Stendhal on Romanticism and Classicism

In his little book, Racine and Shakespeare, Stendhal defined romanticism and classicism as follows:

Romanticism is the art of presenting to different peoples those literary works which, in the existing state of their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure.

Classicism, on the contrary, presents to them that literature which gave the greatest pleasure to their great-grandfathers.

To which Victor Hugo replied,

…he is profoundly unaware of what the classical genre is or what the romantic genre is.

Perhaps. Stendhal’s definitions aren’t like anything I’ve ever heard in an English class. On the other hand, they’re as clear and understandable now as they were when he wrote them down nearly 200 years ago. I suspect they’re also a great deal more useful for actually communicating an idea than anything Hugo might have come up with. For example, as Stendhal put it,

It requires courage to be a romantic (his definition), because one must take a chance. The prudent classicist, on the contrary, never takes a step without being supported secretly, by a line from Homer or by a philosophical comment made by Cicero in his treatise De Senectate.

If you look at what passes for “culture” in Europe in our time, it’s obvious that not many artists are taking chances. They’re mostly content with repackaging the work that pleased their great-grandfathers.

Stendhal

John Brennan Redefines “Jihad”

According to the ideology of our current rulers, religion is good.  Multi-culturism is also good.  Therefore, as expressions of culture, all religions are good.  Not only that, they are all good to a precisely equal degree.  It is impossible for one religion to be “more good” than another religion.  As a caveat of this, nothing done in the name of or on behalf of religion can be bad.  If someone murders your children and tells you they did it because of their religion, they’re simply the victims of an unfortunate misconception.  If religion inspired something bad, than the law of the conservation of religious goodness would be violated.  It therefore follows that such people are delusional, and don’t actually understand their own religion.

In keeping with these truisms, White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan has done Moslem terrorists the honor of redefining the word “jihad.”  In the process of explaining the “real” nature of their religion to them, he recently enlightened them with the knowledge that all those hours they spent in the Madrassa memorizing the Koran were in vain. Thanks to careful reading of the New York Times, he is now able to inform them that their understanding of “jihad” is flawed. When they blew all those people up, they were the victims of a terrible imposture. Bringing his profound theological expertise to bear, he sets them straight:

Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.

Thus spake Imam Brennan.  In order to fact check the presidential advisor and newly minted Islamic scholar, I consulted Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, circa 1968.  It is one of those wonderful old massive dictionaries that used to be mounted on lecterns in the better libraries, and was published by the great ancient ones long before the dawn of the era of political correctness.  It defines ”jihad” as follows:

1) A holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty. 2) A bitter strife or crusade undertaken in the spirit of a holy war.

Note the guileless use of the now forbidden term, “crusade.”  I thought that was particularly charming.  It is not recorded that anyone at the time, Moslem or otherwise, objected to the above definitions.

Depleted Uranium: The Hysteria Rolls On

As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use depleted uranium (DU) as ammunition because of its potential value as an energy source. Other than that, its substantial advantages as a penetrator for defeating armored targets are likely grossly outweighed by the value of the propaganda weapon we hand to our enemies when we use it, not to mention the massive cost of litigating cases brought by lawyers who are well aware of the potential value of DU hysteria for lining their pockets. That hysteria lost touch with reality long ago, and continues to grow. A glance at the facts should be enough to cure anyone of an overweening faith in the intelligence of human beings.

The basic propaganda line relating to DU weapons is that a) Great increases in cancer and other health problems are experienced in areas where they are used, and b) Most of these health problems are due to radioactivity from DU.  The professionally pious have devoted a great deal of webspace to the subject, typically short on facts but with lots of pictures of terribly deformed infants and, as usual, featuring themselves as noble saviors of humanity. Those with strong stomachs can find examples here, here and here. It’s all completely bogus, but the truth has never been more than a minor inconvenience for ideological poseurs.

The World Health Organization, public health arm of the UN, an organization that has not been notably chummy with the US of late, debunked the DU hysteria in a report that appeared in 2001 (click on the link to see the document). Quoting from the report,

For the general population it is unlikely that the exposure to depleted uranium will significantly exceed the normal background uranium levels.

Measurements of depleted uranium at sites where depleted uranium munitions were used indicate only localized (within a few tens of metres of the impact site) contamination at the ground surface.

General screening or monitoring for possible depleted uranium-related health effects in populations living in conflict areas where depleted uranium has been used is not necessary. Individuals who believe they have been exposed to excessive amounts of depleted uranium should consult their medical practitioner for examination, appropriate treatment of any symptoms and follow-up.

The potential external dose received in the vicinity of a target following attack by DU munitions has been theoretically estimated to be in the order of 4 μSv/year (UNEP/UNCHS, 1999) based on gamma ray exposure. Such doses are small when compared to recommended guidelines for human exposure to ionizing radiation (20 mSv/annum for a worker for penetrating whole body radiation or 500 mSv/year for skin (BSS, 1996).

Of course, the poseurs dismiss such stuff with a wave of the hand, claiming that, for reasons known only to them, the authors of the report suppressed damning evidence, or didn’t consider certain miraculous processes whereby the DU can be transported into the bodies of its victims without showing up in urine samples.  If one points out, for example, that natural background radiation in places such as Iran and India is much higher than any increase due to DU in the places where all the birth defects and illness is supposedly taking place, without ill effects to the local populations, they merely reply that the DU is carried on insoluble particles, that are infinitely more dangerous than natural uranium.  If it is pointed out that, in that case, it would actually be much more difficult for DU to cause birth defects because the rate at which the body carries insoluble compounds to the vicinity of the reproductive organs is an order of magnitude less than for soluble uranium compounds, or that it is much more difficult for insoluble compounds to get into the food chain, they quickly change tack.  Suddenly, the DU becomes soluble, and the circle is squared. 

A moment’s rational consideration of the facts demolishes the DU hype.  For example, it is claimed that 320 tons of DU were used in the Gulf War in 1991 and 1700 tons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Those numbers pale in comparison to the approximately 9000 Tons of natural uranium and 22400 tons of thorium currently released each year from the burning of coal.  Much of this material is pumped directly into the atmosphere in the form of particulates that easily enter the lungs.  It is far more likely to contaminate nearby population centers in this form than the byproducts of DU munitions.  Coal consumption in China alone is over 2 million metric tons per year, resulting in the yearly release of about 3000 tons of uranium and 7450 tons of thorium.  There have certainly been health problems downwind of these plants, but they’ve been due to plain old-fashioned air pollution.  There have been no massive increases in birth defects or radiation-related cancer, flying in the face of claims about DU’s supposedly demonic power to sicken and kill.  Uranium absorbed in the body will show up in the urine, whether it is ingested in soluble or insoluble form.  Yet, despite massive screening of military veterans, ongoing studies find no persistent elevation of U concentrations beyond that found in the general population other than in soldiers actually hit by DU fragments or involved in friendly fire accidents.

Studies of uranium miners confirm the absurdity of the inflated DU claims.  Exposure to increased levels of uranium dust has not been associated with increases incidence of cancer, even in older miners.  Increased levels of lung cancer in such workers certainly have been detected, but it is associated with the breathing of high concentrations of radon in confined spaces.  The contribution of DU to radon gas concentrations in the atmosphere in Iraq is utterly insignificant compared to natural seepage from the earth and release by coal plant pollution.  Meanwhile, massive use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, the sabotage and burning of hundreds of oil wells after the first Gulf War, and the release of a host of carcinogenic chemicals in the process of oil production are somehow never considered as possible contributors to illness and birth defects, unless, of course, they happen to fit another narrative.

In a word, the DU propaganda is nonsense, but that doesn’t keep it from being effective.  Other than that, because of DU’s potential value as a fuel in future breeder reactors that will be available to us without the environmental and health hazards of mining new uranium, we are almost literally shooting silver bullets.  Under the circumstances, one wonders what possible justification there can be for the claim that the advantages of continued use of DU munitions outweigh the drawbacks.  Why are we working so hard to confirm the familiar claim that “military intelligence” is an oxymoron?

Rogue State Arizona

Like most major news organizations, CNN occasionally throws out some red meat to what remains of its base of readers and viewers in the form of propaganda that hits the right ideological cords.  Apparently they wanted to give particularly prominent billing to one such piece today, as it popped up on their iGoogle widget.  According to the title of the article, written by Ruben Navarrette, Arizona is a “rogue state at war.” 

As his hyperbolic title implies, Navarrette shares the pervasive heartburn on the left over the Arizona immigration law.  In his words,

(Arizona Governor Jan) Brewer just signed SB 1070, a disgraceful anti-immigration and pro-racial-profiling law, to give local and state cops throughout the state the chance to suit up and play border patrol agent. Why shouldn’t she get the chance to suit up and play general?”

In accordance with established precedent, he never bothers to actually quote the sections of the law he finds “anti-immigration” and “pro-racial-profiling.”  There’s good reason for that.  There aren’t any.  In fact, the law specifically prohibits racial profiling.  For example, according to Section 2B,

A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color, or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.

and similar wording appears in Sections 3C and 5D.  One could, of course, claim that the “real” intent of the law is to condone racial profiling in spite of its repeated and explicit rejection thereof if it were impossible for law enforcement officers to reasonably form the suspicion that someone was in the country illegally for any other reason.  However, that claim is nonsense, based as it is on the supposition that nothing in the dress, manner, or behavior of an individual could possibly lead an experienced law enforcement officer to suspect such a thing.

In fact, the idea that SB1070 condones racial profiling is so absurd that no one who has actually read the short, ten page law could rationally make such a claim.  I suspect that’s the reason for the now familiar claim we’ve heard from the likes of Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano that they haven’t actually read the bill.  It gives them an out.

In fact, the Arizona law is pretty lame stuff, and it’s hard to imagine what all the fuss is about unless one realizes that ones opinion concerning it happens to be a litmus test that distinguishes those who live in the ideological box on the left from those who live in the ideological box on the right in this country.  In other words, its something like the Three Chapters controversy, which raised furious passions in the days of the Emperor Justinian, even though no one outside of a seminary could distinguish what it was the two sides were actually fighting about today, or the controversy over whether Communion in both kinds was permissible or not, a question over which a long series of wars were fought, even though not one person in a thousand could explain the difference between the two sides today.  It serves as a similar red flag in our own day, inflaming the passions of the partisans of the two sides, although it is otherwise unlikely to have a significant effect on the inhabitants of Arizona, whether there legally or not.  Hence Mr. Navarrette’s furious pronunciamiento against the “rogue state.”

Once he has put the oppressive tyrants of Arizona in their place with sufficient contempt, Navarrette regales us with accounts of all the wonderful things the Administration is doing to prevent illegal immigration.  For example,

So I can tell you what the border patrol agents on the ground would tell you: The U.S.-Mexico border has never been more fortified. There are now more than 20,000 border patrol agents on the federal payroll. That’s more agents than any other federal enforcement agency, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those agents apprehend people and deport them at a feverish clip. In fact, it was recently announced that the Obama administration deported more people last year than the Bush administration during its final year in office.

Of course, what all these wonderful and praiseworthy efforts have in common is that they are completely ineffective.  Those who are deported “at a feverish clip” merely suffer the inconvenience of having to re-cross the border, taking better care not to get caught the second time around.  Navarrette continues,

If the federal government does take border enforcement seriously, critics might ask: Why are there still people trying to enter the United States illegally? Simple. We can dig a moat, deploy an army, build walls or call in an airstrike, but desperate people will always find a way to go around, under or over any impediment in their path to a better life.

In fact, history provides ample proof of the fact that moats, walls, and airstrikes are not necessary to stop the illegal crossing of borders.  What is required is the political will to stop it, and that will is lacking.  It is cold comfort that the Republicans also lacked that will.  Why compare failures?  Navarrette aims another slap at the Republicans in his closing paragraph:

There’s only one of those (magic bullets for stopping illegal immigration). It involves fining, arresting and prosecuting the employers of illegal immigrants, including people who are, this election year, streaming into fundraisers for McCain, Brewer and other tough-talking Republicans vowing to solve a problem that many of their backers helped create.

I’m on board with that, but it’s all one, really.  We’re only arguing about how to shut the barn door now that the horses have already escaped.  The chances are slim that we’ll even bother.  After all, Navarrette is right about the Republicans.  They’re all talk.  They had eight years to do something about illegal immigration during the Bush administration and accomplished nothing.  As long as the people who keep their campaign coffers full continue to require cheap labor, we can safely assume they will continue to accomplish nothing if they regain power, all their rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  There’s nothing for it, really, but to grin and bear it.

Rand Paul and the Christian Nation

According to Rand Paul, who recently defeated conservative stalwart Trey Grayson in the GOP primary for a Senate seat in Kentucky, we would be better off if the US were a Christian nation.  In his words,

I’m a Christian. We go to the Presbyterian Church. My wife’s a Deacon there and we’ve gone there ever since we came to town. I see that Christianity and values is the basis of our society. . . . 98% of us won’t murder people, won’t steal, won’t break the law and it helps a society to have that religious underpinning. You still need to have the laws but I think it helps to have a people who believe in law and order and who have a moral compass or a moral basis for their day to day life.

As an atheist, who must therefore, by implication, be an immoral murderer, thief, and subverter of law and order, I can only suggest that Mr. Paul consider how well the “Christian nation” thing has worked out for us in the past. The Albigensians were mercilessly annihilated by the leaders of Christian nations at the behest of the leader of the world’s Christians at the time, Pope Innocent III. They carried out this act of law and order because they were Christians. The Hussites were attacked and slaughtered by the leaders of Christian nations at the behest of the leader of the world’s Christians at the time, Pope Martin V, who called on

all the kings, princes, dukes, barons, knights, states, and commonwealths of Christendom, adjured them, by “the wounds of Christ,” to unite their arms and exterminate that “sacrilegious and accursed nation.

Exterminate they did, and countless thousands were killed in the many years of warfare between Christian nations that followed.  Those who carried out these acts of law and order did so because they were Christians.  In France, tens of thousands of Huguenots were murdered on St. Bartholomew’s Day in a Christian nation at the behest of Christian rulers by people who acted on behalf of Christianity. They carried out this act of law and order because they were Christians.  Eight civil wars were fought between the Christian Huguenots and the Christian Catholics in Christian France.  Tens of thousands died in these acts of law and order, fought by Christians to vindicate Christian principles.  Eventually, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots were forced to flee the country after being subjected to countless acts of rape, pillage, and murder, carried out by Christians to vindicate Christian principles at the behest of a Christian king.  Very few of them remained in France after law and order had been restored in this way. 

The list goes on and on.  I would be interested in hearing how the “libertarian” Paul would go about the task of creating a Christian utopia, with all the blessings of law and order set forth above.  Normally, to create such utopias, it is necessary to use state power.  I would also be interested in hearing how Paul would insure equality before the law and equal rights for all citizens, regardless of their religious beliefs, in a country ruled by people who, like him, believe that those who are not religious are likely to murder, steal, and break the law. 

Paul’s detractors are right.  He is a bigot.

Of Glenn Beck, the Washington Post, and the Political Value of Gold Coins

You can always tell when a political message is being delivered effectively.  Instead of debating the message, the ideologues on the other side smear the messenger.  That being the case, it’s obvious Glenn Beck has been hitting some nerves lately. 

His latest detractor is Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, who has been shedding crocodile tears because one of Beck’s sponsors, Goldline, Inc., is supposedly overcharging for its gold coins. It’s interesting when you follow the links on this story that you have a very hard time finding exactly which gold coins Weiner is referring to, regardless of whether the source is on the left or the right. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that neither side has a clue what they’re talking about. The dead tree media sites often claim that Goldline’s markup is 90% over bullion value, but, as noted here, that number is meaningless unless you identify which coin you’re talking about. For example, one of the more recently struck U.S. gold coins, the $2.50 Indian head quarter eagle, only contains 0.121 troy ounces of gold, or a little over a tenth of an ounce. Based on the current gold price of $1190 per ounce, its bullion value is, therefore, about $144. However, look at the completed listings for the coin on eBay and you’ll see that high grade coins easily fetch over $300 at the moment, and even coins with significant wear typically sell for over $225. 

If one is speaking of strictly bullion coins, it appears that Goldline’s markup over the most competitive dealers is around 25%, varying up to 35% for proof coins, which do have limited numismatic value.  However, that’s hardly out of the ordinary in the coin business.  Shop around on any of the coin cable channels on TV, and you’re unlikely to find markups less than that on similar bullion coins.  That seems rather odd when we learn that Weiner represents himself as perfectly balanced.  Why, to hear him tell it, he would go after liberals like a bulldog if they did the same thing.  For example, from Politico,

But Weiner, a liberal who represents New York City, brushed off allegations that his report was politically motivated. “My message is directed at consumers, telling them to beware that the things that Goldline and Glenn Beck are selling are essentially rip-offs,” he said, adding “if these were all liberal commentators who were promoting a company that has a 200-percent mark-up on its gold, I would like to think that I would be just as hard on them.”

If that’s really true, and we can take the good Congressman at his word, I have a prime candidate for his next investigation; the staunchly liberal Washington Post.  It happens that on page A-17 of today’s issue there’s a quarter page ad for silver dollars by GovMint.com, which refers to itself as “Your one best source for coins worldwide.”   It appears they’re selling Peace silver dollars for the bargain price of $39.95 each.  Now Peace silver dollars contain 0.773 troy ounces of silver, so the bullion value of each coin based on today’s silver price of $17.75 per ounce is only $13.75!  In case you’re bad at math, Congressman Weiner, that’s a markup of not just a paltry 90%, but a whopping 190% plus!  Unleash the hounds!

The WaPo has been running similar ads for years, so one can only wonder at the fact that the “fair and balanced” Congressman hasn’t yet sniffed them out.  Of course, the coins in question are claimed to be uncirculated, and even common Peace dollars have some numismatic value in that condition, so let us be more charitable than the good Congressman, and actually take that into account.  Let us take into account, as well, the fact that, if one buys twenty of the coins, one can get them for the bargain basement price of only $29.50 each.  Turning once again to eBay, we find that, as I write these lines, one can buy a dumptruck full of uncirculated Peace silver dollars for under $20 each.  Putting it all together, we arrive at a markup of a “mere” 50%.     Goldline, with its paltry 25% to 35% for similar material, is a mere piker by comparison.  So much for Congressman Weiner’s “evenhandedness.”

I doubt that Glenn Beck would agree with much of anything I’ve posted on this blog, but I’m glad he’s out there.  Don’t his liberal enemies always tell us that diversity is a good thing?  Well, he represents real diversity.  There’s no such thing as freedom of speech if it’s only the freedom to listen to people who think just like you.

Surprise! Cell Phones Really are Annoying

It’s official. The miserable creatures who sit down next to you in public places and yap on their cell phones nonstop really are annoying. According to a study soon to appear in the journal Psychological Science, people are irritated by cell phone conversations because it’s hard to tune them out.  It’s good to know I’m not unreasonably grumpy after all.  In the words of lead author Lauren Emberson of Cornell,

Hearing half a conversation is distracting because we are unable to predict the succession of speech… We believe this finding helps reveal how we understand language in conversation: We actively predict what the person is going to say next and this reduces the difficulty of language comprehension.

People are often more irritated by nearby cell phone conversations rather than conversations between two people who are physically present. Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can’t tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated.

In all fairness, the authors of “Pearls before Swine,” should be given priority for this discovery. In a previous study of annoying people that appeared in their comic strip some years ago, they included Fred, the guy who “makes unnecessary personal calls on his cell phone while in public places,” right up there with Myrna, who “obliviously blocks a whole grocery aisle with her shopping cart while looking for her favorite cake mix,” and Dirk, the guy who “reclines his airline seat all the way back and crushes the knees of whoever sits behind him,” in their “Box o’ Stupid People.”  It’s true their strip isn’t peer reviewed, but it will likely be more heavily cited than the Psychological Science paper.

The Role of Morality

In the previous post, I pointed out that morality is a blunt and dubious tool for achieving the “well-being” of mankind, even assuming it is possible to achieve general agreement on what the well-being of mankind really is.  It would seem this should be obvious.  Morality is an evolved behavioral trait that maximized the chances of genetic survival in conditions that, for all practical purposes no longer exist.  It is irrational to assume that some plausible variation of emotional behavioral traits that evolved in times utterly different from the present are somehow likely to be effective tools in achieving goals, such as the well-being of mankind in general, that are completely different from the biological function they performed when they came into existence.  We can no more dispense with morality in the everyday interactions of individuals than we can jump out of our own skins.  The hard-wired emotional behavioral traits we associate with morality are a part of us, and we are far from being intelligent enough to simply shut them off by an act of will.  However, when it comes to public policy, we are more likely to achieve common goals by applying our powers of reason, weak as they are, then by seeking to find and apply some Platonic form of the “perfect morality.”

These assertions do not mean I am in favor of allowing mankind to sink into a swamp of amoral behavior, where dog eats dog, and the powers of darkness prevail.  On the contrary, I maintain that, if our goal is to avoid such a world, we are more likely to achieve that goal by applying our weak powers of reason, such as they are, than by relying on the innate behavioral traits of our species associated with morality, which evolved because they performed a function utterly different from maximizing collective well-being in a world anything like the present, and which are, in any case, still poorly understood. 

Consider what has happened when modern human societies have attempted to maximize collective well-being by applying moral rules in the past.  In addition to identifying the “good,” whose well-being is to be maximized, they have invariably identified the “evil,” as well, those “immoral” ones who are seeking to harm the “good,” and must be defeated and, if possible destroyed.  In applying morality to achieve social goals it is not possible to nicely separate “good” and “evil.”  The innate behavioral traits associated with morality must inevitably and invariably include identification of the evil “out-group,” as well as the good “in-group.”  Don’t look believe me?  Just look at the facts; as reflected in the entire recorded history of humanity.  Consider, for example, the Nazis.  Can anyone be naive enough to believe that they were all deliberately attempting to do evil?  On the contrary, they sought to maximize the well-being of the “good,” in this case, the German people, who were believed to be closely related to each other genetically.  We know what happened to their out-group, the Jews.  Another familiar recent example is the Communists.  They sought to maximize the well-being of the proletariat, who, according to theory, would inevitably become a majority in modern societies.  In order for them to achieve the “good,” it was necessary for them to eliminate the “evil,” in the person of the bourgeoisie.  The result was 100 million innocent dead. 

Are things any different at the present time?  Consider the most self-consciously pious ideological type in modern society, the “progressive” liberal.  Think the identification of “evil” out-groups is absent from their world view?  Guess again.  Visit any of their websites and you’ll find furious rants against greedy corporations, members of the tea party movement, Republicans, global warming deniers, etc., etc. 

If we would maximize human well-being, lets attempt to apply reason instead of morality for a change.  I make this suggestion, not because I consider myself more moral or just than others, but because I would prefer to avoid the inconvencience of neighbors who are trying to kill me.  As many who experienced the attentions of  Communists in the Soviet Union, or Nazis in Germany, or were tortured and killed as “heretics” in an earlier day might have testified, that’s an all too frequent negative character trait of the “morally good.”  Turning around and declaring them “morally evil” after the fact is small comfort to the victims.  This is getting old.  It’s time we tried something different.

Sam Harris and his Butterfly Net Revisited

In an earlier post, I commented on fellow atheist Sam Harris’ chase after that gaudy butterfly, the good-in-itself. Well, the chase continues. In an article that appeared on no less virtuous a site than Huffpo, he describes his recent progress “Toward a Science of Morality.”

His latest on the subject was inspired by feedback on a talk he gave at this year’s Ted Conference from, as he puts it, ”literally thousands” of people. It would seem that many of them are no more impressed by Sam’s quest for the holy grail of scientific goodness than I am. In his words,

If nothing else, the response to my TED talk proves that many smart people believe that something in the last few centuries of intellectual progress prevents us from making cross-cultural moral judgments — or moral judgments at all. Thousands of highly educated men and women have now written to inform me that morality is a myth, that statements about human values are without truth conditions and, therefore, nonsensical, and that concepts like “well-being” and “misery” are so poorly defined, or so susceptible to personal whim and cultural influence, that it is impossible to know anything about them. Many people also claim that a scientific foundation for morality would serve no purpose, because we can combat human evil while knowing that our notions of “good” and “evil” are unwarranted. It is always amusing when these same people then hesitate to condemn specific instances of patently abominable behavior. I don’t think one has fully enjoyed the life of the mind until one has seen a celebrated scholar defend the “contextual” legitimacy of the burqa, or a practice like female genital excision, a mere thirty seconds after announcing that his moral relativism does nothing to diminish his commitment to making the world a better place. Given my experience as a critic of religion, I must say that it has been disconcerting to see the caricature of the over-educated, atheistic moral nihilist regularly appearing in my inbox and on the blogs.

Well, I’d like to think that not all of those thousands of commenters were caricatures of over-educated, atheistic nihilists.  As Sam describes them, they don’t make a lot of sense.  For example, it is logically impossible to “combat human evil while knowing that our notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are unwarranted” because the statement itself is an admission that the speaker doesn’t know what “human evil” is.  Similarly, one can’t be committed to “making the world a better place” unless he actually knows what he’s talking about when he uses the term “better.”  However, Sam is no more logical than the opposition.  In the same paragraph he implies that good and evil must have a real existence by virtue of the fact that human beings are capable of strong negative emotional responses to practices such as forcing women to wear burqas, or female genital excision.  By that logic, God must exist, too, because otherwise there would have been no one around to create the world.  For that matter, I also have a strongly negative subjective emotional response to liberal “progressives” striking ostentatious poses of public piety.  That doesn’t mean that such people are “really evil.”  It merely means that my subjective identification of “out-groups” is different from Sam’s, a difference that human moral behavior is entirely flexible enough to accommodate.  Sorry, Sam, but human emotional responses are adequately explained as the expression of evolved behavioral traits.  They do not require the existence of real good and real evil.

Sam continues,

First, a disclaimer and non-apology: Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy. There are two reasons why I haven’t done this: First, while I have read a fair amount of this literature, I did not arrive at my position on the relationship between human values and the rest of human knowledge by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continued progress in the sciences of mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of terms like “metaethics,” “deontology,” “noncognitivism,” “anti-realism,” “emotivism,” and the like, directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. My goal, both in speaking at conferences like TED and in writing my book, is to start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and find helpful.

Here I can only agree wholeheartedly.  My own thoughts on morality are based on the fundamental hypotheses that

1.  The human behavioral traits associated with morality exist because they have evolved.

2.  They evolved at a time when the nature of human relationships and human societies were much different in many respects from what they are in the modern world.

3.  Good and evil exist only as subjective mental constructs of the mind associated with these behavioral traits.  They have no objective existence independent of their manifestation in the minds of individuals.

Acceptance of these hypotheses requires, at a minimum, knowledge and acceptance of the theory that human beings have evolved as a result of a process of natural selection.  No pre-Darwinian moral philosopher could have understood or appreciated the significance of these fundamental assumptions.  Therefore, until someone can demonstrate that my hypotheses are wrong, it makes no more sense for me to learn everything they had to say about the real existence of good and evil that it would have made for Copernicus and Galileo to learn everything that had ever been written based on the assumption of a geo-centric universe. 

As for the modern effusions of the “experts on ethics,” they have a remarkable aversion to, as E. O. Wilson put it,” laying their cards on the table.”  In other words, they tend to wander off in obscure reasonings about good and evil without bothering to first explain to the rest of us why they believe such categories even exist, and, if they do exist, what the nature of their existence might be.  I have” laid my cards on the table” by setting forth the fundamental assumptions noted above.  They make it possible for others to agree or disagree with me by simply demonstrating that my hypotheses are right or wrong.  To the extent that the “experts” fail to lay their cards on the table in similar fashion, I consider what they have to say on the subject of morality irrelevant, regardless of how many articles they have published on the subject in scholarly journals.

Sam continues with the assertion that one can have a science of morality.  That is certainly true in the sense that one can seek to discover truths about its nature and the reasons for its existence.  One can also use science to examine the legitimacy of moral claims.  Hume realized long ago that good and evil are not objective things, and that one cannot, therefore, demonstrate their existence using reason.  That certainly doesn’t mean one can’t subject the phenomena associated with morality to scientific study.  One cannot, however, use science to create something that doesn’t exist.  If objective good and evil don’t exist to begin with, then they will not magically spring into existence, even if one invokes science until one is blue in the face, any more than God will spring into existence by virtue of the fact that he is subjected to scientific study. 

However, we soon discover that Sam does not refer to a “science of morality” in this limited sense.  In the following paragraphs he claims that the real, objective good consists in maximizing human well-being.  He does so rather subtly, as if embarrassed to make such a claim, but still, he makes the claim.  In his words,

I might claim that morality is really about maximizing well-being and that well-being entails a wide range of cognitive/emotional virtues and wholesome pleasures, but someone else will be free to say that morality depends upon worshipping the gods of the Aztecs and that well-being entails always having a terrified person locked in one’s basement, waiting to be sacrificed.

Notice that, though their definitions of “well-being” differ, both Sam and the worshipper of Aztec gods in the paragraph above are made to implicitly accept the claim that well-being can be equated with real moral good.  In later paragraphs, Sam confirms the surmise that he equates well-being with the objective good.  For example,

Even if there were ten thousand different ways for groups of human beings to maximally thrive (all trade-offs and personal idiosyncrasies considered), there will be many ways for them not to thrive — and the difference between luxuriating on a peak of the moral landscape and languishing in a valley of internecine horror will translate into facts that can be scientifically understood.

For instance, I think that Kant’s Categorical Imperative only qualifies as a rational standard of morality given the assumption that it will be generally beneficial (as J.S. Mill pointed out at the beginning of Utilitarianism).

These are all good questions: Some admit of straightforward answers; others plunge us into moral paradox; none, however, proves that there are no right or wrong answers to questions of human and animal well-being.

What we have then, is a version of Mill’s Utilitarianism with “well-being” substituted for “utility,” but with the added claim that well-being and objective good are actually the same, a claim that Mill, who explicitly rejected claims of “transcendental good” would never have made.  As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, I suspect Mill would have rejected even his own qualified version of Utilitarianism if he’d been able to sit on the shoulders of Darwin, but, unfortunately, he was born a bit too early.  He died some years after publication of “On the Origin of Species,” but before the implications of Darwin’s theory concerning morality had a chance to sink in.

In what follows, Harris addresses the objections to his “scientific morality” from a number of individuals, who all, oddly enough, agree with the notion, at least implicitly, that real objective good exists, and that it can be equated to well-being.  Far from denying that well-being and objective good are the same, they merely quibble about whether one can find adequate metrics to determine scientifically what “well-being” is.  For example, prominent among them is physicist Sean Carroll, whom Harris quotes as saying,

Surely all right-thinking people agree on the primacy of well-being.

Imagine that we are able to quantify precisely some particular mental state that corresponds to a high level of well-being; the exact configuration of neuronal activity in which someone is healthy, in love, and enjoying a hot-fudge sundae. Clearly achieving such a state is a moral good.

More importantly, it’s equally obvious that even right-thinking people don’t really agree about well-being, or how to maximize it.

And from biologist P. Z Myers, again, implicitly accepting the criterion of well-being, but rejecting the possibility of scientifically measuring it.

I don’t think Harris’s criterion — that we can use science to justify maximizing the well-being of individuals — is valid. We can’t… Harris is smuggling in an unscientific prior in his category of well-being.

Of course, the elephant in the room that all these comments and counter-comments studiously avoid is the validity of the claims that a) objective good actually exists, and b) objective good can be equated with well being.  In fact, Harris seems to be aware of this, as he belatedly gets around to moving from “is” to “ought” at the end of the article:

So, while it is possible to say that one can’t move from “is” to “ought,” we should be honest about how we get to “is” in the first place. Scientific “is” statements rest on implicit “oughts” all the way down. When I say, “Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen,” I have uttered a quintessential statement of scientific fact. But what if someone doubts this statement? I can appeal to data from chemistry, describing the outcome of simple experiments. But in so doing, I implicitly appeal to the values of empiricism and logic. What if my interlocutor doesn’t share these values? What can I say then? What evidence could prove that we should value evidence? What logic could demonstrate the importance of logic? As it turns out, these are the wrong questions. The right question is, why should we care what such a person thinks in the first place?

This paragraph makes no sense for a variety of reasons.  To begin, the nature of water “is” what it is regardless of the value one assigns to the means of discovering its nature.  That nature does not depend on mental processes going on in the minds of those trying to find out what it is, and it would not change a bit if those minds were living, dead, or never existed to begin with.  Furthermore, the “ought” Harris refers to has nothing to do with a moral “ought.”  It refers to the effectiveness of methods of acquiring knowledge of the nature of water.  In other words, it assumes a goal, and assigns value to the different means of achieving the goal depending on their relative effectiveness.  If someone preferred an approach different from my own to determining the true nature of water, I might conclude they are wrong, but I would not conclude they are immoral. 

The “oughts” related to human morality, on the other hand, are associated with emotional responses in the form of innate predispositions that are hard-wired in the brain.  These “oughts” can vary somewhat depending on education and culture, but display striking commonalities across widely varying societies.  We experience them as absolutes, independent of their effectiveness in achieving one goal or another.  The behavioral traits associated with morality evolved because they promoted our survival in times very different from the present.  They are not relevant to any other purpose one might name, including the well-being of mankind. 

False conclusions can be dangerous.  For example, if we falsely conclude we can fly, and walk off a cliff, we will die.  False conclusions about morality can be far more dangerous.  When the Communists tried to associate morality with their version of the well-being of mankind, they did not succeed in creating a “New Soviet Man” whose moral behavior was infinitely adaptable to suite the purpose they had in mind.  Rather, they unleashed human emotions they did not understand, resulting in the greatest episodes of mass murder and brutality mankind has ever witnessed.  One can rationally discuss whether the “well-being of mankind” is a desirable goal.  Attempting to achieve that goal by tinkering with innate behavioral traits that are as yet poorly understood is to invite disaster once again.

Continuing with Harris’ remarks:

But the consequences of moral relativism have been disastrous. And science’s failure to address the most important questions in human life has made it seem like little more than an incubator for technology. It has also given faith-based religion — that great engine of ignorance and bigotry — a nearly uncontested claim to being the only source of moral wisdom. This has been bad for everyone. What is more, it has been unnecessary — because we can speak about the well-being of conscious creatures rationally, and in the context of science. I think it is time we tried.

Yes, we can speak about the well-being of conscious creatures rationally, and in the context of science, but we cannot cause the well-being of conscious creatures to be identical with the real, objective good, because the real, objective good doesn’t exist, and one can’t call it into existence by an act of will.  Have the consequences of moral relativism been disastrous?  So what?  Objective good either exists or it doesn’t, and that reality will not be changed one iota by our conclusions regarding the consequences of moral relativism, or our dissatisfaction with the perception that science hasn’t achieved some noble end or other.  One wonders why Harris ever became an atheist.  After all, one can as easily claim that the decline in religious belief has been disastrous because it has deprived many people of a purpose in life.  Should we not, therefore, magically call God back into existence and make him “true,” out of concern for the suffering of these people?  If we conclude that seeing the color red has been disastrous, will it suddenly turn to green to spare our sensitivities? 

Harris doesn’t realize it, but his claim that faith-based religion is a great engine of ignorance and bigotry is itself a manifestation of human moral behavior; namely, out-group identification.  The statement is both untrue and morally loaded on the face of it.  I myself am an atheist, and would be the first to agree that religion is potentially harmful by virtue of the fact that it is not true, but “a great engine of ignorance and bigotry?”  I don’t think so.  On a general level it is simply untrue that religion has never resulted in anything good, and on the individual level, I know a host of firm religious believers who are neither ignorant nor bigots.  Harris’ identification of religious believers as an out-group in this fashion is a manifestation of moral behavior that is entirely similar to the identification of “the bourgeoisie” as an out-group by the Communists, or the Jews as an out-group by the Nazis.  It seems to me the results in those experiments in the creative application of morality did not contribute to the “well-being of mankind.”  Out-group identification is an aspect of human moral behavior that continues to be ignored as an inconvenient truth, but it exists, nevertheless.  To demonstrate that fact to himself, Harris need merely glance around him at Huffpo and take note of the furious ongoing demonization of political opponents.  If he really believes in the fantasy of a “real good” that is identical with human well-being, he might want to consider the fact that the “real evil” must inevitably accompany it.  It always has in the past.  Under the circumstances, Harris would do well to rethink his conclusion that well-being and moral good are identical.  As for the notion of “moral relativism,” I doubt that it even exists, except as a chimera of moral philosophers.  Most, if not all, human beings perceive the moral good as an absolute, because that’s the way in which it has most effectively promoted our survival. 

Continuing with Harris,

So it is with the linkage between morality and well-being: To say that morality is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that the well-being of conscious creatures is good, is exactly like saying that science is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that a rational understanding of the universe is good. We need not enter either of these philosophical cul-de-sacs.

In fact, it is anything but exactly the same.  Is it really so difficult see that “the good” in the sense of a real, objective thing having an independent existence of its own is not the same as ”the good” in the sense of a useful method of finding the truth?  There is no similarity between good defined in terms of usefulness for achieving some preconceived goal, such as discovering truth, and good defined as real objective moral good, having an existence of its own independent of subjective human emotions, yet corresponding to the subjective feeling of Sam Harris and a subset of human beings who think like him.  Are all the recent revelations about the hard-wired origins and emotional nature of human moral behavior really meaningless and irrelevant?  I can understand the reluctance of some people to give up the only objective justification they have for the great joy they derive from virtuous indignation.  Unfortunately, that justification simply doesn’t exist.  There is no such thing as real, objective good, nor is there any such thing as real, objective evil, any more than there is a real, objective God.  By attempting to force them into existence Harris isn’t inaugurating a new science of morality.  He’s inaugurating a new secular religion, complete with an imaginary God of its own.

The Real Face of “Hate Speech”

Apropos “hate speech,” it’s interesting that none of those who are so active in promoting censorship as a means of fighting it even noticed the most extreme and potentially dangerous outburst of it in recent memory.  I refer to the obsessive hatred of the United States promoted in the mass media of any number of countries around the world.  It reached extreme levels in the final years of the Clinton and first years of the Bush adminstrations before apparently finally choking on its own excess.  I speak German, and followed the development of the phenomenon there with interest and dismay.  It became so extreme that it occasionally became difficult to find any news about Germany among the rants about the evils of the United States on the websites of such “news” outlets as that of Spiegel magazine.

We humans are characterized by “moral” behavior that distinguishes between “good” in-groups, and “evil” out-groups, a trait that I have elsewhere referred to as the Amity/Enmity Complex.  No aspect of our nature could be so mind-bogglingly obvious, yet the neuroscientists and other experts who specialize in the workings of the human mind have yet to “discover” it.  It happens to be in conflict with ideological myths, particularly prevalent in academia, about the universal brotherhood of mankind.  Earlier generations of so-called experts willfully ignored the abundant evidence regarding the profound influence of innate, “hard-wired” predispositions on human behavior for decades on account of similar myths, until their faces were literally rubbed in the truth by advances in brain imaging techniques and other diagnostic tools.  As long as research in the field is not suppressed, their faces will eventually be rubbed in the truth of the Amity/Enmity Complex as well.  When that happens, I suspect they will see the question of hate speech in a rather different light.

Among other things, they are likely to notice that “hate speech” is only recognized as such when directed at an in-group.  At the time when expressions of anti-American hate reached their most extreme levels in Germany and elsewhere, those who were most active in spewing that hate characterized their vicious diatribes as “objective criticism.”  As one on the receiving end of their hate speech, I found their rationalizations absurd, and yet I don’t doubt they actually believed their own cant.  Americans were an out-group, and therefore, at least in their minds, incapable of being victims of hate speech. 

It is for that reason that attempts by government to censor hate speech, such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the “international organization” favored by French foreign minister Kouchner, as noted in an earlier post, are futile.  As intrinsically political organizations they must inevitably be blind to hate speech directed at their political foes, or “out-groups.”  I know of not a single instance of such an organization raising the least objection to the mindless demonization and villification of the United States, even when it was at its most extreme.  The only real antidote to hate speech is free speech.