In a previous post, I talked about the intention of some writers to perpetuate the struggle over cartesian duality in their approach to the philosophy of mind. Such a contention implies there is some hidden agenda on the part of both types of debaters: those who hinge their position on the preposterous nature of dualism, as well as those who hinge their position on the preposterous nature of materialism. Actually, neither position is preposterous. Both have some good arguments for their views. Even so, neither case is conclusive, and extremists who simply refuse to consider the arguments ought to be ignored.
It isn’t hard to understand why spiritualist types, adherents of religions, theologians, etc., might be biased toward a wider view of the Universe than a strict materialism accepts. But it is harder to understand why the war is so avidly fought by the opposition: the atheists, the materialists, the marxists, and the just plain rationalists. After all, you can’t argue with the irrational, can you?
When I went to school starting in the 50’s, we were taught the mythology of science in elementary school. The concepts of science were not taught until high school. Biology in the ninth grade; physics in the tenth grade; and if you were sufficiently talented to survive the first two years of science, you were admitted to the esoteric intricacies of chemistry in the eleventh year. Twelfth graders were above science. Or too bored with school to bother. Or else the teachers had exhausted their fund of science knowledge.
Now, this is strange. In the mythology classes of fourth and fifth grades, we learned things like, Galileo was suppressed by the Pope. Copernicus had to hide his manuscript on heliocentrism until after his death. Marie Curie died from radiation poisoning in her groundbreaking study of radium. Newton got beaned on the head during a year Cambridge was closed down due to outbreaks of the plague. Dozens of interesting little historical tidbits about how the Saints of Science were crucified and pilloried, burned and censured by the evil papists, so that the Gospel of Science was only able, by dint of great personal sacrifice, to break out into the light of day over many years.
This is rubbish. There is no Stations of the Scientists where people contemplate their sacrifices on Easter. But even today we’re lead to believe the honest, hard-working scientists who can barely scrape together the price of bread and water have to fight against the powerful forces of Churches throughout the world. Where is all this pro-science rhetoric (which has nothing to do with real science) coming from?
It’s coming from the same cultural matrix where the fight against Darwinism continues. Richard Dawkins has taken up the struggle to quell this dastardly attack on reason, and brings not only the Gospel of Biology to us, but also lengthy lists of how evil religious doctrine is. The fight is alive and well today. There is something about “the enlightenment agenda” that calls right-thinking atheists to battle, right now.
The enlightenment agenda is not complicated. It consists of a few basic tenets that are commonly recognized and espoused by professors of philosophy such as John Searle, even when he attacks some of the more extreme positions of conventional scientific materialism. These points are: There is no God (or if there is, He is irrelevant, as with Newton’s concept of the clockmaker who stands aside to let his contraption run without interference); Reason will reveal the light of truth; Everything can be explained; and Science will do all the explaining we need to do.
Every one of these points can be dismissed. For example, Searle points out that we can’t have knowledge of peoples’ subjective states because (and this is the tricky part), it’s subjective. But dismissing scientific materialism has the potential to threaten the architecture of our current society. You have to have a PhD in psychology to publish an article in a woman’s magazine telling the ladies they should get some sleep at night. Universities have a tremendous stake in the enlightenment agenda, since they train the scientists, engineers, efficiency experts, MBA’s, and administrators for all the drug companies, not to speak of the actuarial statisticians for the insurance companies.
Now, the point here is not that we don’t need science. Nor is it to defend a browbeaten and nearly failed set of religious institutions in the latter days of their survival. The point is to shine some light on the existence of this struggle, and if you don’t believe in the struggle, then just what do you think Mr. Dawkins is doing? He’s giving lectures on bible interpretation, since he is of the opinion that ministers, preachers, and priests aren’t doing it honestly. (He certainly has the right to do that, and I would defend his right, though perhaps not the wisdom of it, unless he has a theology degree of some kind, which I have not heard that he has.) Strange work for a science popularizer, is it not?
For my own part, I don’t care about the battle, but I am interested in a fair and open discussion of the problems of a decent theory of mind, language, and meaning, and just because we sort ontologies into one group rather than another is not prima facie evidence of error. And along that line, dismissing the vast range of mental phenomena as if they are delusions is not reasonable.
As for the Enlightenment Agenda, it has already gone too far. The original purpose of it, back when the Age of Enlightenment began, was to weaken the totalitarian position of religious dogma–which it has done admirably–but it has continued. The skepticism against authority, the belief in individualism, the demand for reasons and a rejection of faith, has led to a rampant postmodernism that dismantles all foundations, not just religious ones. Oddly enough, some of the people who most defend the rational enlightenment also criticise postmodernism.
But it is their own just desserts, and I think it’s just funny as heck.
