Recommended: Wild Tales (2014)

I loved this film despite hating its underlying premise.



As the title suggests, and the opening credits make explicit, Wild Tales is based on the notion that we’re a heartbeat away from “regressing” to our animal nature. As expected, this nature is characterized by: violence, vengeance, irrationality, lust, the reflexive defense of kin and tribe, greed, and gluttony.

This sort of speciesism – which itself underlies a great deal of racism, sexism, and political repression - we can and should avoid, particularly in works that aspire to political satire or social criticism. Director Damián Szifrón has discussed the film’s theme:

Despite the clear common theme of violence and vengeance, what connects the accounts, according to the director, is ‘the fuzzy boundary that separates civilization from barbarism, the vertigo of losing your temper, and the undeniable pleasure of losing control’. This is explored through the concept that human beings have animalistic features. Szifron considers the main difference between human and animals is the capacity one has to restrain oneself as opposed to animals who are guided by their instincts. Humans ‘have a fight or flee mechanism, but it comes with a very high cost. Most of us live with the frustration of having to repress oneself, but some people explode. This is a movie about those who explode’. It deals with ‘daily life’ aspects and ‘is a movie about the desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom, and the rage and anguish it produces, can cause us to run off the rails’. The main issue, according to Szifron, ‘is the pleasure of reacting, the pleasure of reacting toward injustice’. (my emphasis)

The Freudian distinction between a repressed “civilization” and a “barbarous” freedom, in addition to isolating the human characters with their alleged instincts and drives, presents an obstacle to working out a real approach to political freedom and social justice. As I said, I loved the film, but it could have been a much stronger work of art, a stinging and biting social satire, had it questioned and challenged received wisdom about “civilization” and “barbarism,” “human” and “animal,” rather than reproducing it.

COWSPIRACY

Now on Netflix:

Quote of the day

[I know this is a second one: I haven’t posted in a few days and have a bit of a backlog.]

“The more fundamental question is what it means for society, for politics or for personal life stories, to operate according to certain forms of psychological and neurological explanation. A troubling possibility is that it is precisely the behaviourist and medical view of the mind – as some sort of internal bodily organ or instrument which suffers silently – that locks us into the forms of passivity associated with depression and anxiety in the first place.

…

The question of how we explain and respond to human unhappiness is ultimately an ethical and political one, of where we choose to focus our critique and, to be blunt about it, where we intend to level the blame.

…

Treating the mind (or brain) as some form of decontextualized, independent entity that breaks down of its own accord, requiring monitoring and fixing by experts, is a symptom of the very culture that produces a great deal of unhappiness today. Disempowerment is an integral part of how depression, stress, and anxiety arise. And despite the best efforts of positive psychologists, disempowerment occurs as an effect of social, political and economic institutions and strategies, not of neural or behavioral errors.”

- Will Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (2015)

(I was expecting something different from this book, and was, in general, pleasantly surprised. I do have some problems with some of Davies’ arguments, particularly as they’re distorted by speciesism. He notes, for example, that Jeremy Bentham, with his emphasis on pleasure and suffering, found sympathies with other animals – who also experience pleasure and suffering – and included them within the sphere of ethics, which Davies seems to regard as (vaguely) positive. But then he goes on to assume that an ethics and public policy that encompasses both humans and other animals necessarily has to be based on a simplified and attenuated vision of humans. Psychological traditions that reduce human experience and needs to pleasure seeking and pain avoidance, to simple calculations of utility, to a one-dimensional material idea of “happiness” are guilty, he argues, of treating humans like animals; a valid psychology would appreciate what’s distinctively human about us – in other words, how we differ fundamentally from all other animal species, including the white rats, dogs, and monkeys on whom psychologists in these traditions have so often experimented.

But this argument has it backwards. Rightly rejecting a ridiculously attenuated view of human psychological experience, it leaves unquestioned a ridiculously attenuated view of the psychological experience of other animal species. A valid psychological-ethical-political approach, in fact, would remain inclusive of other animals. Rather than understanding humans in terms of a degraded view of other animals as mere responders to stimuli, though, it would understand that other animals have emotions, desires, needs, social relationships, and so on. This isn’t a radical view: it was recognized by Darwin and has been extensively documented over the past decades. There’s simply no way human psychology and politics can be approached validly without appreciating it.)

(I’m also at a loss as to why he would ignore virtually the entire tradition of political-humanist-liberation psychology – Fromm, Horney, Fanon, Martin-Baró,…)

What a struggle

A couple of posts at Butterflies and Wheels called to mind one of my favorite sections in Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her

[CHARLES DARWIN, 1809-1882]

If Darwin’s ill health was not, as some seem to think, a pretext to isolate himself with his work, neither was it, as Darwin had right to fear, an insuperable obstacle to his work. One reason why it did not prove fatal to his ambitions was the devotion and sympathy of his wife.

GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution

Beginning early in the day, after taking breakfast alone, and a walk, he worked in his study from eight until nine-thirty in the morning. Then he went into the drawing room with his family; he looked over the mail, and sometimes listened as a novel was read aloud, he resting on the sofa. (‘All that we can do’, he wrote, ‘is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio…) He returned to his study at ten-thirty and emerged again at noon. (…that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation, or at intervals, has to struggle for life or suffer great destruction…’) Then he took another walk, past the greenhouse, perhaps looking at an experimental plant, and then onto a gravel walk encircling an acre and a half of land, taking a specified number of turns, perhaps watching his children play, observing a bird, a flower. Or before he took too many spills, taking a canter on an old and gentle horse. (‘What a struggle must have gone on during long centuries’, he wrote, ‘between several kinds of trees each annually scattering its seeds by the thousands, what war between insect and insect – between insects, snails and other animals with bird and beasts of prey - ) After this, lunch was served to him. And then he read the newspapers and wrote letters. If they were lengthy he dictated them from rough drafts. At three o’clock, he went to rest in his bedroom, smoked a cigarette, lay on a sofa, and listened again to a novel read aloud to him by his wife. ( - all striving to increase, all feeding on each other, or on the trees, their seed and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of trees!’) This reading often put him to sleep so that he complained he had missed whole parts of books. His wife feared the cessation of her voice would wake him. (Of the Formica refescens, he wrote, ‘So utterly helpless are the masters, that when Huber shut up thirty of them without a slave…they did nothing; they could not even feed themselves and many perished of hunger’.)

At four he took another walk, and worked for one more hour. Then after another period of listening to a novel, he ate his dinner, played two games of backgammon with his wife, read some of a scientific book, and when tired finally, lay back again to listen while his wife read to him or played the piano. When he retired at ten or ten-thirty, he often lay awake for hours afterward in pain. On bad days, he could not work at all. (Of the process of selection he wrote: ‘…the struggle will almost invariably be most severe between individuals of the same species, for they frequent the same districts, require the same food and are exposed to the same dangers’.)

In a letter to Lyell he claimed that he was bitterly mortified to conclude that ‘the race is for the strong’, but that he would be able to do little more than admire the strides others would make in science. (‘…the swiftest and the slimmest wolves’, he wrote, ‘would have the best chance of surviving and so be preserved or selected’.) Because of his own ill health, and that of his grandfather and his brother, and mother-in-law and aunt (And he wrote: ‘…so profound is our ignorance and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being, and we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms…’) and because of the sick headaches which his wife suffered (‘natural selection acts only by preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being…’ he wrote) he feared for the health of his children, of whom one died shortly after birth, one died in his childhood, and others suffered chronic illness.

In 1844, of his discovery of evolution, he recorded: ‘At last gleams of light have come and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to the opinion I started with) that the species (it is like confessing a murder) are not immutable’. (145-6)

Neo-Liberal Genetics and The Trashing of Margaret Mead

“The practice of science, like all human activity, depends upon categories, understandings, and conventions of practice that are, inevitably, culturally and historically specific. …[T]he point is not that ‘good science’ operates outside of culture and without reference to cultural categories, while ‘bad science’ does not. On the contrary, it is precisely because ‘good science’ recognizes its inevitable situatedness within culture that it must always place its most fundamental categories, understandings, and conventions at risk through the examination of contrary evidence. At least ideally, the scientific method requires that a hypothesis be tested against empirical data that have the potential for disproving it – that is, against aspects of the world that are relevant, resistant, and not already internally implicated in its own presuppositions. It is precisely evolutionary psychology’s failure to do this that makes it ‘bad science’.” - Susan McKinnon, Neo-Liberal Genetics, pp. 120-121

“By misrepresenting Mead’s views and by presenting himself as the guardian of evolution and interactionism, Freeman asked his readers to dismiss Mead’s work as mistaken, misguided, anachronistic, and unscientific and accept his position as accurate, responsible, thoroughly scientific and a harbinger of the future. A number of intelligent people found this seemingly clear-cut choice attractive. After all, who could oppose evolution, science, and responsible scholarship? The real choice, however, was not between Mead, on the one hand, and Freeman, on the other. It was between wondering whether Freeman read what Mead had written about culture, biology, and evolution and, for whatever reason, omitted entire passages and works that did not support his argument, or whether he did not carefully read Mead and therefore was not fully aware of what she wrote.” - Paul Shankman, The Trashing of Margaret Mead, p. 224

I wish I’d read Susan McKinnon’s 2005 Neo-Liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology



and Paul Shankman’s 2009 The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy



when they were first published. It would have saved me some of the disappointment and exasperation I’ve experienced in the online science-atheism advocacy community.

Shankman’s book deals with the public controversy sparked a few decades ago when Derek Freeman published books claiming that Margaret Mead, who he claimed was the founding figure of an anti-evolutionary paradigm in anthropology, had actually been a naïve victim of a hoaxing during her fieldwork in Samoa. As the quotation above suggests, Freeman also sought, with a good deal of success among the public, to use his criticisms of Mead to begin the destruction of what he labeled an unscientific perspective and to promote one closer to Evolutionary Psychology. McKinnon’s pamphlet* is a more general scientific critique of Evolutionary Psychology from the perspective of cultural anthropology and related scientific fields.

Both books, which complement one another and other worthwhile works (Sahlins’ The Western Illusion of Human Nature, Fine’s Delusions of Gender, Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man,…), address both the science and the rhetoric of EP and related paradigms. Both describe in detail the scientific failings of EP – the unexamined presuppositions, the use of highly selective and often shoddy and even ridiculous** evidence, the flawed methods, the leaps of logic in analysis, and maybe most important the failure to engage with the full spectrum of evidence including that which potentially contradicts its claims and suggests different conclusions.

They also – McKinnon explicitly and Shankman more indirectly – discuss the rhetoric employed by EP advocates both within their books and in the public promotion of their approach. As both books describe, EP advocates make full use of rhetorical tactics to present themselves as the apolitical defenders of disinterested Science while their detractors are politicized and painted as unscientific wishful thinkers who can’t accept the irrefutable evidence. (This rhetoric is also highly gendered: opponents and their approaches are feminized while EP is portrayed as rational, intellectually courageous, masculine.)

I want to bring these works to more people’s attention because I believe there are many who are interested in considering the evidence and curious about what it shows – who aren’t so easily swayed by EP’s rhetorical bluster. Realistically, though, I’m not as optimistic that many of those already taken with EP will be interested in engaging with it seriously and respectfully and in the spirit of scientific inquiry. In fact, rhetoric consistently substitutes for substantive engagement in the responses to EP’s critics. A couple of years after the publication of McKinnon’s book, Henry Harpending wrote a review which Alex Golub at Savage Minds called “libelous.” Most striking are the rhetorical characterizations of McKinnon’s work quoted by Golub, which are so formulaic that you have to question whether Harpending even read the book he was reviewing. According to Golub, for example, he calls the 152-page well-organized pamphlet a “rambling screed,” and asserts that McKinnon “does not complain that evolutionary psychology is bad science according to standard criteria for evaluating science: Instead she dislikes the ‘rhetorical structures and strategies of the texts.’” As the quotation at the beginning of the post shows, though, it’s precisely on the basis of scientific criteria that McKinnon criticizes EP – the entire pamphlet is a presentation of the scientific failings of EP in the face of contrary evidence and compared to other explanations.

There just doesn’t seem to be any way to break through the rhetorical wall of condescending arrogance and draw EP advocates into a real engagement on these grounds, which in itself suggests that there’s something other than a dedication to science driving this movement. Which is especially depressing since it appears another round is about to begin with the publication of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance.

* McKinnon’s pamphlet is published by Prickly Paradigm Press. The works in this series are all relevant to contemporary debates and issues, and I don’t understand why they haven’t been made into Kindle or e-books and sold online for a few dollars.

**To reiterate, because this is easily the worst: In looking for evidence concerning the possible inborn nature of human gendered toy preferences (presumed to be universal), the researchers presented vervet monkeys with a series of gendered objects, including cooking pans. They gave cooking pans. To vervet monkeys.

Neither unicorns nor carbon-based life forms

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ” – Aristotle, Politics

The phrase “neither gods nor beasts” has often been used to describe humans (more typically, “Men”) and the human condition. You’ll find it in progressive political works. It even forms the titles of two recent books – Elof Axel Carlson’s 2008 Neither Gods Nor Beasts and Gilbert Meilaender’s 2009 Neither Beast Nor God.

“Neither gods nor beasts” needs to go.

As for the first part: Of course humans aren’t gods. There are no such things as gods. In a situation in which everyone understood, first, that gods - of whatever ill-defined form - are imaginary entities, and, second, that these imaginary entities aren’t part of a hierarchy in which humans stand “below” them but above others, bringing mythical gods into discussions of human capacities and the human condition might possibly be theoretically useful (though I doubt it). But that isn’t the present situation or the way the god concept is being deployed.

The second part is simply false. Of course humans are beasts. We’re animals. Every single one of our qualities and capacities – good, bad, or indifferent - is entirely an animal quality or capacity. Including those we clearly share with other animals and those in which we differ from all or most other species. Including the cultural and political – that we’re cultural and political animals results from our evolved animal capacities. Our potentials and limitations are entirely animal. We’ve received no special contributions from anywhere outside of our common evolution with other beings on this planet. We’re beasts.

The “neither gods nor beasts” formulation might have made sense to those who believed in gods and knew nothing about evolution. But in this secular and scientific age, it can only serve ideological ends. It treats “human” not as a simple descriptor but as a status, elevating us above other animals. Along with this status, it grants us a false “dignity” which is refused to our fellow animals, who are now “beneath our notice.”

It damages our relationships with other animals by denying at least some of our shared condition and heritage and attempting to link us instead to some transcendent concepts or mythical beings “above” us. It harms us psychologically by leading us to see our relationship with other animals and the rest of the natural world as inherently alienated: in this view, as “in-between” beings, we don’t fit either among gods (which doesn’t matter since they don’t exist) or in our actual world (which would matter very much if it were true).

It distorts our understanding of our own capabilities and possibilities by seeing our animality in terms of inflexibility and limitations, such that to the extent that people come to understand that we’re wholly animal they believe our freedom and possibilities to be circumscribed. It pushes people to denigrate other animals as they seek to identify themselves with the qualities held to be godly or transcendent or to claim them for humanity….

“Neither gods nor beasts” is false and useless. We need to expel ideas about hierarchy and status from our understanding of the human condition, of our needs and potentials, of our limitations and possibilities, and of our relationships with other natural beings.

Brave Genius 2: A profound imminent alliance

I’d enthusiastically hoped that Sean Carroll’s Brave Genius* might, in its discussion of the exchange of ideas between Camus and Monod, talk about how biology informed philosophy, politics, and ethics for the better.** And it does, somewhat, in the final chapters about Monod’s writing and activism after Camus’ death. But it also illustrates how, as they’ve entered the cultural vortex, important parts of biology’s message have been distorted and lost.

Carroll describes the central arguments in Monod’s 1970 book Chance and Necessity. He says that “Monod sought to establish the new biology’s place at the philosopher’s table, as well as in the minds, if not the hearts, of thinking people.” Monod was influenced by his friend Camus’ existentialist philosophy, particularly the ideas expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus. But, Carroll contends, while Camus drew only on philosophy, Monod “began with new empirical scientific facts” which he rightly believed had something important to contribute to our understanding of the human situation.

Monod’s argument had four “essential points,” which Carroll describes in turn. The first is that “Biology has revealed that the emergence of humans is the result of chance, and therefore not a matter of any preordained plan.” The second, that “All belief systems that are founded on a special place or purpose of man in nature are no longer tenable.” Religious and secular claims about a special status or cosmic purpose for humans are in fact, as James Rachels argues, shattered by biology.

So far, so good. But the trouble comes when Monod elaborates on the meaning of biological discoveries. In a surprising shift owing nothing to science and everything to culture, Monod interprets the recent advances in biology as confirming our alienation and isolation from the rest of the universe as part of our existential condition:

The common flaw in all of these systems, Monod underscored, is that they assume ‘between Man and the Universe, between Cosmology and History an unbroken continuity, a profound immanent alliance’. However, Monod argued, ‘the scientific approach reveals to Man that he is an accident, almost a stranger in the universe, and reduced the “old alliance” between him and the rest of creation to a tenuous and fragile thread’.

Moreover, Monod asserted that molecular biology had snapped the last thread: ‘It remained for modern Biology…blossoming into Molecular Biology, to discover the ultimate source of stability and evolution in the Biosphere [DNA and mutation], and thus blow to shreds the myth of the old alliance.”

…‘Man must wake out of his millenary dream…wake to his solitude, his fundamental isolation’, Monod urged. ‘Now does he at last realize that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien universe. A universe that is deaf to his music, just as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his suffering or his crimes’.

…[Monod argued that:] “The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance’. [emphasis added]

No, I say. No. We’re not strangers, isolated, alien, alone, with no imminent connection to the rest of life and the cosmos. Precisely the opposite. Monod’s own discoveries, and all of the biological and other discoveries preceding them from Darwin on, and all of those that have followed – including Carroll’s! - have only confirmed and deepened the human understanding of our relatedness to the rest of the natural world. Far from contributing to an appreciation of our supposed condition of alienation, they’ve chipped away at the notion of our separateness or isolation.

Science has destroyed old and arrogant myths about our place in the universe, “overturn[ing] all previous, long-cherished notions of humans’ special significance in the universe,” but has replaced them with real knowledge about our deepest relationship with the rest of nature. Scientists have shown that we’re wholly natural stuff. We’ve evolved, as have all of the other forms of life on the planet. We’re animals. The processes through which we develop are shared, as Monod himself recognized, with other living beings. There are no walls separating us, in any aspect, from the rest of life or nature. Science shows a deep connection, not a separation.

This reality is enormously consequential. It doesn’t just dislodge self-serving myths about our situation and relationship to the rest of nature. It also informs the conclusions that follow from the abandonment of those myths. If people believe that their only relationship to others in their community is that they’re living under the same absolute monarchy, and that monarchy falls, they might feel isolated and alone. But if they realize that they’re in fact an ancient community of common origin, sustained by a shared nature and characteristics, and united by action, they’ll find a community of truth to replace the mythic vertical identity.

The idea that our existential situation is one of abandonment and alienation is a sad relic of belief in a cosmic deity and human specialness. It was damaging to existentialist philosophy and morality, and has hobbled philosophy and morality ever since. Scientific reality contests it.

Monod felt, in his words, that “the most important results of science have been to change the relationship of man to the universe, or the way he sees himself in the universe.” And it’s true that modern biology has forever upset mythical views about a human-centered cosmos. But it has never challenged a vision of the cosmos in which we form a part and from which we emerge in every element of our being.

* I’ll probably post a full review in the future.

** This is territory covered, as I’ve discussed, by James Rachels.

Free Birds, reviewed by evangelicals

Feeling down after reading the “Twelve Reasons” post, I was relieved to stumble on this review of the new movie Free Birds by the Christian outfit MOVIEGUIDE.

I have no problem with sociopolitical film reviews as such (in fact, I’m quite fond of them). But what’s funny about MG’s is how earnestly literal they are. Movies shouldn’t be “the ax for the frozen sea within us,” encouraging compassion, moral questioning, and awareness of other perspectives. They're seen as purely didactic, and their messages either promote conservative Christian dogma or subvert it. So MG tots up the “Christian” elements, swearwords, and sexual acts to determine how well a movie performs as a celluloid sermon or, on the other hand, pollutes vulnerable minds.

Here’s their summary of Free Birds:

Light mixed pagan worldview with strong revisionist history regarding the pilgrims mixed with some biblical virtues that include sacrifice, hard work, the importance of standing for something bigger than oneself, and making peace, one pilgrim also says, “Thank God,” the turkeys perform a symbolic ritual over their dead chief where some loose leaves swarm together into the air, as if his soul is ascending heaven, there’s also a reference to “the great turkey” which in the end turns out isn’t a divine being, evolution is briefly suggested; no foul language but “shut up,” “buttocks,” and “son of a gun” are said; some light slapstick animated violence, such as the pilgrims try to shoot the turkeys, and they send their dogs on them, and there’s a tense scene that includes fire; no sexual content, but a light kiss between turkeys; no nudity; no alcohol use; no smoking or drug use; and, one character acts selfishly, but learns his lesson in the end.

I think it was the “light kiss between turkeys” that got me. (Could have been “mixed pagan worldview,” or the mention of a suggestive reference to evolution alongside “foul language,”* sex, drugs, and violence.**)

The very idea that turkeys might have a point of view, from which humans – Americans! – look like terrifying killers is anathema:

One of the main issues with FREE BIRDS is regarding its revisionist view of history. Though the movie does begin with a comical disclaimer stating its fictionalized version of the actual events, it still may confuse young children. The very fact that the movie sets up the pilgrims as the villains is not only wildly outlandish, but also disrespectful. To make mockery of the men, women, and children who starved, suffered and died to build this country shows poor taste in MOVIEGUIDE®’s opinion. The movie doesn’t portray all the pilgrims as evil, only the hunters, but the rest are only shown as spineless sheep who bend to the evil hunters’ every command. Though it’s likely the filmmakers only intention was to entertain children with a admittedly clever plot, it should never be at the expense of damaging a child’s education or perception of America’s heroes.

But here’s the part I liked best:

Also, for a movie about Thanksgiving Day, FREE BIRDS fails at conveying a message of thankfulness. Instead of being thankful for what we have and for what God has provided for us and our country past and present,*** the children seeing this movie might demand a vegetarian replacement of the traditional turkey meal. FREE BIRDS had many opportunities to teach positive lessons of gratitude, but it never did.

For primarily this reason, Free Birds “merits a caution for susceptible children” – those whose capacity to care about the suffering and deaths of others hasn’t been entirely deadened. The film is dangerous, in other words, in that children might be led to question the bogus Christian justifications for killing our fellow animals, see them sympathetically, and wish not to eat them. They might be inspired to act as moral agents who want to avoid causing suffering. How un-Christian.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m almost tempted to recommend it on the basis of this possibility alone. So much of our culture is dedicated to indoctrinating people to subdue or ignore their sympathy with other animals and to rationalize exploitation and killing. A work that has the potential to activate sympathy and encourage children to stand up for those who suffer and are killed has to have something worthwhile about it.

* I’ll resist the obvious pun.

** Calling the humans’ attempts to kill the birds “light slapstick…violence” is pretty much what I’d expect, as was the inability to appreciate any other violence (which appears in the trailer itself).

*** Incidentally, MOVIEGUIDE also awards the Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays (“The primary purpose of the prize is to further the influence of moral and spiritual values within the film and television industries. Seeking to promote a spiritually uplifting, redemptive worldview, the Kairos Prize was founded to inspire first-time and beginning screenwriters to produce compelling, entertaining, spiritually uplifting scripts that result in a greater increase in either man’s love or understanding of God”); the Epiphany Prizes for Inspiring Movies & TV (“for those popular, entertaining movies and television programs which are wholesome, uplifting, inspirational, redemptive, and moral…to encourage filmmakers and television producers to create movies and television shows that help increase man’s understanding and love of God”); and the Chronos Prizes for Inspiring Screenplays by Established Filmmakers (“designed to help established filmmakers who have made successful faith-friendly and faith-based movies and television programs and screenplays. It intends to reward successful established filmmakers who endeavor to create stories that are compelling, entertaining, inspiring, spiritually uplifting, and increase man’s love or understanding of God”).

These awards are all funded by the Templeton Foundation, who also think gratitude should be instilled in the masses, along with other important character traits.

Species Pride

I’ve been writing with increasing frequency about how our language and culture are saturated with speciesism. There are examples everywhere, but once in a while one jumps out at me for its sheer refusal to try to cover its self-congratulation with even the thinnest veil of argumentation or intellectual rigor.

Such was the case with an article a few days ago in The Atlantic, “How Reading Makes Us More Human.” The subheading reads, “A debate has erupted over whether reading fiction makes human beings more moral. But what if its real value consists in something even more fundamental?” The writer of the piece, Karen Swallow Prior, is intervening, as the subheading suggests, in a “battle” in some corporate media outlets over the question of whether reading (not just reading, but reading fiction, and more specifically Great Literature) makes people more moral.

This seems a rather silly and self-serving debate to begin with – select an activity enjoyed by members of your class, remove its context and content, and flatter yourselves by talking about how it in particular contributes to making people better in some way (bonus narcissism points for using yourself as an illustration or for implying that this pursuit is a necessary or exclusive means of improvement).¹

Prior’s would be just another tired intervention in another such pointless discussion if she didn’t go beyond its terms – or, possibly, make them more explicit! – by writing an article with almost no content other than speciesism. What does “more human” even mean? How could it have any meaning at all?

It’s not only the emphasis on trying to be human, or “more human,” that reveals the article’s speciesism, but the repeated and explicit contrast of The Human with The Animal. Of course, there’s the obligatory reference to the fact that only humans read:

Reading is one of the few distinctively human activities that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. As many scholars have noted, and Paul too mentions in her piece, reading, unlike spoken language, does not come naturally to human beings. It must be taught. Because it goes beyond mere biology, there is something profoundly spiritual -- however one understands that word -- about the human ability, and impulse, to read.²

This is perfectly condensed speciesist rhetoric: this activity sets us apart from other animals (our deep connections to other animals are ignored, as is the fact that the basic capacities that enable us to read are evolved), it isn’t “natural,” it transcends the merely and meaninglessly biological, and humanness is to be defined – and really only defined – in contrast to alleged animal qualities. The line “Reading is one of the few distinctively human activities that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom” is highlighted in bold alongside the text for emphasis. The reader evidently isn’t supposed to question how this point about distinctiveness contributes to an intervention in a debate about the relationship between reading and morality. We’re expected to understand: reading defines us as human and that’s what’s important.³

It goes further. While she suggests that reading is somehow spiritual (“however one understands that word”) by virtue of being distinctively human, Prior also refers to the supposedly crucial distinction made by Frank Kermode and echoed by Annie Murphy Paul, one of the participants in the Great Literature-Morality Debate of 2013, between “carnal reading” (“the hurried, utilitarian information processing that constitutes the bulk of our daily reading diet”) and “spiritual reading” ( “reading done with focused attention for pleasure, reflection, analysis, and growth”):

It is "spiritual reading" -- not merely decoding -- that unleashes the power that good literature has to reach into our souls and, in so doing, draw and connect us to others. This is why the way we read can be even more important than what we read.

So not only is reading itself a pursuit exclusively of humans, but a certain kind of human reading – evidently having little to do with our bodies, though it would seem to be difficult without our carnal brains - is required for true connection and enlightenment.

And there’s more. Not just any lowlife can practice spiritual reading. Learning to transcend our carnal, material, animal – read: immoral - nature requires time and study. “Our” superiority is also an achievement – to be better we have to work and to submit.⁴ This is an achievement of the few.⁵

In the end,

The power of "spiritual reading" is its ability to transcend the immediacy of the material, the moment, or even the moral choice at hand…. [S]uch reading doesn't make us better so much as it makes us human.

It’s all about being human. Human even trumps better, despite the fact that it has and can have no meaning whatsoever. The “real value” of reading lies in its humanness, which is “even more fundamental” than morality, including concrete moral choices. The fact that “spiritual” and “soul” and “human” have no meaning in the piece and that “more human” makes no sense is necessary to these sorts of articles. “Human/spiritual” works the same way as – and is in fact at the foundation of – “masculine/manly” or “civilized.” It’s a celebration of the dominant category and its (alleged) capacities. Human is simply understood to be something wonderfully special to be, an identity that in itself confers greatness. It’s not necessary to elaborate on any practical effects; since the value is inherent in the category, its spirit magically suffuses all associated activities and capabilities.

Here we’ve moved far from any useful discussion of morality, especially in the context of evolution, or of the complexity of human capacities and activities in contributing to or obstructing moral choice. There’s no sense of the ambiguous moral effects of our capacity to create and respond to abstract and symbolic works, or of the other forms of “reading” that are foreclosed or diminished when that capacity is developed or emphasized. There’s no serious questioning of the nature of practical ethics – of better or worse actions - in an indifferent and uncertain universe. Morality is simply defined in terms of certain inherent and realizable capacities of our kind.

Of course, the Human can't justify itself. Our humanness enables us to be more human, which is human and therefore good – this would just go around in circles. The Human needs external, superior validation. As the references to the “spiritual” scattered throughout the article show, Prior’s image of human superiority rests not on itself but on a connection to God: “What good literature can do and does do -- far greater than any importation of morality -- is touch the human soul.” Prior is, I wasn’t particularly surprised to learn, a professor at Liberty University and a faithhead. Reading is valuable in her view because “more human” means for her more godly. She explicitly compares “spiritual reading” to religious observation: “In fact, reading good literature won't make a reader a better person any more than sitting in a church, synagogue or mosque will. But reading good books well just might.”

The unabashed starkness of Prior’s speciesism makes the article a useful tool for recognizing some important features of speciesist thought. Serving as almost an ideal type, it alerts us to the characteristics of speciesism found elsewhere in less blatantly self-aggrandizing forms. In arguments shaped by speciesism,

• what is argued to be Human is presented as, or simply assumed to be, inherently valuable, with a correspondent devaluing of what is presented as Animal;
• qualities or activities alleged to be characteristic of or exclusive to humans are in turn circularly seen to raise the value of humanness;
• it’s assumed implicitly or explicitly that “human” is not a designation but a direction of movement or a stage in development: human isn’t just something better, but a movement toward something higher – God or some equivalent transcendence.

These features, including an implicit assumption of a higher, more godlike state, are preserved in many secular humanist writings, including many which don’t use religious terminology. Without some form of the element of godliness, in fact, the assumptions about inherent human superiority and transcendence would be revealed as nonsensical. It would be an interesting exercise to remove all of the elements based on these assumptions from humanistic writings, religious and secular, and see what’s left. In this extreme case, there’s nothing. Nothing but a fearful and vapid species pride.

¹ This also works for race, sex, sexual orientation, and so on. It’s especially effective if subordinate groups aren’t able to engage in the activity through forcible exclusion or force of circumstance.

² The claim that there’s a human impulse to read is questionable, to say the least.

³ This contrast is one the last few that can be expressed plainly in Good Liberal circles. You won’t read articles in these publications contrasting some exclusively Christian pursuit with Jewish materialism or carnality, for example. You’ll occasionally read one contrasting some “Western” activity with “primitive” material existence. But you’ll often see the unquestioned assumption that what is human (regardless of whether the specific capacity really is exclusively human, although in the case of reading books it is⁶) is therefore defining and valuable and unquestionably good. “They don’t do it so doing it must make us better” is relatively unquestioned when “they” are nonhuman animals and “we” are human animals. (Actually, the only other contrast that seems to be acceptable to make in this context, and it builds on the human/animal contrast, is between religious people and atheists.)

⁴ Earlier, I discussed this tension between what we supposedly are and what we’re supposed to strive to be.

⁵ This carries the implication, naturally, that cultures that practice writing and reading are “more human” than, and therefore superior to, those that don’t.

⁶ Although Prior runs into trouble when she argues that

In fact, even the various senses in which we use the word captures this: to "read" means not only to decipher a given and learned set of symbols in a mechanistic way, but it also suggests that very human act of finding meaning, of "interpreting" in the sense of "reading" a person or situation.

“Reading” a person or a situation in this sense, as she admits, doesn’t require symbols – much less Great Literature - and is arguably a capacity of many nonhuman animals. So her claim that “To read in this sense might be considered one of the most spiritual of all human activities” falls apart.

S.H.A.M.E. Project's latest profile

There was Charles Murray, brave hero dedicated to advancing pure, dispassionate, wholesome science, and along came those femistasi, afrostasi, and pooristasi with their evidencist political agendas.

Evolution and speciesism in the evo psych debate

The charge of human exceptionalism is often deployed as part of a ‘Gotcha!’ argument by proponents of evolutionary psychology. If you criticize research in the field, the claims the research is argued to support, or the assumptions on which these are based, the argument goes, it’s because you’re clinging to an outdated notion of human exceptionalism which holds that nothing (or very little) about our brains or behavior is rooted in evolution – that we’re “blank slates” upon which culture writes all. So, opponents of specific methods, claims, and assumptions are portrayed as evolution denialists who refuse – for political reasons, of course – to acknowledge that we’re products of evolution like all other animals. There are two key and complementary responses to this charge, but appreciating them requires addressing some of the speciesism that distorts our thinking.

Nick Gotts crisply summarized the first response to the standard straw man claim - that if you don’t accept extrapolations about innate sex differences from other species to humans you’re denying an evolutionary link between humans and other species:

So your ‘null hypothesis’ is that homo sapiens are unlike other mammals? Have I got that right? Why would this be your expectation? – noelplum99

First, if you’re going to use scientific terminology to make your point sound sciency, it’s a good idea to get it right. It’s Homo sapiens: both the upper-case initial letter of the generic name, and the italics, are required. Second, there’s a bit of a hint toward the answer in what you wrote earlier in the same comment:

When we observe other mammals we see differences between the sexes in terms of behaviour that are not clouded by culture in the same way they are with humans.

Now since you’re evidently not very bright, I’ll spell it out for you: the hypertrophy of culture in our species means that we are very limited in the extent to which we can legitimately extrapolate from what we see in other mammals when we consider behaviour, and specifically, behavioural differences between the sexes. With very limited exceptions, such as breastfeeding, there is no human behaviour unique to one sex, and even breastfeeding and similar examples are heavily influenced by culture in a way that has no parallel in other species.

The “hypertrophy of culture” for humans (and its specific implications for sex differentiation) is a key point that simply can’t be ignored. We’ve evolved to live and learn within human cultures, which means we have a highly developed capacity for cognitive and behavioral flexibility.

This doesn’t imply, though - and if I recall correctly Gotts has also alluded to this in the past - that human culture marks some magical line that clearly separates us from all other animals. The second response to the human-exceptionalism accusation is to point out that the capacity to learn, to develop, to live in cultures, to be flexible in our behavior is the result of evolution. These capacities didn’t originate with us, as many of our human myths claim, marking us as unique and special amongst animals.

[semi-gratuitous cat pic]

Many other species exhibit behavioral flexibility, are social, cooperate, teach and learn, play, experience emotions, and so on, and our own evolution built on the same structures. We can look to evolution to understand our capacity, and of course propensity, to learn, to be cognitively flexible in response to changing circumstances, and to live in cultures, just as we can look to evolution to understand other aspects of our physical selves.

It’s marvelous that evolution has produced this. The evolved physiological basis for our (and other animals’) cognitive and behavioral flexibility has to be immensely complex. That’s precisely the opposite of a “blank slate.” The “blank slate” metaphor (much less the “It’s probably X% cultural and Y% innate” business) doesn’t even make sense. A slate doesn’t absorb and change in response to what’s written on it; it doesn’t interact with the world at all. It’s a completely inapt metaphor for human culture and its evolutionary foundation.

Coming to terms with the evolution of cultural beings is a significant aspect of overcoming speciesism. And it should be noted that our flexibility and other adaptations related to culture have no doubt been accompanied by losses in other capacities. Moreover, these capacities and propensities have allowed humans to succeed so far - for a short evolutionary time - but might not serve us in the long run. Recognizing the tradeoffs and actual or potential disadvantages of our evolved cultural capacities, including cognitive and behavioral flexibility, plasticity, and learning, can help us to appreciate our connections to other animals and to reject the inaccurate natural/evolved/animal vs. cultural/unevolved/human dichotomy that underlies so many of the arguments about evo psych.

He claimed what?!

I somehow seem to have missed William Lane Craig’s comments about animal suffering (his primary contention being that it doesn’t exist; no, really). Fortunately, several people, including PZ Myers and Austin Cline, responded thoughtfully.

Anyway, here’s a more recent video response:

Two aspects especially worth noting: the reference to “The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations,” and the interview with Lori Marino, whose debunking of Dolphin-Assisted Therapy I wrote about last year.

Speciesism and the biological sciences

“The first shots revealed that despite their great differences in appearance and physiology, all complex animals…share a common ‘tool kit’ of ‘master’ genes that govern the formation and patterning of their bodies and body parts…. [I]ts discovery shattered our previous notions of animal relationships and of what made animals different, and opened up a whole new way of looking at evolution.” - Endless Forms Most Beautiful, p. 9

“The doctrine of human dignity says that humans merit a level of moral concern wholly different from that accorded to mere animals; for this to be true, there would have to be some big, morally significant difference between them. Therefore, any adequate defence of human dignity would require some conception of human beings as radically different from other animals. But that is precisely what evolutionary theory calls into question. It makes us suspicious of any doctrine that sees large gaps of any sort between humans and all other creatures. This being so, a Darwinian may conclude that a successful defence of human dignity is most unlikely.” - Created from Animals, pp. 171-2

I returned recently to Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo.

It’s another book I’d started long ago and put aside; turned out to be a good moment to finish it. The scientific content itself is of course fascinating and merits a recommendation (as do the images, especially the butterflies!). But reading more about discoveries in the science of development over the past several decades and how they’ve transformed our understanding of animal relationships also brought me back to several sociological and historical questions I’ve been considering, particularly concerning the connection between science and speciesism.

Looking at the intersections of science and speciesism, we can examine the relationship in both directions: how speciesist culture affects the advance of science, and how science in turn influences the culture of speciesism. I believe the relationship over the long term is a positive, even if not a simple or automatic, one.

I’ll divide this post into two (or more) parts. In this part, I’ll talk about how overcoming speciesism is good for science and science education; in the second (third, fourth,…), I’ll look at the positive contribution of science to overcoming speciesism. I’ve previously discussed the numerous reasons – psychological, political, ethical – that we should work against speciesism. (The most important and urgent, of course, is not a benefit to us but to nonhuman animals, but there are many largely unrecognized benefits to us as well.) One I haven’t discussed, but which is hinted at in Carroll’s and Rachels' work, is scientific: the capacity of nonspeciesist culture to promote scientific advances and remove barriers to scientific education.

While incorrect ideas about the effects of scientific discoveries on speciesism abound, the question of the effects of speciesism on the development of science has largely been neglected. Both James Rachels, in Created from Animals, and Carroll recognize that overcoming speciesism has been central to developments in human understanding of evolution (and biology more generally). Rachels notes that key to Darwin’s development of the Theory of Evolution was his ability to overcome speciesist biases, to think beyond notions of human dignity and specialness, and to be open to deep connections and continuities between our species and others.

Because his goal is to tell the story of scientific discovery in evolutionary biology and not to join a sociohistorical argument about speciesism, Carroll describes fairly unselfconsciously the speciesist assumptions that have constrained scientific practice in his discipline and the responses to discoveries that challenge notions of human specialness. He recognizes how presumptions of human or mammalian distinctiveness have shaped the approach to the study of evolutionary processes. “[W]hen I went off to study fruit flies after receiving my Ph.D.,” he writes,

some senior scientists offered their opinion that I was stepping off the edge of the Earth. Fruit flies? What would they teach us about humans or mammals? The common perception…was that the rules of physiology and development differed enormously between mammals and bugs or worms. So great were the differences, they believed that working on something like fruit flies was (gasp!) irrelevant.

They were in for some big surprises. (pp. 63-4)

The discovery that the same sets of genes control the formation and pattern of body regions and body parts with similar functions (but very different designs) in insects, vertebrates, and other animals has forced a complete rethinking of animal history, the origins of structures, and the nature of diversity. Comparative and evolutionary biologists had long assumed that different groups of animals, separated by vast amounts of evolutionary time, were constructed and had evolved by different means….

…This view was entirely incorrect. (pp. 71-2)

Carroll’s narrative of discovery highlights his wonder and awe at the simple beauty and depth of the relationships, but also his recognition of their implications for our 'species honor'. The cold reception of these discoveries in a speciesist context is registered by his use of the word “humbling” in describing their potential psychological and cultural effects: “These facts and figures should be humbling to those who wish to hold humans above the animal world and not an evolved part of it” (p. 10); “More Humbling Lessons from Fruit Flies: A Tool Kit of Body-Building Genes” (p. 65). Our observations of and interactions with other primates, he reflects, “can be as unsettling as they are fascinating,” and thinking about our relationship to them has “always raised provocative and, for some, discomforting questions about the gap between man and beast” (p. 250). (His quote from Queen Victoria in response to watching an orangutan – that she [the orangutan] was “frightful, and painfully and disagreeably human” (p. 250) – captures well the cultural hostility to recognizing commonalities and continuities. Carroll's speculative description of Urbilateria, the common ancestor of all animals, concludes with a gentle teasing of the reader to “Be proud of your heritage” (p. 125).

This last he undoubtedly wrote with a grin, but his word choice and his recognition of the psychological implications of this knowledge show an awareness of the way speciesist beliefs have shaped our sense of ourselves and our value. If we didn’t live in a society steeped in speciesism, scientific revelations about our deep connections to and similarities with other animals wouldn’t be greeted with a sense of loss. They wouldn’t be humbling, unsettling, discomforting, frightening. They wouldn’t even be particularly surprising, much less resisted. They might even be welcomed.

Carroll correctly notes (p. 14) that great science is about making previously unimagined connections between phenomena, and every major development in our understanding of the natural world and our place in it has involved finding these deeper connections and continuities. Speciesism, on the other hand, like the other ideologies of oppression, rests on clear distinctions, on oppositions, on hierarchies. While it’s not possible to have any certainty about counterfactual histories, the evidence suggests that the speciesist resistance to recognizing shared features and commonalities that challenge human specialness has likely delayed the progress of the evo devo revolution and biological science more generally.

So Rachels and Carroll in their narratives allude to the positive relationship between transcending our speciesist prejudices and the advance of science. It seems to me that if you’re trying to be innovative or original in any biologically-related field, a key is to question your speciesism and related biases and to cultivate inter-animal sympathy and the recognition of similarities, connections, and continuities across humans and other species. It’s not too hyperbolic, I don’t think, to say that this effort has become almost integral to the advance of science. This is true not only strictly for the study of evolution, but also in understanding, for example, consciousness, ecology, epidemiology, and so on.

Whether or not this relationship holds for all scientific endeavors and all forms of social justice (Rachels’ discussion of the negative influence of Aristotle’s ideas is interesting and suggestive), it is the arc of biology. At every, or virtually every, turn in our quest to understand our evolution, beliefs in clear demarcations amongst animals and between humans and other animals have taken a hit. We should expect that challenging our species egocentricity and the essentialism, oppositions, and hierarchies that form part of it is necessary if we want to best advance our knowledge and understanding of the natural world and where we fit in it.

This means recognizing creationism, in all its forms, as a political movement with speciesism at its center, but also appreciating that creationism is only one very extreme expression of speciesism, which isn’t exclusive to religion. I’ll discuss the speciesism of many humanist – including radical – traditions in great detail in future posts. But generally what needs to be faced is that speciesism is not free-floating or linked exclusively to specific belief systems, but in fact the ideology at the heart of a global system and project of animal exploitation.

Carroll asks of zoo encounters: “What do the apes see when they glance toward their hairless, bipedal visitors? What is going on behind the long stare of a gorilla? What rolls of the ecological and genetic dice put us on the outside of those enclosures looking in, and not the other way around?” (p. 250). This experience wouldn’t be unsettling if our culture weren’t saturated with speciesism and if we didn’t have to try to rationalize and justify our exploitative and often cruel treatment of nonhuman animals. Gorillas aren’t imprisoned in those enclosures by nature or their genes, but by humans, based on a cultural belief that they’re separate, distinct, and inferior.

Rachels draws the larger picture in his discussion of our assessment of other animals’ intelligence and sensitivity:

It has always been difficult for humans to think objectively about the nature of nonhuman animals. …[E]ven as we try to think objectively about what animals are like, we are burdened with the need to justify our moral relations with them. We kill animals for food; we use them as experimental subjects in laboratories; we exploit them as sources of raw materials such as leather and wool; we keep them as work animals – the list goes on and on. These practices are to our advantage, and we intend to continue them. Thus, when we think about what animals are like, we are motivated to conceive of them in ways that are compatible with treating them in these ways. If animals are conceived as intelligent, sensitive beings, these ways of treating them might seem monstrous. So humans have reason to resist thinking of them as intelligent or sensitive. (p. 129)

I’ll continue to disagree with the superficially uncontroversial claim that “these practices are to our advantage” in general, that the harms caused by exploiting our fellow animals fall solely on them and not on us. But in the case of science specifically, even leaving aside the other indirect but related benefits I’ve discussed previously, I think any balance of the benefits and harms of speciesist culture tips heavily toward the harms side of the scale. The benefits of abandoning speciesism to the advance of knowledge of ourselves, evolution, and nature in general are shown very clearly in the character and context of discoveries in biological fields.

(It could be argued, I suppose, that while it’s true that this has been the pattern until now, with the discoveries of the past few decades we’ve reached a level of scientific knowledge at which speciesism has less practical effect on the development of science. I think this is mistaken, not only in terms of the continuing advance of knowledge in areas like embryonic development but even more so in areas like the study of consciousness, morality, emotions, and other characteristics often regarded as exclusive to humans.)

Carroll argues in his last chapter that the best way to encourage understanding and acceptance of evolution is to continue to promote better scientific education - a position shared, of course, by many others. While of course we need to promote basic education in scientific thinking and knowledge (including vocal challenges to faith, which Carroll doesn’t seem to recognize as particularly important), this approach fails to address the specific problem Carroll himself points to: speciesism and its important role in our system of animal exploitation. If we want to promote a full acceptance of evolution, we have to take on speciesism itself; we can’t work around it or try to accommodate or paper over it.

But what does this mean in practice? In both Rachels’ and Carroll’s narratives the appearance of this scientifically productive capacity, this ability to think beyond our culture’s prejudices, is left unexplained or presented as a happy idiosyncratic characteristic of individual scientists. And that might be true in the individual cases they discuss (though I doubt it). But given the evident relationship between transcending species chauvinism and scientific insight, should we simply wait and hope for the rare appearance of special individuals with the happy combination of scientific competence, subversive thinking, and the opportunity to pursue science, or for conventional thinkers to make fortuitous discoveries so compelling that they and others will have to accept these connections? This would not only be terribly inefficient, but fails to address the larger forces holding science back.

We need as a society to cultivate a nonspeciesist perspective. We need not only to encourage challenges to speciesism in ourselves and others in our vicinity, as well as promote a nonspeciesist vision in our educational system, but also to develop practices and systems founded on respectful, nonspeciesist principles. Most importantly, we need to fight the system of exploitation that requires speciesism for its justification and perpetuation. Scientists as professionals can become involved in this cause as they have in activism surrounding pollution, nuclear weapons, etc. Individual scientists and groups of scientists will of course continue to overcome their speciesist indoctrination through various paths or make important findings that change people’s understanding of our nature and our relationships with other animals, but there’s no reason to rely on this rather than to promote fundamental societal changes that make it far more likely.*

* Erich Fromm confronted a similar issue in his advocacy of love and the being mode of existence. Rightly fearing that To Have or to Be? would be read as voluntarist “self-help” literature rather than part of a call for radical social change, Fromm intentionally avoided the inclusion of a section offering personal-level advice. (This is described in Annette Thomson’s 2009 Erich Fromm: Explorer of the Human Condition.) It wasn’t that he didn’t think there was anything individuals and communities could do in the absence of systemic changes, or that he didn’t appreciate the rare individuals who exemplified his ideals, but he argued that to promote these goals most fundamentally and efficiently we have to change society.

Recommended: Created from Animals

I've mentioned it two or three times now at Pharyngula, but for the handful of hypothetical people who read this blog but not that one, I'll note it once again: I highly recommend James Rachels' Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism, which is available free online.

Peter Kropotkin in Slate

I hate the title: “The Russian Anarchist Prince Who Challenged Evolution.” Kropotkin didn’t challenge evolution, or intend to challenge evolution, as the author notes right in the piece itself.

I hate the inane subtitle - “Are we cooperative or competitive?” – and the claim in one of the opening paragraphs that Kropotkin “came to believe that…cooperation was the predominant evolutionary force driving all social life, from microbes to humans.” He stated right in the introduction to Mutual Aid:

It may be objected to this book that both animals and men are represented in it under too favourable an aspect; that their sociable qualities are insisted upon, while their anti-social and self-asserting instincts are hardly touched upon. This was, however, unavoidable. We have heard so much lately of the "harsh, pitiless struggle for life," which was said to be carried on by every animal against all other animals, every "savage" against all other "savages," and every civilized man against all his co-citizens -- and these assertions have so much become an article of faith -- that it was necessary, first of all, to oppose to them a wide series of facts showing animal and human life under a quite different aspect. It was necessary to indicate the overwhelming importance which sociable habits play in Nature and in the progressive evolution of both the animal species and human beings: to prove that they secure to animals a better protection from their enemies, very often facilities for getting food and (winter provisions, migrations, etc.), longevity, therefore a greater facility for the development of intellectual faculties; and that they have given to men, in addition to the same advantages, the possibility of working out those institutions which have enabled mankind to survive in its hard struggle against Nature, and to progress, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of its history. It is a book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution -- not on all factors of evolution and their respective values; and this first book had to be written, before the latter could become possible.

His intention was plainly to focus on the evolution of mutual aid in order to counteract the biased view prevailing among many of evolution’s spokespeople (and also opportunistically adopted to this day by creationists) and to contribute to a comprehensive picture.

I hate the suggestion that Kropotkin was primarily taking issue with Darwin rather than challenging what he viewed as ideological distortions of Darwin’s ideas by Huxley and others as a means of defending Darwin’s theory against political misrepresentations.

And I hate that Dugatkin refers to Kropotkin as a prince here and in the title of his book on the subject - The Prince of Evolution: Peter Kropotkin's Adventures in Science and Politics – while noting even in this shorter piece that Kropotkin had renounced that title by the age of 12. I think his wishes should be respected.

There are other problems as well. These aside aside, though, I’m very pleased to see evolutionary biologists writing about Kropotkin on popular sites, and the article’s informative enough. I’ll also be reading the book

(only $3.99 for the Kindle version!) over the next few days.

Creation Moments

It was in the car flipping through the radio dial yesterday, trying to find any song other than “Somebody That I Used to Know,” that I had my first Creation Moment. I’d never heard one of these before, but I guess they’ve been airing for some time.

The one I stumbled upon on was “When Facts Aren’t Facts”:

...Several years ago, Canadian and U.S. papers were filled with the results of polls in both countries that tested members of the public by asking some scientific questions. The problem is, both polls were heavily stacked with questions that resulted in so called "wrong" answers if the respondent didn't believe in evolution. Since more than 10 percent of the questions dealt with evolution, we can assume that the real purpose of the "poll" was to make belief in evolution look the same as "scientific literacy."

Consider the questions asked. Of the 14 questions, one read: "Human beings as we know them today developed from earlier groups of animals." Obviously, the so called "correct" answer is "true." Another question asks: "The earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs." And the "correct" answer to this is "false."

The poll does show widespread ignorance of science in real areas of science. A scientist who didn't know that light travels faster than sound would be considered unfit to do science. Measurements of the speed of light and the speed of sound are easily done and offer consistent results.

But no one has ever measured – much less reproduced – the results that the poll claims are "correct" about evolution! Many scientists, including some who are very famous, would also have insisted on the so-called "wrong" answers about evolution! The lesson for us is that, as Christians, we need to read and listen very carefully to what is called "news," because some of it really isn't based upon fact at all....

They’re pretty funny. From the one on aspirin:

In His foreknowledge, our Creator knew, regretfully, that the human race would fall into sin. He knew that among the effects of a world changed by sin would be pain and sickness. So in His mercy He provided plants that would make the active ingredient in aspirin. But the greatest expression of His love for us was in providing us with a cure for sin itself in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Another recent offering is “New Element, Balonium, Confirms Evolution Is True.”

Francis Collins, creationism, and research ethics

PZ's posted about some more confused claptrap from Nick Matzke, in a post at the Panda's Thumb. As often happens, the discussion over there has devolved due to accommodationist, well, something that's either stupidity or intellectual dishonesty or a blend of the two.

Fortunately, some of the responses are smart and entertaining, including Larry Moran's. One of Moran's quotations from Francis Collins, though, caught my eye for another reason. Moran notes: "Collins believes that, 'Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history' (p. 200)." He rightly asks, "Is that view really compatible with yours? Do you actually believe that evolution can’t explain why humans recognize the difference between right and wrong?"

There was concern at the time of Collins' appointment to head the NIH that this belief would affect the promotion or discouragement of research on the evolutionary origins and basis of morality. I think this issue of research priorities potentially shaped by false religious beliefs rather than science was and remains a valid concern. Even so, I assume this research area is extremely small within the NIH.

The agency, however, supports research on millions of nonhuman animals every year. If the head of the organization holds false religious beliefs about humans' qualitative "spiritual" differences from other animals, what effects could that be having on the culture of research ethics within the NIH and beyond?

There's a long history of false beliefs about human exceptionalism (religious and nonreligious) being used to justify the callous and cruel treatment of animals in scientific research. It's true, of course, that the NIH has some institutional protections for animal subjects in place - though we shouldn't be so gullible as to believe they're always honored in practice - and researchers themselves have their own beliefs and emotions about animals. But the effect of someone who believes in special creation and human uniqueness heading this research agency could be as simple as maintaining the status quo - little impetus from the top of the organization to rethink the culture and practices of animal research, or a lack of attention to findings about the capacities of nonhuman animals that might be relevant to the ethics of their treatment in a research context. This could affect the lives of millions of beings.

The situation probably involves too many variables for us to be able to determine the effects of Collins' false beliefs, especially in the present. But it would be wrong to ignore the fact that beliefs in this as in any context have serious ethical implications.

Radioactive Wolves!

This was fascinating.

I want to take pictures there.

Two sex queries

So...I have two questions related to my post yesterday:

First, just after I saw Orgasm, Inc., I heard on the car radio an ad for some sort of herbal supplement for men (I wish I'd written down the name). The product was alleged to mimic or promote testosterone or something. The commercial acknowledged that the "condition" it supposedly treated was merely normal changes associated with aging, but focused - in addition to boosting vigor generally - on maintaining or increasing sexual desire.

I recalled at least one Roman writer* reflecting upon declining sexual desire with age and calling it a positive and enjoyable experience: men (I think they were writing specifically about men) are less likely to behave stupidly, and the weakening of those overwhelming physical drives frees them to focus on other aspects of their lives, especially their work. Now, I can see a specific situation in which a man's partner has a problem with his lack of interest in sex (not that this silly supplement would do anything for that beyond, potentially, the placebo effect). But I see the Roman writers' point, and don't really understand why people would want to artificially create desires in themselves, even if these can be satisfied. Why are some men interested in doing this?

Second, both PZ and Dan Savage have written recently about the mystery of the female orgasm, both leaning toward the "by-product theory" which sees the female orgasm as an evolutionary by-product of the male orgasm. This makes sense, but I've been confused about why the female orgasm is seemingly assumed to have no adaptive function because it's not needed for ejaculation. I could well be missing something important here, but I would think that the pleasure of orgasm, like other sexual pleasure, would incline women to have more sex. Is the assumption that female sexual interest/desire has played no evolutionary role whatsoever? If so, that assumption doesn't seem defensible in light of primate and human anthropological research.

With regard to the specific case Savage is commenting on, I think his advice to relax about it is good. We know that this can be strongly affected by psychological states, and being wound up about it can't be helping, even if it's not hurting. At the same time, cultural beliefs (and the feelings of shame that stem from them) and ignorance about sex (on both partners' parts) shouldn't be dismissed as possible factors because of an evolutionary hypothesis.

*(if anyone can remind me which specifically, please do)

Peter Singer, making me angry

Pretty much every time the subject of differences in the abilities and interests of “races” or sexes comes up online, there are a few people (not always the same people) ostensibly on “my side” who chime in to repeat the same basic line. It goes something like, “Anyway, group differences are merely statistical averages, so we can’t make assumptions about any individuals; moreover, people should have equal opportunities or treatment regardless of such differences.” These comments have always annoyed me, as the argument always seems to rest on the assumption that these differences do in fact exist. They’ve also bothered me because this line of thinking is so formulaic that I was sure it must trace to a common source, but didn’t know what it was.

It’s evidently Peter Singer. Chapter 2 of the latest edition of Singer’s Practical Ethics



is, quite simply, a scholarly nightmare. It’s also…(ironically) kind of unethical. I was a bit worried going in, since his discussion of Marxism in the previous chapter was simplistic and that chapter had hinted at some problems. The basic contention of the chapter at issue, one with which I generally agree, is that while people are not really all “equal” on every criterion, our treatment of each other has no business being based on people's capacities or characteristics other than the fact that they have interests. We all have the same fundamental interests, and any true ethics is democratic in the sense that everyone is considered a moral equal; everyone’s interests are given equal weight under the principle of equal consideration of interests.

Singer concludes the chapter with a discussion of disabled people, of whom he says

When we ask how such people ought to be treated, there is no argument about whether their abilities are the same as those of people without disabilities. By definition, they are lacking at least some ability that normal people have. Their disabilities will sometimes mean that they should be treated differently from others… The fact that a specific disability may rule a person out of consideration for a particular position does not, however, mean that that person's interests should be given less consideration than those of anyone else. Nor does it justify discrimination against disabled people in any situation in which the particular disability a person has is irrelevant to the employment or service offered (pp. 44-45).

Of course, as he notes, “people with intellectual or physical disabilities,” like the “gifted” or “geniuses” of whatever stripe at the other extreme, is a huge umbrella category, and anyone disabled in one way can be perfectly average or even immensely gifted in others. In fact, Singer could simply have written entirely about individuals. He could have spoken of people who are not bright, or talented, or who lack abilities considered important in a particular culture or area, or their opposite – people with extraordinary abilities on any particular scale. His fundamental argument is that none of this has anything to do with the moral consideration we grant any of these beings.

Singer doesn’t focus on individuals, though. Instead, the chapter is taken up with a discussion of alleged race and sex differences, and this analysis is, frankly, dreadful. Again, there’s really no reason for this discussion. His point could be made easily with reference to individuals. Singer repeatedly notes that it doesn’t really matter whether racial or sex differences in intelligence or other capacities or propensities exist. He’s only, he says, discussing them hypothetically because he wants to show that even if they do exist they should have no ethical ramifications. His arguments, he argues, “give no comfort to racists.”

Throughout the chapter, though, he shows his hand: it’s clear that he does believe these differences exist. It’s all there - The Bell Curve, the unspecified black US Olympic team, mental object-rotation, Greater Male Mathematical Variation, female verbal ability and recognition of emotional states, aggression, live faces vs. mechanical mobiles, evo psych just-so stories… And it’s all presented as if the scientific evidence is overwhelming, and social inequalities a result of differences in ability. For example,

[T]he fact that there are more males at both extremes of ability in mathematics, whereas females tend to cluster more around the average level, does support Lawrence Summers’ ill-fated remark about the relative scarcity of suitable female candidates for Harvard positions in those areas of science and engineering in which mathematical ability plays a key role. Only those with exceptional ability become professors, and even within that select group, only those among the very best have any prospect of becoming a professor at an elite institution like Harvard. It isn't difficult to see that males are likely to be overrepresented among those at the extreme upper end of the scale of mathematical giftedness.(p. 32).

Ay. Where to start? This is remarkably ignorant, on so many levels. I’m reading, and I’m fearing, but I’m thinking, “No, he wouldn’t possibly go there…”

And then…

In addition, the preferences young females show for playing with dolls, and young males for playing with toy trucks, have even been shown to hold for vervet monkeys! No wonder that parents continue to give their children the toys that they most desire and with which they are most likely to play (p. 30).

Veeeeeeeeeeeerveeeeeeeeeeeets! In the annals of racist and sexist “research” it has a lot of competition, but this may in fact be the stupidest article ever. (And so much for mere alleged statistical averages – now it’s “the toys that they most desire.”) Someone so deeply concerned with animal rights should stand with vervets against their use in research so profoundly dumb and pointless.

But this is just the most egregious element in a chapter that, without honestly acknowledging it, takes on board much of the range of racist and sexist contentions that have characterized the past several years. It’s almost as though Singer read one or two of the popular “difference” books and just swallowed it all whole. Throughout the discussion, he makes no effort to take seriously or engage with the extensive criticisms of the research he cites or the equally extensive counterevidence. He writes:

It would be inappropriate for me to attempt to assess the scientific merits of biological explanations of human behaviour in general, or of racial or sexual differences in particular. My concern is rather with the implications of these theories for the ideal of equality. For this purpose, it is not necessary for us to establish whether the theories are right (p. 25).

But then follows a lengthy discussion, after which:

...These are the major psychological differences that have repeatedly been observed in many studies of females and males (p. 29).

Followed by:

Adopting the strategy we used before in discussing race and IQ, I shall not go further into the evidence for and against these biological explanations of differences between males and females (p. 31).

Oh, of course not. This, again, given what he actually does write, is completely disingenuous. He presents the alleged scientific foundation for these differences (he never does even define “race” or point to any scientific basis for this concept) as though it were scientific fact. But of course these “theories” have no implications as such if they’re incorrect (as I discuss below, their existence as “theories” taken seriously has very real implications, but that’s something very different).

Indeed, as Singer sees it, antiracists and feminists – those dumb feminists never seem to understand! – are at fault for making a big deal of these beliefs, which we should all just admit to because they’re really not a problem at all. The (so ‘70s) opposition of these groups to the plain findings of science can only reflect ill-founded political sensitivities, fears, and feelings. “The opposition to genetic explanations of alleged racial differences in intelligence is only one manifestation of a more general opposition to genetic explanations in other socially sensitive areas,” he writes.

It closely parallels, for instance, the hostility of 1970s feminists [I love that it’s about the “1970s feminists”] to the idea that there are biological factors behind male dominance in politics and business. (Today's feminists are more willing to entertain the idea that biological differences between the sexes are influential in, for example, greater male aggression and stronger female caring behaviour. [???]) The opposition to genetic explanations also has obvious links with the intensity of feelings aroused by evolutionary explanations of human behaviour. The worry here is that if human social behaviour is seen as having evolved over millions of years and having links with the behaviour of other social mammals, we shall come to think of hierarchy, male dominance and inequality as part of our evolved nature, and thus unchangeable. Nevertheless, evolutionary explanations of human behaviour are now much more widely accepted than they were in the 1970s [?] (p. 25).

One of my biggest pet peeves is the formulation of explanations for allegations. Hypothetical explanations should be for actual, defensible findings. How do you have an explanation for something that’s simply alleged? Related to this is the charge that feminists – well, those clunky, outdated ‘70s feminists – have no arguments or empirical challenges to these contentions, only fear and irrational hostility. Regardless, the claim of blanket opposition to any "evolutionary explanations of human behavior" is a straw man.

And of course those 1970s feminists were so ignorant to think that biological essentialist arguments were a problem:

Although this question of origin is important in some special contexts, it was given too much weight by the 1970s feminists who assumed that the case for women's liberation rested on acceptance of the environmentalist view. What is true of racial discrimination holds here too: discrimination can be shown to be wrong whatever the origin of the known psychological differences (p. 29).

Singer’s views are amazingly clear in the following:

Some years ago an American sociologist, Steven Goldberg, built a provocatively entitled book, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, around the thesis that the biological basis of greater male aggression will always make it impossible to bring about a society in which women have as much political power as men. From this claim, it is easy to move to the view that women should accept their inferior position in society and not strive to compete with males or to bring up their daughters to compete with males in these respects. Instead, women should return to their traditional sphere of looking after the home and children. This is just the kind of argument that has aroused the hostility of some feminists towards biological explanations of male dominance. As in the case of race and IQ, the moral conclusions alleged to follow from the biological theories do not really follow from them at all. Similar arguments apply (p. 32).

Great! The actual consequences that those dumb feminists think might follow from the acceptance of arguments in books like The Inevitability of Patriarchy really don’t! Peter Singer said so, or at least that they shouldn't, and the conclusions of philosophy books are binding. (Don’t even get me started on his ignorant claims about capitalism.)

This all rests on so many nonsense assumptions. Here’s my view:

1) The vast majority if not all of these shifting but resilient essentialist claims about race (not to mention the idea of biological race) and sex are wrong. They need to demonstrate their scientific worth in the face of challenges, and they haven’t.

2) The fact that so many, including so many in the media, are so willing to readily accept notions of difference that are based on garbage research and/or actively contradicted by the evidence makes me angry. It also makes me angry that distinguished scholars not only buy into this nonsense but go out of their way to include it in their otherwise intelligent books.

3) The idea that we – women and minorities - shouldn’t be concerned about these “scientific” racist or sexist claims is shockingly wrong. It’s a naïve notion that could only be held by the powerful. The effects of these claims aren’t determined or ameliorated by an ethics book. Their consequences are well established. (The same is true of nonhuman animals: The facts about orcas and people’s knowledge of them, for example, make a difference to how orcas are treated. If people believe that they’re generally unintelligent and asocial, they’re going to be treated as such.) This is reality, and it’s irresponsible - and therefore immoral - to ignore it. This doesn’t mean social realities are unchangeable, but that it’s unethical to write as though they don’t exist and one’s claims don’t fall on a fertile ground of racism and sexism.

I think the ethical course of action, given modern history and demonstrated social effects, for anyone writing or talking about racial or sexual differences in abilities/capacities/interests would be to

A) Not assume the biological reality of race, and in fact regard the notion critically.

B) Not make or repeat claims about these differences unless these claims are supported by solid and extensive scientific evidence.

C) Consider alleged evidence critically. This means not just critically evaluating this evidence but seeking out and taking seriously critical perspectives and opposing evidence.

D) Consider alleged evidence historically. This means learning the history of racist and sexist “science” – and this goes well beyond eugenics - and viewing contemporary “findings” in this line. We need to appreciate both contemporary and historical variation, and go out of our way to learn of examples that contradict our notions of what’s natural, aware that our ideas of human nature are bound to reflect the prejudices of our own times. This epistemic ethics is part of the practical ethics Singer talks about.

Singer says:

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers [ahem], from which our fathers [ahem] freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold (p. 49).

Yes. Let’s all do this.

UPDATE: I wrote this post a few days ago, and at the time I assumed that I’d have few problems with the later chapters. I was wrong. This surprised me given that, as with the chapter I talk about here, I agree with him on the most central points. I’ll probably post about his childbearing and abortion sections soon.