Dawkins and his dangerous idea

article
by Richard Dawkins

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me).

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

Why do you suppose he can't reach that level of enlightenment?

 

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Because he himself is a product of evolution.

 

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so in other words knowledge of evolution cannot infringe on issues of evolution?

 

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To some extent we can overcome our evolved traits through acts of will.

 

wait up
slow down there buddy

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That act of will would also be a mechanistic event. You cannot escape it.

 

According to Dawkins, will is a mechanistic event too, so it's difficult to understand how that can be escaped in the first place.
:shrug:

 

Isn't that what I said?

 

sorry - I interpreted act of will to mean the consequence of will (act of will = willful act)

So I guess that takes us back to knowledge of evolution can not infringe on issues of evolution

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Law exists to provide enough order for society, industry and trade to be possible. You punish offenders in order to dissuade others from committing similar crimes and to take these people out of circulation. Abstract concepts such as blame and responsibility don't factor into the equation.

 

We did evolve to overcome some aspects of evolution, but never the mechanistic nature of our nervous system. We evolved, for instance, to have the ability to learn about phenomenon like evolution.

 

if the nervous system is inherently mechanistic where is the question of dissuasion?

 

and what is the practical result of learning such a thing?
What is the value of knowledge that has no scope for practical application?

 

If you know why you feel like doing something (craving fatty foods for instance), you might rethink doing it.

If Dawkins' idea is brought to it's logical conclusion, then the justice system is also the result of a mechanistic process. I think he's saying we don't really have free will.

 

If we don't have free will, how did we just refrain from eating fatty foods?

 

We didn't. We are a product of an environment that happens to include the idea not to eat fatty foods. I am playing Dawkins' advocate here. I'm not sure if I agree with his conclusions. A mechanistic device can include analog elements that introduce randomness and arbitrary decisions.

 

so in other words the issue of our action (refraining from fatty foods) does not bear any consequence to knowledge of evolution (but rather randomness)

... that brings us back to ....

and what is the practical result of learning such a thing?
What is the value of knowledge that has no scope for practical application?

 

I think it could. It's like a cascade of causation. Evolved intelligence becomes aware of the process that formed it, and that knowledge changes behavior, which spreads through our culture and changes other people.

A practical application of knowing behavior is controlled by genes is the ability to invent treatments, and apply them instead of the cruder method of changing behavior by punishment.

 

Our brains is in auto mode when it comes to situations and it applies to situations the sensations of feeling of the event. This is called emotions. Strong emotions triggers automatic love or hatred to the situation or subject. bad strong bad emotions are never welcomed but cannot be controlled and trigger automatic hatred to an event or subject. This is all done without the logical thought processes of analysis. I am unsure how humans could evolve to neglect emotions and think in purely logic.

 

but once again, the will to act in such a way (apply treatments etc) is mechanistic so the cascade of causation never overrides the cause