I think Colin McGinn is somewhat overconfident about the ease of establishing a basis for morality within atheism. Within current philosophy--and most academic philosophers today are atheists--there is very little agreement within meta-ethics, the field of philosophy concerned with grounding our ethical judgments in a bigger ethical theory.

In particular, there seems to be great difficulty in figuring out exactly why we ought to be moral--why there is such thing as an "ought" at all. While theists can generally come to some kind of basic agreement on this question--whether they believe that morality ultimately stems from God's commands as commands, or whether they come from somewhere else as Denys Turner claims--it is not obvious on what basis atheists might come to any kind of consensus.

A sign that there may be quite a bit of confusion underlying McGinn's position is indicated by his mentioning the Euthyphro dilemma. While it's true that Plato seems to undermine the notion that morality is dictated by divine commands, this is only possible for him in the context of a bigger cosmic picture. For Plato, the form of the Good is both a transcendent reality and the root of all genuine morality.

But for an atheist naturalist like McGinn, there can be no such transcendent reality providing for our morality. What, then, is its basis? Reason, as he says? But what kind of reason? And how does it function in this way? What role does the emotional aspect of benevolence and good will play?

* sigh *

Fine, whatever. I've got an avatar now.

Ben Stein has become a parody of himself.

Excellent title.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
psh... I have a sealed copy of DOS 6 around here somewhere.


Actually, MS-DOS 6.0 was released six months or so after Windows 3.1. If the box said "Windows for Workgroups"--Windows 3.11--then you might have something there. But at the time of the release of Windows 3.1, MS-DOS 5.0 was the current version.

>> ^scottishmartialarts:
Mithras was a Persian god, not Roman. Although his mystery cult was very, very popular among the Roman Legions. Wherever we have evidence of a Legion presence, we also find evidence of Mithras cult. As I recall Mithras was Ahura Mazda's (the infinitely good god of the Zoroastrian faith) general in his crusade against the devil Ahriman. Darius the Great's conquests were largely motivated out of missionary zeal to spread the Zoroastrian religion.


Well, Mithra was the Persian name. Adding the "s" on the end was just how it was Latinized. But the Roman Mithraic cult doesn't, as far as scholars can tell, have much in common with the Persian cult beyond the name and a few elements of symbolism--a lion-headed "Arrimanus," for instance, a clear Latinization of Ahriman. It's perfectly acceptable to refer to the Roman version of Mithras as a Roman god.

It has to be said, though, that Fry's facts about Mithras are just wrong. In the first place, we don't actually know what the central beliefs about Mithras were. They were Mysteries, not be written down or revealed to outsiders. The doctrines of Mithraism perished with its last follower. Reconstructions of Mithraic doctrine like the ones Fry read are merely speculative interpretations of the images found in the Mithraea--the caves where the Mysteries of Mithras were enacted.

However, some of the things Fry said are just plain wrong even as mere speculation. Mithras is never depicted as being born in a cave or manger, for instance, but emerging from a rock or an egg. He didn't die for anyone's sins or to give people eternal life. The central image of Mithras was instead the tauroctony--Mithras' slaying of a bull, usually assisted by a dog, a serpent, and a crab, clearly astrological symbolism. While there are a few superficial similarities with Christianity--as Fry mentioned, the head of the cult of Mithras was called Papa, just as the Pope is--they do not seem to go very deep.

And finally, it would be very strange for the December 25th date of Christmas to come from the cult of Mithras simply because it was a private mystery religion. Public celebrations just weren't allowed.

However, I'm a little surprised that Fry didn't mention Dies Natalis Solis Invicti--the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. It was celebrated in the late Roman Empire around the same time as Christmas as a public holiday, and so is a prime candidate for being an influence on the date of Christmas.

His quick dismissal of Saturnalia as being only somewhat influential, though, is just plain wrong. Many of the traditions of Christmas clearly come out of Saturnalia--gift-giving, visiting friends, and lavish feasts and celebrations. Many elements of Northern European Christmas celebrations just as clearly come from the pagan holiday "Jol" or "Yule," such as hanging mistletoe as a sign of peace and love, and the ornamenting of an evergreen tree.

Eh... how does one become a "devout" atheist? I don't think that phrase means anything.

A wonderful presentation, but somewhat misleading. One could get the sense that the Greeks were unfamiliar with reincarnation, when this could not be farther from the truth. The Pythagoreans were propounding such a doctrine long before Alexander, and Plato--Aristotle's teacher--seems to have made it a central point.

That said, Aristotle himself was skeptical, and may well have passed this skepticism down to his famous pupil. Though reincarnation played an important role in many other aspects and ancestors of Greek culture. One might note the Aeneid, Book 6 of which contains a sublime account of reincarnation.

The point, I suppose, is that there is not necessarily one myth playing an important role in a society, but many in conflict, even when one might have dominance.

Heh, I was just listening to this album this afternoon.

I wouldn't necessarily say he's a genius. I understood all this when it was explained to me in middle school, and it was explained to Carl Sagan before me. After all, Edwin Abbot lived long before the both of us. But Sagan explains it extraordinarily well.

Psychologic:

To initially approach the question of dualism from the perspective that it is essentially a "discussion about physical reality" is to assume your conclusion from the outset. The whole thing hinges on whether or not it is a discussion about physical reality, at least where "physical" is construed in the narrow sense as concerning the phenomena explainable by physics.

When I refer to the "hard" problem(s) of consciousness, I am using the distinction put forward by David Chalmers, between the "hard" problem--the explanation for the sense of internal experience that we have--and the "soft" problems regarding cognition, emotion, etc. It is not at all obvious why the chemical and electrical processes of the brain should give rise to or be associated with particular experiences.

Indeed, Chalmers makes this the bedrock of one of his arguments for dualism. We can, he says, conceive of the existence of what he calls p-zombies. A p-zombie is simply a human physiologically and behaviorally identical to any other--but entirely lacking this internal experience. If we can conceive of the existence of such a being, if we can know what it would be like for such a thing to be--and this is a point of philosophical contention--then it must be the case that our internal experience is not identical to the physical processes associated with it.

Another argument that consciousness cannot be explained by a scientifically reductionist account comes out of the work of Thomas Nagel, notably in famous essay "What is it like to be a bat?", and explored more thoroughly in The View from Nowhere. While Nagel himself is a confirmed physicalist, similar lines of argument have been advanced to defend dualist notions.

And, of course, there are the many other arguments--some good, some bad, none very decisive--regarding the existence of non-physical qualia.

Psychologic, the current argument in philosophy is precisely about whether or not an empiricist, scientific mode of investigating the mind can ever solve the "hard" problems of consciousness (as opposed to the soft problems--how cognition in the brain works, how the brain assimilates language, how brain chemistry affects emotions, etc.). It is at best naive to decide at the outset that only a scientific account will do before examining whether such an account can in principle actually provide an answer.

If it cannot--and there are strong arguments that it can't--then one must find some other way of talking about consciousness. The dualist positions of philosophers like Donald Davidson and David Chalmers are one attempt at this. So are the non-reductive physicalist ideas of John Searle or Thomas Nagel. In a similar vein, one could perhaps revive the panexperientialist philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, as some have begun to do.

Finding a non-scientific way of talking about consciousness is not mere "speculation" as opposed to evidence-based reasoning. Those make the attempt formulate the strongest arguments they can based on the best premises they believe they have. In doing so, they open themselves up to substantial objections and counter-arguments which may indeed entirely defeat their positions.

>> ^Haldaug:

One could have said the same on the theory of evolution before we found out about DNA. Before the discovery of DNA one couldn't possible concede of a satisfactory way to fully describe the origin of the species because there didn't exist a way to explain the way information could passed on through generations and how that information changed minutely to make the "survival of the fittest" possible.


One could have conceived of possible theories which might, if true, explain the transmission of genetic information. And in fact there were numerous hypotheses which were proposed and tested, including hypotheses defending vitalism.

The situation with contemporary dualists is quite different. They argue that no such theories are in principle possible, even as hypotheses which could explain things if true. One need not be a dualist to acknowledge that these arguments are often at least initially convincing.

>> ^Almanildo:

Postulating a new kind of physical interaction isn't substance dualism; you have to take the new stuff completely out of physics to call it dualist.


Well, you have to take it completely outside of physics to call it substance dualism. Under property and predicate dualism, it is be difficult or impossible to give a thorough account of the mind without speaking of the underlying physical processes which create or are associated with it.

EDIT: Fracking comment interface. Didn't mean to post this comment and can't figure out how to delete it.