Dawkins on values

PeterDF · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 7:14 pm Post subject: Dawkins on values

Richard Dawkins gave one of the best lectures at the Values Conference. For me, he came closer to the heart of what the conference was about than any other lecturer did.

I cannot describe the lecture in full for reasons that I hinted at in the post in my journal thread. But its importance is such that I think it will be of considerable interest. So I will try and get across what I think he was saying by paraphrasing part of his lecture. Anyway here goes:

I don't know how many of you will be familiar with the BBC sit/com Fawlty Towers but it stars John Cleese as Basil Fawlty who is an apoplectic hotel owner. One sketch from the show, in particular, has become a classic. In the sketch Basil's car breaks down. Basil orders it to start immediately - which of course it doesn't - so he duly warns it three times. He counts to ten and he tells the car that if it doesn't start he will be forced to take firm action. The car still doesn't start so Basil gets out of the car, pulls a branch from a tree and proceeds to give the car a sound thrashing with it.

Dawkins showed the clip and proceeds to analyse the sketch. He argues that we laugh because Basil's actions are completely inappropriate. A car, of course, does not respond to punishment. When something is wrong with a car one simply replaces the faulty part. It is absurd to personify what is effectively just a complex lump of metal.

Now to the paraphrased part: Consider a psychopath who has murdered a child. People often respond with very powerful emotion to this kind of crime, but we now know that there is something different about the way a psychopath's mind works. A psychopath does not feel that what he is doing is wrong. Although he may have been told the difference between right and wrong, it does not feel wrong to him to kill a child. He does not understand remorse because he does not understand - with the feeling part of his mind - that what he did was wrong. There is something faulty about a psychopath's brain analogous to the faulty part of Basil's car. So is it more appropriate to personify the psychopath than to personify a car? If it is why is it appropriate?

The example I have given in the above paragraph is a different example to the one Dawkins gave but it illustrates the point I think Dawkins was trying to make. Dawkins said that there were times when he felt the most profound anger about the way certain people behave, although the scientist in him was telling him that those people just needed to have parts of their brains replaced.

He was quite honest that he didn't have a solution to this dilemma. But it seems to me that this goes to the heart of the new scientific view of mankind. I don't know the answer either. As some of you will know I proposed 'Humanity Horizon' dualism as a way of coming to terms with it.

Dennett referred to Dawkins' challenge in his summary at the end of the conference and he had to agree that there is no easy solution. (As I understand it, Pinker's view of this is that finding an explanation for a particular behaviour does not in any way imply any moral justification for it.)

Jeremy1952 · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 5:06 pm Post subject: Re: Dawkins on values

Well-posted, well said. I was thinking along Pinkers' lines and trying to remember where I'd heard it when you quoted him at the end.

Suppose the car, instead of refusing to start, refused to STOP. The mechanics are the same, but the analogy to the psychopath is better... he needs to be stopped.

Threatening wrong-doers is the right thing to do exactly to the extent that it is effective. Tell psychopaths that they are going to be locked up, because they don't like being locked up. Don't tell them that you are going to be sympathetic to the silicon chip inside thier brians, because it is counter productive to keeping society sane and safe.

Science is neither a philosophy nor a belief system. It is a combination of mental operations that has become increasingly the habit of educated peoples, a culture of illuminations hit upon by a fortunate turn of history that yielded the most effective way of learning about the real world ever conceived. E.O.Wilson

Chris OConnor · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 10:16 pm Post subject: Re: Dawkins on values

Peter

By the way...I forwarded your questions/email directly to Pinker and he did thank me for doing so. Has he emailed you?

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be." -- Leonardo da Vinci

PeterDF · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2003 2:00 pm Post subject: Re: Dawkins on values

Chris

Great! Thanks. Haven't heard anything yet. Did he say he would respond? I'll let you know of course.

Peter

Chris OConnor · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:21 pm Post subject: Re: Dawkins on values

His response was very brief - he just thanked me for forwarding the email to him and signed off with "best wishes." Who knows if he will response, but we at least know he received your emailed questions/comments.

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be." -- Leonardo da Vinci

PeterDF · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2003 9:55 am Post subject: Re: Dawkins on values

Jeremy

I think you are spot on with your view on crime and punishment. It seems to me that the criminal justice system (at least in Britain) has been focussed too much on the crime and not enough on the criminal.

We have people who have been convicted for seventy or eighty offences of, say, burglary. Who, when they re-offend get, say, 3 months because that is the "correct" tarrif for an offence of burglary.

Make the punishment fit the ciminal - not the crime.

Timothy Schoonover · Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2003 12:40 pm Post subject: Re: Dawkins on values

In some ways I think the car/psychopath analogy is misleading. A car is a mechanism designed to serve some specific function; it is a means to an end. When such a mechanism deviates from its intended purpose, there is no ambiguity involved in stating that said mechanism has malfunctioned. This is simple enough and useful for what its worth, but in order to diagnose deviancy, there must be some knowable standard of normalcy. In the case of motor vehicles, such a standard is sufficiently clear, but with respect to human behavior, it seems to me that such a standard is terribly elusive. To what end is human behavior a means? Who can say? What room is there for value at all in a universe of brute physical laws?

Let me put it another way. Means are justified by their ends. A car is good because it expedites travel. A car is a means to fast travel. At the same time, legs are a means to slow travel. We can say that cars are better than legs for fast travel, but we cannot say that fast travel is universally better than slow travel. It is a simple matter to justify a means with respect to its end, but it is impossible to ultimately justify that moral end itself.

It seems as far as ends go, might does indeed make right.

bernt

Psychopaths as free-riders and values

could not this be seen as a win-win game. The Free-rider defect by deceiving, he pretend to be reciprocal and altrusitic but is a true free-rider only waiting for the right momement to take advantage of the group allowing him to be among them.

Now to compare with a car is not easy. Make the Car a very intelligent robot? A Robot programmed to know the reciprocity among us. An epathic Robot who cares about us and then it kill somebody then we replace the faulty chip.

A human Psychopath we don't replace the faulty brain tissue we lock him up for a long time or maybe for good.

suppose we get enough knowledge to correct the faulty parts in his head? Inplansts corrcting the hormonal balance? Restoring the sense of guilt and shame and sensitivity for being blamed and having a selfconscience in line with our norms?

Do we have the right to force such a treatment on anybody. Should we bargain with them.

Get the treatment and we let you out. Stay as you are and we never let you free.

what about prevention. Should we screen every child at birth and ask the parents for advice on if they want to abort a coming psychopath.

Should their insurance go high to compensate for the higher cost to society?

Should Psychopaths live on isolated Islands and deal with Casino and Sexindustry? Visitors allowed on their own risk? Psychopaths not allowed to procreate?

What is most valued to give everybody freedom to cheat on the other or to have the freedom from such pepel who fail to cooperate?

Bernt asking too much giving too little advice.

Jeremy1952

Quote:
Bernt asking too much giving too little advice.

Not at all... I think you raise excellent questions.

Maltharis · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:27 pm Post subject: Dawkins online

Any chance that the lectures were recorded and on the net?

Any info on how to find online lectures by the likes of Dawkins/Dennett would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

PeterDF · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2004 2:18 pm Post subject: Re: Dawkins online

Sorry for the delay in replying.

No the lectures weren't recorded but the conference website is here Values Conference

But there is a website where you can access e-lectures its hereboxmind.com

Unfortunately there is a price to pay - currently £60.00 per year. (you'll have to convert that if your currency isn't English)

There was a free sample lecture by Dawkins the last time I looked.

How about booktalk members clubbing together to get access!!!


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