Those Creepy Dollhouse Ads

I'm a big fan of director Joss Wheden, but his work always seems to get screwed up at some point along the way. For instance, Firefly had the potential to be one of the best sci-fi series ever made, but then FOX messed with its schedule and canceled it. In the end, we got Serenity out of it, which is one of my favorite movies, but it's a crime that the show never really got a chance. On the other hand, with no network to blow it, I also really enjoyed Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog--until it jumped the shark in the third installment.

Thus I've been looking forward to Whedon's new series Dollhouse, which premiers this Friday on FOX, but I can't help but have a bad feeling that they are gonna screw this up too (why, oh why would he go back to FOX?!). Still, the premise sounds fascinating: It's about a company that reprograms its employees to do whatever jobs its clients wish--raising all sorts of interesting questions about human nature, free will and determinism, good and evil, etc.

But those ads! For the last couple weeks I keep running across these creepy advertisements (e.g. on Technorati) with the lead actress naked and surrounded by photographs or mirrors or whatever. I get that they are trying to highlight the way she is being exploited by the Dollhouse--thus, the images I've seen are not really sexual--but yuk! I hope this isn't the tone they are going to set in the show as a whole, or I may not be watching it long. Has any one else seen these?

In Praise of Free Love

The following was first posted here (part of a different blogologue), and is tangential to the present discussion of inclusivism, so I wont add it to the list, but since free will is important to my position on these issues, I think it's relevant:

In the comments on my post about free will, doctor(logic) made a statement that I don’t want to fall off the main page unnoticed. Arguing that accepting determinism would not adversely affect our experience, he provides the following example:

If we could explain the details of a love affair in terms of chemistry, that wouldn't really make much difference to the experience. We still "feel free" to weigh our options and decide according to how we feel.

I think this example itself illustrates the danger of deterministic thinking. What is “love” anyway? Is it a rush of emotions? Attraction? If that’s all it is, then I could make his statement even stronger: we already know that this is essentially a chemical phenomena. Truly, the fact that we can tie our emotions to certain hormones doesn't change our enjoyment of the sensations they cause. In that sense, determinism does not impact the experience.

But note that we have now redefined love in terms of chemistry. In the process, we have lost the very thing that makes it valuable: choice. Love is not infatuation, though such emotions can strengthen it. Love is the choice to treat another “as you would treat yourself,” to “consider another more important than yourself,” to “put someone else first.” It is the choice that makes it love, not the chemically induced emotions sometimes associated with it, nor even the actions it produces. Selfless action without choice isn’t love, it’s slavery -- whether chemically or socially induced.

In love as in life, choice is inherent to our experience. To leave it out is to leave love out, and that seems a poor trade for determinism.

The Logical Fallacies of Materialist Morality

This was first posted in April 2005, the Internet Archive retains a copy here, including some important discussion in the comments. This is by no means my favorite post (I include it mainly for the sake of its follow-up), but it does make some important points about Christianity, Naturalism, and the possibility of objective morality:

I’ve got nothing but respect for Tom Clark’s willingness to engage in open debate on the merits of Naturalism in forums like this, which are so obviously hostile to his viewpoint, but his position is simply untenable. In his response to Denyse O’Leary’s brief criticism of the Center for Naturalism, Clark attempts to defend Naturalism’s (or Materialism’s) ability to preserve a full-blooded morality apart from “controversial and unverifiable metaphysical facts about the nature of human action,” apparently not noticing that Naturalism itself fits into that category just as easily as any form of theism. In support, he points to two articles from the aforementioned Center (“Materialism and Morality: The Problem with Pinker” and “The Moral Levitation of David Brooks”) and an external article by Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen [Sorry! the article is no longer available – such is the transitory nature of the internet!].

All three articles make approximately the same point, though the first and especially the third in far greater detail than the second. The point he seems to be trying to draw from them is summarized nicely at the end of “The Moral Levitation”: “if we can demonstrate that moral responsibility survives determinism, and moreover requires it, then perhaps the fear-based objections to a naturalistic understanding of ourselves can be overcome” (emphasis original). In other words, his argument is:

1. Materialism implies hard determinism,
2. Hard determinism is consistent with (or even required for) moral responsibility,
3. Therefore, Materialism is consistent with moral responsibility.

Put in this way, it is not hard to see that this argument violates a basic rule of logic known as "Affirming the Consequent." Consider a similar example [note: I regret this example and would prefer to remove it, but the point I draw from it is valid and important to what follows, so I'll retain it.]:

1. Tom Clark is a human being,
2. Humanity is consistent with (or even required for) femininity,
3. Therefore, Tom Clark is a woman.

Both arguments fail for exactly the same reason: just as Tom can be a human being without being a woman, so Materialism can imply hard determinism without being consistent with moral responsibility. Why? Because there is more to being Tom Clark than there is to being human, and there is more to Materialism than just hard determinism. Moreover, hard determinism, even if true, does not require Materialism, for it is also consistent with Supernaturalism (just ask any Calvinist!). Thus, even if it is true that hard determinism is consistent with, or even required by, moral responsibility, it still would not follow that Materialism is consistent with moral responsibility. (And obviously it would do nothing at all to prove whether or not Materialism is actually true; though, to be fair, this is not what Clark is trying to prove at the moment!)

In reality, this entire argument is a red herring. The real argument has nothing to do with free will and determinism but with the possibility of a binding Moral Law, yet neither Clark nor the articles he links even attempt to justify how Naturalism can provide such a thing. They only attempt to show that, given a moral law, hard determinism (unfairly equated with Materialism) does not prevent us from holding those who break it responsible. Yet if Naturalism is true, then it needs to do more than just maintain a morality that has been handed down to it by the traditional religions it has debunked; it needs to provide its own morality without appealing to any supernatural authority.

Clark does not attempt to do this, but the articles he links do imply Naturalism’s only possible response: In “Materialism and Morality” we read: “Our basic, neurally-embodied desires and preferences, bequeathed us by nature and fine-tuned by culture, constitute us as moral creatures; they determine what we hold to be right and wrong” (emphasis original). In other words, our understanding of right and wrong (our “moral compass”) is, like everything else, a product of our environmental and social conditioning, inherited through our genes and society (for a similar conclusion, see the end of Greene and Cohen’s article [again, sorry!]). And truly, no other answer is available to the Naturalist, for Naturalism denies a priori that anything beyond those proximate causes exists---Nature is all there is.

But it should come as no surprise that this description of the origin of morality is identical with his description of what causes immoral behavior: “The killing of a child, for instance, would be no less bad or wrong in a world in which actions were the natural falling out of various circumstances rather than the result of free will.” So, the killer’s actions are “wrong” despite the fact that they are the natural result of his circumstances, and our moral outrage is “right” despite the fact that it is the natural result of our circumstances! But if naturalism is true, then such distinctions are entirely meaningless, for the very definition of Naturalism is that “Nothing about us escapes being included in the physical universe, or escapes being shaped by the various processes---physical, biological, psychological, and social---that science describes,” and if nothing escapes that influence, then all judgments of right and wrong are equally dependent upon our environment and therefore indistinguishable.

Why should my belief that killing a child is “wrong” have any more authority than the killer’s belief that it is acceptable? Unless there is some standard---something above both of us to tell us what we should value (whether we actually do or not)---then we are at an impasse. I can say: “more people agree with me than with you, and if you don’t stop, we will force you to,” but I can’t say: “I’m right and you’re wrong, and therefore I am justified in forcing you to stop.” No human can be justified that their view of right and wrong is itself right or wrong, unless there is something above all humans against which those judgments can be compared. If Naturalism is true, no such thing exists, for nothing exists beyond nature.

The point is simple---either there is a standard of right and wrong that stands above nature and therefore has the right to judge between the different ways that nature is (e.g., the different ways that we are), or there is not. If there is not, as Naturalism unabashedly declares, then all morality is relative; if there is, then Naturalism is false. That is why Naturalism is “inconsistent with morality” (a better way to put it would be “incapable of providing a standard of morality”), and the debate over free will and determinism is a separate issue altogether.

Dawkins' Fawlty Logic

As I begin this new blog, it seems appropriate to highlight a few of the best posts I've written for Signs of the Times. On that note, here is one of my favorites, Dawkins' Fawlty Logic:

Every year, Edge magazine asks numerous people of interest a single question (HT: Telic Thoughts). This year's question: "What is your dangerous idea?" Richard Dawkins' answer: Determinism.

Not very unique, I know, but his explanation is noteworthy. According to him, "science" has dismantled the illusion of free will by reducing us to the blind interactions of our physical particles.

The result? A fantastic British comedy, apparently:

Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty?

[D]oesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

Dawkins’ is right about one thing: this truly is a dangerous idea. But he is quite mistaken about where that danger lies. He only sees in it an end to retributive justice, but much more is at stake than that.

Consider: Basil becomes so angry at his car precisely because it was not doing what it was supposed to. Yet cars can only be "faulty" because they are built for a purpose. A rock cannot be faulty; it can only be itself, for it was not made for any purpose. But according to Dawkins, people are more like rocks than cars. Their design is only apparent, not real, and they have no more purpose than a rock does (nor are they any more capable of determining their own behavior than a rock is).

But in that case, we have not only thrown out moral responsibility, we have also thrown out morality itself. We have not just destroyed the justification for punishing crime, we have also destroyed justification itself. All actions would then be just as right as all others (and just as wrong, since these words lose all meaning), and it is no longer possible to call anything faulty.

Ironically, while such a view wouldn’t prevent anyone from punishing a criminal for their "sins" (any more than it stops Basil from beating his car), it would prevent anyone from rehabilitating the criminal. For you can’t rehabilitate a man unless you have some idea of what man is supposed to be, and this is precisely what Dawkins has declared to be impossible for the science-savy to accept.

If we carried this Fawlty logic to its end, Basil would not only be irrational for beating his car, he would be irrational even to think there was a problem with it. No wonder Dawkins finds it unlikely that even he "shall ever reach that level of enlightenment."