New Atheism

Alain De Botton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6-vyd8rU

This man has gone from being paid millions for spouting obvious truisms, to being paid millions for spouting obvious truisms combined with absolute bullshit.

What an idiot.

"Sometimes you should meditate on how big the universe is and how small we are"

Oh really, because its not like we realised that at the age of ten.

All these idiots who think New Atheism, or whatever they call it, is some sort of dry, unemotional movement with no comprehension of ideas on how to live, and their roots in religious movements can go fuck themselves.

I mean, seriously, you would think people would actually go and investigate some media from Sagan, Dawkins, Einstein, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris.

The idea behind this New Atheism, or the message I take from it, is that the religious are actually insulting "creation" when they feel that the world as it is, is not beautiful enough for them that they have to create fiction. I can't think of a better way to say that there is nothing good or beautiful in the universe as it appears to us than to feel the need to posit bullshit stories. IS THIS NOT ENOUGH!

The way I say this can be summarised as religious people saying: "Because you don't feel the need to create blatant lies about the universe, you are therefore incapable of feeling any emotion of any kind".

Au contraire, at the core of most, if not all true people of science (true scotsman fallacy incoming) is a drive to understand the the glory of the universe

Here's a quote from an explicitly atheistic person

"The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is."


When the fuck is this bullshit going to end?

All that the New Atheism people are claiming is that being able to explain facts of the universe does not demean it, whereby positing fictions is both insulting to the universe (which is meant to be Gods perfect creation...what a fucking irony) and damaging to society.

If YOU want to feel like your pathetic life is meaningless just because we can posit theories of the origin of life or human psychology, dont project your own puny imagination and depression onto the rest of us. Find some own meaning for yourself. Christ.

out.

Why I am a subjectivist in 5 minutes

Here's a shorter post for all the whingers of the world. This one probably wont hurt anyone's feelings either....

Any ethical statement has no way of being verified external to the speaker who states it. When someone states, "Causing harm is wrong" there is no way to verify this is any objective way. What we can do with ethical statements, is prove them true or false with reference to the beliefs of the speaker. For example, if a person states that torture is wrong, the truth or falsity of this statement depends on both empirical facts and the speakers arational ethical intuitions. By this I mean that if a person states that random torture is justified even though they are aware that torture causes pain and they believe inflicting random pain on people is wrong, we can point to how their position is invalid as it does not follow from their premises.

Contrary to Ayer, I believe ethical statements represent beliefs about the world. Through rational criticism of our beliefs, others can show us the error of our reasoning, and therefore out beliefs change.

It is often asked: How can one be a subjectivist and still hold positions in practical ethics? Well, as I have argued, if people hold the same higher arational assumptions (causing unjustified harm is wrong, for instance) then we can have a debate about both the empirical facts of the case AND whether our view on this issue is logically consistent with out higher assumptions. Thankfully for myself, it seems that many people do hold the same higher assumptions as me, therefore debates in practical ethics are often fruitful.

I believe Ayer was wrong in arguing that ethics has no place in philosophy, as he incorrectly disregarded the role of logical consistency in ethics. Ayer argued that people only ever appeal to empirical facts when trying to convince someone of an ethical position, however this seems not to be the case.

Ayer claims that "no one tries to convicne someone to change their emotion". However, if we accept the psychological idea that a person's emotion can be changed if we change their beliefs, then it seems by appealing to logical consistency in showing a conclusion to be invalid, we can change a persons belief and therefore their emotion. it would be interesting if there was some way to test if changes in beliefs lead to changes in moral sentiment....Or is it moral sentiment that informs belief?

Dragging myself through the negro streets at dawn

I consider the following to be quite a tired topic but due to the constant abuse and mockery that comes my way from certain quarters I feel compelled to write a defense of my position on animal rights. As with all of these blogs, I am writing these off the top of my head, so if you have issue with any of what I have to say, write it in the comments and I will respond. I realise hardly any of this blog is original, but it may be to the reader.

The general framework of my argument will show that if you accept certain ethical premises, you are irrational not to accept the logical conclusions of these premises. If you don't accept my premises, I will argue this is either from the reader failing to see how these premises must rationally be believed based on other beliefs they appear to have, or, if they have a belief system that can logically deny these premises, that they are total cunts.

Lets start with the premise: It is wrong to cause unjustified pain. First, let look at the concept of something being "unjustified". It seem clear, feel free to dispute in the comments section, that an act is morally unjustified if the harm it causes greatly outweighs the benefit. In cases of consent, questions of harm and benefit can become murky, but as no animals consent (indeed their behaviour indicates the opposite) this issue is irrelevant.

One may reject utilitarian ethics and focus on other normative theories. Whichever way you go, our abuse of animals is unjustified.

It seems clear to me (this is not necessary for my argument though) that if beings possess the capacity to feel pain, then their interests should be taken into account. It has been argued that humans are unique from animals, and thus possess a right to use them. However, in what ways are we unique? Animals have been shown to reason, use language (comprehension of verbal language and deployment of sign language, as they do not possess the necessary vocal cords to speak), to love and to have beliefs and desires about the world.

Any argument for eating meat that relies upon a supposed lack of intelligence in animals leads to a conclusion that it is morally acceptable to imprison and torture the intellectually disabled, assuming the intellectually disabled do not have any family members that would suffer etc etc. Furthermore it leads to the absurd conclusion that a highly intelligent alien species would be justified in keeping us prisoner and killing us for food, when they have reasonable food sources that are ALMOST as palatable as ethical food sources. The "almost" is crucial here. The pleasure gained by eating meat is so insubstantial compared to the harm it causes that it cannot be justified. If I were to gain a small pleasure by raping your child, my response of "I like the taste of his arse" would not really be accepted.

Some have argued that any life is better than no life at all. This is surely not the case. This same argument could be used to justify human slavery. "At least they were born at all, how lucky they are!" says the cotton farmer. I will agree with many meat eaters that the majority of harm from the meat industry comes from the way the animals are treated, rather than a painless (rarely the case) death. Nevertheless, causing a painless death to an animal can be viewed as wrong under any of the major normative views. A hedonic utilitarian can argue that, in the case of an animal that has a happy life and then is killed painlessly, harm is done to the animal through reducing the happiness they could have felt. Furthermore, theories of rights (which as we have established must be extended to animals) generally view unjustified death as wrong.

Furthermore, even if you still believe that any life is better than none, once sentient creature are alive, this does not lead in any way to thinking the act of killing them is justified. I am not justified in killing a random person on the street and claiming that "It is not wrong, at least he had a life".

So I feel I have established here that the animal industry causes unjustified pain. But does a vegan diet cause less pain than an omnivorous? Yes. Yes it does.

It has been often raised to me: How do we know plants don't feel pain? First, just let me respond by claiming that if we take an infallibist view of knowledge, we cannot really know anything at all. I would response by saying: We cant infallibly know that other humans feel pain, yet we all include humans in our ethical reasoning. So if one wants to claim that as we cannot infallibly know what a plant feels, therefore we are justified in eating meat as for all we know a plant feels as much pain as an animal, then if I employ that reasoning, there seems to be no problem with me replying "there is no way to infallibly know that humans feel more pain than animals, therefore I am just as justified in eating humans as I am eating animals"

What we can do is have fallible knowledge that we employ based on probability and likelyhood based off scientific theories of the mind and physiology.

So, how do we gain fallible knowledge of what feels pain? We do not know for sure, as with any empirical fact, that plants do not feel pain. However, we make observations of behaviour and physiology that can lead us to make informed choices. Plants do not demonstrate the complex behaviour or underlying neurology to possess a qualia that is quantitatively and qualitatively equivalent to what we call pain.

It is highly unlikely plants feel pain and even if they do, they possess a much lower level of pain. In any case, meat eating is unjustified.There is no credible scientific argument that plants feel pain. In contrast, the scientific evidence strongly suggests that animals feel pain. .

It seems like attacks such as the plants feel pain argument are nothing more than an emotional defense from the omnivore, devoid of any reason. It is also incredulous for those who claim to use science as a guide to reality to make such ridiculous claims. Also, one last comment, we cannot know infallibly that rocks don't feel pain. Does this mean it is likely that rocks feel pain, or that we should take into account a rocks interests when we raise a jackhammer? No, because the science points to the facts that rocks do not feel pain.

Also, global warming. The meat industry is a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions produced by a vegan diet are substantially less. Furthermore, animals are a highly inefficient food source. A proportion of the our agricultural harvest goes to feeding the animals we keep for meat. This does not translate kilo for kilo into meat, there is a huge amount of food lost in this process. In a world that is considering how to fight global warming and world hunger it seems incredulous that more people do not wake up to the facts regarding the meat industry.

Some other arguments for eating meat.

Animals eat other animals. Therefore, it is right.

This is obviously ridiculous. Non-human animals do all sorts of stupid and vicious shit. For example, if a man propositions my girlfriend, would I be justified in having a fight to the death over it as some animals do? Of course not. Am I now allowed to lick my anus in public because cats do so? There is a huge double standard here. On the one hand, the meat easter claims that animals are inferior, incapable of reason and their pain is on no consequence. On the other hand, they then turn around and claim that the behaviour of said animals is to be a guide for ethical judgements! This is nothing more than an is-ought appeal to nature...pretty boring in this day and age.

We evolved to eat meat.

Irrelevant. Next?

We need meat as part of a healthy diet.

This is not actually true. A vegetarian diet can provide for all nutritional needs. I wont go into huge detail on this because I cant be fucked but if anyone has any particular vitamin etc that they believe a vegetarian diet cannot account for, post in the comments and I will reply.

There are some concerns about vegan diets however. First, let me claim that any health detriments from a vegan diet pale in comparison to the pain that cows and chickens (in factory farms) have to deal with in the dairy and egg industry. Second, these deficits can easier by overcome by supplements, if one is really concerned by B vitamin deficiency. In any case, this article is mainly about vegetarianism, not veganism, and we have established that eating the flesh of other animals is by no means necessary for optimal health. In fact, most vegetarian diets are healthier than meat diets through lower levels of heart disease etc etc.

The reality is that most of the meat in this country, and the world, comes from factory farming. Factory farming is fucked up. Really really fucked up. When you consider billions of animals that live in these conditions world-wide, it really makes one get really fucking pissed off. Even if the reader still holds thats the life of a non-human animal is not worth as much a human, surely the lives of billions of non-human animals are worth, perhaps, millions of human lives.

I believe, based on what the science tells us of the sentience of animals, that the institutionalised torture and murder of billions of animals is morally equivalent to a genocide of millions of humans in terms of pain caused. Even if we only concede that the pain of a non-human animal is only worth a mere 1000th of the pain of a human, this belief (if we are utilitarians) is justified.

So maybe not the reader will understand why I find it so incredibly frustrating when I am eating with a meat-eater, who is actively supporting in the moral equivalence of a genocide, has the utter nerve to make some snide comment. I realise this must sound self-righteous but I have been driven to this self-righteousness by years of putting up with insecure people in my life trying to put me down, when until now, I have minded my own business.

http://www.animalsaustralia.org/media/videos.php?vid=factoryfarming

Revolving Doors

I was a boy of ten when my family spent a week in rural Tuscany, in central Italy. I have few visual memories of this time except for an attic with beams too low and a long road into town with stones I would collect. The most defining memory I have of this trip was the lack of English reading material that was available. My library for this trip consisted of a book documenting all of Da Vinci's inventions in great detail and a new (for me) fantasy series, David Eddings' The Belgariad. To take nothing away from Leonardo's genius, I became engrossed in Eddings' work to the point of rationing myself to 200 pages per day, as to not run out of reading material before I could return to my homeland where my future as an cricketing hero would surely unfold.

While literature cannot cure the schizophrenic, conduct monetary policy or answer philosophical questions, I believe its role in current society is understated and its potential for use in a clinical setting should not be underestimated. While these ideas may be familiar to the reader, I make no pretense of groundbreaking originality in this blog, it merely serves to fuse together my thoughts on different topics into some kind of coherent world view.

Nevertheless, while literature itself cannot answer philosophical questions, I believe literature can be used in an empirical analysis of the epistemological concepts of knowledge-how and knowledge-that. It is commonly held that one could know all propositional facts about riding a bicycle, and yet fail to know how to ride a bicycle. Conversely, it seems plausible that a person (human or non-human) could know how to ride a bicycle without knowing facts of how to ride a bicycle. The knowledge of riding a bicycle is implicit.

It seems that most people would not agree that you can learn know-how through the act of reading. Through reading a bicycle manual, it is claimed, one does not learn the motor skills required to ride a bike. However, relating my own personal experirences, it seems that one can learn know-how through reading literature. Literature engrosses the mind in a way non-fiction seldom does. It is through the process of imagination and visualisation that we can implicitly learn motor skills. It is not only motor skills that one can learn through the act of visualisation, but life skills as well. It is the poetry of words that can be harnessed to capture feeling and experirences that non-fiction prose can only grasp at.

It is here the more empirically minded of you will ask: Ok, so how would we actually test this?

A friend of mine has recently begun research into the area of literature, and individual differences and causes behind literature appreciation. This general area fascinates me and I believe several interesting research hypotheses could be formulated with a view to testing in the future.

The hypotheses that:

1. People who are exposed to high quality, descriptive, poetic and moving description of a experiences will learn significantly more knowledge-how than a control group that reads a passage of text that is the equivalent in facts, but lacks the poetic ability to stimulate imagination and visualization in the reader. Perhaps it is the forging together, through the power of visualisation, of previously aquired abilities into new unique abilities that could lie at the bottom of this.

If this was found to be the case, this would be of great pedagogical importance, and could have wide ranging implications in educational institutions. Not only would the process of learning become a more enjoyable and enriching experience, but the process of learning would become a more efficient process.

2. Exposure to literature that contain's themes of relevant life challenges can be incorporated into current clinical practices. The dominant force in modern clinical psychology is the cognitive-behavioural approach, which reflects the two dominant paradigms of 20th century psychology: behaviouralism, and the cognitive approach. Through cognitive-behavioural therapy, patients are encouraged to change their behaviours and their cognitions.

Specific literature (and for that matter, music, film and any artistic medium) could be incorporated into each individuals specific therapy plan after the relevant questionaires and diagnoses has been made. For example, a claim has been made that people who score highly in Introversion are more likely to use literature as a tool for learning social rules and norms, and allows the introvert to slowly expose themselves to social situations from a safe place. (I can cite this if anyone is interested)

As good poetry and prose can stimulate the imagination and cause the subject to visualise the experirence, literature could be used as a behavioural technique to aid those who are crippled by strong phobias. Furthermore, literature can aid in the cognitive side of CBT, forcing the beliefs of subjects to be challenged as they have a vivid visualisation of the situation they fear. Literature can, under this view, change peoples beliefs about the world, and their behavioural reaction to certain stimuli.

The reader may ask here: Why not just get the patient to imagine it themselves? This comes back to the power of well-written literature. Many CBT self-help books, and indeed handouts given to those in therapy, include written descriptions of hypothetical situations with fictional people feeling in a similar way. However, the way these hypotheticals are written is in a dry formulaic and often patronising way. What is needed, is a decent level of time spent reading literature that focusses on the issues specific to the patient. This literature need to be engrossing and realistic and must be relevant to the human condition.

There are numerous hypotheses regarding both causes and correlations between the arts and psychology that would, in my opinion, be fascinating to research. The idea of having my hands upon a large data set that analyses the relationships between cognitive-behavioural,individual differences, developmental, social and neurological areas of psychology, and the arts literally makes me drool.

Consider if literature could improve social learning in children? Or prevent dementia in the elderly? Perhaps the social phobe, I use this term in a self-deprecating way, could use literature, along with traditional therapy options, to overcome their paralysing fears.

So with these questions in hand I ask myself: When was it that I learnt the most about love? Was it when I fell in love for the first time? Was it when I learnt of the behaviours and corresponding neural changes? I believe it is neither. I think I learnt the most of the qualia (herp) of love at the age of ten in the Tuscan hills.