Darwinian nihilism?

from the NYT Sunday book review of Dawkin's The God Delusion:



"But the objectivity of ethics is undermined by Dawkins’s logic just as surely as religion is. The evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, in a 1985 paper written with the philosopher Michael Ruse, put the point starkly: ethics “is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate,” and “the way our biology enforces its ends is by making us think that there is an objective higher code to which we are all subject.” In reducing ideas to “memes” that propagate by various kinds of “misfiring,” Dawkins is, willy-nilly, courting what some have called Darwinian nihilism. "



willy-nilly, eh? the usefulness of current theories of "memes" aside, is there an alternative to this willy-nilly-ness? any serious theory of ideas must, in the end, explain its own existence by appealing to purely physical causes. this is initially corrosive, but finally liberating. though i kindof like the title of Darwinian nihilist.

For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything

by Greene M, Cohen, JD (respectively of Harvard and Princeton)

draft review/commentary

The premise of the article, to state it in it’s boldest form, is this: because the world we occupy has come to exist in its present form through simple physical evolution, there is no need to appeal to individual actors as explananda, and thus, an individual is as responsible for her acts as a bumped rock is responsible for rolling down a mountain. This is, of course, true. But if one is going to do more than hint at this statement, its consequences (if there indeed are any) must be dealt with.



The contribution of the article are first, to dance very near the phrasing of the premise above, which is an accomplishment for any scientist to publicly utter, and second, to illustrate the elaboration of the how of the premise above, as it applies to the human mind. That is, we know something practically inconceivable has happened in the evolution of the brain, but we are slowly exploring the small corner of the physical how that explains processes of learning and development and the moment by moment action of the brain. This elaboration is necessary if we are to bridge the illusory mind-body problem, the connection between the materialist premise above and the actions of an agent (as an agent of action), not only in theory but in actual everyday practice.



The paper also attempts to make the case for a consequentialist view of the law. This is a case that does not need to be made, but it worth the note in LN that any competing views do not accept basic physical determinism. In the extreme, such views on the law can be dismissed as nonsensical. The enumerated benefits of accepting a consequentialist view include a shift toward better corrective measures such as education and early intervention, instead of blind (but evolved and affect-guided) retributive punishment. Punishment can be replaced by theories of the physics of the very complicated systems that brains are (e.g., detailing, effectively, how to stop a disturbed brain from rolling down a slope).

...

LN does fail to draw an obvious and surprising new relation between an accepted determinism-based consequentialism and one of the most ancient pieces of wisdom regarding justice. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” now becomes “Do unto others as you do unto you”... For if the distinction between the causes of “I” and “the world” dissolves, so too does the distinction between consequences for me and consequences for you?