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Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

#29: July - Sept. 2006 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Ch. 3 - Why Good Things HappenWhat could this chapter be about? Odd chapter names. Maybe it is really asking, "Why Good Things Happen to Bad People." This is a question worth discussing.
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Notes...1. Bringing out the bestThis whole section presupposes that the social benefits of religion are the foremost justification for religious belief. This is justification from the perspective of the analyst. It says, in effect, "what does all of this mean for us?" Which is good and well from one point of view, but it's a little silly to ask people on the inside of the phenomenon to look at it from the same perspective. A more central justification for religious belief, to the believer, at least, is their conviction that their belief is true.2. Cui bono?Given that he's already brought the topic up of miracles into the discussion several times, and dismissed it out of consideration each time, I would have appreciated it if Dennett would have, at least, given a provisional definition so we knew exactly what he meant by the term. People use the word in a lot of different ways, and not all of them are clearly at odds with the rest of his thesis.I'm not too sure what Dennett means by "free-floating rationale"(p. 60) -- has anyone read any of his other works that might shed some light on the subject. In general, he seems to be treating reason as something independent of conscious thought, which strikes me as an assumption that we ought to be careful about accepting.In general -- and I've pointed this out before, I know -- Dennett's use of language is disappointing, and I think it's likely to cause confusion if we're not careful. Why repeatedly use the word "designed" when "evolved" says precisely what you mean without raising the connotations that have been so controversial in other debates? In a related matter, his emphasis on the economic metaphor for evolutionary principles may cause as many difficulties. But then, that's not something unique to Dennett -- the analogy between economics and evolution has plagued biology since Darwin, and is probably due in very large part to the fact that Sir Charles was inspired by a reading of Malthusian economics.One point that I found interesting was Dennett's digression about how clones might be more prone to parasitical infection and disease (pp. 64 & 65).At the end of this section (p. 69), Dennett writes: "A hypothesis to consider seriously, then, is that all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values..." Actually, to call that a hypothesis at all is to stretch the functional meaning of that term -- how do you test for the truth value of a claim like that? You can't. What Dennett is putting forth here is not a hypothesis but a premise, one by which, unless I'm mistaken, he expects us to judge the evidence to be put forward. Tacit acceptance of this premise is bound to work against a theist if he also takes up the implied premise that only one sufficient answer is necessary to any question. If we can explain intrinsic values as instrumental values, then we have no need of an absolute source to make them intrinsic.Again, I think Dennett is misjudging his audience here. It seems to me that part and parcel of nearly any supernatural explanation of things is a dual acceptance of sufficient causes with final causes. To that end, any sincere and intelligent religionist is likely to walk away from this discussion saying, "you'd be right if sufficient causes were all we dealt with, but I don't believe that's so." Unless he can provide a convincing argument for why man should live by bread alone, I don't think he's likely to reach the audience he's been at such pains to draw in.
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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3. Asking what pays for religionP. 69: "Whatever else religion is as a human phenomenon, it is a hugely costly endeavor, and evolutionary biology shows that nothing so costly just happens." I don't know that this is entirely consistent with what Dennett has written in the rest of the book. On p. 6, for example, he writes that religion has occupied "still just a brief moment in biological time." What's our standard for determining whether or not its an anamoly on the evolutionary timeline? Not that anyone would want to defend evolution as a 4,000 year screw up, but if we recognize that it takes up only a small increment of biological time, then how can we be so sure that we can evaluate it according to the standards that we would a more long-term biological feature like a body part of an instinctual behavior? Likewise, on p. 63, Dennett presents humanity as "the only rationale-representers yet to have evolved", which would seem to imply a minor change in the rules when it comes to human creations. How do you determine whether or not it's safe to treat cultural evolution with the same assumptions as you would treat biological evolution?More importantly, "What pays for religion?" is a question that pertains to its survival as an institution. Two points arise from this. The first -- that, as such, it says nothing about the ultimate meaning, nor the truth value, or religion -- we can put aside for the moment. The second is more germaine to the discussion at hand. It points us back to Dennett's effort to define religion. Religion as an institution may survive and "evolve" entirely because the term is so amorphous that it has been applied to things which are dissimilar in crucial ways. If we didn't regard ancient Mithraism and Buddhism as the same sort of thing, then no one would infer the persistence of the kind of thing characterized by Mithraism from the contemporary existence of Buddhism. If religion applied to Mithraism but not to Buddhism, and those were the only two cases under scrutiny, then we'd be forced to conclude that religion no longer existed. The distinction is purely categorical, and as Dennett has demonstrated with his own definition of religion, the category is loose enough that we can expand or collapse it to include whatever we want to consider.Finally, I think Dennett's assertion on p. 70 that "The only honest way to defend that proposition --" ie. the revealed origin of religion, or presumably any supernatural account of events -- "is to give fair consideration to alternative theories of the persistence and popularity of religion and rule them out by showing that they are unable to account for the phenomena observed" is applicable only to the naive sort of religionist who insists that supernatural invervention is capable of accounting for X, whether X stands for the existence of religion or for something else. But that certainly is not the only kind of religionist, and I'm not even sure that naive religionists of that ilk make up the majority. A real dualists -- and dualism has exerted a major influence on most modern religions -- is entirely capable of assessing those alternative theories, professing their soundness, and maintaining that it's still possible that things could have happened another way. And in doing so, such a person would still be adhering to logic -- they just wouldn't be playing according to the rules Dennett has laid out for the game.
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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4. A Martian's list of theoriesHere come the memes! P. 82: "For our purposes now, the main reason for taking the memes perspective seriously is that it permits us to look at the cui bono? question for every designed feature of religion without prejudging the issue of whether we're talking about genetic or cultural evolution, and whether the rationale for a design feature is free-floating or explicitly somebody's rationale." Okay, a) what he's essentially saying here is, that we're to accept the meme idea and its application to our subject not for its factual value (ie. whether or not memes actually exist) but for its functional value. He's bootstrapping the idea: this concept allows us to do this, so don't bother questioning it too much. Which leads us to b), that memes were initially suggested and are routinely invoked for essentially one reason: that they allow us to treat cultural features as we would biological features. They allow us to use biological reasoning when talking about cultural and conceptual objects.While we're at it, we may as well point out that the question of God was very much on Dawkins' mind (or page, at least) when he coined the term "meme".What matters in all of this, of course, is what Dennett intends to do with memes in the context of his larger subject, religion. For the moment, it's worth pointing out that all but one of his "Martian theories" for the persistence of religion hinge entirely on our acceptance of the meme theory. Only the last one, the pearl theory, evades this pattern.I think we'd be wise to question why a writer who has put so much effort into convincing his readers to consider all the possibilities ends that third of the book by only raising possibilities related to one particular theory. I think he already has a conclusion in mind.
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Dennett is definitely taking an evolutionary psychology perspective. Since I've read multiple books on evolutionary psychology and accept its premises, much of this chapter was rather dull. Chapter 3 would be problematic for someone who doesn't accept it or isn't familiar with evolution psychology.However, Dennett downplayed one major aspect of ev. psych. For tens of thousands of years, as a minimum, human society was rather constant, and human nature evolved to fit those primitive conditions. Then, over the last several thousand years, human society changed much more rapidly, too quickly for evolution to adapt. Human nature fits a world that disappeared thousands of years ago.Now, I'm not sure when you'd consider religion to have started in that scheme of things. Still, I'll be thinking about that as I continue reading.
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JulianTheApostate: Chapter 3 would be problematic for someone who doesn't accept it or isn't familiar with evolution psychology.That's funny, given that a major part of Dennett's audience, as he would have it, are people who aren't likely to accept, a priori, evolution psychology as a starting point.Now, I'm not sure when you'd consider religion to have started in that scheme of things.That's a serious problem, and one that I'm not sure we're in a position to resolve at this point. Dennett aludes to this fact, but I'm not sure he really gives it due consideration. Because we don't have the evidence to nail down in time the origin of religion as he describes it -- there's just no definite standards for determining when a prehistoric mind began to believe something.
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Mad:Quote:This whole section presupposes that the social benefits of religion are the foremost justification for religious belief...A more central justification for religious belief, to the believer, at least, is their conviction that their belief is true.But as I understand Dennett's thesis, it does not really matter WHY the individual justifies the belief it holds...it is WHY has nature produced the belief. Remember, Dennett is trying to approach religion through the lens of science, so taking into account the rationalizations people have about what they believe is not what the book is after. We can believe that we have evolved opposable thumbs because primates are social species and we like to shake hands, but this is simply not necessarily why they really developed. Dennett is NOT trying to justify religious belief, as I see it, he is trying to approach the subject of why and how they developed, not why we think it is right or wrong.Quote:Given that he's already brought the topic up of miracles into the discussion several times, and dismissed it out of consideration each time, I would have appreciated it if Dennett would have, at least, given a provisional definition so we knew exactly what he meant by the term.I dunno...I kinda understand what he is getting at by the word. I dont think we need to stretch too far to figure that out. We can play around with semantics all you like, but the miracles that Dennett and many other skeptic/atheists talk about is the extreme occurances that people claim to have witnessed and are usually found to be fakes. The Virgin appearing on a Florida window (palm frond oils caused this) or the bleeding statues, the stigmata and other foolishness.An argument like this reeks of an attempt to unfocus the central idea here Mad.Quote:I'm not too sure what Dennett means by "free-floating rationale"(p. 60) As I understand it, it is a rationale that is totally valid but not necessarily understood by the individual...like the flight instinct of an animal. Humans have rationale that we create, like why it is good to not eat meat on Sundays. That is how I understand it.Quote:At the end of this section (p. 69), Dennett writes: "A hypothesis to consider seriously, then, is that all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values..." Actually, to call that a hypothesis at all is to stretch the functional meaning of that term A hypothesis is simply a statement that contemplates something. It does not have to be testable to be made, just to be validated. Maybe he meant it in this way: (from webster) "1 a : an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument b : an interpretation of a practical situation or condition taken as the ground for action". Maybe we cannot test this yet...but it is still an interesting hypothesis...hopefully the means to test this will come about one day! I have hope.Quote:Tacit acceptance of this premise is bound to work against a theist if he also takes up the implied premise that only one sufficient answer is necessary to any question. If we can explain intrinsic values as instrumental values, then we have no need of an absolute source to make them intrinsic.And? Why is that a bad thing? So we should pamper theists so that there will always be that "absolute source"? That is exactly what this book is NOT trying to do. To me and others, there is also no way to "test for the truth value" pf anything to do with belief in god or religion. I don't see any gross expectation on Dennett's behalf here. He is addressing theists and those who follow religion...maybe he is just asking these people to suspend their belief...as atheists are sometimes asked to suspend their DISbelief.Quote:To that end, any sincere and intelligent religionist is likely to walk away from this discussion saying, "you'd be right if sufficient causes were all we dealt with, but I don't believe that's so." And there is the ignorance Dennett is trying to address. Just because they do not believe in something is not sufficient reason to walk away from the discussion. Dennett is trying to show that religion is a natural phenomenon...and he is doing a good job in my opinion. Structuring the argument to include the mindset of religionists would be a stark contradiction to the intent of this book.Quote: I don't think he's likely to reach the audience he's been at such pains to draw in.And I do not necessarily think that is entirely, or even mostly, HIS fault.Mr. P. Mr. P's place. I warned you!!!The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy PiperEdited by: misterpessimistic  at: 8/7/06 3:49 pm
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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misterpessimistic: But as I understand Dennett's thesis, it does not really matter WHY the individual justifies the belief it holds...it is WHY has nature produced the belief.He doesn't offer, so far as I can tell, any explanation of how nature has produced religious belief. He suggests a few things when he brings up burial taboo, but never gets very far into articulating the precise genesis of religious conception. And I don't think the discipline he's chosen really provides a way of explaining how these ideas are produced. Evolution psychology and the meme model are basically ways of explaining the survival and diffusion of ideas; so far as I know, they don't provide any means for explaining their birth.Dennett is NOT trying to justify religious belief, as I see it, he is trying to approach the subject of why and how they developed, not why we think it is right or wrong.Well, he's definitely not trying to justify it. But the early chapters led me to believe that the whole purpose behind putting religion under the lens was that an improved understanding of the nature of the subject would allow us to reconsider the place that it holds in our culture. So it seems clear to me that Dennett does intend to pass some form of judgement on religion, and I seriously doubt that he's going to fall on the "justification" side of the line. The fact that he plans to use the history of religion that he's drawing out to judge aspects of religion as a whole is the only reason I bring up his apparant assumption that the best justification for religion is morality. Because it seems clear to me that's what he'll be comparing his model to. The titles of future chapters indicate that morality is going to be an issue, and it's likely such a prominant issue for Dennett because he perceives morality to be the standard argument in favor of religion.We can play around with semantics all you like, but the miracles that Dennett and many other skeptic/atheists talk about is the extreme occurances that people claim to have witnessed and are usually found to be fakes. The Virgin appearing on a Florida window (palm frond oils caused this) or the bleeding statues, the stigmata and other foolishness.Let's call those demonstrative miracles -- they're interpreted to serve as demonstrations of the veracity of faith. Now let's take a second category of miracles -- call it, intercessionary miracles -- those in which a predictable misfortune is averted when human agency was believed to be insufficient. Just as a for instance, a man is wounded in a car accident, the doctors do their best but warn the family that they simply don't have the skill or technology needed to save the man, yet he survives all the same. The family, who is religious, interprets this as an intercessory miracle. Would Dennett lump this in with the demonstrative miracles?Whether or not he actually would is a little beside the point. What I'm trying to show is that the word miracle could include lots of different kinds of events. Dennett was at pains to explain precisely what he meant by religion, and it would have been helpful here if he had been just as meticulous to explain what he meant by miracles.An argument like this reeks of an attempt to unfocus the central idea here Mad.Don't read the posts I've made so far as a sustained, cohesive argument. I took notes as I went, and those notes are often self-contained. I just made note of whatever struck my interest in what Dennett had said. If some comment I made loses sight of Dennett's central thesis, oh well. Tangents are part of what make these discussions interesting. But I haven't made any attempt to employ rhetoric as a diversionary technique.As I understand it, it is a rationale that is totally valid but not necessarily understood by the individual...like the flight instinct of an animal.Hmm, I got a different sense of the word, which is why I wish Dennett had taken a little more time to explain what he meant by it. (He has, of course, but in another book, when we need it in this one.) The way I understood it was that a free-floating rationale is something that looks like reason but which has occured through processes that don't have a reasoning agent behind them.Me: Tacit acceptance of this premise is bound to work against a theist if he also takes up the implied premise that only one sufficient answer is necessary to any question. If we can explain intrinsic values as instrumental values, then we have no need of an absolute source to make them intrinsic.Mr. P: And? Why is that a bad thing? So we should pamper theists so that there will always be that "absolute source"?It's a bad thing to accept it at the moment because it isn't necessarily true, and we have no way of testing it. Accepting it for the purpose of a brief hypothetical exercise is harmless, of course, but Dennett is building towards reconsidering the role that a very large part of culture plays in our lives. He says that it's a hypothesis worth considering -- what he doesn't say is that he's about to build a very grandiose argument on the whole thing.I'm not for pampering anyone's point of view on the matter, but it does seem to me that Ockam's Razor is invoked in quite a few arguments like this not so much because there's any sound reason to accept it as because it allows the author to reject arguments to the contrary. "My argument is simpler (even if unproven), and therefore there's no reason to consider your argument."And I do not necessarily think that is entirely, or even mostly, HIS fault.It's certainly not entirely his fault. But the way he's written the book isn't likely to help.
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Quote:Dennett writes: "A hypothesis to consider seriously, then, is that all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values..." Actually, to call that a hypothesis at all is to stretch the functional meaning of that term -- how do you test for the truth value of a claim like that? You can't. What Dennett is putting forth here is not a hypothesis but a premise, one by which, unless I'm mistaken, he expects us to judge the evidence to be put forward.I think you misunderstand Dennett's intentions, then. He isn't asking the reader to assume that all values were once instrumental. Rather, he is pointing out that many values ultimately have an instrumenta explanation rooted in a sort of Darwinian explanation--he uses the example of pain as something which we often take to be instrinsically bad but which is actually for something.To insist that these values are intrinsic would be to demand an assumption of such a truth, it seems to me. For instance, the only way to truly believe a value is intrinsic, in Dennet's words, is if it "couldn't have such an explanation" (that being an instrumental explanation). He isn't asking you to assume the truth of instrumental values, but to examine the instrumental explanations he offers for these values.Quote:Tacit acceptance of this premise is bound to work against a theist if he also takes up the implied premise that only one sufficient answer is necessary to any question. If we can explain intrinsic values as instrumental values, then we have no need of an absolute source to make them intrinsic.Of course it is bound to work against a theist. If a naturalistic account of these values can be given, then there seems to be nothing further to explain. You seem to think that there can be a sufficient answer and on top of that a "final answer" as well. This is indeed possible. The only problem, of course, is that these "final answers" will not be capable of support with evidence. If all the evidence leads me to believe that my television works in a naturalistic manner according to the actions of various electrodes and such, it is all fine and dandy for someone to reply that some absolute source can also be responsible for my television's workings on top of this naturalistic account. But there is no evidence to support such a view, and it is only a bare possibility. A good reason to reject these final explanations in favor of sufficient explanations is simply because we only have evidence of the sufficient ones.
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Saint Gasoline: He isn't asking the reader to assume that all values were once instrumental.Isn't he? That's certainly what it looks like when he writes, "A hypothesis to consider seriously, then, is that all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values...." And the arguments he presents throughout the rest of the book depend on that assumption for their exclusionary power.For instance, the only way to truly believe a value is intrinsic, in Dennet's words, is if it "couldn't have such an explanation" (that being an instrumental explanation).That's the only justification for believing that, if you are, as Dennett is, a pragmatist. Given Dennett's philosophical premises, that may be so, but as I understand it, pretty much the whole of Western philosophy prior to Nietzche has supposed that it was possible to have some overlap on the matter, so it certainly isn't "the only way to truly believe a value is intrinsic."Of course it is bound to work against a theist.And that's all fine and well, except that Dennett is asking theists to extend him some good will in considering his arguments. It seems disingenuous to me to then turn around and stack the deck against them.You seem to think that there can be a sufficient answer and on top of that a "final answer" as well. This is indeed possible. The only problem, of course, is that these "final answers" will not be capable of support with evidence.In the case of natural phenomenon, that's true. But looking ahead to a point I make in regards to the last chapter, one matter Dennett barely raises at all is that the central claims of most religions are only incidentally related to natural phenomenon. Most religious believers are not interested in providing an explanation for how your television works. They believe in the holiness of this or that thing or concept, and if science can't touch that claim, then it's unlikely to affect their belief at all.
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