Saturday 8 February 2014

Chris Port Blog #352. The Singing Pig: A Reply to The Moral Landscape Challenge

© Chris Port, 8 February 2014
 

(I had to reduce a 10,000 word argument to 1,000 words, so it’s a bit ‘crammed’).
 
“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” ~ Robert Heinlein
 
 
Pigs are highly intelligent animals. They can learn their names by two to three weeks of age, they can run a mile in seven minutes, and they taste nice in bacon sandwiches. Life… it’s not fair, is it?
 
Ought morality to be fair? If so, do we mean ‘equitable’ or ‘deserving’? Ultimately, this is a neuroaesthetic problem (e.g. a cognitive bias towards utilitarianism or elitism).
 
Sam Harris proposes that the only coherent principle of morality is ‘the well-being of conscious creatures’. I agree.
 
The real problem is one of in[ex]clusivity. Sticking with our porcine metaphor: ‘All conscious creatures are unequal, but some conscious creatures are more unequal than others’. This is a variation of our earlier neuroaesthetic problem.
 
Consider the following case study:
 
Olivia Solon, Wired, 15 February 2012
 
Admittedly, breeding brainless livestock would reduce their conscious suffering. Is it then moral? Arguably. But many would feel an aesthetic ‘wisdom of repugnance’ and sense a slippery slope. If chickens, why not pigs? And if pigs, why not lobotomized human work drones? My point here is that moral facts are inextricably linked to neuroaesthetic values.
 
Applying a variation of the equivalence principle, Sam Harris argues that facts about well-being equate to moral values. I mostly agree, with some quibbles about selectivity and performativity. On the surface, these are institutional problems but their underlying cause is also neuroaesthetic (e.g. altruism versus greed).
 
Do these quibbles falsify the principle? No. But without a sound system of prioritization, it may be incoherent in practice. Prioritization (possibly optimization) is another neuroaesthetic problem – all facts are uselessly indifferent until contextualized in a narrative.
 
“There is no such thing as a fact. There are only stories. Choose different facts, and you get a different story.” ~ Marty Gull
 
Can moral facts be scientifically tested and falsified? Yes. They can be mapped and navigated by empirical cartographers independently of cultural compasses – insofar as cultural institutions will permit in practice.
 
The real problem is one of persuasion, and the real question is always “Cui bono” (to whose benefit?). I suspect that The Moral Landscape is undermined not by de jure principle but by de facto cynicism – selectivity and performativity.
 
Assuming evolution (and discounting intelligent design) we would be committing a teleological fallacy if we claimed that morality evolved for any purpose.
 
It would be less erroneous if we simply claimed that communities (and shared cultural values) evolved as a successful survival strategy. From this we can deduce that morality evolved from a natural hierarchical pecking order into etiquette.
 
Homo sapiens evolved in the (mostly insentient) natural world. Our intelligence evolved as another successful survival strategy. Eventually, this sapient differential evolved into misrecognition. We began to see ourselves as separate from the natural world. Thus, I would argue that the essence of higher level consciousness is not so much recognition as misrecognition.
 
However, this separation is a fallacy. In (physical) reality, sentience is an emergent phenomenon. The artificial is still part of the natural world.
 
Morality can only exist in higher level consciousness. Facts can only be contextualized and [mis]recognized within narratives. These are Wittgensteinian language games which are inextricably linked to cultural practices.
 
Sam Harris proposes we should discard cultural relativism and quantify these language games in terms of falsifiable facts about conscious well-being. However, consciousness must precede well-being.
 
This is a one-way logic gate. We can talk of consciousness without well-being, but it makes no sense to talk of well-being without consciousness.
 
Therefore, existence must precede essence (sans Sartrean Free Will) and survival must precede morality. But survival of what? Individuals, communities, genes, or memes?
 
These qualities are entangled and interdependent, but we cannot be equitable from first principle here. Unfortunately, we do not live in a deathless paradise. Therefore, in the physical universe, we can only talk of survival and morality in terms of priorities (e.g. dilemmas or conflicts of interest).
 
This is the essence of morality. How do we choose? More importantly, if others disagree, how do we persuade (or enforce)? Ultimately, persuasion comes down to neuroaesthetics.
 
From a pseudo-liberal perspective, the rise of religious fundamentalism is ambiguous. It appears to be a Third World backlash against ultra-positivist hegemony. However, it is simultaneously appearing on the political agendas of the developed world. This suggests that fundamentalism may have deep-rooted psychological and memetic causes as well as political and economic ones. Is fundamentalism the inevitable sequitur to postmodernism, or are there more sophisticated and pragmatic options (e.g. metamodernism)?
 
The ‘free market’ has created an institutional trap where rational individuals no longer have even the illusion of free will. The profit motive dominates and coerces: “If I don’t do it, somebody else will, and my family will be out on the street…”
 
How do we dismantle institutionalized irrationality? How do we teach pigs to sing?
 
When confronted by meticulously reasoned falsification arguments, religious fundamentalists experience cognitive dissonance. Their whole belief system is challenged. However, instead of reconstructing their belief system, they retreat into the psychology of denial and prevarication.

Capitalist fundamentalists exhibit similar behaviour. So, rather than being different phenomena, dogmatic religion and dogmatic capitalism may be different manifestations of the same underlying problem: irrationality.
 
There is an obvious problem here. Most scientific research is not dependent on funding from religious fundamentalists. However, it is dependent on funding from capitalist fundamentalists.
 
At the moment, mainstream debates are dominated by the language games (and logic traps) of ‘performativity’. Further separation of science and the humanities can only make this worse. This is why I want to move in the opposite direction.
 
The more we can engage the sciences in meaningful debate, the more we can bring the concept of falsification to bear on performativity. It’s not the solution in itself, but changing the language game is the only way forward – and I can’t see any other way of doing it.

18 comments:

  1. Redacted debate from another forum:

    CP: Interestingly, there's no such thing as a sound premise. Counter-intuitively, even "I think, therefore I am" or "2 + 2 = 4" aren't sound ("I" is an emergent property rather than an essence, and Gödel proved that mathematics can't establish its own axioms).

    Having said that, some axioms are more valid than others. I don't have a problem with the premise of The Moral Landscape. The well-being of conscious creatures is the least flawed axiom for morality I've come across – and far more rational than religious dogma. The problems start when we try to put the principle into practice.

    Sam Harris argues that these are technical problems best solved by the scientific method. I mostly agree with him, but I think he underestimates the unavoidable effect of aesthetics on the 'measurement problem' and the vulnerability of science to political and financial narratives.

    This doesn't invalidate his thesis. But I'm suggesting his thesis is incomplete.

    * * * * * * *

    CP: The definition of consciousness is still problematic, but neuroscientists are making huge strides in refining our understanding of how it works in practice.

    If you haven't yet seen it, I highly recommend 'God is in the Neurons' as a way in.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPEdDcs_8ZQ

    Sam Harris starts with 'the worst possible misery for everyone' then suggests that ANY move away from this is a step in the right (moral) direction.

    Although it could be argued that his premise tends more toward utilitarianism than elitism, he doesn't prescribe either. He simply suggests that well-being/suffering can be measured as physical facts, and these facts will appear as 'peaks' and 'valleys' in an empirical landscape.

    There will be many peaks and many valleys, so there needn't necessarily be one 'correct' moral value system. However, since we can test and falsify facts, we can test and falsify moral values. This means we can also test cultural practices and pronounce moral judgments on them. If they lie in a 'valley of suffering', we can say they're morally wrong without being 'cultural imperialists'.

    In principle, anyway. Persuading them is another matter. Especially if they hold the purse strings... :/

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Pleasure of Changing My Mind
    Sam Harris, 20 February 2014
    http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-pleasure-of-changing-my-mind

    Interesting pisstake at the end. When it comes to semantics, reductionist methodologies (e.g. keyword frequency) are easily tricked. With language, context is all ;)

    More generally, people who try to 'win' their theory are being unscientific. This is the problem of selectivity and performativity (e.g. status and funding).

    All good scientists try to LOSE (falsify) their theory. If they can't, then they may be closer to the 'truth'. When people try to 'win' their theory, they're not being a scientist. They're being a politician.

    When it comes to the 'truth', it's generally a good idea to trust scientists and distrust politicians. But what should we do when scientists have to play politics to get status and funding?

    This is where our academic system is taking us...

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Act of Killing: don't give an Oscar to this snuff movie
    Nick Fraser, The Observer, 23 February 2014
    http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/32325982

    ‘High-minded snuff movie’, or detached study of the banality of evil (and vapid entertainment)?

    Nick Fraser makes some valid and discomforting points. But ultimately I disagree with him. It is better this film were made than not made, better watched than not watched, and better thought about than not thought about.

    It presents the killers representing their crimes as ‘art’. Here they are, monstrously unmonstrous. Self-guiltless, they laugh and joke and sing. They re-enact their participation in mass murder as entertainment. Perhaps, for them, it’s a form of Aristotelian catharsis. For this detached Westerner, it feels more like Brechtian epic theatre.

    I feel a hypocritical distance. But it’s a critical distance as well. The closer to home such atrocities get, the more uncomfortable my armchair feels. I see their kind in my country every day – banal and evil and self-guiltless. And, in my own way, I have taken part.

    “Writing in 1944, Arthur Koestler was among the first to gain knowledge of the slaughter of eastern European Jews and he estimated that the effect of such revelations was strictly limited, lasting only minutes or days and swiftly overcome by indifference. Koestler suggested that there was only one way we could respond to the double atrocity of mass murder and contemporary indifference and that was by screaming.”

    This YouTube post doesn’t have English subtitles, so I commend it only as a form of extended trailer. You need to understand the full banality of their thoughts to gain the measure of this film.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tILiqotj7Y

    Comparative Case Study

    ‘From Barnes’ (1996) perspective, Life is Beautiful (1997) would be inimical to righteous anger that the Holocaust was allowed to happen. Although some might consider that the gap of time since the Holocaust should broaden our perspective to allow more pacific emotions, it might behove us to again look eastwards to recent allegations of rape camps and ethnic massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo. Would Life is Beautiful work as a redemptive comedy if transposed there, and for what kind of audience with what sense of humour?’

    Humour in the Holocaust? (A case study on Roberto Benigni's film Life is Beautiful, Melampo Cinematografica, Italy 1997; a comparative case study on Laughter! [Auschwitz], Barnes, 1996).
    © Chris Port, Central School of Speech and Drama, 1999.
    http://martygull.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/chris-port-blog-150-humour-in-holocaust.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. 'Religious Rights More Important Than Animal Rights - Clegg'
    LBC, 6 March 2014
    http://www.lbc.co.uk/religious-rights-more-important-than-animal-rights---clegg-87001

    Morality is 'the well-being of conscious creatures'
    ~ Sam Harris, 'The Moral Landscape'

    If you accept this premise then the deliberate infliction of suffering is an evil act. However, depending on context, it may be the lesser of two evils.

    Religious dietary proscriptions are cultural traditions. Other than that they have no personal or metaphysical significance.

    The method of slaughter is physical and (to the animal) personal.

    Does the cultural upset of eating ḥarām or treif meat outweigh UNNECESSARY suffering? No. I give greater moral weight to the suffering of an animal in the present than the 'suffering' of historical practices which are physically incapable of suffering.

    The real question is whether halal or kosher slaughter methods are UNNECESSARILY cruel. Religious belief is a misdirection here.

    The real problem is that secular abattoirs are often far more cruel than religious ones.

    e.g.

    Secret footage allegedly shows pigs abused at abattoir
    Jack Caba, The Telegraph, 29 July 2011
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/batteryfarming/8670309/Secret-footage-allegedly-shows-pigs-abused-at-abattoir.html

    and

    "One time I took my knife and sliced off the end of a hog's nose, just like a piece of salami. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt and rubbed it on the wound. Now that hog really went nuts. It was my way of taking out frustration. Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn't done anything wrong, wasn’t even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn't stop. And when I finally did stop, I'd expended all this energy and frustration, and I'm thinking what in God's sweet name did I do."

    ~ Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry

    So I'd start with attacking the greater of the two evils.

    See also:

    The Singing Pig: A Reply to The Moral Landscape Challenge
    http://martygull.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/chris-port-blog-352-singing-pig-reply.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. From another forum:

    CP: I think it's important to bear in mind that Dhabīḥah and Shechita originated as the most humane slaughter methods available at the time. Both methods advocate that the animal must be killed quickly with respect and compassion.

    As mentioned earlier, I think religious belief is a misdirection here. It's more a cultural practice.

    Some questions:

    1. Are we criticising the culture or the practice? From an animal welfare perspective, it has to be the practice and not the religious connotations. If the focus is on religion then we are merely using animal suffering as a pretext. To me, this seems at best hypocritical and at worst immoral.

    2. Is expert throat-slitting (in a claimed environment of 'respect and compassion') more or less cruel than bolt-stunning and electrocution (allegedly frequently bodged) in profit-driven concentration camp conditions? There are some arguments that the former method is more humane.

    e.g.

    Shechita is not a painful method of slaughter, claims Jewish community
    Henry Grunwald, The Telegraph, 1 April 2011
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8420154/Shechita-is-not-a-painful-method-of-slaughter-claims-Jewish-community.html#

    3. If biblical era cultural practices were to be updated so the animal was unconscious before having its throat cut, would this be an acceptable compromise between animal welfare and cultural tradition? If so, such a compromise would require orthodoxists to budge on their insistence that the animal remain conscious.

    They may see this as contradicting the literal 'Word of God', or the thin end of the wedge of an attack on the rest of their culture and beliefs.

    With regard to the first fear, the 'Word of God' is already full of contradictions because it is communicated through the 'words of Man'. All religions have updated themselves by refining their interpretations. They evolve. That's how they survive. In this instance, methods of killing are not a metaphysical issue.

    With regard to the second fear, there is probably some truth in this. Religion IS politics. And vice versa. After that, the arguments get complicated.

    But the focus on animal suffering is simple. Overall, WHICH method of killing is the least cruel? This question can be answered factually by scientific methods. Religious beliefs don't come into it. So that's where I'd start. The rest is political posturing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. “In our modern world we’ve developed something that looks awfully like the left hemisphere’s world. We prioritise the virtual over the real. The technical becomes important. Bureaucracy flourishes. The picture however is fragmented. There’s a lot of uniqueness, the how has become subsumed in what. And the need for control leads to a paranoia in society that we need to govern and control everything…”

    “… It turned out that Einstein’s thinking somehow presaged this thing about the structure of the brain. He said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant but has forgotten the gift.”

    ‘The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World’
    Iain McGilchrist, Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, November 2010
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI

    Transcript
    http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1533615/RSA-Lecture-Iain-McGilchrist-transcript.pdf

    Despite what you've been told, you aren't ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’
    Amy Novotney, The Guardian, 16 November 2013
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/16/left-right-brain-distinction-myth

    ReplyDelete
  7. “At the same time you are generating huge amounts of human suffering unnecessarily…” ~ Robert Reich

    Robert Reich: ‘Austerity is a terrible mistake’
    Mary O'Hara, The Guardian, 18 March 2014
    http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/18/robert-reich-attacks-economic-austerity

    Noam Chomsky: America hates its poor
    Chris Steele, Zuccotti Park Press, Salon, 1 December 2013
    http://www.salon.com/2013/12/01/noam_chomsky_america_hates_its_poor_partner/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Some rough statistics on National No Makeup Day.

    Global cosmetics turnover ≈ £100 billion p.a.

    Global cancer research funding ≈ £12 billion p.a.

    Global cancer-related deaths ≈ 8 million p.a.

    Global poverty-related deaths ≈ 18 million p.a.

    Today, roughly 22,000 children will die from poverty around the world. That's one child every 4 seconds.

    Keep young and beautiful, if you want to be loved.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KUrnHSHrfs

    ReplyDelete
  9. 'You'll Never Look At Bacon The Same Way After Seeing Photos Of A Slaughtered Pig'
    Kristen Aiken, HuffPost Taste, 19 March 2014
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/19/slaughtered-pig_n_4980023.html

    'Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, and Pork: The Comprehensive Photographic Guide to Humane Slaughtering and Butchering'
    Adam Danforth, Storey Publishing, 2014
    http://www.amazon.com/Butchering-Poultry-Rabbit-Lamb-Goat/dp/1612121829/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395086121&sr=1-1&keywords=butchering+adam+danforth

    'Butchering Beef: The Comprehensive Photographic Guide to Humane Slaughtering and Butchering'
    Adam Danforth, Storey Publishing, 2014
    http://www.amazon.com/Butchering-Beef-Comprehensive-Photographic-Slaughtering/dp/1612121896/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395086121&sr=1-2&keywords=butchering+adam+danforth

    ReplyDelete
  10. 'Prime Cut' (opening titles)
    Dir. Michael Ritchie, 1972
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b9k1mqlF6Q

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Would anyone suggest that you would send someone to prison for documenting child abuse? Is there anyone who is going to run on that platform? Why in the world do we have a lesser standard for animal abuse? The answer is that animals are not people—but the broader point is that the health of animals affects the health of people."

    'The Law That Makes It Illegal to Report on Animal Cruelty'
    Andrew Cohen, The Atlantic, 19 March 2014
    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-law-that-makes-it-illegal-to-report-on-animal-cruelty/284485/

    ReplyDelete
  12. "If science could create artificial being indistinguishable from humans, wouldn’t they deserve to be treated with the same dignity as us? Second, and more disquietingly: if they were more intelligent than us, wouldn’t these beings also be more humane and compassionate than we are?"

    Ryan Lambie, 'The Machine' Review, 21 March 2014
    http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-machine/29800/the-machine-review

    cf. Humour in the Holocaust: Does Laughter Relieve Our Suffering or Diminish Our Objections to the Suffering of Others?
    © Chris Port, Central School of Speech and Drama, 1999

    Chapter 3: The Mind/Body Axis. (Is laughter created by an involuntary body or a voluntary mind?).
    http://martygull.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/chris-port-blog-148-humour-in-holocaust.html

    Extract

    However, the machine-functionalist model raises several intriguing possibilities. As well as pondering whether a computer could achieve consciousness (artificial intelligence) similar to that of a human being's natural intelligence, would it also be able to achieve a sense of humour as well (and which of our earlier theories of laughter might it be based on?). Such a prospect raises the symbiotic possibility that an artificial intelligence's sense of humour may be able to provide a definitive explanation of human humour. Alternatively, if human laughter is so irretrievably located in human being's particular neurophysiologies, objections of 'species chauvinism' may become irrelevant and we will be left none the wiser.

    Unfortunately, the more pessimistic proposition looks likely. The American philosopher John Searle (cited in Rogers, 1999) opposes behaviourist and artificial intelligence models of the mind because he believes that such proponents 'find themselves in the absurd position of denying the existence of what it is they set out to explain: consciousness.' (Rogers, 1999, p.14). We have to concede that, if we do not have a sound theory of consciousness, we do not have any valid theory of humour.

    Searle (1996) rejects attempts to remodel Cartesian Dualism in favour of accepting consciousness as just another related phenomenon of our biology along with respiration. In essence, Searle (1996) side-steps the problem of the mind/body axis by the simple expedient of suggesting that there is no problem. Instead, he appears to adopt a Wittgensteinian approach of accepting consciousness together with all of its related properties and the physical world as axioms and then analysing the language games needed to communicate with others.

    Searle (1996) dismisses 'the traditional mind/body problem' thus:

    'My own view is that we need to overthrow this problem... Once we see that so-called mental properties really are just higher-level physical properties of certain biological systems, I believe this problem can be dissolved. Once it is dissolved, however, we are still left with the task of analysing what is the central problem in the philosophy of language.' (Searle,1996, pp 22-23).

    If Searle is correct then laughter would simply be a human biological property which should be analysed within the different contexts and language games in which it appears (in our field of study, dramatic texts, productions and receptions).

    We conclude this chapter with the observation that a neurophysiological explanation of consciousness and humour within the mind/body axis remains as elusive as a single definition of comedy. If we remain with the intuitive sense of what it is like to be human and find something laughable then we have no explanation. Alternatively, if we try to explain consciousness and humour in terms of neurophysiology, the 'feeling' of it is somehow left behind.

    ReplyDelete
  13. ^ cf.

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/first-draft-phd-proposal/397025593660968?comment_id=85976711&offset=450&total_comments=490

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/first-draft-phd-proposal/397025593660968?comment_id=85976766&offset=450&total_comments=490

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/first-draft-phd-proposal/397025593660968?comment_id=85976986&offset=400&total_comments=490

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/first-draft-phd-proposal/397025593660968?comment_id=85976992&offset=400&total_comments=490

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/first-draft-phd-proposal/397025593660968?comment_id=85978700&offset=400&total_comments=490

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/first-draft-phd-proposal/397025593660968?comment_id=85978700&offset=400&total_comments=490

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/first-draft-phd-proposal/397025593660968?comment_id=85980421&offset=400&total_comments=490

    ReplyDelete
  14. cf. Bring back ideology: Fukuyama's 'end of history' 25 years on
    Eliane Glaser, The Guardian, 21 March 2014
    http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/33370795

    From a pseudo-liberal perspective, the rise of religious fundamentalism is ambiguous. It appears to be a Third World backlash against neo-positivist hegemony. However, it is simultaneously appearing on the political agendas of the developed world. This suggests that fundamentalism may have deep-rooted psychological and memetic causes as well as political and economic ones. Is fundamentalism the inevitable sequitur to postmodernism, or are there more sophisticated and pragmatic options (e.g. metamodernism)?

    When confronted by meticulously reasoned falsification arguments, religious fundamentalists experience cognitive dissonance. Their whole belief system is challenged. However, instead of reconstructing their belief system, they retreat into the psychology of denial and prevarication.

    Capitalist fundamentalists exhibit similar behaviour. So, rather than being different phenomena, dogmatic religion and dogmatic capitalism may be different manifestations of the same underlying problem: irrationality.

    The key problem: How do we dismantle institutionalized irrationality?

    ReplyDelete
  15. “In sum, the results of our experiments, discussed in section 6, indicate that either one of the two features apparent in historical societal collapses – over-exploitation of natural resources and strong economic stratification – can independently result in a complete collapse. Given economic stratification, collapse is very difficult to avoid and requires major policy changes, including major reductions in inequality and population growth rates. Even in the absence of economic stratification, collapse can still occur if depletion per capita is too high. However, collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.”

    Safa Motesharrei, Jorge Rivas, Eugenia Kalnay (19 March 2014)
    Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies
    http://www.sesync.org/sites/default/files/resources/motesharrei-rivas-kalnay.pdf

    Did Nasa fund 'civilisation collapse' study, or not?
    Nafeez Ahmed, The Guardian, 21 March 2014
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/21/climate-change-scienceofclimatechange

    ReplyDelete
  16. Mary Midgley: a late stand for a philosopher with soul
    Andrew Anthony, The Observer, Sunday 23 March 2014
    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/23/mary-midgley-philosopher-soul-human-consciousness

    Philosophy in Review XXXII (2012), no. 3
    journals.uvic.ca/index.php/pir/article/download/11379/3097
    http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=the%20solitary%20self%3A%20darwin%20and%20the%20selfish%20gene&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CGcQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.uvic.ca%2Findex.php%2Fpir%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F11379%2F3097&ei=IxEvU72cLM3xhQef5ICIAg&usg=AFQjCNF20c0TFrBOtKDCMDQLp8XypQNHIw&sig2=1KDrQxPlRk1tZ8s91arwJQ&bvm=bv.62922401,d.ZGU

    The Solitary Self: Darwin and the Selfish Gene
    James Krueger, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 29 March 2011
    https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24663-the-solitary-self-darwin-and-the-selfish-gene/

    The Genial Self
    Alexander Barker, The Oxonian Review, 17 January 2011
    http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/the-congenial-self/

    The Solitary Self: Darwin and the Selfish Gene
    Willem B. Drees, Time Higher Education, 9 December 2010
    http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/the-solitary-self-darwin-and-the-selfish-gene/414516.article

    Hobbes's Leviathan, part 1: Strange selves
    Mary Midgley, The Guardian, 6 April 2009
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/03/religion-philosophy-hobbes-midgley

    Hobbes's Leviathan, Part 2: Freedom and Desolation
    Mary Midgley, The Guardian, 13 April 2009
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/10/religion-philosophy-hobbes-individualism

    Hobbes's Leviathan, Part 3: What is selfishness?
    Mary Midgley, The Guardian, 20 April 2009
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/20/religion-philosophy-hobbes-dawkins-selfishness

    Hobbes's Leviathan, part 4: Selling total freedom
    Mary Midgley, The Guardian, 27 April 2009
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/27/hobbes-midgley-philosophy-leviathan

    Hobbes's Leviathan, part 5: The end of individualism
    Mary Midgley, The Guardian, 4 May 2009
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/01/philosophy-religion-hobbes-ayn-rand

    Hobbes's Leviathan, part 6: responses to readers
    Mary Midgley, The Guardian, 11 May 2009
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/08/hobbes-leviathan-philosophy

    How to believe
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/how-to-believe

    Does science make belief in God obsolete?
    Mary Midgley, John Templeton Foundation, 2008
    http://www.templeton.org/belief/essays/midgley.pdf

    Mary Midgley on Dawkins
    Interlog, 10 August 2007
    http://amidatrust.typepad.com/interlog/2007/08/mary-midgley-on.html

    In Defence of Selfish Genes
    Richard Dawkins, Philosophy, Vol. 56, No. 218. (Oct., 1981)
    http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c114612/documents/2008/Reply_to_Midgley.pdf

    The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy, Ethics and Animal Behavior
    Mary Midgley, Philosophy, vol. 48 (1973)
    http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/midgley02.htm

    ^ “… but philosophers, of all people, know that words may be redefined in special ways for technical purposes.”

    In Defence of Selfish Genes
    Richard Dawkins, Philosophy, Vol. 56, No. 218. (Oct., 1981)
    http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c114612/documents/2008/Reply_to_Midgley.pdf

    cf. PHILOSOPHY Epistemological Debate Map - Probability, Statistics and Bikinis
    https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B19dnXpLCCwgMWJhYmVmNTQtNzIwNi00ZDFkLWJjODYtYzkyNGI3ZDk2NTc0/edit?num=50&sort=name&layout=list&pli=1#

    Wittgenstein’s ‘language games’ [bottom right]

    “Stop worrying about reality and start analysing how we communicate.”

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  17. Quantiphobia and the turning of morals into facts
    Adam Waytz, Scientific American, 25 March 2014
    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/moral-universe/2014/03/25/quantiphobia-and-turning-morals-into-facts/

    “My working hypothesis is that they make objective things that people prefer to be subjective. In other words, numbers make things more fact-like, and facts can evoke discomfort. My thinking on this stems from some research on which I have been lucky enough to collaborate, led by Jordan Theriault at Boston College. The research asks the question of whether people represent morals (e.g., “murder is wrong”) more like facts (e.g., “2+2=4″) or more like preferences (e.g., “chocolate is better than vanilla”), and does so by scanning people’s brains while they evaluate morals, facts, and preferences. Without getting into the details of the currently under review research, both neural and self-report evidence show that people tend to represent morals like preferences more than like facts.”

    The Moral Universe
    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/moral-universe/

    Adam Waytz – Publications
    http://adamwaytz.com/publications/

    Adam Waytz, James Dungan & Liane Young (2013)
    The Whistleblower’s Dilemma and the Fairness-Loyalty Tradeoff
    http://static.squarespace.com/static/51e3f4ede4b053e5f0062efd/t/51f7e2fee4b0021e84485c97/1375199998187/the-whistleblowers-dilemma-and-the-fairness-loyalty-tradeoff%20.pdf

    ‘Moral Tribes’ by Joshua Greene
    Adam Waytz, The Boston Globe, 2 November 2013
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/11/02/book-review-moral-tribes-emotion-reason-and-gap-between-and-them-joshua-greene/qwYcMuCw3wDqC60Af5eAAM/story.html

    Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene – review
    Salley Vickers, The Observer, 12 January 2014
    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/13/moral-tribes-joshua-greene-review

    Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene – review
    John Gray, The Guardian, 17 January 2014
    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/17/moral-tribes-joshua-greene-review

    Paul Conway (2013)
    The Process Dissociation of Moral Judgments: Clarifying the Psychology of Deontology and Utilitarianism
    ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2830&context=etd

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  18. Multiverse Controversy Heats Up over Gravitational Waves
    Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 31 March 2014
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multiverse-controversy-inflation-gravitational-waves/?

    “An untestable idea is by definition unscientific, because science relies on verifying predictions through experimentation. Proponents of the multiverse idea, however, say it is so inextricable with some theories, including inflation, that evidence for one is evidence for the other.”

    cf. Intertheory Relations in Physics
    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-interrelate/

    Hmmm… cf. The Moral Landscape/Singing Pig:

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-port/the-singing-pig-a-reply-to-the-moral-landscape-challenge/775068282523362

    http://martygull.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/chris-port-blog-352-singing-pig-reply.html

    Are intentional [psychological] concepts inextricable from non-intentional [neurophysiological] concepts?

    Concepts of Intertheoretic Reduction in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind
    http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/cir.htm

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