Dawkins' Confused Notion of Explanation

It is tempting sometimes to imagine Richard Dawkins as a sort of Max Bialiystock of the popular science world, with his God Delusion being a sort of literary equivalent of The Producers. I sometimes imagine him, pre-publication, preparing to launch his rant, both irreligious and anti-religious in form, cloaked in the assumption that nobody would take it seriously. Were he ever to have displayed a sense of humour I would be tempted to make this thesis the central argument of this blog. More in keeping with his reverence for the scientific view, and of his own place in the shaping of that view, might be the thought that he offers his views as a sort of Secular Encyclical, albeit one designed to endorse the pre-existing opinions of his readership rather than to offer the consolations of more difficult truths.

Dawkins operates a sort of positivism with respect to theology: not only does he take its claims to be false he also suggests that it is meaningless to think of it as being an academic discipline at all. It is not clear how, even given the former view, one might arrive at the latter one. Is it sufficient that the beliefs suggested by theology are false? If so does it follow that Newtonian physics is meaningless as an academic discipline?

But it’s still Christmas as I write this and so in the spirit of the season (the celebration of which might or might not be meaningless) let us give Dawkins all he wants: let us agree that to meet the central, ahem, “arguments” of God Delusion it will not do to fall back into the idiom of theology. But we don’t need to. An objection to the Dawkins, possibly a fatal one, can be developed using thoughts suggested by that most scientifically sympathetic and materialist-inclined philosopher Donald Davidson (no theologian he!).

Dawkins assimilates all explanation to the scientific. The existence of consciousness is, for him a mere epiphenomenon: a causal product of the elaboration of the evolutionary story. But the existence of consciousness carries with it an alternative, though not competing, form of explanation, the personal explanation. Davidson, who affirms that all mental events are identical with physical events (and who locates the proper sphere of philosophical inquiry in the third-personal, rather than the subjective) nevertheless argues that the mental is anomalous with respect to the physical, and he does this precisely because of the strict (nomological) status of the laws of physics. On this view, a view which owes nothing to theology and everything to the “desert landscapes” of a scientific philosophy, the forms of explanation which make reference to human beliefs and desires etc will never be displaced by science, however developed that science eventually becomes. It is not the case, as Dawkins seems to assume, that theists in formulating the “God hypothesis” are guilty of a thought too far. Rather, the fact of agency and the forms of explanation it furnishes, is immanent in the world, to at least the extent of science. You don’t need to do any “theology” to realise this; just a little philosophy.

Channel 4 at it again...

I'm beginning to wonder if C4 News has given up even the pretence of political impartiality. Tonight's lead was the (re)announcement of 3 "debates" between the main party leaders within the context of the next general election campaign. On at least two occasions Gary Gibbon made unchallenged references to Gordon Brown's "mastery of political and economic" detail, the supposed contrast with Cameron being none the less obvious for remaining unstated.

I suppose that Brown might be said to have a "mastery of political and economic" detail in much the same way that Frank Spencer might be said to have a "mastery" of the detail of an IKEA instruction booklet.

Why has this meme of Brown the great intellectual (progenitor one G.Brown) not yet been exploded amongst the classes of the commentariat? Is it a refusal to admit that they got it wrong? Is it simply a dislike of Cameron (whose obvious privilege of birthright is a standing reproach to their own privilege of current status)?

Is Gordon still running?

According to recent newspaper reports Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken up jogging. By pure chance I've had sight of a copy of his training diary.......
Day OneI have decided to take up jogging in order to eliminate the excess weight I have inherited from my predecessor. This morning I attended Hyde Park in the company of my friend Comrade Personal Trainer Smith. I can report here that he wanted me to jog for one mile without stop and that I wanted to jog no more than half a mile without stop and that we were therefore in complete agreement that I would not jog two miles without stop. Negotiations having been concluded to my satisfaction I then jogged one mile without stop. The following discussion then took place:
Comrade Personal Trainer Smith: “What I want you to do now is to run as hard as you can from here to that tree. By the time you arrive at the tree I want you to have worked so hard that you are actually in oxygen deficit.”
Comrade Me: “I can predict now and with confidence that any oxygen deficit I incur will be eliminated by the first quarter of 2015. Myself and the Chancellor have put in place prudent measures which will ensure that I emerge from oxygen deficit well before that old man over there by the bandstand.”
Comrade Personal Trainer: “No you misunderstand me. What I mean is that by the time you reach the tree you must be physically spent.”
Comrade Me: “I will not be physically spent but I will have invested physically to a greater degree than the Tories. If David Cameron were to sprint to that tree and still have some breath left then we will know that he intends to axe the jobs of thousands of nurses and teachers. I will sprint for the many and not the few.”
Comrade Personal Trainer: “Let me put it another way. I want you to go for bust.”
Comrade Me: “But I have abolished bust.”
Comrade Personal Trainer: “You have abolished going for bust?”
Comrade Me: “I never said that. I’m just getting on with the jog”
Day TwoToday during my morning training session I hit the wall. It was not my fault. I’m not sure who put the wall there but the bricks probably emerged in the American sub-prime market and the emergence of the wall overall could not have been predicted by anyone.
Day ThreeToday I entered my first 10K race. At the registration desk I noticed a slim runner with a lawyerly presence who looked like he had done this sort of thing before. I therefore approached him and made the following suggestion: “I think it would be best for the running community overall if we agreed now that you take the lead for the first half of the race and then drop out and allow me to lead thereafter. Whilst you are leading I will try and stay on your shoulder and constantly snipe at you in a constructive way. I might even attempt to trip you up as a gesture of my complete support. Do we have a deal?”. The man looked at me, spat on the floor, turned around and walked off in a gesture of complete agreement. Nothing can go wrong now. I have been running for a week so it must be my turn to win.

Nightwaves on Bertrand Russell

Radio 3's Nightwaves is this week hosting a series of discussions on the theme of "Sacred Monsters". It is, in essence, an exercise in debunking the various myths and hagiographies that surround various iconic figures. Last night Bertrand Russell got the treatment in a discussion between AC Grayling and Barry Smith, chaired by Ann McElvoy.

I'm wondering if next week there might be an opportunity to debunk the debunkers because last night's discussion was, to put it charitably, lacklustre. It amounted to this: Russell's work on philosophical logic is still of value but his social commentary was in large part misconceived.

This is hardly news. Wittgenstein once remarked that everything Russell wrote on the former should be required reading and everything he wrote on the latter should be banned. Now, given that Wittgenstein died more than 50 years ago we can safely say that the central thesis of last night was not original in any startling sense. Russell's work on philosophical logic, his attempt to draw certainty from logic via its reduction to mathematical axioms, is indeed of value in that it allowed later philosophers to demonstrate that such a reduction is not possible. Which is not to denigrate Russell since to be both bold and wrong is a species -perhaps the most important species -of philosophical innovation.

Roger Scruton once described Russell as being an aristocrat, though not a gentleman. And it is indeed quite possible to read his writings on morals, marriage etc as being an attempted vindication of his own relentless selfishness -he loved humanity, but not people. I doubt that Grayling would concur, since for him Russell was a kind of architect of a more "tolerant" society. He was no such thing of course since the society he helped author approves of much yet is tolerant of very little.

Turner Prize: I miss out again

And for the third year running the Turner Prize judges have passed me over in favour of an endorsement of modern so-called art. This year's winner, an abstarct mural by Richard Wright, is arresting enough but not innovative in the manner of my own entry: my training run from last Friday, conducted in front of a number of respected art critics including Professor Hermione Nugget, Chair of the Department of Gender Outreach Studies at the University of the West Country.
I really thought I was in with a shout this time. My refusal to wear a garmin was described approvingly as "an attempt to place the run within the parameters of the traditional artistic canon without itself being bound by the constraints of that canon". My distinctive running gait was said to be "the opposite of poetry in motion and all the more iconoclastic for that" (I thought I was a mild overpronator but these critics had seen more than I). When I slipped and landed on my backside on the descent from Westwood into Bradford on Avon, the moment was praised as being "emblematic of the collapse of bourgeouis aesthetic standards under the weight of their own internal contradictions". Furthermore, my place within the running pack (last and behind a woman to boot) was described as being a "paradigm of the neo-Hegelian subversion of the typical male power hierarchies" (a good thing apparently).
At one point I thought I'd embarrassed myself. On returning to the clubhouse I noticed that someone had left the veranda door open and before I could stop myself the words were out: "For God's sake shut that door. I wasn't brought up in a barn you know!!". I turned to the critics with the intention of apologising but I was assured that no such apology would be necessary as my "iconoclasm with respect to the prevailing religious stereotype involved a subtle restatement of a desirable secular heterodoxy". I was assured I'd get extra marks for that.
But it wasn't to be so once again I am a runner up (pardon the pun). It has been suggested that I write to the Turner judges and request the Appeals Procedure but this is no longer possible since, due to an administrative error, the Appeals Procedure did itself win the Turner Prize in 2001 and now sits in a designated viewing area in the Tate Moder.
Still there's always next year. I might enter my 2002 PB in the Benfleet 15.....