Humanity's Sweet Spot - Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...

"What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?," a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and "best" was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for."

                            ~Robert M. Pirsig
                                  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Do we live in an age of reason?

Problem with the Trolley Problem

$4.4 million granted to study "free will"

Free will is an imaginary concept made up by religious people to rationalize other imaginary concepts like heaven and hell and good and evil.

There, may I have the money and get back to a question science can address?

What's that? Not so fast, you say? I first need to pay homage to the Christian philosophers that have continually tried to wriggle their way into relevant dialogue with the help of wealthy philanthropists?

One such source is the John Templeton Foundation. There is an article in the Chronicle Review of Higher Education this week that explores some of Templeton's recently funded projects. The topics are disappointing. Free will, immortality, and evil top the list. All of them being studied from the slanted angle of philosophy rather than science.

Here is Nathan Schneider in a piece titled "The Templeton Effect"

In the past few years, Templeton has been stepping up the number of its six- and seven-figure awards for people in the discipline to study what the foundation calls the "Big Questions." These "Big Questions" are the kinds of out-there topics that make philosophy seem bold and exciting to a college freshman but can feel thoroughly desiccated after a few years in graduate school: free will, the universe, evil, hope, consciousness.

Controversy, though, always follows money, especially when it's Templeton money. Partisans of Richard Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists have long despised the foundation, interpreting its interest in dialogue between science and religion as an attempt to buy undeserved credibility for the latter at the cost of the former. Adds Brian Leiter, "It's clearly more of a windfall for philosophers who have some sort of vague religious angle to what they're doing." Yet he also points out that Mele is an exception. His foregoing work on free will expressed scant interest in the religious implications—which makes it all the more noticeable that his Templeton project has a component devoted to theology.

Read the rest of this article here at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

For me, the problem with Templeton funding is where the foundation is choosing to make these grants - Universities.  By distracting wide-eyed college freshman with a false carrot at the end of a never ending tunnel of philosophy Templeton is doing a disservice to institutions of higher learning.  If the foundation wants to give grants for young people to enter the seminary fine, but I'd prefer they keep their money out of the University. 

Philosophers may argue with me and say that Templeton funding is a boon to their field and that I should not rain on their parade. I call bullshit here. Why do you need funding above and beyond your salary? By accepting money for pseudoscience "experiments" you are hurting your field. If you are taking these huge sums and buying nicer armchairs you are no better than the clergy fluffing their nests with church donations. 

I will grant that not all people who have received some money from Templeton have automatically been turned into faith-pushers. Brian Greene and Tracy Day launched one of the most powerful science expositions in history with a starter grant given in part by Templeton - the World Science Festival.  Though there have been some controversial panels at the World Science Festival these should not overshadow the general awesomeness this festival offers. I have volunteered there three years in a row and it just keeps getting better. I highly recommend it.

Atheist Morality: Ratcheting Forward

By Kristopher Hite 

As a person with no religion and no belief in any gods, it may come as a surprise that I spend considerable time thinking about the best source of moral guidance. Throughout history there have been people who maintain a good reputation, a high quality of life, and provide constant intellectual stimulation to their peers while actively questioning what is right and wrong. Who are these people in present day and what do they have to say?

Dr. Ken Miller is a cell biologist and professor at Brown University. He is famous for defending evolution as a fundamental subject in biology classrooms and has given testimony in several important court cases. The most recent being Kitzmiller v. Dover, PA.  By doing so he has elevated the quality of public education in the United States and helped ensure evolution be taught as a matter of fact.  Through his work he has upheld the establishment clause fo the US constitution and for this I applaud him.

As for moral thought, Dr. Miller has gone on record saying that "science can only take us so far." I was able to ask him to elaborate on this thought last week as part of a Google Hangout On Air moderated by the HuffPostLive host Josh Zepps. I asked him where atheists ought to get their morals and where he gets his. Here was his response.

If, in science, we found an absolute, testable, empirical source of morality then scientists everywhere would agree on all moral questions. The reality is I think our discussions of morality, in other words, what is right and wrong, have to be informed by science. I think we have to be literate in science, even people who are not scientists. But ultimately moral questions require a philosophical point of view in terms of what is the good life? How should we treat each other? What is the value of human life?  Now as a Catholic, I have to confess, I draw a lot of my moral sense from the religious teachings of my faith. But I also would argue that there is a moral sense that is present in everybody. Whether they are a person of faith, whether they are an agnostic, or whether they are an atheist. I completely agree with the idea that one can have an atheistic world-view. And informed by science, and by using logic, and by having a philosophical view on life, you can in fact, develop a moral code which is consistent and which provides the greatest good for the greatest number.

His answers only lead me to more questions. Which philosophical views help provide the greatest good? And what time-scale for good should we choose? If not from science then where do these ideas originate? And how are contemporary atheists doing on developing a moral code?

Fellow blogger, Cara Santa Maria chimed in via the Huffpost discussion informing me that she had recently recorded a pertinent episode of "the Point" a spin-off of the the Young Turks Network. The episode was essentially a panel discussion of exclusively atheists trying to answer the question "where does atheist morality come from?"

As part of the panel discussion, video comments were aired as food-for-thought. To me, the most striking guest was AJ Johnson, Development Director for the American Atheists organization. Here is her comment.

 

Physicist and blogger Sean Carroll responded to her comment with a plea to  atheists to heed her words and to try harder to actively participate in the process of developing an atheist morality. Here is Sean.

AJ Johnson brings up a really important point when she says secularists should "own" their superior morality. I think that we have been on the defensive for a very long time because traditionally the reason why things were "right and wrong" ultimately flowed from God. God was helping us explain what is good, and what is bad. Of course God does not exist. But we haven't, as secularists, really given a good explanation of where our morality comes from. And partly, it's because we don't know. Figuring out how to act in the world without guidance from outside anywhere is a very difficult problem. We say nice things about equality and liberty and things like that. But we don't agree on the underlying philosophy. We don't have the cheap out of saying "well, here's the holy book where its all been written down." We have to think about things. And I think we need to do a better job.

At this point you may say "we can look to evolution and neurobiology for our moral origins. We can see how justice plays out in animals. We can look to cognitive neuroscientists like Josh Greene who can tell us the average response to moral dilemmas in the fMRI scans of human brains. We can use this scientific data to rationalize a fair system for human society. Right?"  Wrong says Sean Carroll.

You do not want to commit the naturalistic fallacy. You do not want to say that because things happen in nature that they are the right things to have happen. We need explain the fundamental reason for saying that some behavior is good, some behavior is bad. I think that evolution helps us explain why we have the predilections we do. And evolution is certainly going to play a crucial role in an ultimate understanding of morality, but it does not GIVE it to us in any simple way. We should be able to do better than that.

If science can not tell us where morality comes from, then what can? As atheists shouldn't we be skeptical of any idea that can not be explained with the scientific method?  I'll give you my answer.  Yes we should be skeptical of pure moral philosophy but that does not mean we should shut our ears to it.  Much can be learned from living people as they have the highest probability of experiencing the same existential questions you have.  The very term "humanist" implies that we ought embrace our peers and draw our ethics from them.  There are currently very powerful  leaders in the atheist community, like it or not.  Though we do not hold these leaders as infallible vessels of an invisible sky-father there is a large collective of minds tuned-in to their thoughts via the internet. 

PZ Myers is one of these leaders. A professor of biology at the University of Minnesota at Morris PZ writes one of the most widely read blogs on the planet.  Being in the right place at the right time, PZ has the unique position of wielding a mighty horde or electronic followers numbering in the hundreds of thousands. When he asks them to do something, they do it en masse. This can be seen any time he asks them to crash some bogus internet poll which they do in throngs.  This kind of klout is not to be taken lightly. Though PZ has been dogged as being odious and even a "shepherd of internet trolls" by thinkers like Sam Harris, in my opinion PZ has made some excellent points lately. I think he has some moral guidance to offer in explaining secular morality more precisely as Sean Carroll has challenged us to do. The following passage penned by PZ  appears in the latest issue of Free Inquiry, titled Atheism’s Third Wave.

Professor and blogger PZ Myer

Science is neutral on moral concerns; it only describes what is, not how it ought to be. And this is true; science is a tool that can be used equally well for curing diseases or building bombs. But scientists are not and should not be morally neutral, nor should scientific organizations or culture be excluded from defining the appropriate uses of science. Science without humanist moral standards leads to Mengele or the Hiroshima bombing or the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.

Similarly, atheism may be value-neutral, but atheists and atheist organizations should not be. Atheism sensu stricto may be a specific assertion about a fact of the universe, but atheism as practiced is a defining idea in a mind and a powerful foundation for a human community. It has meanings and implications that we must heed and use for achieving our goals.

And what should those goals be? Because I’m an atheist and share common cause with every other human being on the planet in desiring to live my one life with equal opportunity, I suggest that atheists ought to fight for equality for all, economic security for all, and universally available health and education services. Peace is the only answer; extinguishing a precious human life ought to be unthinkable in all but the most dire situations of self-defense. Ours should be a movement that welcomes all sexes, races, ages, and abilities and encourages an appreciation of human richness. Atheism ought to be a progressive social movement in addition to being a philosophical and scientific position, because living in a godless universe means something to humanity.

I went to see President Obama speak in Colorado last week. During his speech he echoed this sentiment of equality and inclusiveness. He pointed out that the history of the United States has seen protection under the law and participation in government become more and more inclusive. He described that process as a ratchet in which progress only goes forward. It is my sincere hope that unprecedented personal connectivity can couple to decentralized information and push the ratchet of progress even further. Maybe even so far as to see an open-atheist as a viable candidate for major political office one day.

Thank you for reading. I hope that as a peer you will leave a comment below and tell me where you get your sense of right and wrong so I might share your wisdom.

Spirit and Sam Harris

Sam Harris has suggested the secular humanist movement reclaim the word "spirit." Though you may think otherwise, this word can have a secular definition. A definition unencumbered by the assumption of an afterlife or any notion of the supernatural at all. Harris would like to untangle the word spirit from "its association with medieval superstition."

I comprehend this word in a literal sense. This is known as the Epicurean definition. Spirit translates from the Latin for breathe. This conceptual syntax can be seen in words like "inspire" "aspire" and "perspire." Indeed, an alternate definition of "inspiration" is to "breath in." 

With this in mind I see the spirit not as metaphorical but as real. 

All people "breathe" their spirit into the world by their interactions with people around them. Someone can breathe their spirit into the world by writing a thousand page tome on moral philosophy, or simply smiling at a child. 

In any case these spiritual expressions I see as the path to immortality (not by living in some imaginary afterlife) but by actually influencing the world of the living after we have died. Living on through the "extra soma"  though this phrase has more to do with living on through writing more so than actions.

Many different forces have formed my own view of the word "spirit" most notably my own Swedish grandmother. We called her "Zsage" though her name was Doris. She still has a daily influence on my life. Not that I speak with her on some astral plain but I'm reminded of her wisdom, in the garden, the kitchen, and  in the studio by all kinds of memory ques. 

I hope this explains what I think "spirit" means. I have written these thoughts before in different ways. Read additional thoughts here.   

Also, the following videos have influenced my view on this topic. The fist is a segment from an interview with the writer Margaret Atwood, and second a speech by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin's speech is particularly poignant in explaining Abraham Lincoln's Epicurean perspective on the afterlife. Famed professor of animal sciences Temple Grandin speaks of the "extra soma" in the last chapter of her famous "thinking in pictures" book as well.

Read Sam Harris' essay "in defense of 'spiritual'" here.

On Air Hangouts - Google Game Changer

Kristopher Hite - New York

In the last several weeks I have watched various online companies scramble to get in on a new game changing technology - live On Air web video conferencing. The winner by a mile is Google. 

The newish free service is the ability to watch or participate in live video conferences with the greatest minds of our time. The inherent transparency is worthy of high praise as the service is now available to any person with a Gmail account. It is just a matter of time before the masses start coming online as I feel the service has come to a tipping point of sorts.

As it is currently set up there can be up to ten people participating in a live video conference. The speaker on the main stage is put there automatically when the sound of their voice is detected via their microphone. The whole set up takes about 5 minutes to get used to but quickly feels very natural.  

I predict the ubiquity of these conferences will grow exponentially in the coming weeks and soon change, once again, the way we interact with the world. Before this innovation most content on the web followed the old publishing paradigm. Content was static and came to us in distinct consumable packages. Now ideas are more malleable and participatory than ever. Anyone with an interest in a topic can weigh in if they have a good internet connection. 

Meritocracy rising. 

Though the web (blogs especially) have been an extremely dynamic medium of permissionless innovation, this new tweak of technology will usher in a new era. Now thought-casters will have more of their phenotype up on the web to work with. Mind, voice, smile, eyes. Those people who are good communicators will rise according to their talents more than just their luck at getting in the game early or knowing the right people in the publishing business.  I am so utterly enthused to see a new meritocracy unfurl.

From a publisher's perspective it will be the people who bring you the most timely lists of the upcoming On Air Google hangouts. Say a discussion of the Personal Genome Project (which I recently signed up for) with Jonathan Eisen, George Church, and Steven Pinker, or a discussion of the meaning of "Free Will" with Dan Dennet, Sam Harris, and Harold Varmus. These are fictitious live discussions I just made up but would be unbelievable to see happen.  I hope Tom Paine's Ghost can be a resource for you to find portals to these discussions and a forum for follow up discussions.

I am going to try and get in on the second-ever Pharyngula On Air Hangout this Saturday June 30th at 11 AM Eastern time. Bully to PZ Myers for embracing and popularizing this new feature of Google+.  If I am not a participant I can at least watch and comment and so can you. I do hope this sets a precedent and that these events become publicized! If you know any good resources out there already alerting us to the URLs and times of said events please leave links in the comments.

Cheers!

May the dialogue continue!

"Plato is right; thought is dialogue, people in lively discussion, not Rodin’s isolated Cartesian." 

     ~Bernard Rollin PhD

 

Where do we get morals? Each other.

Will science colonize philosophy, the humanities, and the arts?

Last August I was standing in a church in a small village in Belgium. I was there with a good friend named Kristiaan. A retired elementary school headmaster, Kristiaan is an expert in Belgian history, especially art history. He had brought me to the church as it was one of many venues hosting pieces in a local art show. An older man with a round face and big yellow teeth met us in the entryway eagerly pointing at his large abstract works hanging all over the walls. He was explaining how the perfection of math made his stark depictions of hyperbolic shapes beautiful. Most of his canvases were two colors of acrylic paint, a bright background in yellow and a ribbon shaped hyperbola in purple.

To me this art was not good at all. The man had obvious enthusiasm but the art was just lifeless. He paid little attention to detail and it all looked like a 7th grade art project gone bad. I did not have the heart to tell the aging man I did not like his work but I had a long conversation with Kristiaan about such art after exiting the church. Kristiaan told me he did not fancy art where artists intentionally infuse scientific or mathematical ideas into their work. He thought art like this seemed forced or overly contrived. I had to agree with him in this instance. But I wonder if this was just an isolated case of a mediocre artist. Can there be scientifically informative art that is not aesthetically dead?

I think about daVinci's Vitruvian Man and his helicopter sketches, I think of the occulus in the dome of the pantheon in Rome or the myriad other instances I have seen artistic beauty and scientific enlightenment intersect. I can't help thinking these poorly painted lines I had seen on the walls of the church were just the result of misdirected talent. But do the examples I listed give the same emotional reaction to viewers as other more "artistic" art. Like Thomas Dewing's In the Garden (above) Picasso's Guernica, Gauguin's D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous?

These painted examples have nothing to do with scientific concepts. They do not attempt to educated the masses by hiding the golden ratio, the Fibonacci sequence, or the physical requirements for aerodynamic lift. These paintings speak to the audience through emotional recall. The works may affect the viewer in a physiological way. We could measure things like heart-rate, body temperature and breathing depth while viewers approach the paintings. However the paintings themselves were not produced for the advancement of scientific education. Yet they maintain tremendous value.

Where does this value come from? Is this a question science can answer?

An assertion was made by E.O. Wilson as I listened to his On the Shoulders of Giants address at the 2012 World Science Festival. He said that science would inevitably "colonize philosophy, the humanities, and the arts." I can see this happening as a great unifying event (an ongoing series of events is a better way to describe it) where artists and scientists communicate constantly, to a point where either could switch position any time.

The problems I foresee arising in this transition involve specialization and fractionation. All of humanity  as seen through the ages looks like vast branching tree. With each new generation there are a whole new set of buds on the tree. Throughout history the branches bifurcate. With each bifurcation comes new divisions (catholic/protestant, shiite/sunni, Eastern/Western, Mashed Potatoes and gravy/mac and cheese). With all the new bifurcations coming online you would think there ought be a shit-storm of sectarian violence at present. But that is not the case. Why not?

I think it is because of the transparency happening right now; the unprecedented level of cross-hierarchical communication going on. You, out there somewhere on earth are reading a blog written by a person you may have never met and you are empathizing. You are reading along with me and even if it is just for a fraction of a second your neurons are firing in some similar pattern to mine. We now live in an age of permissionless innovation where I can hit the publish button without any publisher, editor, mother, or father giving me the go ahead. More and more people are realizing this ability every day and that brings me great happiness.

Back to the art-science fusion project. I do not know if science will successfully "colonize" art because specialists do like to keep there sects pure and free of the passing fancier. But I also think our broader and more transparent view of the world, especially the talents and weaknesses of our fellow humans, will continue to help in creating the most beautiful art and the most beneficial science the world has ever known.

Animals feel. Common sense. Right?

An interview with Bernard E. Rollin University distinguished professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University and University Bioethicist in residence.

Retaining a thick Brooklyn accent Bernie (as he is known by his students) is a force to be reckoned with.  A proud weightlifter and connoisseur of Harley Davidson motorcycles, you might not peg him as a Columbia-educated University distinguished professor.  My first encounter with this giant of animal welfare came as he guest-lectured a bioethics class I was taking in the fall of 2006.  His plea for students to embrace logic, critical thinking, and practice “weight-lifting with your mind” was imprinted on us with his use of punctuating profanity as he lectured.  He is what you would consider a “Rock Star” professor on par with Temple Grandin in reputation among students.

The Superior Human?

Lucretius - on the nature of things

On the Origin of Beauty

Philosopher Denis Dutton provides a Darwinian explanation of human aesthetics. As I watched I felt the chills of prehistory run up my spine. This forces a question that (in my mind) has a hard-to-swallow answer - Do we have the freedom in to decide what is beautiful?

Dan Dennett: Philosophy's Santa Claus

Here Dan Dennett discusses his concept of consciousness and presents critiques of various concepts buried in the words "free will." Before encountering Dennett's take on this I had seen the English words "free will" and "consciousness" as Trojan horses for faith-based learners and other such metaphysical proponents. Dan Dennett, on the other hand says those words need to be taken for what they are - placeholders for a more complex amalgam of naturally occurring phenomenon that science is on the march toward understanding.

The Word "Spirit" Comes from the Latin word for "Breath"

Gaia Cleansing

The idea that Earth's biosphere operates cooperatively as a singular superorganism (also known as Gaia theory) has gained footing as more than just a new age worldview since its formation by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the late 1960's. With the publication of James Lovelock's book Gaia - a New Look at Life on Earth the idea that life would go on with or without humanity began trickling into general consciousness.

Forty years later Lovelock is not optimistic about the future of humanity in the face of inevitable global climate change. A year ago he was quoted in the Guardian as believing that "global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics." He highly doubts the efficacy of green initiatives saying it is really all too little too late.

When we go to the grocery store on our bikes and fill up reusable grocery bags with organic veggies are we simply rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic? No one who has made these life changes wants to concede that. But at least we have new leadership that might steer us away from the iceberg. If the desire to make small lifestyle changes spreads to a large enough scale perhaps some environmental mitigation will manifest. In the meantime it might be worth investing in planning "cities of the future" so we might have rafts of survival when southwest Asia runs out of glacial melt water and the Mediterranean gets flooded by Greenland falling into the north Atlantic.

Maybe all the houses left empty by the financial meltdown can be left vacant and be readied for the billion plus climate refugees that might be displaced in the near future. In the face of inevitable catastrophe James Lovelock tells a reporter to "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan." Cheers to that! We all need to eat drink and be merry regardless of the negative drivel that oozes from the television screen.

What do you think about Lovelock's outlook?