“Reduced To” Absurdum

2008.07.02   prev     next

During the heyday of socialism, it was popular for liberals to say that in capitalism, the human individual is “reduced to” a gear or a cog, or perhaps an insect. This argument neglected the fact that when a man who by day works on an assembly line attaching bolts to cars, goes home for the day, he experiences pleasures, relationships, and intellectual pursuits of which no cog or insect could ever dream. Having to tighten bolts on an assembly line, while certainly an undesirable fate (don’t I know), did not “reduce” him to something less than human. And in any case, the need to have those bolts tightened does not go away based on whether it’s demeaning to tighten them — so let’s build some robots to do it, shall we?

Today, the “reduced to” absurdity has been taken over, curiously enough, by religious conservatives — most specifically advocates of free will. Without free will, they say, humans are “reduced to” robots. (See my prior comments on this silliness.) Well, maybe we are robots — but only if your definition of robots includes something as graceful, complex, and capable as a human. Oh wait, you meant that without free will, we’re “reduced to” the aforementioned, assembly-line, bolt-tightening robot? Can you say “equivocation?” I knew you could!

David Tyler’s ARN article “How To Be Rational About Ethics” provides us with a prime example of the “reduced to” nonsense in action:

Gosh, where do I start?

postmodernist — as used here, a pointless epithet which communicates nothing.

utilitarian — yes, ethical codes in society are intended to actually do something helpful, like improving our lives. What the hell is wrong with that? Oh yeah, I forgot — we were put here to suffer piously, which pleases our singular creator. Are ARN ID articles supposed to be a refreshing new perspective on non-atheist intentionality, or just a sickening throwback to the worst, fun-is-wrong puritanism that religion ever gave us?

evolving — perhaps human ethics does evolve, but seriously, how much? Will acts of wanton, society-harming destruction ever be considered ethical by a successful, long-lasting human nation? (Hey, maybe that “utilitarian” factor isn’t such a bad thing!)

reduces — of course. If someone else’s interpretation of society disagrees with yours, be sure to call theirs a “reduction” of humanity. That’ll give you the upper hand. I could stop there, but while we’re on the subject: How is a human mind that employs complex logical (and therefore ultimately deterministic) analysis to arrive at its decisions less sophisticated than one that uses unpredictable (i.e. effectively random) “free will?” My desktop computer is a fantastically better analytical device than the pair of red, Vegas dice sitting next to it on my desk. If you ever hear me say that we shouldn’t “reduce” dice to the level of a desktop computer, please feel free to assume that I just can’t stomach the idea that I’m not totally “free,” and would rather turn common sense on its head than face that possibility.

And, by the way, let’s suppose that ID is correct and that humanity was actually designed by some unspecified designers. They wrote our genetic code (borrowing heavily from their past creations, the chimpanzee and gorilla) then set the first human pair (call them Adam and Eve if you like) loose on the planet to grow into the six-billion-strong, technologically advancing humanity in which you and I now find ourselves. Great. I have no problem with that. In fact I think it likely correct. But — what does that have to do with trying to refute materialistic interpretations of how human society works?

Pssst — nothing. Absolutely nothing. Shhh. Don’t tell.

Update 2008.08.03 — More of the same kind of thinking on Uncommon Descent (last July 7):

UD’s Denyse O’Leary chimes in with happy agreement:

When Darwinists and design advocates are in harmonious agreement, it would be nice if we could assume they are both right, instead of both wrong. Too bad for us.

Why do ethics need an “ultimate foundation,” and what the hell does that mean, anyway? The foundation of laws against murder is simply that the vast majority of people value not-getting-murdered far more than they value getting-to-murder-other-people. Why does the average person have this preference? Well, if we didn’t, we probably would have gone extinct a long time ago. So, whether by Darwin or design, humans have to have this (average) preference to survive. And, I suppose, the quasi-Darwinian competition among nations pretty much guarantees that this average preference will stay with humanity (again, irrespective of whether humans evolved naturally or were intelligently designed).

Attention all ID people. Time for a major wake-up call. Play this loudly on a bugle to the tune of Reveille until you’ve gotten it down:

The scientific evidence for ID overturns the Darwinist claim that natural selection has a building effect that is responsible for synthesizing humans from bacteria over the past four billion years. And that’s all it overturns! It doesn’t undermine all the things that Darwinists like to say, such as that we have no free will, there’s no “ultimate foundation” for human ethics, natural selection weeds undesirable genes out of the population, humans aren’t subjected to divine retribution after death, etc., etc. Most of these things survive the evidence for ID completely unscathed. The illusion that they don’t is maintained by the virtually unanimous use among the ID crowd of the same debating tactic of which Jerry Pournelle charges Richard Dawkins — proof by repeated assertion.