Dawkins Wants It Both Ways
Jonah Goldberg’s post at The Corner alerted me to an article by Richard Dawkins in which he argues that the idea of sexual fidelity in marriage is a relic of primitive thinking.
It seems to me that while he adopts a pose of brave truth-telling, Dawkins is afraid to confront the implications of his own stated beliefs. Put bluntly, he believes that evolution demonstrates that humans are machines, our minds are flesh-based computers and our sense of self is the epiphenomenon of firing neurons. (I’ve written in NR that I think he makes outrageous assertions about what the Modern Synthesis of evolutionary biology does and does not prove about this question, but I haven’t seen a retraction from him).
In his article on cheating he says that:
Sexual jealousy may in some Darwinian sense accord with nature, but “Nature, Mr. Allnutt, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” Just as we rise above nature when we spend time writing a book or a symphony rather than devoting our time to sowing our selfish genes and fighting our rivals, so mightn’t we rise above nature when tempted by the vice of sexual jealousy?
I, for one, feel drawn to the idea that there is something noble and virtuous in rising above nature in this way.
We’re “put in this world”? We’re supposed to “rise above nature”? Says who? What does it mean to say that something is “noble” or virtuous” when done by a machine? Does a large boulder “sin” if it rolls down a hill and crushes a pebble?
With his metaphysics, it is no more noble to overcome jealousy than it is wrong to push a three year old child in front of a car for the fun of watching her head explode. To ask whether something is right or wrong is like asking whether it’s Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny that brings us toys at Christmas.
The wierdest thing is Dawkin’s argument that when Chris Tarrant’s wife hired a detective to determine if he was committing adultery, she was the “horrible” one of the pair.
Even if you assume that marital fidelity doesn’t have any intrinsic value to society, doesn’t Dawkins see some value in keeping your promises, particularly promises made to the co-parent of your children? Dawkins might not care if Tarrant cheated on him, but doesn’t he grant that their fidelity is ultimately a matter to be negotiated between Mr. and Mrs. Tarrant themselves?
— J Mann · Dec 5, 10:20 PM · #
Completely agreed that Dawkins can’t prove that human beings are von Neumann machines. Goedel thought his incompleteness theorems proved that, in fact, we aren’t. Consciousness itself remains an intractable problem for strong-AI folks and neo-Cartesians alike.
But I’m not sure I agree that being a materialist disqualifies you from articulating a set of ethics, or even from postulating a teleology. A crude version of both could go something like this:
Human beings want to be happy, not unhappy. This human desire to be happy, not unhappy, is the only basis for a teleology of human existence; neither metaphysics nor Darwinian fitness are relevant, as the former is a phantasm and the latter is relevant to genes, not individual organisms. The starting point for ethics, then, is to maximize your own happiness across time, taking into account the reaction of other similar human beings to any proposed strategies of yours to maximize your own happiness and your own nature and how that constrains your ability to be happy
Human beings have a nature that is the result of evolution by natural selection. This nature constrains what kind of life can make us happy; we will not be happy unless we have a social existence, for example. Therefore, when we think about our own happiness, we have to think not only about our short-term desires but about our entire lives and how those lives are entwined with other lives, and a society. Moreover, we should think about our ethical decisions from the neutral perspective of society as a whole rather than from our own selfish perspective, because such an attitude will produce a society most conducive to our happiness in the long term. We can reasonably do this because we are not in a prisoner’s dilemma: we don’t have one shot to defect, but multiple shots, with multiple opportunities for retaliation; moreover, our friends and relations have multiple shots, and their happiness affects ours.
Moreover, because human life is finite, the only way we can “win” the happiness “game” is by accruing “benefit” from the expectation of events that will not transpire until after our death. Strictly speaking, this is a fantasy, of course, but that doesn’t matter, because the only purpose of life is to be happy, so if this fantasy actually makes us happier, then we are happier – if the trick works, it counts.
A noble soul, in this scheme, is one who is most able to be made happy from others’ happiness, and most able to be made happy from events that will not happen until after their death.
I don’t see why Richard Dawkins would object to any of the above.
On the other hand, I don’t see why the above is incompatible with a variety of religious observances. One could make the same kind of argument about religion increasing happiness as about shepping naches from events after one’s death. I certainly don’t carry water for Dawkins’ tub-thumping village atheism. But I would say that while I disgaree that materialism implies that it is OK to murder three year olds for fun, Christianity in particular has a harder time being reconciled with a materialist outlook than, say, Buddhism, or Hinduism.
— Noah Millman · Dec 5, 10:28 PM · #
Interesting — I’m actually sympathetic to Dawkins’ argument re: sexual jealousy. Actually, it comes to mind in light of Sandra Day O’Connor’s martial dilemma.
And I also think the framework Noah sketches above is basically the one I rely on, though I don’t make any claims as to its logical rigor.
— Reihan · Dec 5, 10:51 PM · #
Noah / Reihan:
I follow the argument exactly, and I think it is the smart way out of the materialism = nihilism trap. And by the way, I don’t think you stated it “crudely”, just concisely.
Here’s the problem I’ve always had with it:
1. Evolution is a statistical process, so there is variation in all characteristics.
2. Even if selection pressures call for a “social instinct”, we will all have it to different degrees, and some will in practice not have it all.
3. So if I’m a sociopath, and it makes me happy to be a serial killer, is it “right” for me to be a serial killer?
Now, I assume that the answer is something like “yes, but not many people are, and you’re unlikely to actually be happy and so on.” (Which has always seemed sensible to me). But at that point, I think we’re saying “do whatever makes you happy”, it just so happens that what makes most people happy is, to some extent, to help others.
In what way is this a system of ethics? How can you say that, using my rhetorical example, the person who is made happy by throwing a child in front of a speeding car for fun has done something wrong, as opposed to merely unconventional?
By the way, these are not rhetorical questions – this is something on which I would really love to increase my clarity. I guess my post was a cry for help.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 5, 11:09 PM · #
Jim:
I think the usual way out of the problem of the sociopath is to say that whatever the serial killer is feeling when he kills, it isn’t “happiness” – but this is, I think, a bit too neat.
The other way out is to say that “ethics” are only meaningful with respect to individuals who can apprehend the ethical. A sociopath who knows he is doing wrong is still going to do wrong – he’s a sociopath. So what’s the point in talking about ethics for sociopaths? What difference does it make if in some abstract sense it’s “right” for a sociopath to kill – it’s not right for a normal person, and you’re a normal person. I actually think this is a viable line of thinking (which is not the same thing as saying I endorse it).
To be clear, I am not making Raskolnikov’s argument that the ethical does not apply to the “extraordinary” individual – rather the opposite: I’m saying that, in some sense, it’s as meaningless to talk about “ethics” with respect to a sociopath as it is to talk about “ethics” with respect to a rabid dog.
Which is why the interesting question, to my mind, is: why would it be wrong for the normal people to preemptively kill the sociopath in the scheme I outlined? And I’m not sure I’ve heard a good answer to that, yet.
— Noah Millman · Dec 5, 11:38 PM · #
This is getting really broad (and you are all intimidatingly smart), so I’ll limit myself to say two quick things. First, for me, the prohibition against infidelity (like most of my moral beliefs) comes not from any arbitrary set of moral principals but from the interplay between people, a model of contract rather than of duty. Sexual infidelity in a relationship that has an expectation of faith is wrong because it violates an understanding of trust between two people. Now that in and of itself doesn’t refute Dawkins’s claim— two people can agree to something that defies their genetic predispositions— but I think it undercuts his notion of antiquated mores holding people back. Whatever the reasons, and however antiquated they may seem to be to Dawkings, people keep making this contract, they keep agreeing to it. The problem with the kind of totalizing view of evolution that Dawkins tends to use so inconsistently is that once you assert that things are the way they are because evolution wants them so, you can’t question any aspect of human behavior. If evolution is predisposing many people to cheat, it is also predisposing them to enter in sexual fidelity in the first place. So why is one rising above while the other is succumbing? Once you’ve eliminated a higher authority, as Dawkins feels he has, you’ve eliminated the extra-human perspective that can call one “in line with evolution” and the other “out of line with evolution.” If sexual infidelity is an adaptation, so is sexual fidelity; evolution doesn’t do “should.” That is the fundamental incoherence of the evolution is everything argument— the same evolution that led man to a place where he can develop a theory of evolution also led him to religion, and it has judged neither.
Second, this is again a reminder of how utterly repulsed I am by the contemporary anti-theism movement and its proponents. I don’t believe in any particular expression of organized religion, and I am closer to an atheist, I guess, than a believer. But I want nothing to do with Dennet or Dawkins or Hitchens. I find that kind of heavy hand Manicheanism (Manichaeism?) and arrogant hectoring to be the opposite of the tradition of the Enlightenment they feel they are representing. However much they may speak to views that are congruent with mine, they don’t speak for me.
— Freddie · Dec 6, 12:01 AM · #
I wonder if Dawkins has noted the connection between monogamy and egalitarianism. In a society dominated by philanderers and playas who collect mistresses for themselves, there will be more frustrated bachelors. One man, one vote, one wife?
— Kevin Jones · Dec 6, 12:19 AM · #
This is a really minor point, but Dawkins writes:
This seems really unfair to Burchill, who sounds like a deeply weird figure (in a good way).
She’s also written a novel about teenage lesbians and she reviewed Never Mind the Bollocks for NME in 1977. I mean, knowing nothing else about her, she certainly sounds quite a bit cooler than Ann Coulter.
— Reihan · Dec 6, 12:31 AM · #
>>>>In what way is this a system of ethics? How can you say that, using my rhetorical example, the person who is made happy by throwing a child in front of a speeding car for fun has done something wrong, as opposed to merely unconventional?<<<<
The eccentric is unconventional. The sociopath is unconventional in a way that threatens our way of life. That threat is what makes the sociopath wrong, and that is why wrong does not mean unconventional.
We can go through what “threat” means, we can note that “our way of life” varies with who is making the moral judgement, but this is the basic answer as I see it.
— mk · Dec 6, 12:36 AM · #
Kevin that is a good point and all signs point that the West’s extraordinary dominance stems from Christian monogamy that gives every man a good chance for a family of his own.
Religion of course is evolutionary necessary, since Human beings are extremely social and need some sort of “glue” particularly when organized in hunter-gatherer mode, which is what we spent the majority of behaviorally modern human time (around 50K years ago to say, 11,000 years ago with the first cities). Without religion to set “rules” people would be constantly sticking spears in each other and most of the planet would have been ruled by Neanderthals. So Dawkins is not a very insightful evo biologist — every culture has a religion since it provides an evolutionary needed function — “rules” regulating human interactions.
Most of human history (and Europe before, during, and then after the Romans until say around 800 AD or so) has been characterized by polygamy in one form or another which is “stable” in that the pattern sticks around but wracked by violence and cycles of men sitting out in the bush/desert, plotting revenge, overthrowing the old lions and becoming the new ones, repeat forever. Resources consist of a few big men, slaves, and concubines.
Whereas Europe under Christianity stamping out polygamy had resources that could be mobilized far greater — not just the big man but yeoman farmers and the like, who could pass on their own wealth and advances to their sons. Monogamy is a unique social adaption to enhance productivity and resource mobilization, and can be seen as the primary reason for the West’s success over other cultures.
Of course, under this system, women have a great deal more freedom (no fear of other men “stealing” your wife) but infidelity is not symmetric with risk, i.e. female infidelity by under-cutting male trust and resource productivity and mobilization is greater than male infidelity (risk the resources will be transferred to new family). Feminists complain about this but it seems part of the system. If you want male cooperation and avoidance of the harem, this is the social price paid. The other alternative seems to be sub-Saharan Africa where paternity is often uncertain, the men mostly lay about as mini-sultans, a group without wives sits in the Bush and acts violently, and very little public investment or private education takes place. Because in winner-take-all systems that allow large amounts of female infidelity, the “winner” Darwin-wise is the man who spreads as much seed around in a “Big Man” way, not the steady auto-mechanic.
— Jim Rockford · Dec 6, 01:52 AM · #
Jim – where outside of sub-Saharan Africa do polygamous systems “allow large amounts of female infidelity”? As far as I can see, many polygynous societies are far more punitive toward straying women than monogamous Europe has been for centuries.
If the idea behind (or the result of) monogamous societies is higher-level co-operation by ensuring that most men can get mates, it makes sense that some disapprobation of male infidelity would also arise, since poaching other men’s wives (or potential wives) violates the implicit social contract among men. (That is, I don’t think the amelioration of the double standard, at least in the form of “sharing the blame” between both parties, is merely an artifact of modern feminism.)
— Rohan Swee · Dec 6, 05:43 AM · #
I do wish Professor Dawkins would make up his mind- are we supposed to embrace our natures or rise above them?
He thinks that religion is merely a evolutionary glitch, a flaw in our brains’ hard wiring… and he fully expects us to ignore that hard wiring now that he’s explained to us that our deepest, most cherished beliefs are a mere Darwinian screwup.
And now, he thinks that our tendencies toward sexual jealousy are another Darwinian glitch we should ignore.
But if anyone were to suggest that, say, homosexuality is an evolutionary glitch (which Dawkins must certainly believe himself), and that gays should therefore suppress their urges (which are nothing more than a genetic mistake, after all), Dawkins would undoubtedly froth at the mouth!
Apparently, SOME evolutionary glitches must be embraced and some suppressed. And who decides which? Professor Dawkins, apparently.
— astorian · Dec 6, 06:34 AM · #
I agree with Noah that it’s at least conceptually possible for Dawkins to articulate an ethical system that recommends that we recognize and avoid some of our innate desires.
What I don’t get is how Dawkins is making the leap, in this article, that extramarital s-x is a “private” matter, EVEN FROM YOUR SPOUSE.
Assuming that a particular person values s-xual fidelity, why does Dawkins assume that it is contemptable and absurd for that person to negotiate for fidelity as a component of a relationship, and to expect the other person to keep their promise?
— J Mann · Dec 6, 03:38 PM · #
This is why I never wander into the fever swamp that is the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section. Does it really serve the newspaper’s mission to give Richard Dawkins a platform from which to announce his availability to female grad students?
— Matt Frost · Dec 6, 04:53 PM · #