And Slaters Go Plop

I’ve observed conversations between theists and non-theists in which the theist will state that the non-theist doesn’t have a leg to stand on with regard to morality because if you don’t believe in a God then you can have no objective basis for your morals and so no moral belief can be better or worse than the other.

And I’ve watch many non-theists scramble to try to show that they do, in fact, have a basis for objective morality but I have to admit that I get a bit lost in the arguments. It’s likely that I don’t understand the finer details of what people mean by “objective” and “subjective”.

Every time I see such a conversation I think to myself that I’m quite happy to believe that there is no great measuring rod in the sky and that all such morals are evolved and subjective. To me, it seems to make sense that stealing can be both beneficial and detrimental depending on the circumstances (i.e. subjective) and that child rape is 99.9999999% detrimental (I always allow for those make-believe scenarios where you have to choose between, say, child rape and killing 1,000,000 people with a lawnmower).

I also think that when people use “wrong” and “right” as opposed to “detrimental” and “beneficial” it actually creates a circular argument for a kind of objective morality because the word “wrong” can be used in both an objective and a subjective sense (i.e. I hit the wrong key on the keyboard vs. abortion is wrong) whereas the word “detrimental” demands that you at least define a goal or framework that is being worked against.

So, theists and non-theists, is there really such a thing as objective morality? And what’s your definition of it? I’ve got no answers, only questions.

Yesterday an ordinary husband and father of three was leaving work for the day in downtown Auckland. As he headed home to his family he spotted a woman being punched by a man and did what any ordinary person would (and should) do; he intervened. The man attacking the woman then turned on him and stabbed him to death.

I’ve never met Austin Hemmings before and I can’t possibly begin to imagine what his friends and family are going through right now. But I count it as a great honour to live in the same city, country and world he lived in.

There are people who act to our detriment and there are those, like Austin, who, just by being themselves — by being ordinary — benefit us all. There will likely always be people who act to our detriment and there will likely always be terrible things that happen to good people for absolutely no reason at all but there will also likely be many good, ordinary people who we don’t notice on a day-to-day basis but who hold the very fabric of our society together by just being themselves.

So, Austin, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to recognise and appreciate you while you were living but I will try to make up for that by appreciating more the people who continue to go unnoticed everyday who carry on the valueable job of acting to the benefit of society. You are honoured. And you are extraordinary.

I’ve just become aware of some research being done at Auckland University in the area of tool use in New Caledonian crows. I know next to nothing about animal cognition but the fact that there is a non-primate species that makes use of tools raises a lot of interesting questions. A while ago the ability to make use of tools was touted as one of the defining characteristics of humans but it wasn’t long before other primates were found to be able to use tools. What makes these particular crows interesting is 1. the fact that they are so far removed from primates, 2. they don’t have the “kind of brain” you’d expect for tool use (which means our expectations are wrong), and 3. they are (as far as anyone knows) alone among not only crows but all other birds in their ability to use tools in this way.

Russell Gray on the New Caledonian crows:

Russell Gray on metatool use:

Alex Taylor on the trap-tube experiment:

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Prior to 2005 I was reading mostly the kind of books that make the Whitcoulls Top 100 list along with the occasional classic by the likes of Dostoevsky, Hardy and others. And, of course, Iain [M] Banks whenever a new book came out.

In early 2005 a friend recommended Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. It was this simple book that, to my great surprise, allowed me to clearly see the fact that my view of reality didn’t match what we can observe of the universe around us. Subconsciously I’d been aware of this fact but had managed to ignore it for 14 years or so. I decided that I would be better off with truth rather than a comforting fantasy and decided to investigate further. I watched a lot of documentaries, visited a lot of websites (and blogs) and talked with a lot of interesting people. I also read a lot of books – here are the ones that have influenced me the most over the last three years:

The Bible – Various Authors
The Mind of God – Paul Davies
A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
E=mc2 – David Bodanis
Deep Simplicity – John Gribbin
Pale Blue Dot – Carl Sagan
The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
Climbing Mount Improbable – Richard Dawkins
The Origin of Species – Charles Darwin
The Demon-Haunted World – Carl Sagan
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
Letter to a Christian Nation – Sam Harris
The Richness of Life – Stephen J Gould
The Creation – E O Wilson
The End of Faith – Sam Harris
Various Writings – Thomas Paine
Breaking the Spell – Daniel Dennett
Why People Believe Weird Things – Michael Shermer
God is not Great – Christopher Hitchens
Infidel – Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Freakonomics – Levitt & Dubner
The Blank Slate – Steven Pinker
Consciousness, An Introduction – Susan Blackmore

And I have the following books waiting to be read:

Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
How The Mind Works – Steven Pinker
The Ancestor’s Tale – Richard Dawkins
Freedom Evolves – Daniel Dennett

I’m not sure where I’ll go to from here but I feel I’ve done the topics of religion, superstition and pseudoscience to death. Evolution, cosmology and the workings of the mind still fascinate me so I’ll probably carry on down that path for a while.

If a super-super-duper machine was able to scan the exact physical state of your entire brain and were to recreate your brain exactly as it is in another body would there then be two of “you”? Where would “you” be?

• In the original
• In both but branching from there
• It’s impossible and always will be
• The other would be a soulless zombie
• Something else?

Imagine a super-duper clever machine that can work its way through your brain and, one cell at a time, remove a cell and create a new cell in its place that is physically identical in every way. I know that the brain has a lot of cells but let’s say one cell is replaced every hour and time isn’t an issue (this is, after all, a thought experiment).

When the machine was finished, what would you experience? That you are still there or that you have gradually died?

Or would there be a crucial part of the brain in which you cannot swap even a single cell without destroying what is “you”? If so, where might this be? And would this be remedied by replacing atom-by-atom?

If you were to undergo surgery that swapped your brain with someone else’s, what would you experience after the operation?

• You are in a new body?
• You are in your old body?
• “You” would be gone and a new “you” with all your memories would carry on?
• There is no such thing as “you”? (the question is invalid)
• Something else?

In 1973 the BBC released a TV documentary series in 13 episodes by mathematician Jacob Bronowski called The Ascent Of Man. 35 years later I purchased it as a DVD box set on the recommendation of a fellow science documentary aficionado.

It’s extremely good! And I’m not just saying that in the context of the era in which it was produced. Sure, some of the music grates on the nerves and some of the graphics don’t compare to what we are capable of these days but overall it’s got a depth that is often missing from the kind of documentaries found on the Discovery Channel. Actually, I take back my comment about the music; it features music from Meddle – my second-favourite Pink Floyd album – which, for me, redeems a multitude of musical sins.

Bronowski is thoughtful, poetic and very deliberate in every sentence. He gives you the feeling that he is treating you, the viewer, as an equal throughout and he conveys a sense of awe that is impossible to resist.

Most moving for me was a scene where Bronowski is visiting a Nazi concentration camp where many of his relatives were murdered. According to the interview with Attenborough in the bonus material the entire scene was spontaneous and filmed in a single take:

Bronowski died a year later of a heart attack at the age of 66.

I’ve heard that Pinker is considering putting pen to paper to more fully address the issue of the history of violence. If it’s as thorough as his excellent The Blank Slate then I look forward to seeing a detailed presentation of the facts to support the claims he puts forward in this video.