelligentsia to be an authority on questions about the existence of a deity. Note that I'm not presupposing an answer to either of these questions, just noting that the people to whom the reading public tends to turn on these issues are largely people who are not experts in the fields of study best equipped to investigate them. That's my short answer.
- CMSMW
March 8, 2013 at 2:15pm
Thank you! Excellent response and I quite agree with you about Dawkins - I know a rigid fundamentalist when I see one. I think he receives so much credibility on these things because of his other talents, but many theoretical physicists become profoundly religious through their work. Any fundamentalism seems dangerous to me. I still don't think we have a scientific tyranny in this country, perhaps the separation of church and state at our foundation feels like it, but I also have little patience for public policy devoid of moral analysis. I think of C Everett Coop as the perfect public servant, balancing out all of this perfectly.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 2:29pm
Good point, CMSMW.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 2:58pm
The Wonder is again telling people how to respond. If there is a cyber bully here it's the seven day wonder.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 3:00pm
Thanks for the nice replies. By the way, Wandreycer, I was thinking again about the language of your question, and I can see where I was inadvertently vague in my first comment. I actually don't think that science is inappropriately invading most areas of our intellectual life, just that on the occasions when this occurs science is more often the invader than the invaded. (The misinterpretation is my fault, not yours.)
- CMSMW
March 8, 2013 at 3:27pm
There's a name for the fallacy that you have to read what Jerry Coyne calls 'Sophisticated Theology (TM)" to know you're an atheist. But why is it OK for an Alabama fundamentalist to be a Christian, having never read the same, but not fine for an atheist never having done so? And when one DOES read those folks, one is less than convinced than disappointed by their 'arguments' such as they are. Is ANYONE convinced by Plantinga's argument that believing in god is just a 'basic feature' of being human? That type of special pleading seems to be what passes for the best academic theology today. In my opinion, and that of many others, philosophers are educated professionals but theologians are not. So what do they have to add to science? Probably not much. And, it seems to me, that the first job of theology is to create questions that theology can answer. Not much to learn from that.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 3:49pm
Bpuharic -- "But why is it OK for an Alabama fundamentalist to be a Christian, having never read the same, but not fine for an atheist never having done so?" I actually don't think that. I happen to be a practicing Christian -- Episcopal, non-fundamentalist (but I repeat myself) -- but I consider it part of the duty of practicing this religious tradition to be at least passingly familiar with what contemporary scholarship, theological and otherwise, has to say about the issues involved in that. I think others should be as well. And if you're going to make pronouncements about God you should at least know what people who study that subject full-time have to say about it. That goes for Dawkins, Coyne, Albert Mohler, Ken Ham, and Rick Perry alike.
- CMSMW
March 8, 2013 at 7:58pm
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Wieseltier says: "H. Allen Orr has the decency to concede that it is not at all obvious how consciousness could have originated out of matter. But he then proceeds to an almost comic evasion" I didn't read Nagel's book but I DID read Orr's review. What Wieseltier calls an evasion is really called, from his perspective, a 'God of the gaps' argument. The reason we can't say how life or consciousness started is we don't know. We didn't know 150 years ago how people got diseases. Is he stating that perhaps it was due to some non-materialist cause, rather than bacteria? It's disappointing to see the hackneyed recourse, time after time, to the elementary failure of this argument. Those of us who are scientists get used to it from folks who don't know much about science, but I had higher expectations than to see it invoked by TNR. It's as if he's not even trying to keep up with science but, instead, expects scientists to regress to an argument that died 500 years ago. Very sad. Really. An educated, articulate spokesman invokes an argument that every creationist has used since 1859.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 11:31am
Bpuharic - I understand that scientists have often been pestered (at minimum) by religious fundamentalists for millennium so I understand a certain cultural defensiveness towards intimations of the divine. That said, I always find this whole argument to be a false one - a construct that isn't real. This is the determinism that I find so stifling and unrealistic, for reasons you pointed out so well. Times change and knowledge changes with it. There are plenty of devout scientists across many disciplines and plenty of skeptics and in between as well. I think of poor Jung being so needlessly tossed aside by the intolerant Freud for his heresy, and on and on. It seems to me that materialism can be just as handy a refuge for intolerance and arrogance as fundamentalism - they seem identical to me in practice, in fact. I don't subscribe to either quite comfortably. I am data driven and highly spiritual and am more than comfortable with that, humility and an open mind being the first requirements for any type of rigorous thinking, right? What am I missing?
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 12:19pm
The fact is, any non-materialist assertions about natural processes has ALWAYS been wrong. It's one of the few times in history there's such a strong dichotomy. When we've found a cause fora natural process, it's ALWAYS been a natural cause. Without exception. 100% of the time. And the non-natural explanations have ALWAYS been wrong. 100% of the time. Yet we still keep going back to the well hoping to find something there. We never have.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 1:37pm
I'm sure you are right Bpuharic, but I just want to be clear - what is a non-natural explanation to a natural process? I was just speaking to my dear friend Basman about this, and I used love as an example (don't we non materialists always do that?). We can't fit in in to any scientific paradigms and trying to stuff it in to the scientific method is especially uncomfortable and forced. And yet! What is more natural? I'm just saying!
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 7:38pm
I don't know what a non natural explanation is. Neither, it seems, do those who say they exist, like Nagel and LW. They say they exist, though they've never seen one and can't point to a single example in all of history. Not one.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 7:42pm
Ok yes! You have me there! Some of us don't even think of such things - needing an example of a non natural explanation. Perhaps these inclinations and needs are almost chromosomal in nature and we'll never understand each other because of it. But I'm cheerful about these things. Even though I'm a Believer, I prefer a learned and non-angry skeptic in these matters any day. Any structure where humans claim power over other humans should have to continually prove that it is not wicked.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 8:02pm
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Even though my heart belongs with the scientists, I just can't quit Leon. Too damn fun to read. I especially enjoyed two ironies. I'm sure one was intentional, not sure about the second. He is not, God forbid, a theist This is brilliant! A double irony at least. 1) Imagining atheistic scientists saying "God Forbid" 2) An athiest could be said to "forbid (the concept of) God" - hah! Second - the irony of criticizing the scientific community for coloring their criticism with exciting language by using exciting language to color one's criticism of them. Leon's language is ever colored exciting, so I'm not sure this was a conscious irony.
- leisureguy
March 8, 2013 at 11:44am
Wieseltier says: "H. Allen Orr has the decency to concede that it is not at all obvious how consciousness could have originated out of matter. But he then proceeds to an almost comic evasion" I didn't read Nagel's book but I DID read Orr's review. What Wieseltier calls an evasion is really called, from his perspective, a 'God of the gaps' argument. The reason we can't say how life or consciousness started is we don't know. We didn't know 150 years ago how people got diseases. Is he stating that perhaps it was due to some non-materialist cause, rather than bacteria? It's disappointing to see the hackneyed recourse, time after time, to the elementary failure of this argument. Those of us who are scientists get used to it from folks who don't know much about science, but I had higher expectations than to see it invoked by TNR. It's as if he's not even trying to keep up with science but, instead, expects scientists to regress to an argument that died 500 years ago. Very sad. Really. An educated, articulate spokesman invokes an argument that every creationist has used since 1859.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 12:00pm
As usual Jake H posts nonsense. There is no use replying to his spam since his response centers around his literal belief of Darwinistic (not the same as Darwinian thoughtfulness) deterministic dogma.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 12:19pm
3,8,13 12:35 pm est// Qite apart from the substance here, in this audio version, the reading is bad, though not as bad the one where the woman reader kept referring to John Donne as "Donnay."
- basman
March 8, 2013 at 12:37pm
"The history of science is a history of mistakes." Yes exactly, Mr. Wieseltier. Theories that are supported by evidence, and can be shown to explain the world, survive. Those that turn out to be wrong are discarded. That is the scientific method. The theories, though, must be shown to be true. This is to be contrasted with philosophy, where there is no mechanism like the scientific method for separating the workable from the unworkable. I am a scientist. I am not dogmatic. I go where the facts lead me.
- mwittenphd
March 8, 2013 at 12:58pm
That just sounds so dreadfully limiting to me. Einstein said imagination was more important than intelligence. I can't help but wonder that if we in fact did just take us where facts lead us, we'd rarely evolve at all.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 1:05pm
I think that you are eliding the general question of how to approach a problem with the method of evaluating a solution. I am not trying to be reductive here. Of course imagination is far more important than intelligence; creativity is as essential in physics as it is in art or literature or music. I am quite aware of this, as a physicist myself. Incidentally, it is interesting that you bring up Einstein. He could not reconcile the degree which randomness plays in the workings of the universe, and he spent a great deal of time fighting against the implications of his own discoveries in that regard. As Nassim Taleb has argued much more brilliantly than I ever could, randomness is the most consequential phenomenon. In quantum theory, as in evolution, large effects are the result of little random perturbations.
- mwittenphd
March 8, 2013 at 3:10pm
What a delightful reply Mwittenphd. So how do we measure creativity and randomness in a material sense? I suppose I'm just not inclined to. Wasn't Steven Jay Gould so helpful to us all in this realm, especially with the "Structure of Evolutionary Theory"? He helped us in the human development realm (I am is social worker and a researcher) by leaps and bounds by showing us that in fact, the past does not predict the future (which would make the King of Materialism himself, Sigmund Freud, frown!). I love Nassim Taleb and I am so pleased to have run in to a physicist. Have you ever read Amit Goswami's work? I know he's a bit spiritual for most physicists, but he said "science is the perfect secretary" which I have taped to my computer. Such is my fate being raised by a devout mother who was also an electrical engineer (when there weren't too women building rockets and weapons).
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 7:55pm
Thank you for continuing the discussion. (An aside: your mother sounds like she was quite an interesting woman!) Your question regarding the measurement of creativity and randomness is, in my view, simply unanswerable. There are no metrics by which we can measure these things. I feel that we must simply live with their results and consequences. Might that be enough? Creativity is not quantifiable. Neither is randomness. The illusion that we can quantify randomness has led to some pretty awful events; consider the Great Recession as a cautionary example. I have always enjoyed and admired Gould's work. I wish many more people would read him. It's crucial to understand that the past does not predict the future. That's a fallacy that we humans love to embrace. I am familiar with the concepts in Goswami's work, but I confess I have not read him. After your sharing with me that quote, which I find perfect, I intend to read him. I enjoy reading philosophical works very much, which is why I was surprised that another post here was so critical of what I wrote. There is, after all, the finest of lines between physics and philosophy. Thanks very much, again, for your post.
- mwittenphd
March 11, 2013 at 10:16am
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Wieseltier says: "H. Allen Orr has the decency to concede that it is not at all obvious how consciousness could have originated out of matter. But he then proceeds to an almost comic evasion" I didn't read Nagel's book but I DID read Orr's review. What Wieseltier calls an evasion is really called, from his perspective, a 'God of the gaps' argument. The reason we can't say how life or consciousness started is we don't know. We didn't know 150 years ago how people got diseases. Is he stating that perhaps it was due to some non-materialist cause, rather than bacteria? It's disappointing to see the hackneyed recourse, time after time, to the elementary failure of this argument. Those of us who are scientists get used to it from folks who don't know much about science, but I had higher expectations than to see it invoked by TNR. It's as if he's not even trying to keep up with science but, instead, expects scientists to regress to an argument that died 500 years ago. Very sad. Really. An educated, articulate spokesman invokes an argument that every creationist has used since 1859.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 1:13pm
You must have a high opinion of your "thought" since you posted your response twice, once up-thread an once here. I thought your response laughable, btw.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 1:31pm
Well, it's actually been posted 3x. Since I only sent it once, perhaps you can blame it on your non materialist causes!
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 1:40pm
Well, it's actually been posted 3x. Since I only sent it once, perhaps you can blame it on your non materialist causes!
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 2:08pm
Well, it's actually been posted 3x. Since I only sent it once, perhaps you can blame it on your non materialist causes!
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 2:14pm
Well, it's actually been posted 3x. Since I only sent it once, perhaps you can blame it on your non materialist causes!
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 2:40pm
Well, it's actually been posted 3x. Since I only sent it once, perhaps you can blame it on your non materialist causes!
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 2:43pm
Well, it's actually been posted 3x. Since I only sent it once, perhaps you can blame it on your non materialist causes!
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 3:12pm
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I am gratified to see that at least one article here can unleash so much passion.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 1:16pm
I never had a good opinion of Pinker's Darwinistic (as opposed to thoughtful and valid Darwinian theory of evolution) determinism so I am not surprised (unlike some of my friends) at his flashy response.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 1:18pm
What kind of scientist are you, mwittenphd. Yes, philosophy so why the vehemence response to Wieseltier's essay on Nagel's book. Do "scientists" need to obliterate every thought that doesn't agree with theirs. I thought after the demise of the communist world the totalitarian temptation was a thing of the past. especially among "scientists." Apparently I was mistaken.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 1:24pm
Bpuharic, others - there are cyberbullies everywhere. Your responses were interesting and lively and are not required to agree with anyone else's to be treated with basic respect. I certainly look forward to your responses.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 1:40pm
The seven day wonder is back.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 2:57pm
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3,8,13,12:43 pm, est /// To start, a small point. But a grain of sand perhaps. I'm not a twitter adept but I read Pinker's tweet, noted by Wieseltier: ...”Steven Pinker took to Twitter and haughtily ruled that it was “the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker,” Fuck him, he explained."...////I read the tweet as what it was a tweet expressing sharp disappointment --"shoddy reasoning"--"with what Nagel wrote and referring to two philosophers' takes on it. What I'm missing is the.... "Fuck him," he explained....I expanded the tweet to read the, or maybe only some of the, accompanying tweets--are the more I missed?--and nowhere do I see anything coming close to a "Fuck him" or in fact in Pinker's tweet and the related tweets, Pinker explaining anything. I've looked a few times and have contorted the tweets in my mind to try to extract even a simulacrum of "Fuck him" but can't. I googled something like "Pinker says fuck him of Nagel" but nothing came up showing Pinker explaining anything in tose terms. And it's a very unPinkerian locution. So what's this all about? Unless I'm missing something, it's bizarre on the extreme edges of bizarre.////Along these lines, what's with the opening of this piece? Another grain of sand? ....Is there a greater gesture of intellectual contempt than the notion that a tweet constitutes an adequate intervention in a serious discussion?...This is pure and simple bullshit. Tweets are tweets. People tweet what their cat ate. They tweet the meaning of Hamlet. Nothing in a tweet about a serious book can be taken to suggest that the tweeter thinks it's a substantive rejoinder or adequate to a dialogue about, or critique of, a book. It's just a tweet, giving an immediate impression and providing good links. So Wieseltier is being intellectually dishonest and blatantly disingenuous in opening this piece as he does. ////I don't agree with Jake that what Wieseltier is writing about here is "beside the point" because a remarkable culture of opposition is worth setting out, especially if it's as imperiously intolerant as Wieseltier asserts. But I'm sympathetic to Jake's frustration with this piece, embroidered as it is in intellectual false cloth as I have tried to show and another thread of that vestment being the false allegation of equivalence between Orr saying consciousness is mysterious and believers saying God's existence is mysterious beyond human ken. I'm sympathetic because Wieseltier doesn't make his case. He alleges a mob. He alleges in this the near totalitarianism of orthodoxy. But he comes nowhere near to showing it and where he tries adduce evidence, as with the tweet and the very opening of his piece, he's at a minimum intellectually disreputable. Add to that that Wiesletier has nothing whatever of substance to say about the arguments over, in his words, "whether materialism....is true or false."///I don't see anywhere in what Jake writes here a literal adherence to Darwinian dogma, rather a real intellectual impatience, which I entirely share, with the mystification of faith.///
- basman
March 8, 2013 at 1:45pm
Fascinating. It is always the thugs amongst us who are the first to detect thuggery and persecution where normal people see only disagreement. And, of course, the perceived response to the claimed thuggery is ad hominem attack. What else? The time-honored displacement onto the other of one's own discreditable impulses. bupharic and mwitten appear relatively new to our longest-established permanent floating tempest in a teapot. I appreciated their remarks and wandrey's and basman's and jake's, as ever. I have nothing worthy to add.
- roidubouloi
March 8, 2013 at 3:07pm
So, Roiderien comes here to say he has nothing to add (he seldom does) but takes sides in an argument. He obviously came here to insult and bully (his usual conduct) while pretends to be above it all. Hypocrisy, thy name is Roiderien.
- arnon
March 8, 2013 at 3:28pm
arnon, what is going on? You're being a complete dick in every comment. Bad day at work? Or are you always this insufferable and I just haven't noticed?
- Fishpeddler
April 24, 2013 at 9:04am
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Wieseltier wasn't writing about the merits or demerits of evolutionary theory, nor was he writing about Nagel's book. He was, as he said, concerned only with the way scientifistic minded drones attacked Nagel's work; about the relation of science to philosophy. To attack Wieseltier for what he didn't say is cheap and indicative of the low level of philosophical and scientific understanding our society has sunk.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 3:12pm
What I think he was saying was that it's too early to write off non materialist explanations of natural processes. And that's plainly wrong. His use of the god of the gaps argument shows that.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 3:14pm
What I think he was saying was that it's too early to write off non materialist explanations of natural processes. And that's plainly wrong. His use of the god of the gaps argument shows that.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 3:36pm
What I think he was saying was that it's too early to write off non materialist explanations of natural processes. And that's plainly wrong. His use of the god of the gaps argument shows that.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 3:44pm
Thanks, and thanks for repeating your comment three times. I don't know to whom you refer to with "he." If it's Nagel, that's not accurate. He is writing about science from a critical stand point, but not as an antagonist. If its Wieseltier that's not accurate neither since he writes from the point of view of a humanist who doesn't reject science. Only fools reject science, but only ignorance leads people to confound critical science an anti-scientific point of view. (Critical in philosophy from Kant on means reflective thinking about the limits of reason (scientific or Philosophical i.e.: logical and epistemological thinking.)
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 5:02pm
I'm sure you feel satisfied blaming me for a glitch in the system that posts responses. Be my guest! Enjoy yourself. LW uses the god of the gaps argument when he says Orr 'evades' the fact Nagel points out we don't have all the answers to all the questions in the universe. What is 'critical science' and how is it related to LW's characterization of Orr's position as an 'evasion'. Because LW's argument is plainly a god of the gaps one.
- bpuharic
March 8, 2013 at 7:47pm
I was being sarcastic, bpuharic. You need to relax, really. Besides LE does not use a "lord of the gaps" argument. You can find examples of critical science in the work of Thomas Kuhn. He who came with the notion of paradigm shifts in science. There is debate in scientific circles bout the merits of his work, but I offer him as an example because I believe that his name is widely known. Like all scientific and philosophic doctrines (relativity for example) "critical science" is a term that has been abused. But I am sure a bright fellow like could figure out who is a genuine practitioner of critical science and who is not. Have a good evening, Sir.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 11:17pm
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A review that gets it right: "Nagel is a professed scientific realist. He does not put scientific knowledge in scare quotes. He believes that reason is reliable and that science does engage reality. But when an account of the origin of reason that links it entirely to reproductive success has this self-subversive corollary, he chooses to trust reason and question the account rather than trust the account and question reason. Here, for this reviewer, is the core challenge, the core disturbance, of this challenging and intentionally disruptive work. Mind and Cosmos, which has been taken as an oblique defense of creationism, is actually a defense of reason. Yet it is also a fabulous effort of the imagination. The place of imagination, of fantasy, even of dream-life in the history of human thought is a large one. Nagel admits that he is not a scientist, but it would call for imagination and not just analysis for a scientist in any given field to begin thinking past contemporary science as a whole toward the contours of what might someday succeed it. Unless one is a scientific Whig, one must strongly suspect that something someday will indeed succeed it. Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos does not build a road to that destination, but it is much to have gestured toward a gap in the hills through which a road might someday run." http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1435&fulltext=1
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 4:45pm
3,8,13,6:10 pm, est///...Unless one is a scientific Whig, one must strongly suspect that something someday will indeed succeed it.... If the "it" of this sentence refers to (contemporary) science, then whatever is this reviewer talking about, at least in this sentence? Nothing of course will replace science, and "contemporary" science will be "replaced," if at all, by further science all within the frame of science.
- basman
March 8, 2013 at 6:04pm
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Leon Wieseltier’s essay contains several errors: 1. He has me “haughtily ruling” that Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos is “the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker,” and accuses me of “intellectual contempt” for deeming this “an adequate intervention into a serious discussion.” Yet the full text of the tweet was as follows: “What has gotten into Thomas Nagel? Two philosophers expose the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker. http://bit.ly/SZCegd “ This is not a “ruling,” but the calling of the reader’s attention to an argument made by others. And the tweet is patently not offered as “an adequate intervention,” since it contains a link to a 3600-word analysis by the philosophers Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg, which the reader can access with a single click of the mouse. There’s no small irony in Wieseltier’s beginning the essay by reproducing the conventional lament about Twitter, namely that its 140-character limit encourages misleading, out-of-context, and shallow judgments, given that he did not even look at all 140 of the characters. 2. The problem with Nagel’s reasoning is not that it is “heretical.” Nor is there a “mob forming,” or a crowd of “dittoheads.” The problem with Nagel’s reasoning is that it is shoddy, as Leiter & Weisberg (and also Elliot Sober and H. Allen Orr, whose reviews I also tweeted) deftly point out. If you make a bad argument, and more than one critic points that out, that is not a mob of dittoheads. 3. Not that it makes a difference, but most of the criticisms of Nagel have been made by fellow philosophers, not scientists. 4. The fact that Nagel’s wildly intemperate subtitle (that Darwinism is “almost certainly false”) will give ammunition to disturbing anti-science, anti-reason forces in the contemporary political power structure is, of course, not in itself a refutation of his argument. But surely it is not inappropriate of reviewers to bring this issue up. Nagel—and Wieseltier—have to know that there is a powerful and well-funded lobby in this country that is trying to discredit the entire institution of science as a close-minded, ideological propaganda front which is determined to promote a secular, materialistic, anti-Judaeo-Christian liberalism. This is emboldens them to blow off the scientific consensus about man-made climate change, corrupt science education, suppress research on gun violence, and criminalize lifesaving medical research. For several years Nagel has been expressing casual opinions and overstating claims in ways that are guaranteed to credit and energize this lobby. While the substance of his claims have to be evaluated on their merits, it is completely legitimate to criticize the way he has expressed them. This is not about the culture war. This is about the future of the planet. 5. It would be one thing if Nagel had rock-solid reasoning behind his trumpeted conclusion that “the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false.” He does not, as the reviews I cited make clear. He repeatedly relies on the Argument from Personal Incredulity and other hunches, tastes, and common-sense convictions. He insists that a scientific explanation of a contingent phenomenon must have predicted it in advance, an error in probabilistic reasoning. He pretends that his metaphysical conclusions about morality and consciousness have been so solidly established – he knows they are not -- that they can overturn four centuries of nonteleological science that *has been* solidly established. He confuses the observation that evolution produced human consciousness with the Victorian, orthogenetic view that evolution is a force that inherently works to shape organisms in the direction of human consciousness. And his call to reintroduce teleology into science might as well be a call to introduce pixie dust into science–vacuous and mystical, not to mention unnecessary. --Steven Pinker
- stevenpinker
March 8, 2013 at 5:36pm
“Nagel—and Wieseltier—have to know that there is a powerful and well-funded lobby in this country that is trying to discredit the entire institution of science as a close-minded, ideological propaganda front which is determined to promote a secular, materialistic, anti-Judaeo-Christian liberalism.” I am sure they do. However this is ironic since Steven Pinker must also know that the anti-scientific, anti-philosophical perspective isn’t limited to the right wing but also infect left wing discourse. I have read some of the reviews Professor Pinker mentions and while they are critical of some of Nagel’s formulations they are not dismissive of his argument in total. They are also appreciative of his work. I don’t know any serious philosophical work Plato to Nagel which hasn’t drawn severe criticisms. Criticism comes with the critical philosophical territory. What I find disheartening in Prof. Pinker’s comments is his willingness to lay aside criticism because there is an antiscientific anti-philosophical (and anti-literary, let’s not forget their condemnation of Huckleberry Finn and the diary of Anne Frank) cabal out there that wants to suppress scientific (and philosophic) thought. This is disheartening because Prof. Pinker’s view is that we should give in to the right wing Know-Nothings. How is this different from what they are trying to do? Self-censorship is also censorship. The best antidote to right wing threats isn’t self-censorship but vigorous search for truth. I doubt that Prof. Nagel’s book is a threat to scientific thinking. Professor Pinker’s point of view is.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 6:27pm
3,8,13,8:00 pm, est, ////...What I find disheartening in Prof. Pinker’s comments is his willingness to lay aside criticism because there is an antiscientific anti-philosophical (and anti-literary, let’s not forget their condemnation of Huckleberry Finn and the diary of Anne Frank) cabal out there that wants to suppress scientific (and philosophic) thought....If I'm reading this correctly, it's misconceived. Where does Pinker in any of his comments show "....his willingness to lay aside criticism because etc..? He draws a clear and emphatic distinction in his comments between the need to evaluate Nagel's ideas on their merits and the legitimacy of noting they feed the anti-science bias afoot in the U.S. And look at his points, albeit brief ones, marshaled under #5. They're concise examples of substantive riposte to Nagel. /// So, again, where in his comments is Pinker's willingness to lay aside of criticism?
- basman
March 8, 2013 at 8:05pm
Thank you Steven - the cold hard fact is that the hostility towards science in this country is a much more tangible danger to us all than the chatter between scientists and their probable supporters on the TNR site expressed. I can't say whether Nagel's thinking is shoddy until I read this book, but I trust your take. I've made it clear that I find the weirdly indestructible idea that science and faith are at war to be a bizarre construct and a total waste of energy on both sides. That said, I am particularly confused by the worries and defensiveness of the faithful and I have to wonder where Leon is coming from.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 8:28pm
I have another question for Professor Pinker: Did you read Nagel's book?
- arnon1
March 9, 2013 at 7:06pm
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Wieseltier's article, predictably, has made him a hero to the creationist Discovery Institute: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/02/in_the_new_repu_1069671.html
- stevenpinker
March 8, 2013 at 6:10pm
Ugh.
- WandreyCer
March 8, 2013 at 8:30pm
Mr. Pinker doesn't prove that Nagel will be taken up by right wing ditto heads. First, very few of them will even bother to read his book and of those that read it they will come away with a feeling of disgust when they realize that Nagel "isn't one of them" and in act opposes what they stand for. You of all people should have realized this. Not long ago many right wingers were praising you for opposing as they saw it Chomsky. That didn't mean that you supported them.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 11:00pm
I would really like to know what a busy scholar such as Prof. Pinker is doing responding to a blog article. Surely he has more important things to do with his time, doesn't he? Not just that, but surfing the internet to find "proof" that he is right just like a common bloghead? Makes me wonder if the comments posted in his name are really his. Wonders never cease.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 11:07pm
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Oh my, arnon. Did you feel insulted? Surely you didn't think I was referring to you.
- roidubouloi
March 8, 2013 at 6:18pm
Nothing you say is insulting, Roiderien.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 6:28pm
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3,8,13,6:12 pm, est///I've noted before that when people make substantive critiques of what Wieseltier writes in these pages, he sits imperiously above the fray, as if entering into it would sully him. It's akin to starting a fight and then walking away. It's in some instances kind of chicken shit.///Well, I think this is one of those times when he must answer. He took cheap shots at Pinker and now he's being called out for it. The very subject of his piece is answering him. He really can't, shouldn't, duck it./// I'll be delighted if he doesn't. I'll simply hope for the best and expect the worst, the worst, not answering, in my books, marking him lousy.
- basman
March 8, 2013 at 6:19pm
Bravo, Mr. Pinker. I should say that your response leaves poor Leon Wieseltier thoroughly skewered and revealed as ignorant of the subjects, science and the history and philosophy of science, that he undertakes to discuss.
- roidubouloi
March 8, 2013 at 6:23pm
Here comes the amen corner.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 6:29pm
What an inane response.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 7:55pm
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I'm not above it all, arnon. I just didn't have anything to add to the substantive remarks of others, enjoyed the opportunity to compliment them, and thought it useful to call attention to some of the bad, ad hominem behavior here. Fortunately, the balance here today between those who are able to discuss the subject at hand intelligently and of those who cannot is favorable to the former.
- roidubouloi
March 8, 2013 at 6:29pm
Hush, Rien take a time out to drink a cup of coffee and think about these issues.
- arnon1
March 8, 2013 at 6:31pm
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Oh, thank you, arnon. I hope someday that I can be a deep thinker like you. The insight you display here "thinking about these issues," not to mention your terribly witty comments about other posters, take my breath away. Is it your superb education, to which others can at least aspire, or your native gifts, to which, alas, we cannot?
- roidubouloi
March 8, 2013 at 10:35pm
I was wondering what would happen to this thread the morning after? Now I know. It went the way of all threads. I hope there will be a rematch between Steven Pinker and Leon Wieseltier.
- arnon1
March 9, 2013 at 12:51am
3,10,13 12:25 am, est//from a very smart guy, not me:"...I think I agree with Pinker in this, for the most part. I think Nagel seems to be relying -- though I'll quickly admit I haven't read him -- on a kind of "folk" understanding of our consciousness that isn't dissimilar from other views from our particular situation in the world -- that the world appears flat, that in any case the sun revolves around it, that life requires some non-material "vital" spark, etc. That is, we should at least be cautious about simply accepting any view that makes our particular situation seem either special or inherent in the nature of things. I don't doubt a materialist explanation of consciousness has a lot of work ahead of it, but it nevertheless offers a way toward real understanding that non-materialist approaches block with various kinds of mystification -- such as that "mind" is some sort of stuff that is fundamentally non-material but somehow interacts with matter and that matter can somehow affect."
- basman
March 10, 2013 at 12:27am
Well said to your friend, and you, and Pinker, and others, though I haven't read the book either. (I've read a lot about it, some time ago.) Because I haven't read it, I don't feel qualified to judge whether it's philosophically obtuse, merely flawed, deeply flawed, overstated, or whatever, and/or whether it gives comfort to the enemy. (It seems to have done that.) In any event, Wieseltier's diary entry adds nothing to any serious, honest conversation on this or related topics. I grant him his style, his often eloquent orneriness, his dissenting/outraged mood in the expression of too-seldom expressed humanistic notions or ethical imperatives. I sometimes even share it and agree with it. In calling out the fictional "Darwinist mob" in this splenetic rant, though, he shows himself divorced from reality, allergic to evidence or logical argument therefrom, and uninterested in the actual and actually interesting issues at the heart of the dispute. He might as well be decrying the War on Christmas. It's a low for him in my book. Maybe not a new low, but probably close.
- JakeH
March 10, 2013 at 1:21am
"grant him his style, his often eloquent orneriness, his dissenting/outraged mood in the expression of too-seldom expressed humanistic notions or ethical imperatives...." What a bunch of horse manure. Typical of this poster!
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 2:10pm
Jake h said nothing in his second post that hasn't been by other Wieseltier hating posters here. This poster is incapable of being original.
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 2:44pm
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The perfect last word, Jake. It has been a slow process, but, little by little, the wheat has been separated from the chaff amongst TNR posters. Lately I see a lot more wheat and a lot less chaff. Thanks for your contribution.
- roidubouloi
March 10, 2013 at 11:53am
Thanks man, right back at you.
- JakeH
March 10, 2013 at 3:25pm
Hear, hear!!
- basman
March 10, 2013 at 3:26pm
Roiderien talks as if he new the difference between Chaff and wheat. I doubt the golden boy ever set foot on a farm or read any book by Thomas Nagel.
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 4:00pm
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I am currently reading Nagel's, mostly to see what occasioned the invectives thrown at him by his self righteous detractors. I didn't thing I would enjoy this book as much as I do. It's pure pleasure to read a book that introduces new ideas or defamiliarizes (ostranenie) old ones. I am currently reading anew biography of Karl Marx which also sets aside received truths and asks te reader to look at Marx form a 19th C point of view. The result is exhilarating. Had it not been for this controversy I would never had approach this fabulous book. Thank you Mr. Wieseltier.
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 4:14pm
I am currently reading Nagel's, mostly to see what occasioned the invectives thrown at him by his self righteous detractors. I didn't thing I would enjoy this book as much as I do. It's pure pleasure to read a book that introduces new ideas or defamiliarizes (ostranenie) old ones. The result is exhilarating. Had it not been for this controversy I would never had approach this fabulous book. Thank you Mr. Wieseltier. ” I am currently reading a new biography of Karl Marx which also sets aside received truths and asks the reader to look at Marx form a 19th C point of view, and not as a “prophet” who predicted the socio economic future. The result is exhilarating. Had it not been for this controversy I would never had approach this fabulous book.
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 4:19pm
The second version was a corrected version of the garbled version I posted above.
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 4:22pm
I think the second is even more garbled than the first. So much exhiliration, so little time. As for "wheat and chaff," that is called a metaphor, arnon. I was not talking about literal wheat and literal chaff. Shall I explain what the metaphor means in this context or can you figure it out on your own? I have indeed lived worked on a farm, although in Israel, not here. They were growing fruit mostly, not wheat. But there was a chicken house. I spent some memorable time crawling through chicken shit. Reminds me of TNR at those times when there is too much chaff and not enough wheat. That's what we call a "mixed metaphor," arnon.
- roidubouloi
March 10, 2013 at 5:36pm
" I think the second is even more garbled than the first. " Very good, maybe now you will stop reading me. I have stopped reading your typed excrement long ago.
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 5:42pm
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Odd, arnon. You seem to have an awful lot of responses to what I write for someone who is not reading a word of it. I, on the other hand, have no intention of ignoring you. Someone has to police this place. That's how we get rid of the chaff. Take a look at this entire thread, arnon. You will see that there is exactly one rude, crude thug here. All but one of the posters is polite and manages to confine his or her remarks to the subject rather than resort to insult and invective directed at others. Do you know who the one rude, crude thug is, arnon?
- roidubouloi
March 10, 2013 at 9:26pm
The chaff, Roidurien, must be having a bad day (and night).
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 9:44pm
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An intersting explication of Prof. Nagel's work published in the American Academy of Science. http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/nagel-ernest.pdf
- arnon1
March 10, 2013 at 11:27pm
To the contrary, arnon. When there is only one uncivil goon left here, it is a very, very good day and night. The lone remaining thug is then both isolated and painfully obvious. That represents serious progress here at TNR. For the first time since I started participating, some eight or nine years ago, it is now possible to look forward to a day when all posters discuss the subject and refrain from personal attacks and invective directed at other posters.
- roidubouloi
March 11, 2013 at 12:45am
Reading LW on this, it is hard to believe he has followed any of the substantive discussions about Nagel's book, or Plantinga's defense of it, in other venues. His attack on Pinker is astonishing besides. The piece is more a tantrum by a threatened and fragile ego than a useful defense of Nagel or a rejoinder to Pinker.
- nehocm002
March 11, 2013 at 10:27am
looks like Pinker's fan club is here. Wieseltier's piece is not about defending Nagle's book which he probably thinks doesn't need defending; it's about the nasty and angry response by those who feel threatened by the book. Many angry comments on this thread prove LW"s point better than anything he or anyone else might say, nehocm002.
- arnon1
March 11, 2013 at 12:46pm
Agreed, nehocm002.
- Fishpeddler
April 24, 2013 at 9:06am
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The only angry responses on this thread, arnon, are yours. What does that tell us?
- roidubouloi
March 11, 2013 at 3:22pm