I don’t know how many people are reading these posts (though I noticed I’ve been getting more hits since I started posting every day), but there haven’t been many comments. I’d like to think that’s because my brilliant dissection of the book leaves you all speechless, but I must humbly admit that I do occasionally make mistakes. If anyone spots any flaws in my arguments, I’d appreciate it if you point them out so that I can correct them.
“The Twinkie Defense” (Chapter Three, section three)
The author cites several ludicrous defenses brought in real-life trials, then cites, “The Twinkie Defense.” A man who murdered two of his coworkers claimed that he could not be held accountable for his actions because he was hyperglycemic and had consumed a Twinkie and Coke on his way to work, causing his blood sugar to skyrocket and cloud his judgment. The jury bought it and lowered the charges from first-degree murder to manslaughter.
At least, that's the way the author presents it. In reality, the defense cited a recent change in the defendant's diet from very health-concious to sugary foods and drinks as a symptom of his overall downhill slide in the time leading up to the murders. Their defense was based on diminished capacity, a claim that the defendant was in an impaired state through no fault of his own and that this state, rather than malicious premeditation, was why he had killed his coworkers.
The author tries to use this case to show that people today get out of being held accountable for their actions by claiming they didn’t act willfully but were instead controlled by circumstances. This case shows no such thing. First degree murder is the malicious premeditated killing of another person. If the defense was correct, the defendant in this case didn’t commit murder, he committed manslaughter. And he was held accountable for manslaughter.
(Whether or not we should make such distinctions if all killings are equally the result of circumstances rather than our free will is a separate discussion. The facts in this case were judged to fit the technical definition of manslaughter, not murder, and so he was properly convicted of manslaughter.)
{unjustified claim}
The author now insultingly implies that scientists are deliberately interpreting data to discredit the concept of free will. He states, “…scientists gain a lot by denying free will: they can get away with the most outrageous actions and be held culpable of nothing.” For a book that is attempting to use rational arguments and scientific principles to support religious claims, this seems awfully close to the universal-conspiracy-of-scientists-intent-on-destroying-religion nonsense I was fed in elementary school.
(I realize that this in itself isn't an argument against his accusation, and that I am making something of an emotional appeal here, but this isn't the place to debunk the scientific conspiracy claim. That will come a little later, in part two of the book.)
He goes on to say that free will allows people to change and grow and denying free will reduces people to helpless automatons. This may be true. (Though I think it’s debatable – even if free will is an illusion, the illusion is so strong that treating it as real in some cases could be useful. The perception that we have free will may itself be a contributing factor among those that drive our decisions. Or maybe not, but it’s not a foregone conclusion either way.) But it’s an appeal to consequences. That acknowledging our lack of free will may rob people of motivation for positive change does not mean that we have free will.
{appeal to consequences}
It’s possible that he meant that people could change and grow ONLY if they had free will, and the fact that people do change shows that free will is a real phenomenon. But this isn’t true, because those changes could themselves be the product of the influences that drive a person’s behavior.
{unjustified conclusion}
I also think that the claim that a lack of free will reduces people to helpless automatons is an appeal to emotion. Most peoples’ reaction will be, “Of course I choose what I do. I’m not some kind of a helpless robot stuck with its programming!” The idea that our decisions are not the result of a conscious choice is very disconcerting.
{appeal to emotion}
This is followed by a story of a person who learned to control his temper and a poetic quote from a rabbi claiming that to be human is, “to ascend higher than angels and to descend lower than the vilest creature… Every day is… a new opportunity to climb… and climb we must.” Very touching, I’m sure, but not at all relevant to the question of whether we have free will. Anecdotes and assertions do not evidence make.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter Three, section two
What Does Judaism Say About the Subject? (Chapter Three, section two)
According the Judaism, the author says, we have a soul and, unlike animals which are driven by their desires, we can control our desires and choose our actions. This ability to choose is what makes us human. He claims that only humans can choose to do things like face their fears or return things they find. I’m not sure whether this is actually true, but even granting that it is, the author’s next statements are baffling.
He says, “Free choice operates only in the realm of morality.” He says that heredity and environment may determine what you like to wear, the kinds of things you buy, even major life choices like your career. But moral choices, those are different. Those are subject to your “free will.” Think about this for a minute. Is there any functional difference between the way in which we choose which shirt to buy or whether to return the extra change the cashier gave when we bought it? Choices, all choices, are made for a variety of intuitive, emotional, and rational reasons.
Perhaps the author means to say that choices that are in line with your desires, such as which shirt to buy, are driven by environment and genetics, while choices that go against our desires, like returning money, are products of our free will. (This seems to be in line with his statement that facing our fears is exercising free will, even though I’m hard pressed to see how facing one’s fear is related to morality. Is it immoral to avoid high places because of one’s acrophobia?) But this isn’t a distinction between moral and amoral choices. If I were to choose to buy and wear a shirt that I despised, is that a moral choice? Yet according to this definition, by making such a choice I would be exercising my free will. Similarly, if I were to return money I found because of the pleasure I get from seeing another person happy to get their money back, that is not a choice made using free will even though it is moral.
Keep in mind, also, that the entire premise is flawed. If I’m right about the author’s intended meaning, he is assuming that either we want to do something or we don’t, and if we do it despite not wanting to we are exercising free will. Our decision making is far more subtle and takes more than our immediate impulses into account. We drag ourselves out of bed in the morning even though we don’t want to because our desire for a paycheck is stronger than our desire to stay in bed. Similarly, any actions we take that go against our immediate desires are most probably prompted by other factors such as societal conditioning, later rewards, or emotional urges. Our decisions about whether to behave altruistically are even dependant on the exact conditions in which we find ourselves. There have been experiments that show that if someone thinks another person is waiting for him he is less likely to stop and help a person in need. Given all of these factors that come into play when we are making decisions, can we really be said to be exercising “free will?”
In the next paragraph the author acknowledges the influences on our decisions, and says that, “It [free will] kicks in only at the point (unique for every individual) where the scales are evenly weighted between the possibilities.” In the abstract, I have to agree that this makes a certain amount of sense. But given a mechanistic view of decision making, a scale (to use the author’s analogy) on which are weighed all the factors influencing our decisions and the heavier side determines our actions, isn’t it possible that those times when the scale balances perfectly are the times we find ourselves paralyzed by indecision? The author is assuming that we tip the scale by exercising our free will. Perhaps there is no such thing as free will, and a balanced scale leaves us deadlocked until something throws weight onto one side.
Granted, this is speculation on my part, but so is the author’s theory of scales and narrow bands where all influencing factors balance to allow for the exercise of free will. Without any evidence it is impossible to say which of our theories, if either, is correct.
He now cites a study done at Princeton University in 2004. The researchers presented the subjects with a serious moral dilemma and observed their brain activity using an MRI machine. They found that in addition to the activity found in the emotional areas of the brain when subjects make simple decisions, there was activity in the abstract thinking and decision-making areas. The author interprets the extra activity to mean that they were making a free-will choice as opposed to one that was wholly influenced by other factors. This despite:
1) The obvious conclusion that complex dilemmas about hypothetical situations require input from more sophisticated areas of the brain to reach a decision than do simple questions.
2) This runs counter to his earlier argument that the point at which the scales balance and free will kicks in is unique for every individual. We would have to assume that all of the subjects in the experiment just happened to have the particular scenario presented to them fall in that narrow band where all the factors influencing their decision balanced and they were able to exercise free will. While possible, it is unlikely that a random scenario would fall into the free-will band for any of the subjects, let alone all of them, and we have no reason to say that it did in this case other than to lend support to the author’s theory.
3) The author writes that the neuroscientists running the experiment reached the conclusion that complex decisions take longer because they use more recently evolved parts of the brain. The author discounts their conclusion for no apparent reason (though I wonder if he might consider their reference to evolution enough of a reason). I’m inclined to give the neuroscientists’ interpretation of the experiment more weight than a layman’s, myself and the author included.
The author’s theory, with very little reference to Judaism despite the section heading, is that free will exists, albeit only in that narrow band where all other factors are evenly balanced. Strangely, he thinks that such balance only occurs in relation to moral choices. Unfortunately for his theory, the decision scales are likely to balance perfectly very infrequently, and I would guess that when they do the result is indecision, not an opportunity for free will. (This may be an unknowable, as it is likely impossible for us to ever measure ALL of the factors that influence a given decision.) The experiment cited is largely irrelevant to the author’s theory, and the conclusions he draws from it are unwarranted.
According the Judaism, the author says, we have a soul and, unlike animals which are driven by their desires, we can control our desires and choose our actions. This ability to choose is what makes us human. He claims that only humans can choose to do things like face their fears or return things they find. I’m not sure whether this is actually true, but even granting that it is, the author’s next statements are baffling.
He says, “Free choice operates only in the realm of morality.” He says that heredity and environment may determine what you like to wear, the kinds of things you buy, even major life choices like your career. But moral choices, those are different. Those are subject to your “free will.” Think about this for a minute. Is there any functional difference between the way in which we choose which shirt to buy or whether to return the extra change the cashier gave when we bought it? Choices, all choices, are made for a variety of intuitive, emotional, and rational reasons.
Perhaps the author means to say that choices that are in line with your desires, such as which shirt to buy, are driven by environment and genetics, while choices that go against our desires, like returning money, are products of our free will. (This seems to be in line with his statement that facing our fears is exercising free will, even though I’m hard pressed to see how facing one’s fear is related to morality. Is it immoral to avoid high places because of one’s acrophobia?) But this isn’t a distinction between moral and amoral choices. If I were to choose to buy and wear a shirt that I despised, is that a moral choice? Yet according to this definition, by making such a choice I would be exercising my free will. Similarly, if I were to return money I found because of the pleasure I get from seeing another person happy to get their money back, that is not a choice made using free will even though it is moral.
Keep in mind, also, that the entire premise is flawed. If I’m right about the author’s intended meaning, he is assuming that either we want to do something or we don’t, and if we do it despite not wanting to we are exercising free will. Our decision making is far more subtle and takes more than our immediate impulses into account. We drag ourselves out of bed in the morning even though we don’t want to because our desire for a paycheck is stronger than our desire to stay in bed. Similarly, any actions we take that go against our immediate desires are most probably prompted by other factors such as societal conditioning, later rewards, or emotional urges. Our decisions about whether to behave altruistically are even dependant on the exact conditions in which we find ourselves. There have been experiments that show that if someone thinks another person is waiting for him he is less likely to stop and help a person in need. Given all of these factors that come into play when we are making decisions, can we really be said to be exercising “free will?”
In the next paragraph the author acknowledges the influences on our decisions, and says that, “It [free will] kicks in only at the point (unique for every individual) where the scales are evenly weighted between the possibilities.” In the abstract, I have to agree that this makes a certain amount of sense. But given a mechanistic view of decision making, a scale (to use the author’s analogy) on which are weighed all the factors influencing our decisions and the heavier side determines our actions, isn’t it possible that those times when the scale balances perfectly are the times we find ourselves paralyzed by indecision? The author is assuming that we tip the scale by exercising our free will. Perhaps there is no such thing as free will, and a balanced scale leaves us deadlocked until something throws weight onto one side.
Granted, this is speculation on my part, but so is the author’s theory of scales and narrow bands where all influencing factors balance to allow for the exercise of free will. Without any evidence it is impossible to say which of our theories, if either, is correct.
He now cites a study done at Princeton University in 2004. The researchers presented the subjects with a serious moral dilemma and observed their brain activity using an MRI machine. They found that in addition to the activity found in the emotional areas of the brain when subjects make simple decisions, there was activity in the abstract thinking and decision-making areas. The author interprets the extra activity to mean that they were making a free-will choice as opposed to one that was wholly influenced by other factors. This despite:
1) The obvious conclusion that complex dilemmas about hypothetical situations require input from more sophisticated areas of the brain to reach a decision than do simple questions.
2) This runs counter to his earlier argument that the point at which the scales balance and free will kicks in is unique for every individual. We would have to assume that all of the subjects in the experiment just happened to have the particular scenario presented to them fall in that narrow band where all the factors influencing their decision balanced and they were able to exercise free will. While possible, it is unlikely that a random scenario would fall into the free-will band for any of the subjects, let alone all of them, and we have no reason to say that it did in this case other than to lend support to the author’s theory.
3) The author writes that the neuroscientists running the experiment reached the conclusion that complex decisions take longer because they use more recently evolved parts of the brain. The author discounts their conclusion for no apparent reason (though I wonder if he might consider their reference to evolution enough of a reason). I’m inclined to give the neuroscientists’ interpretation of the experiment more weight than a layman’s, myself and the author included.
The author’s theory, with very little reference to Judaism despite the section heading, is that free will exists, albeit only in that narrow band where all other factors are evenly balanced. Strangely, he thinks that such balance only occurs in relation to moral choices. Unfortunately for his theory, the decision scales are likely to balance perfectly very infrequently, and I would guess that when they do the result is indecision, not an opportunity for free will. (This may be an unknowable, as it is likely impossible for us to ever measure ALL of the factors that influence a given decision.) The experiment cited is largely irrelevant to the author’s theory, and the conclusions he draws from it are unwarranted.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter Three, section one
Soul Properties: Are Our Choices Predetermined? (Chapter Three, section one)
The author begins with a story of an elderly man who, determined to conquer his fear of flying, boards a plane for his annual trip to his favorite vacation spot rather than take a train as he had been doing for years. (The author expresses his awe of this man, and I’m inclined to agree, insofar as this was something that took a lot of willpower. Conquering phobias by immersion is an extremely difficult thing to do. Fortunately, there are straightforward therapeutic techniques to cause phobias to cease, and the elderly man in the story would have been better off going to a therapist for a few sessions than risk a heart attack by forcing himself to fly. All of this is, however, beside the point.) The author asks whether we can doubt that this man made a conscious choice to board the plane and conquer his phobia.
The author here is conflating, “making a conscious choice,” with, “exercising free will.” That we arrive at a decision based on a conscious process does not mean that process wasn’t influenced in part or wholly by something outside our control. Our decisions are influenced by many things, not least of which is culture. Had the man in the story not lived in a society which saw conquering your fears as a noble endeavor it is highly unlikely he would have boarded that plane. He didn’t choose the society he was born into or the social norms he was indoctrinated with, yet those social norms had a profound influence on his “conscious” decision.
The influence of society alone doesn’t negate free will, but let’s engage in some speculation. Let’s suppose that this man was very close with his late father, and his father believed that conquering one’s fear was very important, to the point where he thought that someone who didn’t do something because he was afraid was a coward. Let’s further suppose that our elderly man is religious and believes he will see his father again in the afterlife. Now let’s say he had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
This specific situation probably isn’t true of the man in the story, but hypothetically speaking, if it was, could we say that his belief he would soon be seeing his father again, and his fear that his father would see him as a coward if he died without conquering his fear of flying, forced him to board that plane? Would his conscious choice to conquer his phobia then be an act of free will, or the inevitable outcome of a confluence of circumstances?
The author now states that modern science says there is, “nothing non-physical about the mind,” and our choices are a product of biology. The physicality of the mind is what I’ve been arguing for all along, and I tend to think that free will is an illusion. It will be interesting to see how the author tries to show that the scientists are wrong. Let’s see if there’s anything other than appeals to consequences.
Ah, here we go. Appeal to consequences: “This theory is as preposterous as it is dangerous. If our choices are not ours… we can no longer be responsible for any of our decisions. …The theory exonerates most evil people, including even Hitler.”
That we would not be able to hold people morally accountable for their actions without free will, and that this idea makes us uncomfortable, has nothing to do with whether or not we actually have free will. Further, the author compounds his appeal to consequences with an emotional appeal when he states that a lack of free will exonerates even Hitler. We are supposed to react in moral outrage. Hitler was a monster! He was evil, and must be held morally responsible for his actions! Again, that we feel outrage at the idea Hitler may not be morally responsible for his actions does not mean that we have free will.
The author also tries to imply that denying free will leads to anarchy, as he claims that every lawyer can say his client committed the crime, but it can’t be held accountable because his lack of free will means, “it wasn’t his fault.” The real question here is what is the purpose of the legal system? The author seems to be taking the approach that the legal system is a way to balance the universe’s books. If someone does something wrong, they must be punished. If they don’t have free will, they can’t be held morally accountable for a wrongdoing, and so shouldn’t be punished. I would argue that the purpose of the legal system is to protect society. If a person is a murderer, they should be imprisoned because they represent a threat to society. If a person causes financially calculable harm to another, he should pay – not as a punishment to him for causing the harm, but so that those who are caused harm will be protected from loss. As the agent of that harm, he is responsible for making good the loss.
“Ah”, some might argue, “but that’s not fair! It’s not his fault! He has no free will!” True enough, but if someone is standing on a ladder to fix his roof, a stray dog wanders into his yard and knocks down the ladder, and he lands on and breaks his neighbor’s lawn furniture, he is still responsible to pay for the broken furniture even though he cannot be held morally accountable for the chain of events that led to the furniture’s destruction.
(Please note, I am not trying to make the legal system the basis of morality. Nor does the fact that at times not being in full control (crimes of passion) may be taken into account mean that my approach is wrong, because it is entirely possible that part of our legal system is built on the same supposition the author makes, i.e. that the law is meant to punish those who did wrong in order to balance the universe’s books.)
Further, the existence of consequences for given actions are themselves part of the circumstances that determine our actions.
{appeal to consequences, emotional appeal }
The author goes on to quote several scientists and philosophers as saying that while we have the perception of free will, we do not have actual free will. He quotes Einstein as saying, “This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals.” I’m not sure why the author included the quote, except perhaps as a contrast to the next section where he talks about Judaism’s stance on free will.
The author begins with a story of an elderly man who, determined to conquer his fear of flying, boards a plane for his annual trip to his favorite vacation spot rather than take a train as he had been doing for years. (The author expresses his awe of this man, and I’m inclined to agree, insofar as this was something that took a lot of willpower. Conquering phobias by immersion is an extremely difficult thing to do. Fortunately, there are straightforward therapeutic techniques to cause phobias to cease, and the elderly man in the story would have been better off going to a therapist for a few sessions than risk a heart attack by forcing himself to fly. All of this is, however, beside the point.) The author asks whether we can doubt that this man made a conscious choice to board the plane and conquer his phobia.
The author here is conflating, “making a conscious choice,” with, “exercising free will.” That we arrive at a decision based on a conscious process does not mean that process wasn’t influenced in part or wholly by something outside our control. Our decisions are influenced by many things, not least of which is culture. Had the man in the story not lived in a society which saw conquering your fears as a noble endeavor it is highly unlikely he would have boarded that plane. He didn’t choose the society he was born into or the social norms he was indoctrinated with, yet those social norms had a profound influence on his “conscious” decision.
The influence of society alone doesn’t negate free will, but let’s engage in some speculation. Let’s suppose that this man was very close with his late father, and his father believed that conquering one’s fear was very important, to the point where he thought that someone who didn’t do something because he was afraid was a coward. Let’s further suppose that our elderly man is religious and believes he will see his father again in the afterlife. Now let’s say he had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
This specific situation probably isn’t true of the man in the story, but hypothetically speaking, if it was, could we say that his belief he would soon be seeing his father again, and his fear that his father would see him as a coward if he died without conquering his fear of flying, forced him to board that plane? Would his conscious choice to conquer his phobia then be an act of free will, or the inevitable outcome of a confluence of circumstances?
The author now states that modern science says there is, “nothing non-physical about the mind,” and our choices are a product of biology. The physicality of the mind is what I’ve been arguing for all along, and I tend to think that free will is an illusion. It will be interesting to see how the author tries to show that the scientists are wrong. Let’s see if there’s anything other than appeals to consequences.
Ah, here we go. Appeal to consequences: “This theory is as preposterous as it is dangerous. If our choices are not ours… we can no longer be responsible for any of our decisions. …The theory exonerates most evil people, including even Hitler.”
That we would not be able to hold people morally accountable for their actions without free will, and that this idea makes us uncomfortable, has nothing to do with whether or not we actually have free will. Further, the author compounds his appeal to consequences with an emotional appeal when he states that a lack of free will exonerates even Hitler. We are supposed to react in moral outrage. Hitler was a monster! He was evil, and must be held morally responsible for his actions! Again, that we feel outrage at the idea Hitler may not be morally responsible for his actions does not mean that we have free will.
The author also tries to imply that denying free will leads to anarchy, as he claims that every lawyer can say his client committed the crime, but it can’t be held accountable because his lack of free will means, “it wasn’t his fault.” The real question here is what is the purpose of the legal system? The author seems to be taking the approach that the legal system is a way to balance the universe’s books. If someone does something wrong, they must be punished. If they don’t have free will, they can’t be held morally accountable for a wrongdoing, and so shouldn’t be punished. I would argue that the purpose of the legal system is to protect society. If a person is a murderer, they should be imprisoned because they represent a threat to society. If a person causes financially calculable harm to another, he should pay – not as a punishment to him for causing the harm, but so that those who are caused harm will be protected from loss. As the agent of that harm, he is responsible for making good the loss.
“Ah”, some might argue, “but that’s not fair! It’s not his fault! He has no free will!” True enough, but if someone is standing on a ladder to fix his roof, a stray dog wanders into his yard and knocks down the ladder, and he lands on and breaks his neighbor’s lawn furniture, he is still responsible to pay for the broken furniture even though he cannot be held morally accountable for the chain of events that led to the furniture’s destruction.
(Please note, I am not trying to make the legal system the basis of morality. Nor does the fact that at times not being in full control (crimes of passion) may be taken into account mean that my approach is wrong, because it is entirely possible that part of our legal system is built on the same supposition the author makes, i.e. that the law is meant to punish those who did wrong in order to balance the universe’s books.)
Further, the existence of consequences for given actions are themselves part of the circumstances that determine our actions.
{appeal to consequences, emotional appeal }
The author goes on to quote several scientists and philosophers as saying that while we have the perception of free will, we do not have actual free will. He quotes Einstein as saying, “This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals.” I’m not sure why the author included the quote, except perhaps as a contrast to the next section where he talks about Judaism’s stance on free will.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
I’m Psychic!
This morning as I walked to my car I idly recalled how once as a teenager I had been waiting in the car for my mother while she ran into a store. The meter she had parked by ran out, and a traffic cop wrote a ticket and stuck it on the windshield as I watched.
As I got closer to my car, I noticed an orange envelope under windshield wiper. The city cleans the streets here on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I had accidentally parked on the wrong side of the street last night. I’d gotten my first parking ticket.
This must mean I have precognitive abilities, right? I was thinking about an incident involving a parking ticket, and then I discovered my car had been ticketed. I’m psychic!
Except… I’m not entirely sure whether I recalled the story before or after I noticed the ticket on my car. And then there are all the other times I’ve thought about incidents involving parking tickets when I didn’t get a ticket. I used to work for a place where part of my job was dealing with the company’s parking tickets. Back then, I thought about parking tickets all the time. But… I didn’t have a car then. So it doesn’t count, right? This can’t have just been a coincidence. It’s too weird. It’s spooky.
No, I’m sure of it. I’m psychic!
As I got closer to my car, I noticed an orange envelope under windshield wiper. The city cleans the streets here on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I had accidentally parked on the wrong side of the street last night. I’d gotten my first parking ticket.
This must mean I have precognitive abilities, right? I was thinking about an incident involving a parking ticket, and then I discovered my car had been ticketed. I’m psychic!
Except… I’m not entirely sure whether I recalled the story before or after I noticed the ticket on my car. And then there are all the other times I’ve thought about incidents involving parking tickets when I didn’t get a ticket. I used to work for a place where part of my job was dealing with the company’s parking tickets. Back then, I thought about parking tickets all the time. But… I didn’t have a car then. So it doesn’t count, right? This can’t have just been a coincidence. It’s too weird. It’s spooky.
No, I’m sure of it. I’m psychic!
Monday, January 4, 2010
Am I A Zealot?
Over the last week I’ve had an interesting conversation in the comment thread to Frum Satire’s post, Is the Torah outdated and irrelevant? I’ve found myself in a debate over the existence of God, arguing for the unlikelihood of His existence. Frum Satire’s blog is an interesting place to have conversations like these because he draws a diverse group of people, who range from strong believers to atheists and from educated intellectuals to… those who are not so intellectual.
I have to ask myself, why do I do this? Part of the answer is because it’s fun. I enjoy debating (especially winning). Part of it is that such conversations force me to think about other points of view and to articulate my own beliefs, which leads me to a better understanding of issues surrounding religion. But I had to ask myself: could part of it be the zealotry of a recent convert?
I’ve been a skeptic for as long as I can remember, always insisting that what I learned in school make logical sense. I’ve always tried to relate what I learned to the real world, and thought about the practical implications of the various things my rabbeim would teach me. I’ve had serious doubts about religion and God since I was sixteen. Yet I’ve always had this hazy notion in the back of my head that God was out there. There were a few arguments for the existence of God that I had heard as a teenager, thought were pretty good, and never really let myself examine. Everyone around me didn’t have any doubts. I couldn’t deny the basis of my culture. And yet, I remember writing papers in college for a writing class where I discussed arguments for various religions and concluded that Hashem was the Creator of the universe and Judasim was the One True Religion. And I didn’t buy it. (The professor, a frum woman, loved it. I got an “A” in that class.)
It wasn’t until I discovered the blogosphere that I realized I wasn’t unique, that there were other people out there who agreed with me, and that it was okay to think the way I did. I found myself drawn to the blogs of fellow skeptics, both those who had left the frum lifestyle and those who, like me, continue to live in the frum community. We all love to hear opinions that confirm our own, and I was eating it up. Very quickly, I came to identify myself as a skeptic and even as an atheist. All this within the last couple of years.
So while the skeptical mode of thought is not new to me, my interest in science, logic, history, and theology are not new, my self-identification as a skeptic is new. And maybe, just maybe, part of why I’m drawn to theological debates is a compulsion to defend my new identity.
I have to ask myself, why do I do this? Part of the answer is because it’s fun. I enjoy debating (especially winning). Part of it is that such conversations force me to think about other points of view and to articulate my own beliefs, which leads me to a better understanding of issues surrounding religion. But I had to ask myself: could part of it be the zealotry of a recent convert?
I’ve been a skeptic for as long as I can remember, always insisting that what I learned in school make logical sense. I’ve always tried to relate what I learned to the real world, and thought about the practical implications of the various things my rabbeim would teach me. I’ve had serious doubts about religion and God since I was sixteen. Yet I’ve always had this hazy notion in the back of my head that God was out there. There were a few arguments for the existence of God that I had heard as a teenager, thought were pretty good, and never really let myself examine. Everyone around me didn’t have any doubts. I couldn’t deny the basis of my culture. And yet, I remember writing papers in college for a writing class where I discussed arguments for various religions and concluded that Hashem was the Creator of the universe and Judasim was the One True Religion. And I didn’t buy it. (The professor, a frum woman, loved it. I got an “A” in that class.)
It wasn’t until I discovered the blogosphere that I realized I wasn’t unique, that there were other people out there who agreed with me, and that it was okay to think the way I did. I found myself drawn to the blogs of fellow skeptics, both those who had left the frum lifestyle and those who, like me, continue to live in the frum community. We all love to hear opinions that confirm our own, and I was eating it up. Very quickly, I came to identify myself as a skeptic and even as an atheist. All this within the last couple of years.
So while the skeptical mode of thought is not new to me, my interest in science, logic, history, and theology are not new, my self-identification as a skeptic is new. And maybe, just maybe, part of why I’m drawn to theological debates is a compulsion to defend my new identity.
Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter Two, section three
Your Space Suit (Chapter Two, section three)
The author draws an analogy between an astronaut’s spacesuit and the physical body. He states that the body is necessary for the soul to function in the physical world, much as a spacesuit is necessary for the astronaut to function in space. As I’ve discussed before, that we perceive ourselves as a disembodied conscious driving our bodies around is merely a quirk of our experience, and fMRI studies are providing increasingly detailed data on how our experiences are produced by our brains. Here the author is codifying that quirk of experience in a theological theory to explain the purpose of our physical body and its relationship to the soul. Interestingly, he doesn’t explain how the metaphysical soul interacts with the physical body. How, exactly, does the non-physical soul get the proper neurons in the physical brain to fire in order to wiggle it's body’s fingers?
Amusingly, the author speculates that if “an alien passing by in his spaceship” saw a human astronaut, he would assume that the suit was the actual creature he was observing, rather than the person inside. Unless that alien was made of far sturdier stuff than we are and was able to survive in the vaccum of space in nothing but its skin, any sentient being with technology advanced enough to build a spaceship would have to know that what he was looking at was a protective suit. Of course this doesn’t affect the author’s point about the real person being the soul inside the body, but as a science fiction fan I found it funny.
At this point it’s impossible for me to say whether he is right or wrong. We’ve moved passed discussing whether or not the soul actually exists. Assuming that it does, the description of the soul as “wearing” the body fits with what we experience. Not that that really matters, because once we’re assuming something that hasn’t been shown to be true and discussing aspects of it that are not testable, everyone’s theory is equally valid. It’s like assuming that dryads exist, and then discussing their relationship to trees’ growth. No one has ever seen a dryad, and there is no way of determining their effect on trees. It’s magic.
The author continues with another alien analogy. This one is about a creature who must have come from a colder planet than Earth, because he parks his spaceship on a frozen lake and wanders off for a month. When he comes back the ice has thawed and his ship is gone. The ice is analogous to the body which “is certain to “disintegrate” at the end of life.” Therefore, the author says, focusing our lives on our bodies is foolish.
This is only true if there is something else. If our bodies are all we have, then what else should we focus on? I am not advocating an irresponsible hedonistic lifestyle, but if we can responsibly indulge ourselves in physical pleasures, why shouldn’t we? In fact, one can argue that, absent the existence of an immortal soul, physical pleasures (including such ethereal forms of pleasure as happiness, satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, etc.) are the only thing of real value.
He then quotes psychologist Dr. Judith Mishell, who like him assumes the existence of the soul and that all positive human traits are to be attributed to it. She uses the analogy of a horse and rider, and explains that the rider must be in control, encouraging and caring for the horse, being considerate of its needs, but never allowing the horse to do as it pleases. Again, assuming that there is a soul, this seems good advice. If the soul is indeed the seat of all virtues, of all higher aspirations, then it is only right that it should be the rider and in control of the body.
But one could tell the same story without referencing a metaphysical soul. Using Freud’s theory of the subconscious, we could say that the Superego should be the rider and maintain tight control over the Id (and Ego) while being sensitive to its needs.
To move even further away from the metaphysical, we could say that the executive functions of the brain, the areas that produce rational thought and weigh pros and cons, should be the rider and maintain control over the emotions and instinctual urges.
Treating the soul as the person inside the body feels right intuitively, and that is why the description of it as wearing the body as suit, or of it controlling the body like a rider on a horse, is so compelling. But we must remember that our intuition is a quick and dirty system for dealing with the deluge of information with which the world inundates us, is highly dependant on past expirience, and in areas in which we are not experts is often wrong. We must refrain from attributing to the soul that which is accounted for by the physical brain (or attributing to the soul that which we don’t yet fully understand simply because of our lack of knowledge). And we must remember that when discussing metaphysical entities which no one has ever seen and which have no measurable effects, all theories about those effects and about the entity’s relationship to the physical world are equally magical.
The author draws an analogy between an astronaut’s spacesuit and the physical body. He states that the body is necessary for the soul to function in the physical world, much as a spacesuit is necessary for the astronaut to function in space. As I’ve discussed before, that we perceive ourselves as a disembodied conscious driving our bodies around is merely a quirk of our experience, and fMRI studies are providing increasingly detailed data on how our experiences are produced by our brains. Here the author is codifying that quirk of experience in a theological theory to explain the purpose of our physical body and its relationship to the soul. Interestingly, he doesn’t explain how the metaphysical soul interacts with the physical body. How, exactly, does the non-physical soul get the proper neurons in the physical brain to fire in order to wiggle it's body’s fingers?
Amusingly, the author speculates that if “an alien passing by in his spaceship” saw a human astronaut, he would assume that the suit was the actual creature he was observing, rather than the person inside. Unless that alien was made of far sturdier stuff than we are and was able to survive in the vaccum of space in nothing but its skin, any sentient being with technology advanced enough to build a spaceship would have to know that what he was looking at was a protective suit. Of course this doesn’t affect the author’s point about the real person being the soul inside the body, but as a science fiction fan I found it funny.
At this point it’s impossible for me to say whether he is right or wrong. We’ve moved passed discussing whether or not the soul actually exists. Assuming that it does, the description of the soul as “wearing” the body fits with what we experience. Not that that really matters, because once we’re assuming something that hasn’t been shown to be true and discussing aspects of it that are not testable, everyone’s theory is equally valid. It’s like assuming that dryads exist, and then discussing their relationship to trees’ growth. No one has ever seen a dryad, and there is no way of determining their effect on trees. It’s magic.
The author continues with another alien analogy. This one is about a creature who must have come from a colder planet than Earth, because he parks his spaceship on a frozen lake and wanders off for a month. When he comes back the ice has thawed and his ship is gone. The ice is analogous to the body which “is certain to “disintegrate” at the end of life.” Therefore, the author says, focusing our lives on our bodies is foolish.
This is only true if there is something else. If our bodies are all we have, then what else should we focus on? I am not advocating an irresponsible hedonistic lifestyle, but if we can responsibly indulge ourselves in physical pleasures, why shouldn’t we? In fact, one can argue that, absent the existence of an immortal soul, physical pleasures (including such ethereal forms of pleasure as happiness, satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, etc.) are the only thing of real value.
He then quotes psychologist Dr. Judith Mishell, who like him assumes the existence of the soul and that all positive human traits are to be attributed to it. She uses the analogy of a horse and rider, and explains that the rider must be in control, encouraging and caring for the horse, being considerate of its needs, but never allowing the horse to do as it pleases. Again, assuming that there is a soul, this seems good advice. If the soul is indeed the seat of all virtues, of all higher aspirations, then it is only right that it should be the rider and in control of the body.
But one could tell the same story without referencing a metaphysical soul. Using Freud’s theory of the subconscious, we could say that the Superego should be the rider and maintain tight control over the Id (and Ego) while being sensitive to its needs.
To move even further away from the metaphysical, we could say that the executive functions of the brain, the areas that produce rational thought and weigh pros and cons, should be the rider and maintain control over the emotions and instinctual urges.
Treating the soul as the person inside the body feels right intuitively, and that is why the description of it as wearing the body as suit, or of it controlling the body like a rider on a horse, is so compelling. But we must remember that our intuition is a quick and dirty system for dealing with the deluge of information with which the world inundates us, is highly dependant on past expirience, and in areas in which we are not experts is often wrong. We must refrain from attributing to the soul that which is accounted for by the physical brain (or attributing to the soul that which we don’t yet fully understand simply because of our lack of knowledge). And we must remember that when discussing metaphysical entities which no one has ever seen and which have no measurable effects, all theories about those effects and about the entity’s relationship to the physical world are equally magical.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter Two, section two
The Human U-Turn (Chapter Two, section two)
The author quotes Drs. Wade and Travis (who, coincidentally, were the authors of the textbook I used in my Intro-to-Psych class in college) as saying that our crowning achievement as a species is that, “We are the only species that tries to understand its own misunderstandings.” The author interprets this as meaning that only humans have the ability to think about their past behavior and try to correct what we did wrong. He then says that, “only the human soul has the faculty to choose between right and wrong.” He is guilty here of the equivocation fallacy, as understanding our misunderstandings and correcting them implies changing what we got wrong in the practical sense, not in the moral sense. Yet the psychologists’ statement doesn’t imply even that, and in point of fact other species are capable of learning from and correcting “wrong” behavior by trial and error. Rather they are saying that we are the only species that thinks about why we got it wrong in the first place.
Further, even if the quote was about moral right and wrong, our ability to determine which is which does not by itself imply a soul. I suppose that at this point the author is assuming that he has adequately proven the existence of the soul in the last chapter, and so I will have to put up with the constant leaps of logic assigning cognitions, emotions, and instincts to the soul.
In the very next sentence the author again commits the equivocation fallacy when he states that animals are capable only of genetically programmed changes while humans are capable of changes through introspection. The examples he uses to illustrate his point are tadpoles changing into frogs and caterpillars into butterflies. The pre-programmed physical changes these animals go through are not the same kind of change we are talking about when we speak about someone turning their life around.
{equivocation fallacy x2}
As an example of someone turning his life around we have another glurgy story, this one about an active KKK member who renounced his former racism and anti-Semitism as a result of, “the remarkable unconditional love of a local Jewish couple.” This is meant to illustrate the ability of the human soul to, “engage in self-examination and make unexpected U-turns.
What can I say except, once again, there is no reason to say this had anything to do with any supposed soul. What if far more likely is that the KKK member was put in the uncomfortable position of holding conflicting beliefs: 1) “Jews are evil.” 2) “A Jewish couple are the nicest people I know and have helped me considerably.” The psychological stress caused by holding two conflicting beliefs is called cognitive dissonance, and inevitably one of the beliefs is discarded in order to maintain a coherent perception of the world. In this case it was the anti-Semitic beliefs that were jettisoned, leading him to renounce his former attitudes in order to maintain his friendship with the Jewish couple. This is a well-documented psychological mechanism whose functioning does not require a metaphysical soul with a divine sense of morality.
I also want to point out that once again the story seems chosen to evoke an emotional response in the reader. Any tale of someone deciding what they had been doing was wrong and changing their life would have worked. What we get is the quintessential modern-day anti-Semite reformed through the love of a Jewish couple. Granted, the author is entitled to choose stories he feels would appeal to his readership, but at a certain point it crosses the line from interesting to manipulative.
{emotional manipulation, violation of Occam’s Razor}
The author ends this section by stating that only the human soul is, “driven to greater and greater accomplishments,” and then claims that Maslow said that, “no sooner does a human being fill a lesser need than he aspires to actualize the next level.” His use of “the human soul” when “human” alone would suffice is becoming annoying. And if I remember correctly, Maslow says that each level of needs has to be fulfilled before one can fulfill needs on the next level. That is, satisfying a lower level is necessary to attempt to satisfy needs on a higher level, but it is not sufficient. Not everyone aspires to fulfill all of the needs in the hierarchy. [There is also some research that shows people try to fulfill needs at multiple levels as the opportunity arises rather than fulfilling them hierarchically, but that may be beside the point]
The author has demonstrated that humans are capable of change through introspection, spurred along by psychological mechanisms. He also continues to claim that only humans are driven to accomplish as much as they can, a claim about which, as I’ve said previously, there is no real data. He has not demonstrated a soul is necessary to account for these factors, and at this point seems to be taking it for granted that all positive human traits are a product of the soul.
The author quotes Drs. Wade and Travis (who, coincidentally, were the authors of the textbook I used in my Intro-to-Psych class in college) as saying that our crowning achievement as a species is that, “We are the only species that tries to understand its own misunderstandings.” The author interprets this as meaning that only humans have the ability to think about their past behavior and try to correct what we did wrong. He then says that, “only the human soul has the faculty to choose between right and wrong.” He is guilty here of the equivocation fallacy, as understanding our misunderstandings and correcting them implies changing what we got wrong in the practical sense, not in the moral sense. Yet the psychologists’ statement doesn’t imply even that, and in point of fact other species are capable of learning from and correcting “wrong” behavior by trial and error. Rather they are saying that we are the only species that thinks about why we got it wrong in the first place.
Further, even if the quote was about moral right and wrong, our ability to determine which is which does not by itself imply a soul. I suppose that at this point the author is assuming that he has adequately proven the existence of the soul in the last chapter, and so I will have to put up with the constant leaps of logic assigning cognitions, emotions, and instincts to the soul.
In the very next sentence the author again commits the equivocation fallacy when he states that animals are capable only of genetically programmed changes while humans are capable of changes through introspection. The examples he uses to illustrate his point are tadpoles changing into frogs and caterpillars into butterflies. The pre-programmed physical changes these animals go through are not the same kind of change we are talking about when we speak about someone turning their life around.
{equivocation fallacy x2}
As an example of someone turning his life around we have another glurgy story, this one about an active KKK member who renounced his former racism and anti-Semitism as a result of, “the remarkable unconditional love of a local Jewish couple.” This is meant to illustrate the ability of the human soul to, “engage in self-examination and make unexpected U-turns.
What can I say except, once again, there is no reason to say this had anything to do with any supposed soul. What if far more likely is that the KKK member was put in the uncomfortable position of holding conflicting beliefs: 1) “Jews are evil.” 2) “A Jewish couple are the nicest people I know and have helped me considerably.” The psychological stress caused by holding two conflicting beliefs is called cognitive dissonance, and inevitably one of the beliefs is discarded in order to maintain a coherent perception of the world. In this case it was the anti-Semitic beliefs that were jettisoned, leading him to renounce his former attitudes in order to maintain his friendship with the Jewish couple. This is a well-documented psychological mechanism whose functioning does not require a metaphysical soul with a divine sense of morality.
I also want to point out that once again the story seems chosen to evoke an emotional response in the reader. Any tale of someone deciding what they had been doing was wrong and changing their life would have worked. What we get is the quintessential modern-day anti-Semite reformed through the love of a Jewish couple. Granted, the author is entitled to choose stories he feels would appeal to his readership, but at a certain point it crosses the line from interesting to manipulative.
{emotional manipulation, violation of Occam’s Razor}
The author ends this section by stating that only the human soul is, “driven to greater and greater accomplishments,” and then claims that Maslow said that, “no sooner does a human being fill a lesser need than he aspires to actualize the next level.” His use of “the human soul” when “human” alone would suffice is becoming annoying. And if I remember correctly, Maslow says that each level of needs has to be fulfilled before one can fulfill needs on the next level. That is, satisfying a lower level is necessary to attempt to satisfy needs on a higher level, but it is not sufficient. Not everyone aspires to fulfill all of the needs in the hierarchy. [There is also some research that shows people try to fulfill needs at multiple levels as the opportunity arises rather than fulfilling them hierarchically, but that may be beside the point]
The author has demonstrated that humans are capable of change through introspection, spurred along by psychological mechanisms. He also continues to claim that only humans are driven to accomplish as much as they can, a claim about which, as I’ve said previously, there is no real data. He has not demonstrated a soul is necessary to account for these factors, and at this point seems to be taking it for granted that all positive human traits are a product of the soul.
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