Series:
Essay #4:
Synopsis:
Spirits
Machines without Mechanism
A worldview is faith; it can lead a rational believer into all manner of silliness; witness how we use the idea of natural selection
Sometimes a worldview gets itself all twisted up. Remember that my worldview thinks and speaks for me; its assumptions become my conclusions. Imagine I ask a biologist, “where do moral ideas come from?” I know his answer before the words leave his mouth. He’s a biologist, therefore his worldview is reductive materialism, and natural selection is his favorite explanation for everything. He’ll say that morality, or at least its foundation, is in our genes and it evolved through natural selection.
I recently read a paper that flat-out said it. The paper was titled, Moral Philosophy as Applied Science, by Michael Ruse and E.O. Wilson. You may recall Dr. Wilson for his research on insects and especially for analogizing human society to a beehive. The paper said,
“Everything human, including the mind and culture, has a material base and originated during the evolution of the human genetic constitution.” The authors posited “epigenetic rules” that “are rooted in the physiological processes leading from the genes to thought and action… we think morally because we are subject to appropriate epigenetic rules. These predispose us to think that certain courses of action are right and certain courses of action are wrong.... (Morality) can be understood solely as mechanisms that are adaptive for the species that possess them.”
Natural selection is one of my favorite ideas of all time, and I concede that it’s likely true that we’re genetically disposed to certain emotions and behaviors because of their selective advantage …but… you got to show your work because teacher don’t give credit for guesses. A scientific explanation must show material cause and effect such that another scientist can verify it by empirical observation. If a scientist can’t show the material mechanism of causation by empirical evidence, then he’s speculating.
For our eminent doctors to get credit, therefore, they must show some semblance of a chain of material cause-and-effect running from genes to thoughts and beliefs. They don’t. Our doctors merely assume that a material chain of causation must run from our genes through culture and idea to behavior. If I asked them to show the mechanism whereby DNA becomes idea, I imagine they’d say, “Well, since it’s such a long series of causes and effects, almost infinite really, the mechanism must be in there someplace; you see, it’s really just like a beehive….”
The same thing happened on a recent Jordan Peterson podcast with an evolutionary psychologist, the indomitable Dr. Gad Saad (February 2021). Dr. Saad was talking about ideas (memes) that act like parasites and control people’s minds. Dr. Peterson asked him whether an idea can act in the material world; an idea doesn’t really control the brain, right? Dr. Saad replied that an idea actually causes neurons to fire just like some parasites use hormones to control the brain of their host.
An idea that causes neurons to fire-- what’s going on here? Nothing. Ideas aren’t made of particles so an idea can never be a parasite. At most, it’s like a parasite. Dr. Saad started with an ordinary analogy that ideas are like parasites, and by strength of faith, he equated the two, such that idea became corporeal parasite that changes the material structure of a brain. We know that ideas cause human action in some mysterious and magical way, but all this is different: it’s a mechanistic explanation without a mechanism.
When a scientist uses analogy not mechanism to make the crucial leap, then he’s a poet. Scientists get paid to show mechanism; poets get paid (or not) to speak metaphor. As an unpaid poet (and a bad one, yes I know it) , I hereby pronounce that the idea of natural selection is like a parasite in the minds of biologists.
I doubt our eminent biologists will ever show a material causal chain going from genes to idea, or going in the other direction, from idea to the firing of neurons. Why? Because if they drew that chain, they’d have solved the great intellectual problem of human history: how to bridge the divide between mind and matter, body and soul. Biological natural selection can’t operate on ideas, because ideas have no material structure. Ideas can’t enter or exit material chains of causation.
Biological drives are different in kind from ideas and culture, and anyway, none of it completely determines human behavior. My behavior (and yours) is a subtle and complex binding of biology, culture, free-will, more. When you see Thou in me, are hormonal secretions in your brain causing you to see Thou, or is your recognition of Thou causing the hormonal secretions? William James asked, “Does the river make its banks, or do the banks make the river?” (from Pragmatism). I think they’re bound together so tight that we can’t unwind them.
It might be true that genes influence ideas at a foundational level… and it’s still irrelevant. Yes, my biological drives speak to me, but I choose whether to listen. I act based on what has meaning for me. That’s what’s important: meaning, and what I do about it, because I have free-will and I am a perpetrator of causation, not its victim. I can change my mind without changing my DNA, which is why our eminent biologists are on the wrong track going nowhere. Hence, even assuming that we’re genetically disposed to certain emotions and behaviors… who cares? The relevancy of natural selection decreases when people have mind. Natural selection needed hundreds of thousands of years to make incremental changes to human biology, and now we humans are using mind, free-will and ideas to change ourselves and the world in less than a generation. Once we got culture, we stopped waiting around for natural selection. Mind controls matter; we modify our own genes.
The worldview spoke! and the believer moved his mouth. A reductive materialist worldview is a strange creature. A worldview is a system of ideas, an immaterial product of mind-world... and by stating that all reality must reduce to matter alone, this worldview denies its own existence. Imagine believing in a worldview that negates itself. That’s the power of faith.