09.05.11

From Korner on Kant: Moral Freedom and Natural Necessity

Posted in ethics, General, Kant at 12:41 pm by nemo

I scanned a passage from Korner’s book on Kant
Check Amazon for a cheap copy:

http://www.amazon.com/Kant-S-K%C3%B6rner/dp/B002QVOUDY/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315244333&sr=1-2

THE POSSIBILITY OF MORAL EXPERIENCE AND ITS
RELATION TO SCIENCE AND RELIGION
I. Moral Freedom and Natural Necessity

I F the experience of conflict between duty and desire is not an
illusion; if the judge’s familiar references to criminal responsi-
bility are more than indirect ways of describing the necessary
course of events; if man is subject to a self-imposed moral
law; then we must assume that man exists not only as a
part of the causal order of nature, but also outside it. We
must assume that he is an end in himself, that he is morally
free.
Before turning to Kant’s justification of thispositionit will
be well to recall once again the distinction between (I) Cate-
gories, which are a priori notions applicable to manifolds of
perception, and (2) Ideas, which are likewise a priori but not
similarly applicable. In the case of the Categories, the method
of showing the rightfulness of their use was by a Transcenden-
tal Deduction of them, i.e. by showing that a manifold of per-
ception becomes an object of experience only through the ap-
plication of the Categories to it. Any parallel treatment of an
Idea is impossible for the obvious reason that it is not thus
applicable; it does not refer to any manifold of perception and
consequently does not confer upon any such manifold that
objectivity which is characteristic of the objects of factual and
scientific judgements.
Kant’s justification for the assumption that man is morally
free proceeds by two main steps. The first has already been
taken. In the Critique of Pure Reason it has been shown that we
can think man a noumenon outside the causal order of nature, and
morally free. Moreover it has been shown that the two pro-

positions • Man as noumenon is free’ and • Man as phenomenon is
part of the causa! order of nature’ are compatible. Indeed,
Kant has argued that the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason can
only be resolved by admitting the joint possibility of both
these propositions, thereby accepting the position of transcen-
dental idealism, that whatever stands under the forms of space
and time and under the Categories • is empirically real and
transcendentally ideal’.
Within the field of mathematics and natural science – that is
to say, within the field of the critique of pure reason – the con-
cept of freedom has no positive content. There, freedom means
nothing beyond independence of the .causal order of nature. If
we keep this in mind we can regard it as a kind of causality
and contrast it, as moral or noumenal, with the positive notion
of natural or phenomenal causality, which is a schematized
Category of theoretical thinking.
We have established, now, the internal consistency of the
notion of freedom or moral causality. .But from the internal
consistency of a notion we cannot infer that there are any
actual instances of it whatsoever. From the internal consistency
of ‘centaur’, for example, it does not follow that centaurs
exist. No more can we infer from the internal consistency of
the notion • man as a noumenon’ that man as a noumenon exists.
If we wish to prove that man exists as a free being we need to
know something more; and the nature of the additional evi-
dence we require will determine in what sense we can attribute
to man existence as a free being.
This additional evidence comes from moral experience. In
appealing to it Kant is taking the second step of his proof that
man is free. According to him, it is the plain outcome of
ordinary moral experience that we apprehend the moral law
and our subjection to it. This implies freedom. If the assump-
tion (of our freedom) were self-contradictory there could be no
such implication; our apprehension of the moral law would
have to pass as an illusion and our moral judgements as mis-
takes. The assumption, however, we have found internally
consistent: so our apprehension of the moral law can be evi-
dence of freedom. There is, moreover, no evidence against it.
To give the position in Kant’s words:
‘The moral law shows its reality, in a manner which is suffi-
cient even from the point of view of the critique of theoretical
reason, in adding a positive characteristic to a causality which
so far has been conceived only negatively and the possibility
of which, although incomprehensible to theoretical reason,
had yet to be assumed by it. This positive characteristic is the
conception of reason as 0 immediately determining the will
(through the condition that a universal form can be given to
its maxims as laws). Thus, for the first time, the moral law can
give objective (though only practical) reality to reason which
always hitherto had to transcend all possible experience when
it put its Ideas to a theoretical use •• .’1
Thus, the categorical imperative implies that we are free;
while on the other hand the assumption that we are so is
(a) internally consistent and (b) compatible with the principle
- a fundamental principle of the Critiqtie of Pure Reason – that
all events are causally necessary. Thus we are justified in taking
our apprehension of the moral law as being what it seems to be
to our ordinary moral conscience – an absolute command
which we can fulfil in spite of our being part of the causal order
of nature. All this, however, does not mean that we can know
our moral freedom and its working in the same way as we
know instances of natural causality. There is, as Kant himself
insists, nothing in his argument, or indeed in his whole moral
philosophy, to alter the thesis that moral freedom is an Idea
of pure reason, and therefore unknowable. For the knowable
must be both thinkable and perceivable; while C a perceivable
instance of an Idea’ is, and remains, a-logical contradiction.
If all our thinking were scientific or if it belonged to the
region of that commonsense reflection which is rudimentary
science, then it would make no difference whether we were
naive realists or transcendental idealists. It makes an impor-
tant difference if our thinking includes reflection not only upon
matters of fact but also on moral obligation. This is because we
I. Pro OR. 48, Ab. 137.

The Possibility of Moral Experience 155

cannot in that case avoid being confronted with the prima
facie conflict between the causal necessity of our actions as
parts of the order of nature and our moral responsibility for
them as free agents. If we cannot reject, as being mere mis-
takes, either our apprehension of natural necessity or our
consciousness of moral freedom then we have no alternative
but to treat Kant’s theory with respect as one of the few
thorough attempts to do equal justice to both science and
morals.
Certainly the statistical conception of natural law does noth-
ing to reconcile the two standpoints. It is sometimes said that
since all laws of nature are merely statistical, science and
morality can no longer conflict. It might be argued in support
of such a view that if it were a statistical law that a certain per-
centage of action must always be done in violation of duty,
then the law would leave room for the freedom of the will,
since being merely statistical it would refer not to any particu-
lar action but merely to a certain proportion of actions. The
argument, however, implies that a law of nature would rule
out the possibility that all men should be able to do their duty
simultaneously and continuously. Our subjection to the moral
law, however, implies precisely this. The conflict between
causal necessity and moral freedom remains unresolved.
Another, and very frequent though no more successful,
attempt to solve the problem is found not only in philoso-
phical books but also in the criminal codes of civilized coun-
tries. It consists in distinguishing between causes identifiable
with the doer and causes which are outside his control. The
doer mayor may not be responsible. He is responsible accord-
ing to the theory if he is or ‘contains’ the cause of his action,
which is then, as it is put, ‘freely chosen’. But if we accept the
principle of natural causality, every event in time is caused
and every cause is part of a causal chain which started before
the birth of the doer. By receiving the title of C freely chosen’
a cause does not cease to have been caused. This way of tack-
ling the problem, e.g., by calling inner causes C free’ and external
causes C mechanical’, is no more than a way of ignoring it.
Kant calls it a ‘miserable makeshift’ and ‘petty verbal hair-
splitting’ .1

We usually regard a person as responsible for his action if
he could have chosen not to perform it. As G. E. Moore has
pointed out, the sense of the phrase ‘if he could have chosen
otherwise’ is difficult to determine. Indeed, however we take
it, we seem to leave the doer either always or never respon-
sible. On the one hand, the mere logical possibility of another
action, i.e. its non-contradictoriness, is not sufficient since it is
always logically possible to assume that an event fell out other-
wise than in fact it did. On the other hand to require factual
possibility (that a person, in order to be responsible, must have
been able to change the course of the causal sequences leading
to his action) is to require too much: for a person is never in
this position and so would neuer be responsible for his action.
To say that the possibility expressed by the phrase’ could have
chosen’ is neither logical nor causal, but sui generis, is, unless
qualified by further suggestions, of little use.

Kant’s answer, which follows from his distinction between
man as a phenomenon and man as noameno«, is that it is incom-
patible with the principle of causality for any causal sequence
to be changed. We cannot choose that an action be not the
effect of its causes. But he also holds that man as a noumenon
could have chosen differently since’ the whole chain of appear-
ances with respect to anything which concerns the moral law
depends on the spontaneity of the subject as a thing in itself.
Of the nature of this spontaneity, however, a physical explana-
tion is impossible.” .

For Kant the key to the understanding of the phrase ‘if he
could have chosen’ is the subject of the choice, which is man
as a noumenon or end in himself. The choice takes place on the
noumenal level of human existence. We can infer, from an’
adequate description of theoretical and moral experience, that
the choice takes place in the realm of noumena, but not how it
does so. Indeed how it takes place is, like everything noumenal
(non-phenomenal), unknowable.
I. Pro R. 96, Ab. 189. 2. Pro R. 99, Ab. 193.
The Possibility of Moral Experience 157

Kant’s solution of the conflict between causal necessity and
moral freedom implies, as he admits, ‘many difficulties’ and
‘is hardly capable of being clearly presented’. But, he rightly
asks, ‘is any other which has been or may be attempted, simp-
ler and more easily understandable?’1 The answer, I think,
must be an emphatic no, unless we regard it as a solution of
the problem to ignore either morality or science and refuse to
consider them together.

To Kant’s account of freedom it is often, and quite naturally,
objected, that our own observable actions and choices are car-
ried out in time whereas the ‘actions’ and ‘choices’ of the
noumenal self are outside time and unobservable. The appar-
ent mysteriousness of these notions seems to many too high a
price to be paid for the consistency of causal necessity with
moral freedom. According to Kant, however, we are faced
with the choice on the one hand of distrusting science,
moral experience, or both; on the other hand of trusting them
but accepting the fact that a crucial aspect of our being must
remain unknowable to us.

In one way Kant’s notion of a noumenal self and its choices
is no more mysterious than, e.g., Hilbert’s notion of infinity.
Both are ideal, limiting concepts by means of which we estab-
lish the internal consistency of a system of propositions: in
Kant’s case the system of moral and scientific propositions, in
Hilbert’s case the system of classical mathematics. Yet Kant’s.
notions of the noumenal self and its choices are considered by
him to demarcate the field of the knowable from an unknow-
able region beyond it; whereas Hilbert’s notion of infinity is
conceived as a highly ingenious and highly subtle technicality.

Kant’s thesis of’ the whole chain of appearances with respect
to anything which concerns the moral law’ being chosen by
the unknowable noumenal self operating outside time, is not
without other parallels. It reminds us, for example, of the
Platonic myth of Er according to which the soul after death
‘must choose a [new] life which she will have to realize of
necessity’.2 It also reminds us of various religious doctrines
within and outside the European tradition. It would, however,
be quite contrary to Kant’s conception of philosophy and to
his manner of inquiry to support his conclusions by making
use of either myth or the appeal to any special religious experi-
ence or authority.
The scientist qua scientist assumes that every event stands
under causal or, at least, statistical laws. The judge, and indeed
everybody who makes decisions and who is capable of feeling
guilt and remorse, assumes that men are morally responsible
and therefore free. It is the task of the philosopher to render
the relation between science and morality intelligible. In under-
taking this he must face problems different from those which
are peculiar either to science or to moral reflection. He can,
therefore, expect but little help from the pure scientists or the
pure moralists and would, I think, be unwise if he ignored
what Kant has to say on the way in which practical reason can
provide answers to questions which theoretical reason cannot
even properly ask.

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10.06.10

Harris’ The Moral Landscape

Posted in ethics, Kant at 4:13 pm by nemo

Just started looking through Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape. My previous sense of alarm has waned considerably: the book is a form of ‘scientism mud’ and so non-descript that I fail to locate an ethical thesis. The shelves of university libraries (I forget the number series, BL something?) are filled with shelf upon shelf of books on ethics, each one of interest, none of decisive merit. The reason for that, next to the flameout brilliance of Kantian ethics is hard to asses, or understand. Why did philosophy decline after Kant?
Harris would replace that philosophy with science, and the result will be even worse.
I will keep trying, but I may fail to be able to read this book, the Weberian venom courses the blood stream and I am paralyzed, like a victiim of blow pipe attack, as I lose consciousness in the Iron Cage. A hitech savage like Harris is, like all primitives, not be underestimated.

I reviewed Kauffman’s Reinventing the Sacred, and advocated the author hang. With Harris, who knows. But I have a severe ‘judge not lest..’ problem.

I should comment on the title, or subtitle, ‘how science can determine human values’. For scientists to wish to try to contribute to the question is fine by me, almost refreshing next to the sterility of religious confusion here, but the problem is that, as with Darwinism, pseudo-science will end up becoming a dogma, as the horde of Darwin fanatics, Dawkins cult groupies, and New Atheists enforce a public mentality that noone can challenge, because ‘experts’ have pronounced it science. This game is pernicious, and the subtitle to Harris’ book triggers a sense of dread, and frustration: here they go again. They won’t stop until the Iron Cage is completely enforced. Once this group has decided what science is, as its new Popes, they will propagandize the public in the name of science, and the harm done is incalculable.

I see no reason why science can’t deal with these issues, but is this the point here?
Kant, after all, created the all time classic here, with his thesis of rationality and ethics, yet none of this enters into Harris’ discussion. He doesn’t even acknowledge the potential for free will. So that should settle matter. The book is not about morality at all, hence the emphasis on a concealed utilitarian thesis. \
Constantly harping on Kant (who I don’t actually agree with in toto) can get boring, but I strongly recommend a look at Kant’s attempt to answer this kind of question, ‘how science can determine human values’: Harris is operating in the wasteland of post-kantian stragglers who can’t even recover the level of insight that Kant reached, in the midst of a curious success mixed with failure.

My issue with this book will therefore be brief: Harris never addresses morality as he doesn’t acknowledge either a human will, or a free will, and more than that, he is fixated by Darwinian evolution and its Just So Story on the evolution of ethics. He is unaware of the problem with these theories, how could he ever get any further? That pseudo-science blocks the first step Harris would wish to take.

I will keep reading, and we will see.

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10.04.10

Science not even in ball park on ethics

Posted in ethics, General, Kant at 12:03 pm by nemo

Science Knows Best
By KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH

We have discussed Harris’ views here critically, several times, now his book is out. Appiah exposes the problem right away, and one is left puzzled by Harris’ choice of utilitarianism for a science here.

I always recommend Kant here, despite the fact that his ethical discourses have often been criticized. The garbage spouted by religionists, i.e. Christians, confuses the whole discussion.
If you can’t critique and then repair Kant (trying to fly is also hard) you are not going to succeed a la Harris.
But Kant doesn’t cheat, and try to assume that neuroscience describes the mind. It might, one day, but at this point it never discusses the ‘will’,the first fundamental requirement of any ethics, the one thing scientists can’t manage.
So science isn’t even in the ball park on this issue. Small wonder Harris tries to fake it with some cheap imported ‘utilitarianism’.

Religion deals with questions about what Harris calls “meaning, morality and life’s larger purpose,” questions that have no scientific answers.

Harris, who has a doctorate in neuroscience, holds the opposite view. Only science can help us answer these questions, he says. That’s because truths about morality and meaning must “relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures,” and science alone — especially neuroscience, his field — can uncover those facts. So rather than consulting Aristotle or Kant (let alone the Bible or the Koran) about what is necessary for humans to flourish, why not go to the sciences that study conscious mental life?

Harris means to deny a thought often ascribed to David Hume, according to which there is a clear conceptual distinction between facts and values. Facts are susceptible of rational investigation; values, supposedly, not. But according to Harris, values, too, can be uncovered by science — the right values being ones that promote well-being. “Just as it is possible for individuals and groups to be wrong about how best to maintain their physical health,” he writes, “it is possible for them to be wrong about how to maximize their personal and social well-being.”

But wait: how do we know that the morally right act is, as Harris posits, the one that does the most to increase well-being, defined in terms of our conscious states of mind? Has science really revealed that? If it hasn’t, then the premise of Harris’s all-we-need-is-science argument must have nonscientific origins.

In fact, what he ends up endorsing is something very like utilitarianism, a philosophical position that is now more than two centuries old, and that faces a battery of familiar problems. Even if you accept the basic premise, how do you compare the well-being of different people? Should we aim to increase average well-being (which would mean that a world consisting of one bliss case is better than one with a billion just slightly less blissful people)? Or should we go for a cumulative total of well-being (which might favor a world with zillions of people whose lives are just barely worth living)? If the mental states of conscious beings are what matter, what’s wrong with killing someone in his sleep? How should we weigh present well-being against future well-being?

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08.24.10

Darwin the Ur-bad apple, Ruse the choir boy and all the other bad apples in the science mafia

Posted in ethics, Evolution at 12:36 pm by nemo

One Bad Apple, and the Threat to Science
Ruse thinks Darwin critics are going to exploit the Hauser case. Not here. And in general I doubt any such critics would bother. They are too busy with real issues, and could just as well critique the premises Hauser adopts, as to the Darwinization of ethics. That Hauser faked research is and has been a news link here, and of little interest, save as a way to discuss related issues.

Note how nervous Ruse is, in his sly reference to Darwin, about the hidden scandal of Darwin’s fraud, in the founder of the whole science. This should be public knowledge, as with Hauser. Darwin’s scientific miscondust, as recorded in minor research tradition depicted by Roy Davies in The Darwin Conspiracy, included backdating evolutionary references to his Galopagos texts to make it look like he discovered things alone far earlier than he in fact did. So major documents in the history of Darwinism are fraudulent. Yet noone discusses this in public.
Such things make us suspect Ruse is a liar, and a bad liar at that.

Darwin was not patient about his research, btw, as Ruse seems to imply, he was confused and stuck, as Lyell began to suspect, and couldn’t make his so-called theory work, not until Wallace sent him the answers unwittingly.

This archfraud at the foundation of Darwinism is so outrageous it would rock science to its foundations if ever properly discussed in the big media. Not because Darwin, the Ur-bad apple, was a fraud so much, as because the entire cadre of scientists are bad apples to exploit this coverup. And yet Ruse tries to make Darwin an example of science integrity.

Clearly Ruse is aware of this Darwin plagirarism (he reads this blog, let him deny it).

So I don’t think exploiting such issues is a threat to science, even if Darwin critics wished to bother. It is a threat to science to indulge in coverups. The entire integrity credibility of science is at risk from the Darwin plagiarism coverup.
The issue with Hauser would be, for me, to get ready to critique his future book, Evilicious, about evil behavior and evolution. Scientists are on the verge of perpetrating an immense harm, with all these junk Darwinism books on evolution and ethics, and the remarkable thing is not their dishonesty as much as their complete stupidity on the subject. Darwinism and ethics is a nexus of pseudo-science, and yet none of these scientists, the Ruses included, can see through the bad theory.
Maybe Hauser is right, Darwinists are ‘evilicious’, and enjoy this criminal enterprise. Hauser real crime is this variant of a Social Darwinist ideology, with a twist here: doing evolution promotes evolution. Kids lap that up in school, and live it after they leave.

Finally, a word about why the Hauser affair particularly is so upsetting and why it might have bigger consequences. Evolutionary biology today, especially anything to do with humankind, is loathed and feared by a range of critics, from prominent philosophers (like Jerry A. Fodor, author of What Darwin Got Wrong?), to the supporters of intelligent-design theory (like Phillip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial), to the out-and-out young-earth creationists (like Ken Ham, the force behind the Creation Museum in Kentucky). Like sharks in the water, they circle waiting for a sign of blood. They seize on issues that supposedly discredit evolution and parade them publicly as the norm and the reason to reject modern science.

If anyone doubts what I am saying here, think of the recent controversy over global warming sparked when critics of the idea illicitly obtained e-mails and other confidential material of the researchers at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. For several months, much was made of incautious remarks made by the researchers about using “tricks” to conceal unwelcome findings and pushing for the firing of unfriendly editors. More measured reflections showed that in fact the researchers were guilty of virtually none of the sins of which they were first accused and that their work was of good quality. Global warming is a reality. But the damage was done.

Most of us feel a tremor of schadenfreude at the troubles of a prominent Harvard professor, but no one will be following the Hauser story with the unabashed glee of the critics of modern evolutionary theory. Wait for them to start pumping up the publicity, and fear the sideways damage that might be inflicted on all of the good work out there. One man’s mistakes rebounds on every evolutionist. But that’s science for you.

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08.02.10

Haidt opens Edge junk science lectures on ethics (with a swipe at Kant)

Posted in ethics, Kant, Philosophy at 12:06 pm by nemo

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality.haidt.html: Haidt at Edge

Accusing Kant and Benthan of Asperger’s Syndrome to open a discussion of ethics is a bit much.
(btw, So what if they did have Asperger’s? It is almost a recommendation, quite apart from the groupie science at places like Edge.org, where everyone is a suckup trying to get a book deal)

Haidt must be worried by Kantian ethics here! It is the strongest challenge to reductionist theories of ethics. Kant’s thinking here was a work in progress and appears in several versions, and, in a way, that closer look is needed near the academic courses that teach his ethics in misaleding fashion.
But after all the problems none of these scientists, stuck on Darwinism, can get ethics right, next to Kant’s way of getting it right, at least as to basics.
Kant confronts the issue of freedom next to causality, and creates a framework where freedom is given its place in the discussion. Scientists constantly, over and over and over, get stuck here, and bloviate for us to no avail.
Kant’s ethical project, even if you disagree, points to something scientists can’t accomplish: ‘common ordinary morality’. Kant wished to assist in understanding the moral sense that is already the case. Perhaps his approach is incomplete, or fails, but he raises the issue that scientists bypass: describe morality before theorizing. Not so easy.

For Immanuel Kant, the case is not quite so clear. He also was a loner who loved routine, feared change, focused on his few interests, to the exclusion of all else. And, according to one psychiatrist, Michael Fitzgerald, who diagnoses Asperger’s in historical figures and shows how it contributed to their genius, Fitzgerald thinks that Kant would be diagnosed with Asperger’s. I think the case is not nearly so clear. I think Kant did have better social skills, more ability to empathize. So I wouldn’t say that Kant had Asperger’s, but I think it’s safe to say that he was about as high as could possibly be on systemizing, while still being rather low on empathizing, although not the absolute zero that Bentham was.

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06.07.10

Booknotes: Good Without God

Posted in Booknotes, ethics, Kant at 3:48 pm by nemo

Review of Epstein’s Good Without God
The idea that morality requires no theism is actually a Kantian idea.
In fact dogmatic theists and dogmatic atheists are equally a problem for moral discussions. Atheists who wish to discuss ethics need to have a clear discussion of Nietzsche and not bluff their way through on the way to nihilism.

This book express (unwittingly) one of the classic strains of philosophy in the discussion of morality: the idea that morality stands beyond divinity is a Kantian one, and it is important to consider that the idea of morality without god was first proposed by religious thinkers, if Kant can be considered a religious philosopher (along with being a secularist par excellence). The idea that a divine agent muust enforce morality by divine decree was long seen to make the whole of morality problematical.
I think that an equal confusion can arise from a purely atheist insistence on the basis of morality. We must completely detach the idea of morality from discussions of atheism/atheism. One of the problems with much contemporary discussion from figures such as the New Atheists is that morality is made to vanish under the canons of scientism, reductionism, and Darwinian evolutionism. This is as destructive of morality as the authoritarian theism foundationalizing religious morality. So it is ironic that authoritarian theism and scientific reductionism are both a problem for moral thinking, which must be founded on the idea of the freedom of the individual to be a moral agent.

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05.27.10

Morality and god

Posted in ethics at 11:55 am by nemo

Why morality doesn’t need God
By TIM DEAN – ABC (AUSTRALIA)
Added: Thursday, 27 May 2010 at 03:04 PM

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/474092-why-morality-doesn-t-need-god

If God is not, everything is permitted.” Or so they say. Except they’re wrong. Dangerously so.

This dictum – that without some absolute divine authority, then morality is at best arbitrary, at worst, annihilated – is unsheathed and bandied about all-too-often these days.

Recently, it’s reared its seditious head in response to the trial of an ethics-based complement to scripture in NSW. The church has pulled out all the stops to block the ethics class, and one of the reasons posed is that ethics without God is hollow, that teaching secular ethics is like teaching English without books, maths without numbers, science without observation.

But the notion that God is required in order for morality to have any real clout is demonstrably false. In fact, if you want a comprehensive, robust and flexible ethics that can address the problems we face today, then you need to explicitly look for a morality without God.

This is because the subject matter of morality is very much grounded in the real world: morality deals with real people, real issues and has to navigate real conflicts. And the real world is a complicated place where not everything is as it seems. One of our best tools for understanding the real world is the humble question “why.” But often you have to ask “why” more than once to get to the answer.

In theory this is a correct argument, but in practice the damage done here is ongoing and destructive. Nietzsche’s appeal to scientists is concealed and deadly.
This idea, it should be said, was clearly present in Kant! You still have to explicate morality, and scientism/Darwinism can’t do that.

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05.09.10

The Iron Cage: Harris and the finishing touches of the perfect prison

Posted in ethics, Kant at 3:24 pm by nemo

Harris’ Toward a scince of morality

Harris seems to equate the moral issue with maximizing well-being.
My sense that he is doomed from the start seems confrimed.
I should add that there is absolutely nothing wrong with such an attempt,
pioneered in a different way by Kant (if not Plato).
The danger here, though, is that, as with Darwinism, one lie leads to an increased ease in promoting another. Science has not produced ‘reason’ but credulity on evolution in its public. Finishing the game off with a pseudo-ethics is the liability of Harris’ project and will likely succeed as gesture of publicity and scientism, to the confusion of and harm done to many.
As I read his essay, which acknowledges his many critics, I realize that i am being slightly unfair: he is so surrounded by nihilist skeptics of scientism who think the value domains is ‘woo’ that his project seems to be a heroic effort in progress to rescue science from its amorality.
I can’t fully judge a book that isn’t out yet, so I must wait. But I suspect that Harris’ effort is going to be false from the beginning, especially given the hints of ‘utilitarianism redux’ in progress.
The attempt to create a science of morality is something that can’t be rejected out of hand. The most magnificent attempt is the ethics of Kant, who some think failed to reach the result. If Harris is going to try to adapt neuroscientism to this task, his failure will be a parody of Kant.

Beyond the success or failure (and not a little obscurity that makes his work hard to approach) of the Kantian version lies a solid foundation of transcendental idealism in which the issue of freedom, the foundation of morality, is given a place. Kant’s ethics of the ‘categorical imperative’ is deeply suggestive, but seems to spawn logical contradictions, or exceptions that require an extended version of his thinking. The question of transcendental idealism was a great success, and is almost more important than the specified ethics, among many, that might exist in the context of TI.

I will bet a nickel (not much, I may lose the bet, I hope) that Harris plans to simply ignore all this, construct ethics on the basis of passive causal logic in which maximizing ‘well-being’ is the mainline project. Worse, then, than a parody of Kantian ethics. That’s a project for the final stages of Iron Cage, the same point in Pharaonic pyramid constuction where the mummy has to be locked in forever so no tomb robbers can find it.
There is hope: we can always break into the Iron Cage.
The Iron Cage still has some exit points, one of them being the glaring absence of the idea of freedom, thence ethics.
Harris, I fear, means to make us amnesiac about what is missing.

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05.08.10

Harris vs Kant

Posted in ethics, Philosophy at 12:04 pm by nemo

Sam Harris, positivist, and arrogant

I was a little unfair to Harris, and my criticism is only of the celebrity effect that can make idiocy seem rational, and influence a huge peanut gallery.

My last remark solves the problem: Harris is going to put his views in writing, without consulting the literature. This is in circle-squarer range.

It is worth, more ironically, looking at Kant’s project here, which is not based on neuroscience, but which did brilliantly try to bring the issues of ethics within the range of ‘reason’. Seeing what Kant said and where, according to some critics, he went wrong will tell you everything you need to know about Harris’ false ambition.
I may be wrong, for, as noted, he is going to put this nonsense, no doubt, in writing.

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04.01.10

Challenges to Harris

Posted in ethics at 1:14 pm by nemo

The Moral Equivalent of the Parallel Postulate
by Sean

Sam Harris gave a TED talk, in which he claims that science can tell us what to value, or how to be moral. Unfortunately I completely disagree with his major point. (Via Jerry Coyne and 3 Quarks Daily.)

Sam Harris Responds
by Sean

Update and reboot: Sam Harris has responded to my blog post reacting to his TED talk. In the initial version of this response-to-the-response-to-the-response-to-the-talk, I let myself get carried away with irritation at this tweet, and thereby contributed to the distraction from substantive conversation. Bad blogger.

Harris’ morality thesis will have to wait on the fuller elaboration in his book, but the opposition from his science peers is par for the course, and perhaps will forestall the probable hype in action better than my partial Kantian perspective.

For a new atheist to start getting ambitious about moral theory is alarming because this cult has done enough harm already, and will be lusting to complete the project of scientism with a reduction of moral thinking.

Current thought, given the religion of Darwinism, is so confused on the question of morality that it would be better to simply shut up. Can’t be hoped for.

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03.31.10

Stupidity in science geeks

Posted in ethics at 11:48 am by nemo

From dawkins site:

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5343

Rather I was suggesting that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want—and, perforce, what other people should do and want in order to live the best lives possible. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind. As the response to my TED talk indicates, it is taboo for a scientist to think such things, much less say them public

This lunatic project is not in principle wrong, but from the New Atheists we can expect only a new form of stupidity in action, complete with cult conversions to the new extreme.

If Harris is so smart let’s see a commentary on Kantian ethics and the question of transcendental idealism, instead of this macho brand of reductionist scientism.

The strange thing about modern science is the way it leads the very intelligent back into stupidity. Geek smartness disguising stupidity is dangerous.

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03.30.10

Two posts at UD on Harris’ ethis project

Posted in ethics, Science & Religion at 12:20 pm by nemo

Lies Sam Harris Tells Himself

Sam Harris on Deriving Ought from Is — BY MEANS OF SCIENCE!
William Dembski

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Harris’ vaulting ambition: ethics and scientism

Posted in ethics, Kant, neuroscience at 12:13 pm by nemo

Moral confusion in the name of ‘science’
by Sam Harris, Project Reason

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5343

from dawkins site

Last month, I had the privilege of speaking at the 2010 TED conference for exactly 18 minutes. The short format of these talks is a brilliant innovation and surely the reason for their potent half-life on the Internet. However, 18 minutes is not a lot of time in which to present a detailed argument. My intent was to begin a conversation about how we can understand morality in universal, scientific terms. Many people who loved my talk, misunderstood what I was saying, and loved it for the wrong reasons; and many of my critics were right to think that I had said something extremely controversial. I was not suggesting that science can give us an evolutionary or neurobiological account of what people do in the name of “morality.” Nor was I merely saying that science can help us get what we want out of life. Both of these would have been quite banal claims to make (unless one happens to doubt the truth of evolution or the mind’s dependency on the brain). Rather I was suggesting that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want—and, perforce, what other people should do and want in order to live the best lives possible. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind. As the response to my TED talk indicates, it is taboo for a scientist to think such things, much less say them public.

Most educated, secular people (and this includes most scientists, academics, and journalists) seem to believe that there is no such thing as moral truth—only moral preference, moral opinion, and emotional reactions that we mistake for genuine knowledge of right and wrong, or good and evil. While I make the case for a universal conception of morality in much greater depth in my forthcoming book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values , I’d like to address the most common criticisms I’ve received thus far in response to my remarks at TED.

Harris’ claims here are not clear yet, but we should be extremely suspicious of this clear vaulting ambition to complete the ‘iron cage’ mentality of scientism now current.
On the other hand, Harris’ project was clearly prefigured by Kant in another mode: deriving ethical action from rational premises, a project both brilliant and flawed, but properly founded in the framework of transcendental idealism.

Harris superficial substitute will probably be more scientism, never challenge the dogmas of Darwinism, and be more wishwashy ‘ethics as the search for happiness’ bullshit.

The danger here is of bestseller idiots like Harris et al. creaing a public mood of fanaticism, as with Darwinian propaganda.
The trick here is to claim that ‘future research’ will solve the question, and that therefore it has solved the question. This trick is part of what made Darwinism a dogma of science, even as the failure to produce evidence for the claims of natural selection was phased into the background.

Scientists are angry they can’t reduce morality, and are lusting to make it a corner of scientism.
Keep in mind these idiots can’t get Darwin straight, ethics, well, they are overwheening in their ambition

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03.29.10

Harris’ morality project

Posted in ethics at 12:22 pm by nemo

Can You Derive Ethics from Science?

For those of you who don’t know, TED is a convention of (usually) world-class thinkers who each give a 15-minute talk about a subject. Many of the people in TED are thought leaders. Some of them, however, get in merely because they have written a popular or controversial book. In one of this year’s TED talks, Sam Harris demonstrated that he has no grasp on the basic concepts of either philosophy or ethics.

Harris’ goal was to demonstrate that there is an objective right and wrong, and that it can, at least potentially, be determined scientifically.

Harris’ basic argument went like this:

The goal of ethics is to make conscious people have more enjoyable lives
Neuroscience can tell us factually what sorts of things make people happy or unhappy, whole or broken, etc.
Therefore, ethics is a scientific discipline, with objective rights on wrongs determined by science
To begin with, Harris somehow thinks that he is unique in saying that ethical reasoning can include scientific reasoning. In fact, all ethical reasoning uses scientific data in one way or another. It is rather amusing that Harris points out quite emphatically that if he were to go to a physics convention on string theory, he would be rightfully thrown out, yet he misses the fact that the same thing would happen if he went to a philosophy or ethics convention.

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03.25.10

Moral Equivalent of the Parallel Postulate

Posted in ethics, Science & Religion at 12:03 pm by nemo

The Moral Equivalent of the Parallel Postulate
by Sean Carroll – Cosmic Variance

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5321

Sam Harris gave a TED talk, in which he claims that science can tell us what to value, or how to be moral. Unfortunately I completely disagree with his major point. (Via Jerry Coyne and 3 Quarks Daily.)

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03.24.10

Harris versus Dawkins

Posted in ethics, Evolution at 1:51 pm by nemo

Harris versus Dawkins, modern day Euthyphro dilemma

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03.03.10

Moral judgments

Posted in ethics at 12:44 pm by nemo

Moral judgments – by-product or by design?

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02.11.10

Theoretical and practical reason…

Posted in ethics at 2:40 pm by nemo

The previous post’s discussion shows us that we must distinguish science, as theoretical knowledge, from the protocal of behavior, which is not a science, but the principle of action, practical reason, to use the language of Kant. Practical reason is a generalized ethics, or simply a refernce to action pure itself with or without ethical judgments. This distinction is more general than the crippled science/religion distinction, and might substitute for it among secularists who are too often forced into the camp of scientism because of the anti-secularism of certain religious critics (who usually are plying a crude variant of the Kantian distinction above).

We live in a science culture where scientists fail to make this distinction and never see the problem in applying theory to action. In some cases, there is no problem with that, but in general we need two categories, corresponding to theoretical and practical reason. Theory and praxis.
Yet scientists tend to refuse this distinction, because they don’t want complications (keep it simple, stupid), exceptions, or intractable entities/issues like ‘free will’ to mess up their universal set of rules. One result is that evolutionary Darwinism becomes a universal law to apply to behavior, unwittingly, producing Social Darwinism, the application of a theory, natural selection, unconsciously, to behavior, disregarding the demands of practical reason, which would counsel the misapplication of theory evident in the confusion (natural selection becoming a ‘should’).
In general the world of science has at best one half the answer. I won’t say that religion has the other half, not by a long shot, but the clear duality of theoretical and practical reason is essential to the right application of reason to action, and enquiry. A most reasonable demand, yet one that scientific fanaticism refuses.

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Ethics, freedom to act, and scientific naturalism/scientism

Posted in ethics, Evolution, Kant, Science & Religion at 2:20 pm by nemo

Previous post: end of id….
Granting the abuse of the design argument by its proponents, the fact remains that scientists have obscured the question with their own methodology which leaves all discussion paralyzed. The design debate simply confuses the issue, so consider a different question, the nature of ethics, its relation to science, the nature of its evolution, and its status in the context of so-called naturalism. Natural selection arguments are not going to explicate ‘freedom to act’ (which may or may not be taken as ‘free will’ exactly. Free will is categorical. Some part of ethics can be based on the more general potential ‘freedom to act’, broken down into cases perhaps, etc…). So scientists are in worse trouble than designists here.

Scientists wish to do science, assume that naturalism is defiined by their method, and throw everything into that sausage machine, and refuse to listen to any problems in this approach.
But the whole game fails.
The reason is very simple: science, apparently, must confine itself exclusively to causal argument and analysis. But ethical behavior by definition is about non-causal issues, the freedom to act, and the will associated with that freedom.
This, by definition, is not science, and yet a crucial aspect of man, his culture and evolution. And yet science can’t handle it, even as is gets stubborn and attempts to eliminate ethics by looking solely at the causal explanations for ethical behavior. Scientists are devious here, because they pretend that they think ethical behavior is real, even as they tacitly eliminate the key property of freedom.
This behavior gets tiresome, and finally destructive, and it is small wonder that religious folks simply say goodbye to science.
What is unfortunate is the non-religious secularists fritter away their modernits foundations by assenting to scientism here.

The question was carefully analyzed by Kant, and a resolution in the context of science came into being.
But scientists are so stubbornly stupid that they don’t even want a solution to this issue. They want universal causal reductionism, the elimination of ethics, and the freedom to act, even as they deny (they must deny) in public that this is what they are doing.
Is the freedom to act beyond nature then? You can see the silliness of the whole framework. We wouldn’t really want to take that position, but scientific thinking is so crippled that, evidently, the freedom to act is supernatrural, and therefore doesn’t exist, etc, etc..
Unless scientists can do better than this religious types will bug them ad infinitum, without mercy.
\\
Science idiots who wish to adopt this lifestyle will have to do so. Everyone else needs to step around this idiocy and adopt a different perspective. If they dislike religious confusion here, a Kantian perspective is a good place to start. So simple, eminently secular, with or without theistic obsessions, atheistic obsessions.
Scientists ridicule religious critics of their methods, or of evolution. But their own stance is completely confused and unreasonable, worse, they cannot grasp the difficulty such is the rigidity of scientific thinking and training.
Stupidity in people with high IQ’s is a most regrettable state of affairs, because it seems to prevent feedback or learning.

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01.26.10

Causal arguments and ethics?

Posted in ethics, Evolution at 1:04 pm by nemo

Visions of ghostseer

The attempt to Darwinize ethics is the perpetual stumbling of the perpetual idiots of Darwinian theory. The point is not to make a religion out of Kant but to see his point that negating freedom through causal arguments is by definition the wrong approach to ethics.

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Darwinian idiocy on ethics

Posted in ethics, Evolution at 1:00 pm by nemo

Evolution and Ethics at Oxford: From Charles Darwin to C. S. Lewis
Hume was not a Darwinist, so it is unfair to lump him together with Darwin, and the reductionist pseudo-ethics that gets produced by natural selection theory.
The endless slanders against Kant’s simple gesture of separating causality and freedom in theories of ethics is forever a stumbling block to Darwinian idiocy.

A growing number of leading philosophers are adopting a Humean/Darwinian moral psychology supported by recent research in evolutionary science, neuroscience, anthropology, and animal behavior. But one can still see the powerful influence of a Kantian transcendentalism in moral philosophy that regards morality as an autonomous realm of pure reason totally separated from the empirical realm of nature as studied by natural science.

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01.25.10

A Very Bad Wizard

Posted in ethics at 1:16 pm by nemo

Review – A Very Bad Wizard
Morality Behind the Curtain
by Tamler Sommers
McSweeney’s, 2009
Review by Joshua May
Dec 29th 2009 (Volume 13, Issue 53)

A Very Bad Wizard is a collection of delightful interviews or conversations conducted by philosopher Tamler Sommers. Sommers interviews an array of researchers–from psychologists to primatologists to philosophers–who all have one thing in common: their work has direct implications for the study of morality. The distinguished interviewees are Galen Strawson, Philip Zimabrdo, Franz De Waal, Michael Ruse, Joseph Henrich, Joshua Greene, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Stich, and William Ian Miller. I read the book on my flights back to the West Coast after picking it up a few days prior in Massachusetts. I simply couldn’t put it down! It truly is–as Steven Pinker states in his blurb–both thought-provoking and entertaining. It is a lively way into some of the most fascinating interdisciplinary research on ethics–what often now goes under the heading “moral psychology”

Interesting, but what a limited perspective on morality.

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12.12.09

Hauser to Nietzsche and beyond

Posted in ethics, Evolution at 11:39 am by nemo

Post on Hauser and the evolution of morality

We discussed Hauser’s piece at Edge.org twice last week, and I a waiting on a copy of his book. But this discussion at Evo-News is reasonable.

However, at least, despite his Darwinian confusions, Hauser has a point: not religion, but ‘evolution’ seems to produce a moral code. Problem is, what evolution? Darwinian evolution hardly foots the bill.
Hauser is on dangerous ground for a Darwinian: he looks at morality as a whole, not just the trick piece about altruism used by Darwinians with their back to the wall.
To explain the existence of a moral code with Darwin’s theory seems impossible, but in any case has not yet been achieved.

Meanwhile the influence of Nietzsche remains a constant, a kind of adolescent rite of passage leaves the reality of Nietzschean thinking obscured by mythology. The fact is that Nietzsche is praised for genius ad profundity but actually has the most vulgar oversimplification of Schopenhauer for his starting point.

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12.05.09

Hauser and Kant

Posted in ethics, Evolution at 3:29 pm by nemo

Comment on Hauser’s book on ethics/evolution

I think I was a little unfair to Hauser, and am ordering his book to take another look (after reading the book hurriedly a while back).
If you are raised on Nietzsche, gosh forbid, the idea of morality seems strange now, and, frankly, that is strange. Nietzsche’s attack on morality is misguided, and springs in part from Schopenhauer’s rejection of Kantian ethics. But I think that Kantian ethics could have been improved using Schopenhauer. Nietzsche always gets the sweepstakes for ‘brilliance’, but his oversimplifications are suspicious, and a bit stupid. He makes life too easy for himself.
The immense complexity of the questions of ethics, addressed by Kant, offer no escape.

The point here is the resemblance of Hauser’s general claim, minus the details, to the Kantian view of ethics. Kant’s claim is not to invent ethcs, but to explicate ‘common ordinary morality’, something that is evident in all tribes of life, despiste the contradictions there.
Kant’s attempt to clarify that is based on an Enlightenment take on ‘reason’ and seems to produce inconsistencies.
So does Set Theory,which didn’t justify abolishing it.

Kant’s advance is great, and remains to be completed.
Hauser’s perspective, then, is not as unusual as it might seem.

The problem I had with Hauser is the Darwinization of his claim.

The issue of how ‘common ordinary morality’ could have evolved remains a truly hard problem, one lacking any evidence.

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12.04.09

Hauser guilty of cowardice?

Posted in ethics, Evolution, Kant at 3:00 pm by nemo

IT SEEMS BIOLOGY (NOT RELIGION) EQUALS MORALITY
I was perhaps overly hasty in dismissing Hauser’s work today in a previous post. His thesis makes a good deal of sense, and shows a strong resemblance to Kantian thinking on morality. The problem I have is, not the suggestion that our sense of morality has ‘evolved’, but the assumption that this evolution must be Darwinian. If Hauser is so confused as to put his thesis on the doorstep of Darwin then his work deserves to be condemned, and probably for cowardice since I am suspicious that Hauser is a fake Darwinist.
The problem with all this is underestimating the full complexity of human evolution, which requires first an explanation of evolving consciousness, and much else.

Further, since we have cited Kant, the question of the ‘freedom to act ethically’ arises, and this is always factored out by scientific students of morality. The complicated deliberations of Kant on the basis of morality and freedom has been replaced with a shark’s game of ‘science’, and the inability of the participants to even speak freely or in violation of the Paradigm.
One has to be suspicious that Hauser is lying to get ahead and achieve some place in the science public.
That’s unethical.

If religion is not the source of our moral insights — and moral education has the demonstrated potential to teach partiality and, therefore, morally destructive behaviour — then what other sources of inspiration are on offer?
Read the rest of this entry »

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11.30.09

Bias and reductionist limits in bioethics

Posted in biology, ethics at 1:49 pm by nemo

Is bioethics and ally of atheism?

The very nature of the question is somehow alarming, and a warning that ethical judgments from atheists/darwinists are all going to be reconciled with scientism, a recipe for disaster in the end. It is a form of bias.

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Bioethics an ally of atheism?

Posted in atheism, ethics at 1:07 pm by nemo

Is bioethics an ally of atheism?
by Michael Cook – BioEdge

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8756/

from dawkins site
From a professional bioethicist’s point of view, one of the disturbing facts to emerge from the heated debate over Obamacare is that “bioethicist” has become a dirty word for many Americans. Few had ever heard of bioethics before, but healthcare rationing is being justified by guys called “bioethicists” — and they don’t like it. Furthermore, it is being associated with atheists, and many Americans are deeply suspicious of such people.

So is it good public relations for atheist bioethicists to trumpet their atheism and call for more petrol to be thrown on the fires of religious controversy? Apparently Udo Schuklenk, the editor of the leading journal Bioethics, and Russell Blackford, an Australian bioethicist, think so.

They recently published an article in the Guardian’s “Comment is free” blog, under the headline, “Stand up, stand up, against Jesus” ( http://richarddawkins.net/articles/4577). They reject accommodationist atheism which cozies up to religious people if they are prepared to support evolution. Schuklenk and Blackford, however, call for more robust criticism:

“Religion cannot be eradicated — that is not a realistic goal — but the many problems with religious dogma can and should be highlighted. As atheists, we should state clearly that no religion has any rational warrant, and that many churches and sects promote cruelty, ignorance, and civil rights abuses.”

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10.09.09

Kant vs Nietzsche on ‘death of god’ and rebirth of morality

Posted in ethics, Kant at 11:52 am by nemo

Does the Death of God Mean the Death of Morality? A Darwinian Response to Nietzsche’s Challenge

Actually not, the ‘death of god’ (a false concept in any case) can be a precondition for a real morality, without the theistic confusion over autonomy criticized by Kant.

Behind all the hot air of Nietzsche’s ‘death of god’ lies the real thing in Kant, who never declared himself an atheist, but who went through the equivalent, and ‘reinvented god’ in a new a more intelligent fashion in his critiques of ethical judgment.

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10.04.09

Sandel on justice

Posted in ethics, liberalism at 1:08 pm by nemo

http://chronicle.com/article/Michael-Sandel-Wants-to-Talk/48573/

Michael Sandel Wants to Talk to You About Justice
Taking his popular Harvard course to public television may raise the scholar’s profile and, just maybe, the tone of political discourse

Sandel’s discussion has a strong Kantian component, and the place of this in the Darwin universe is problematical, which means that Darwinism is problematical.

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09.07.09

Booknotes: Darwin’s Ethic

Posted in ethics, Evolution at 4:32 pm by nemo

Arnhart reviews/discusses Weikart’s new Darwin’s Ethic

According to Weikart, the fundamental end for Hitler’s ethic was the evolutionary improvement in the human species. Hitler interpreted the Darwinian conception of evolution as dominated by a struggle for existence as teaching that the only moral imperative was the survival and reproduction of the superior races over the inferior races. The Aryan or Nordic race prevalent in the German Volk arose in evolutionary history as the superior race. Promoting the progressive expansion of that race would therefore promote the biological improvement of the human species.

The elements of Nazi ideology seem diverse–racism, German nationalism, anti-Semitism, socialism, militarism, imperialistic expansionism, the “leadership principle,” eugenics, and genocide. But Weikart is remarkably persuasive in showing how all of these strands of Nazi ideology are woven together by the final end of Hitler’s ethic–the evolutionary improvement of the human species through the triumph of the Aryan race in the struggle for existence.

Proponents of Darwinian ethics–like myself–should be honest in recognizing the impressive evidence that Weikart marshalls from Hitler’s writings and speeches to show how Hitler’s thought and actions were driven by a coherent view of Darwinian ethics.

But once this is conceded, then we are left with at least three questions. First, was Hitler’s Darwinian ethics scientifically correct? Second, was it logically derived from Darwin’s science? Third, what alternative view of morality is Weikart offering us?

The case of Hitler and the Nazis is proof that we must always be wary of an underground stream of eugenic fascism. Suddenly erupting in the early twentieth century, with obvious ulterior ‘historical conditioning influences’ (a phrase concocted to satisfy the critics of the ‘direct causation’ claims sometimes made here) springing from Nietzsche, Wagner (?), Darwin, Aryan pseudo-history, and misunderstood distinctions of the ‘esoteric’/'exoteric’, and gosh knows what else, Hitler’s eugenic calamity shows that the public assurances of ‘nice Darwinians’ are insufficient. The madness can erupt anytime during periods of social instability for the simple reason that people who believe in Darwinism can easily be tempted to think that genocide will generate evolution. Nietzsche was an example!
Anyone who explores ‘Darwin culture’ over a lifetime comes across many rank idiots who take Darwin at his word (we had one here in the comments while back who insisted on extermination of all below a certain IQ level, unaware that he put himself at risk).

The only real protection is the realization that natural selection cannot generate evolution in man. The psychic frame of man is highly complex, to a large degree ‘virtual’ and not accessible to temporal manipulations.
It is impossible to ‘evolve’ man by the methods of mass eugenic selection. You could certainly ‘induce’ microevolution, but the inner nature of man is locked and sealed behind a kind of Kantian noumenal barrier.

Note: Much fascist eugenics is caught up in the question of Aryan ‘master race’ mythology. The whole mythology is a misguided form of dementia. The Aryans were quite overrated.
At The Gurdjieff Con we have discussed Danielou’s A Brief History Of India and the now challenged (but probably correct all along) vies that the Aryans entering India were less advanced in many ways than the people they encountered, and that the current perspective on the Aryan source of Indian religion in the Vedas is false and misleading: the sources of Indian religion lay in the Dravidian and other earlier Indian cultures. The whole thing was just ripped by the Aryans who imposed on it the false law of caste in the hodgepodge of what we now call Hinduism.

So much for Nietzsche and the other Aryan supremacists. The great race of supermen must have been the black Dravidians, confronted by an invasion of Aryan poor white trash.

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