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I'll pass that on to her D. Thanks. In the meantime, I'll just post this so I have all this stuff together for my own future reference. Ya'll don't have to read it.
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Jamila: I'm really impressed that you looked up BF Skinner so quickly!
Tom: I love YOU. If he’s that important to you, he’s important to me.
Jamila: Um, you are very right about his ideas on freedom - he is a determinist. So, I know that conflicts with open theism - duh! And that's something I'm really struggling with regarding Skinner.
Dad: I’m glad for your struggle! Don’t give in to him.
Jamila: I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile all the stuff I really like about Skinner's philosophy and the stuff I don't.
Dad: Good question, because he seems obviously correct about some things. I’d say that part of the problem might be feeling like we have to absolutize or universalize either ‘freedom’ or ‘determinism’, thinking that one or the other alone has to be THE explanation for all behavior. Some make that mistake. They see some obvious example of deterministic behavior and make that the paradigm through which they view everything. Or visa versa with freedom. I ran into an open theist the other day who believed NOTHING was determined or fixed about the future. It’s ALL open. But that just makes the same sort of mistake.
Seems to me the life is a mixture of the two. Some of what happens in the world couldn’t happen otherwise, given previous states, i.e., some influences are determinate and causal, especially at a pre-volitional level (biologically and sociologically). Skinner obviously saw that. But at the volitional level, even though Skinner knew our intuitions and experience of freedom were very “entrenched” (I think that was his word), he sought to dislodge those intuitions and boil everything down to the machinery of biological and sociological influences.
But does the fact that some or even much of what we do is sociologically determined mean everything about us is determined? It doesn’t follow logically that this is the case. You have to actually offer some evidence that genuine freedom is impossible or irrational, and that’s a tall order. Surely there are some moderate Skinnerites out there who make room for significant freedom.
I wonder if the reason many biologists and sociologists (and psychologists) conclude that we’re NOT free (i.e., why the opt to view ALL possible behavior through the determinism that seems obviously to obtain in SOME cases) is because once you posit freedom, you posit the human agent as a “final cause,” a “final arbiter” between what she might/might not do and what she in fact chooses to do. And once you posit the agent as creator of choice in this sense, then free choice and agency are not “reducible” to biological and sociological influences in deterministic fashion. But that in turn calls for some account of rational and free choice. What is the human agent if she’s a free, self-determining center of volition not exhaustively determined by her history and surroundings (Skinner)? What are we REALLY if we’re free in this sense? HUGE question. The only explanations on the horizon, it seems, involve religious claims that human beings are a unique material/immaterial blend, embodied spiritual realities not exhaustively reducible to atoms, particles, and sociological influences (though all these play a PART in determining who and what we are).
Jamila: I guess I am kinda mixing up my arguments regarding science and religion. For me, science trumps religion. I mean, why wouldn't it? Science is the study of observable phenomenon.
Tom: But there are observable phenomena which to date have not been successfully explained by science: consciousness, love, beauty, art, morality, and of course our perceptions of freedom. These are all observable phenomena that (to date) have not successfully been explained by materialism. Is it even likely that materialistic suppositions will be able to fully explain these observable phenomena some day? I doubt it. Look at how Skinner has to define moral accountability (in terms of merely ascribing ‘credit’ for this or that behavior). But to “credit” someone with performing this or that behavior is just to identify a person with his behavior. But surely when we attach competing values (love, hatred, bigotry, racism, humility, etc.) to behavior we’re doing far MORE than just ‘crediting’ behavior to this or that person. We’re attributing “value” to behavior as such. Of course Skinner had no room for this. I don’t see that this is a ‘scientific’ move on his part at all. Surely science can say, “No, there are observable features of our behavior which are clearly not reducible in this manner, the explanation for which escapes a purely materialistic metaphysics.”
Jamila: I guess, I feel that if people can successfully believe in science and subscribe to a religion and they can do this with no problems, then that's great! You seem to have done it. But yet you joke about how you believe in evolution, but not to tell mom. I guess that means for you, religion trumps science. So, what I'm saying is, for me, science is the BOSS :) and I'm figuring out what I can add onto that without it conflicting.
Dad: I don’t choose sides (science over religion) and then make one ‘fit’ the other. At least I try not too. I really try to let both speak and inform me. I think the key is not to build certain metaphysical presuppositions into your methodology, i.e., don’t sneak in assumptions about what can or can’t be ultimately real BEFORE you step into a laboratory OR a church. You criticize this in religious believers (who make assumptions about science based on faith). But you do the same in the opposite direction. You just feel you’re the more justified because you’re science is built on objective observation of empirical data. I’m saying I think you’re missing much about what’s observable in our behavior and experience which cannot be explained in materialistic terms.
I don’t feel at all threatened by evolution though. My difficulties here are that I just I simply don’t understand the science enough to make my own, independent, educated conclusions. I mean, I can’t be a world-class biologist AND the best Dad in the world! Come on. So I try to do the best I can. I’ve met and read Christian believers and philosophers I know personally and respect who embrace the standard evolutionary explanation of human origins. And I have to admit that ‘theologically’ I can’t see any problem with the idea that we evolved.
Jamila: What is it about ME that finds beauty and value in the rainbow? Hmm. Deep, dad, deep.
Dad: It doesn’t get any deeper.
Jamila: I guess it's our highly evolved brains :) I can't explain it in deep philosophical ways.
Dad: If you’re a materialist, then all you can allow yourself are physical explanations. But a physical explanation of your experience of beauty in a rainbow? That’s crazy. You KNOW the rainbow is, physically speaking, nothing more than refracted light, etc. But to attribute ‘beauty’ to it, and to experience ‘aesthetic pleasure’ in it are to say the rainbow is MORE than JUST this. Now, I agree that human beings, if they evolved, must have developed this capacity over time. But that doesn’t close the gap or explain the something more that’s going on here. All you’re doing is saying that it took us some time to become the sort of unique and wonderful creatures who perceive and attribute beauty and meaning to the universe over and against what we know to be the MERELY materialistic explanations.
What I’m saying is, to experience the pleasure of beauty is to do what your materialism won’t let you do, namely, offer an EXPLANATION of the universe beyond the MERELY material, for the experience of beauty (or of moral value, which is just the beauty of a particular way of ‘choosing’) IS ITSELF AN EXPLANATION of the observable universe. When you say “that rainbow is beautiful and I derive pleasure from it” you’re EXPLAINING the universe, you’re saying what the universe MEANS. But that meaning can’t be grounded in a purely materialistic metaphysics.
Evolution can tell us that it took us some time to become such creatures. It can tell us that as far as we know this thing we call the “human experience” only happens when brains and central nervous systems reach the particular level of complexity that defines them…yes. But that’s no explanation of what in fact occurs when we experience the beauty of a rainbow, or the power of love, or the horror of some desperate evil. Those valuations and perceptions are (to bring Philip Clayton back into the discussion) EMERGENT properties of the highly evolved complex system we call our brain.
Jamila: Over hundreds and thousands of years, we find small musical instruments, drawings on cave walls, and finally a burial site with flowers. It's not like humans as a species got zapped by God on a particular day and all of a sudden we can appreciate beauty and we find value in others.
Dad: No disagreement here. We evolved slowly. God zapped us gradually, as our capacities evolved and our ability to think abstractly developed and we become self-perceivers (an amazing thing in itself), what I’d call the spiritual capacities emerged and took shape. Man became a living soul. No zapping in two seconds’ time.
Jamila: In order to explain phenomenon we didn't understand, like weather and death, we came up with religion! Invisible gods who controlled the world. I mean, when you look at all that how rediculous does Christianity sound? The Greeks and the Chinese and every people group and culture have had a different religion. How does Christianity claim any superiority? How do you reconcile evolution with your faith? Am I just sounding like an angry teenager?
Dad: A bit like an angry teen-ager, yeah. Funny!
This last paragraph is a different sort of issue. But why assume that whatever is a universal feature of human experience (religious faith, for example) is somehow suspect and false? I should think the scientific thing to do is to begin by assuming that whatever is a universal feature of human experience is definitive of human being per se. But by your count something’s being a universal feature of human experience is itself a reason to toss it out. Why is that? It seems far more plausible (and more faithful to a scientific respect to follow the evidence wherever it leads) to assume that there’s something behind religious faith.
Look, if religion and faith developed along with the emergence of modern man as we know it, then shouldn’t that tell us something about the link between the two? It tells me that we evolved into the sort of beings capable of perceiving ultimate and abiding value and meaning in the universe. Sure, different cultures express this in diverse ways (different religions), but essentially they’re all DOING the SAME THING. It’s one and the same function. And the fact that the religious urge, or the faith perception, can descend into superstition only lends weight to the conclusion that there’s something more than mere material mechanics going on. We’re driven to find our identities—to explain our own meaning and place in the larger world just the way we explain the meaning and place of a rainbow in our own world. We have evolved into a search for meaning. That’s all that’s going on when religions take their leave and become superstitious. It’s just the same search to define our own place in the world. So we get it wrong sometimes? Does that mean the search is invalid? Hardly. And every time you perceive beauty in a rainbow (or in your having something to do with redeeming a person’s psyche and enabling them to be a more whole and healthy person), you are testifying against materialism. To say “That’s so beautiful, so right,” is to explain the world in terms simply not possible as a materialist.
You have to choose between beauty and materialism. But to sacrifice beauty is to deny your own humanity.
We want someone to explain US the way we explain a rainbow. We know we can’t be our own explanations either. That’s all the religious impulse is. It’s just raw aesthetics yearning to find its place in the world. Too much about our observable behavior is unexplainable in terms of bottom up causation, mechanics, and pure materialism.
It’s hopeless. You’re too much a lover of beauty and humanity to deny your own aesthetic self and too intelligent a person to think it’s all explainable purely in terms of the mechanics and chemistry of the brain.
Oh yeah, about Christianity’s superiority. We can talk about that later. This has gotten too long. I’m all about Jesus, not the religion built up around him. You know me.
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Jamila: about my spiritual experiences with God – Nothing ever happened that could not be explained somehow. I never saw, heard or felt anything that wasn’t in some way related to people around me, the person praying for me, the people telling me to speak in tongues.
Dad: Spoken as a true Skinner disciple. Good luck with that.
I appreciate your view on the coaxing and silly antics that religious people go through. I get all that. If you can live in Skinner’s world, I won’t love you any less. ;o) I don’t love you because you believe this or that. I don’t get my love OF your FROM you! I get it from somewhere else. Of course, all of this is meaningless if Skinner is right—what we call love, value, morality, beauty, all of it, is just a function of social determining. We’re just automatons reacting to so many neurons firing in our cerebral cortexes.
If you’re going to believe that world, then LIVE in that world consistently. In my view, to do so is to be LESS than fully human.
Jamila: There have been times in church when I got goose bumps from a song or a person giving his testimony. I always thought that was God or something. But it’s also the SAME feeling I get when I watch extreme makeover home edition – when a poor family gets a second chance and they get a new home. It’s the same feeling I get when I watch Oprah grant a wish to a sick child. It’s the same feeling I get when a client tells me they were thinking of killing themselves the night before, but knew I was coming to see them the next day, so they held on to that little bit of hope. I don’t see it as unique to Christianity or the Holy Spirit. It’s explainable.
Dad: It’s explainable, yeah, but not at all in purely materialistic terms. OF COURSE you felt the same thing with a testimony, home makeover for the poor, Oprah’s gifts to the needy, and your saving somebody’s life. What idiot Christian would say that God is ONLY in the testimony and not at work in these other things. I think you FEEL what you feel in all of them because you’re perceiving what IS in all of them—God at work. That perception of value and beauty is utterly meaningless in purely materialistic terms.
Jamila: Were you a Christian your whole life?
Dad: I came out of my Mom’s vagina with a Bible in my hand and speaking in tongues. What else? Ha!
Kisses and hugs to Tuck,
Dad Post Edited (Tom) : 3/26/2009 10:38:47 AM (GMT-5) |