Hello, I saw you linking this piece on X in a reply to prof. Stock.
Interesting read, I agree with most of it, except for a feeling I have that between the lines of your rational discussion there may be some spiritual attitude which I would be skeptical of.
If I may, two quick observations.
First, even though you recognize one could be better off without positing a clear nature/nurture divide, I'm not sure I agree with your take on what's "innate" (if I even understood correctly).
You speak of "inborn trait" as being the same as "genetic". You also say "one is not born with a shoe fetish or a pedophilia gene any more than one is born with an attraction to blondes". Well, speaking strictly of shoes it may SOUND as a reductio ad absurdum, but personally I'd bet that a pedophilia gene may indeed be a resonable scientific hypoteses, and I certainly feel if I'm attracted to blondes this isn't too different from being attracted to the opposite sex (which is pretty much understood as innate). I'm afraid the problem lies in you not allowing an intermediate role to be played between genetics and behaviour: learning. There is research showing that one is attracted by what is familiar to him, but not too much similar (as in: preferably don't have sex with your sister, but choose a mate which is not too different from her). This is not particularly a "cultural" influence, more an environmental one, but it's also genetic, in the sense that the algoritm that instructs you what to look for may well be encoded in genes. (So there isn't a gene that tells you: look for blondes, but there may be one that tells you: if your potential mate has the same hair as your sister, all the better -it's not literally this, I'm just outlining the reasoning).
I don't see any essentialist risk in this: I remember Dawkins pointing out that he doesn't understand some feminist fear of admitting some behaviour as genetic in origin: why, if one can fight against what he was conditioned to do by society, couldn't fight in the same way what he was conditioned to do by his genes? One is not more inevitable than the other.
More to the point of your considerations, I think this sentence is a good summary: "consent becomes a kind of baseline, far below anything any reasonable person would consider morally/ethically sufficient". It may well be that the law should be content with the baseline. We can then try to more or less enforce social rules. I'd like to point out that this shouldn't just mean males should strive to be morally above that baseline. I like (and probably share) your approach to virtue ethics. But you seem also to be materialistic. We should then ask what are the material interest of males and females, because they are more likely to have an impact on society. Why should a selfish male be interested in being ethically better than his peers? I don't wanna sound like a MRA or an incel, but they may have a point. Men will be incentivized to behave better when behaving better will be rewarded. Of course dishonesty is a thing, but there are still social clues one can act upon. I'd say we should teach girls to choose boys who behave better over macho types. 30 years ago this attitude bothered me. I grew over that, but rationally I think there is a point: if girls are attracted to the more assertive type, but this is correlated also with more selfishness, then one shouldn't act susprised when this selfishness shows itself.
I appreciate your thoughtful engagement with the piece. You shan't disabuse me of the spiritual dimension of my own thought, but that's a much longer discussion. I might point you to David Bentley Hart's theses on consciousness as an entree (ubiquitous on YouTube). His remarks on Dawkins rather sum up my own as well (but I'll link another article here, to put things in my own words). I'm absolutely a materialist, to a point, but materialism hasn't the capacity to totalize. I'm frequently misread on my nature/nurture stuff, in part because what I'm saying is so far afield, epistemologically speaking, from the modern zeitgeist, that it can be a bit strenuous. I'm saying it is an utterly false dichotomy, not merely useless, but misleading, a kind of petītiō principiī fallacy writ very large. I don't say its unclear. I say that it's false, through and through. Nature and consciousness co-participate in one another to such a degree that no division is even possible.
"Why should a selfish male be interested in being ethically better than his peers?"
This is a different question (yes, I nod to it wrt virtue ethics), and here is where I'll put the other link I promised, to perhaps clarify my own thinking beyond the questions raised by Dr. Stock's insightful piece.
Thanks again for paying attention (and for challenging me).
Am I missing something, or you promised two links and I see only one? :)
I am a physicist and I would define myself as an agnostic (I grew up in a catholic environment, oriented toward liberation theology, and I don't have much sympathy for *militant* atheism). I certainly believe metaphysics has a place: but it is way deeper than explaining consciousness. Science is concerned on HOW things work, not why. But you can then ask, how is it so that the law of physics are "enforced"? And yes, this is just a permutation on the old question "how is it that being exists instead of nothingness?". Unfortunately, I don't think consciousness has any place in this: we may not be able to explain it, but it is something that emerge from complexity in a similar way that temperature is simply a manifestation of the average energy of gas molecules: from very many simple things it comes out something macroscopically, qualitatively different. Meanwhile, morality is a different thing, but I'm afraid it's a byproduct of our species evolutionary history. Also unfortunately, while I believe metaphysics has a place, I also believe "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
We call physical laws "laws," but they're no such thing in the juridical sense, because juridical law begins with the assumption that the law can be broken. But I'm quibbling now. (-; I know what you mean, and it's more than "why is there something and not nothing?" It's about Being, which contains and transcends the restless transience we see unfolding within this phenomenon called time. In the co-participation of consciousness and the rest (the domain of phenomenology), we experience, in moments of restful contemplation, the staggering IS-ness of "this." It was during a moment of clarity like this, one day on a river bank, that I was suddenly struck (as Annie Dillard once said, "like a bell") with the certain and perfusive presence of God. But, I digress.
I provisionally agree that sound scientific practice (I'm skeptical of the notion of "Science") limits its questions, in fact, more restrictively even than "how?". That's leaving aside, of course, all the business of who decides (via funding) what scientific research is pursued. I admire the strictness, the rigor, of that practice, wherein "certainty" is maybe the biggest word of all. But the practice, self-limiting (and humble) as it is, depends upon no prior metaphysical assumptions. It limits itself, in every instance after the hypothesis, to observation.
The relevant point here--yes, I'm getting there--is that while this is an efficacious practice (in the practice itself and in its applications), it requires a form of control that decontextualizes what it observes. A comprehensive metaphysics, on the other hand, depends upon those often dynamic relations that constitute context.
Where you and I diverge is on the question of "priors." Is the form ontologically prior to its "parts"? You say, the form emerges "from complexity in a similar way that temperature is simply a manifestation of the average energy of gas molecules: from very many simple things it comes out something macroscopically, qualitatively different." This is not a scientific assumption, but a metaphysical one, and an abstraction in the bargain. I say, you are Enrico--in all your gloriously dynamic complexity--and that is prior to the transient exchanges of molecules that sustain Enrico, and even prior to the past formative [teleological] processes that brought Enrico into being, or Being.
Metaphysically, I suggest that this is not "accidental" (an idea that is well beyond the remit of scientific practice), and that there is a telos drawing all these discretely conceptualized and anatomized physical phenomena toward these many forms.
Consciousness is part of this, but deserves its own place on the shelf. In my view, there is already a divine consciousness prior to Being (not temporally prior, because time is an aspect of Creation and contained within it). However limited, your consciousness and mine are "given" of that divine consciousness, and drawn--at some level--back toward it in contemplation. (Nowadays, there's so much noise, that contemplation has become far more difficult.)
This chasing after causes that marks scientism, the belief that "Science" holds the key to understanding all of Being is fundamentally flawed by the collapse of all four of Aristotle's "causa" into efficient cause.
I'll give you another link now. (-: (on consciousness)
Hi Stan, I wanted to let you know that I followed the link you provided and it took me to your post Failure of the Secular; however, at the very beginning of that piece is an underlined link (The Battle of Woke Hill) which I attempted to read, but was meant with an “ERROR” on Medium indicating the post violated their policy. Do you have another way for your readers to access that piece? Thank you for your time.
I think it’s interesting that so many people in the medical field (hormone specialists, therapists and surgeons) are okay with “gender affirming care” for minors, when most research indicates the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until around 25 years of age. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision making, reasoning and the ability to consider the long term consequences of your actions. I guess if we had laws based on science, you’d need to be 25 years old before you could drink, use (legal) drugs, consent to sex, join the military, vote, consent to “gender affirming care,” and people under 25 years old could not be “tried as an adult” for crimes. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed and if anything the “age of consent” and the age at which youth are tried as adults for crimes seems to just get younger and younger.
Hello, I saw you linking this piece on X in a reply to prof. Stock.
Interesting read, I agree with most of it, except for a feeling I have that between the lines of your rational discussion there may be some spiritual attitude which I would be skeptical of.
If I may, two quick observations.
First, even though you recognize one could be better off without positing a clear nature/nurture divide, I'm not sure I agree with your take on what's "innate" (if I even understood correctly).
You speak of "inborn trait" as being the same as "genetic". You also say "one is not born with a shoe fetish or a pedophilia gene any more than one is born with an attraction to blondes". Well, speaking strictly of shoes it may SOUND as a reductio ad absurdum, but personally I'd bet that a pedophilia gene may indeed be a resonable scientific hypoteses, and I certainly feel if I'm attracted to blondes this isn't too different from being attracted to the opposite sex (which is pretty much understood as innate). I'm afraid the problem lies in you not allowing an intermediate role to be played between genetics and behaviour: learning. There is research showing that one is attracted by what is familiar to him, but not too much similar (as in: preferably don't have sex with your sister, but choose a mate which is not too different from her). This is not particularly a "cultural" influence, more an environmental one, but it's also genetic, in the sense that the algoritm that instructs you what to look for may well be encoded in genes. (So there isn't a gene that tells you: look for blondes, but there may be one that tells you: if your potential mate has the same hair as your sister, all the better -it's not literally this, I'm just outlining the reasoning).
I don't see any essentialist risk in this: I remember Dawkins pointing out that he doesn't understand some feminist fear of admitting some behaviour as genetic in origin: why, if one can fight against what he was conditioned to do by society, couldn't fight in the same way what he was conditioned to do by his genes? One is not more inevitable than the other.
More to the point of your considerations, I think this sentence is a good summary: "consent becomes a kind of baseline, far below anything any reasonable person would consider morally/ethically sufficient". It may well be that the law should be content with the baseline. We can then try to more or less enforce social rules. I'd like to point out that this shouldn't just mean males should strive to be morally above that baseline. I like (and probably share) your approach to virtue ethics. But you seem also to be materialistic. We should then ask what are the material interest of males and females, because they are more likely to have an impact on society. Why should a selfish male be interested in being ethically better than his peers? I don't wanna sound like a MRA or an incel, but they may have a point. Men will be incentivized to behave better when behaving better will be rewarded. Of course dishonesty is a thing, but there are still social clues one can act upon. I'd say we should teach girls to choose boys who behave better over macho types. 30 years ago this attitude bothered me. I grew over that, but rationally I think there is a point: if girls are attracted to the more assertive type, but this is correlated also with more selfishness, then one shouldn't act susprised when this selfishness shows itself.
I appreciate your thoughtful engagement with the piece. You shan't disabuse me of the spiritual dimension of my own thought, but that's a much longer discussion. I might point you to David Bentley Hart's theses on consciousness as an entree (ubiquitous on YouTube). His remarks on Dawkins rather sum up my own as well (but I'll link another article here, to put things in my own words). I'm absolutely a materialist, to a point, but materialism hasn't the capacity to totalize. I'm frequently misread on my nature/nurture stuff, in part because what I'm saying is so far afield, epistemologically speaking, from the modern zeitgeist, that it can be a bit strenuous. I'm saying it is an utterly false dichotomy, not merely useless, but misleading, a kind of petītiō principiī fallacy writ very large. I don't say its unclear. I say that it's false, through and through. Nature and consciousness co-participate in one another to such a degree that no division is even possible.
"Why should a selfish male be interested in being ethically better than his peers?"
This is a different question (yes, I nod to it wrt virtue ethics), and here is where I'll put the other link I promised, to perhaps clarify my own thinking beyond the questions raised by Dr. Stock's insightful piece.
Thanks again for paying attention (and for challenging me).
Peace
https://stanleyabner1951gmailcom.substack.com/p/failure-of-the-secular
Am I missing something, or you promised two links and I see only one? :)
I am a physicist and I would define myself as an agnostic (I grew up in a catholic environment, oriented toward liberation theology, and I don't have much sympathy for *militant* atheism). I certainly believe metaphysics has a place: but it is way deeper than explaining consciousness. Science is concerned on HOW things work, not why. But you can then ask, how is it so that the law of physics are "enforced"? And yes, this is just a permutation on the old question "how is it that being exists instead of nothingness?". Unfortunately, I don't think consciousness has any place in this: we may not be able to explain it, but it is something that emerge from complexity in a similar way that temperature is simply a manifestation of the average energy of gas molecules: from very many simple things it comes out something macroscopically, qualitatively different. Meanwhile, morality is a different thing, but I'm afraid it's a byproduct of our species evolutionary history. Also unfortunately, while I believe metaphysics has a place, I also believe "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
Peace of course
We call physical laws "laws," but they're no such thing in the juridical sense, because juridical law begins with the assumption that the law can be broken. But I'm quibbling now. (-; I know what you mean, and it's more than "why is there something and not nothing?" It's about Being, which contains and transcends the restless transience we see unfolding within this phenomenon called time. In the co-participation of consciousness and the rest (the domain of phenomenology), we experience, in moments of restful contemplation, the staggering IS-ness of "this." It was during a moment of clarity like this, one day on a river bank, that I was suddenly struck (as Annie Dillard once said, "like a bell") with the certain and perfusive presence of God. But, I digress.
I provisionally agree that sound scientific practice (I'm skeptical of the notion of "Science") limits its questions, in fact, more restrictively even than "how?". That's leaving aside, of course, all the business of who decides (via funding) what scientific research is pursued. I admire the strictness, the rigor, of that practice, wherein "certainty" is maybe the biggest word of all. But the practice, self-limiting (and humble) as it is, depends upon no prior metaphysical assumptions. It limits itself, in every instance after the hypothesis, to observation.
The relevant point here--yes, I'm getting there--is that while this is an efficacious practice (in the practice itself and in its applications), it requires a form of control that decontextualizes what it observes. A comprehensive metaphysics, on the other hand, depends upon those often dynamic relations that constitute context.
Where you and I diverge is on the question of "priors." Is the form ontologically prior to its "parts"? You say, the form emerges "from complexity in a similar way that temperature is simply a manifestation of the average energy of gas molecules: from very many simple things it comes out something macroscopically, qualitatively different." This is not a scientific assumption, but a metaphysical one, and an abstraction in the bargain. I say, you are Enrico--in all your gloriously dynamic complexity--and that is prior to the transient exchanges of molecules that sustain Enrico, and even prior to the past formative [teleological] processes that brought Enrico into being, or Being.
Metaphysically, I suggest that this is not "accidental" (an idea that is well beyond the remit of scientific practice), and that there is a telos drawing all these discretely conceptualized and anatomized physical phenomena toward these many forms.
Consciousness is part of this, but deserves its own place on the shelf. In my view, there is already a divine consciousness prior to Being (not temporally prior, because time is an aspect of Creation and contained within it). However limited, your consciousness and mine are "given" of that divine consciousness, and drawn--at some level--back toward it in contemplation. (Nowadays, there's so much noise, that contemplation has become far more difficult.)
This chasing after causes that marks scientism, the belief that "Science" holds the key to understanding all of Being is fundamentally flawed by the collapse of all four of Aristotle's "causa" into efficient cause.
I'll give you another link now. (-: (on consciousness)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQKoRA6deEQ
Hi Stan, I wanted to let you know that I followed the link you provided and it took me to your post Failure of the Secular; however, at the very beginning of that piece is an underlined link (The Battle of Woke Hill) which I attempted to read, but was meant with an “ERROR” on Medium indicating the post violated their policy. Do you have another way for your readers to access that piece? Thank you for your time.
Gotta fix that (Medium shut me down). Here’s the other. Thanks for the heads-up, amiga mia.
https://stanleyabner1951gmailcom.substack.com/p/the-battle-of-woke-hill
I think it’s interesting that so many people in the medical field (hormone specialists, therapists and surgeons) are okay with “gender affirming care” for minors, when most research indicates the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until around 25 years of age. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision making, reasoning and the ability to consider the long term consequences of your actions. I guess if we had laws based on science, you’d need to be 25 years old before you could drink, use (legal) drugs, consent to sex, join the military, vote, consent to “gender affirming care,” and people under 25 years old could not be “tried as an adult” for crimes. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed and if anything the “age of consent” and the age at which youth are tried as adults for crimes seems to just get younger and younger.