That's how Alan Hogue describes "evolutionary psychology," and it sounds like a pretty accurate summary of Breaking the Spell, by Daniel C. Dennett. According to Leon Wieseltier's delightful review,
"Breaking the Spell" is a long, hectoring exercise in unexamined originalism. In perhaps the most flattening passage in the book, Dennett surmises that "all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values," and that this conviction about the primacy of the instrumental is a solemn requirement of science. He remarks that the question cui bono? — who benefits? — "is even more central in evolutionary biology than in the law," and so we must seek the biological utilities of what might otherwise seem like "a gratuitous outlay." An anxiety about the reality of nonbiological meanings troubles Dennett's every page. But it is very hard to envisage the biological utilities of such gratuitous outlays as "The Embarkation for Cythera" and Fermat's theorem and the "Missa Solemnis."
It will be plain that Dennett's approach to religion is contrived to evade religion's substance. He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason. In this profound sense, Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.
Of course, criticism in a book review is exactly the sort of persecution Dennett expects:
In his own opinion, Dennett is a hero. He is in the business of emancipation, and he reveres himself for it. "By asking for an accounting of the pros and cons of religion, I risk getting poked in the nose or worse," he declares, "and yet I persist." Giordano Bruno, with tenure at Tufts! He wonders whether religious people "will have the intellectual honesty and courage to read this book through." If you disagree with what Dennett says, it is because you fear what he says. Any opposition to his scientistic deflation of religion he triumphantly dismisses as "protectionism." But people who share Dennett's view of the world he calls "brights." Brights are not only intellectually better, they are also ethically better. Did you know that "brights have the lowest divorce rate in the United States, and born-again Christians the highest"? Dennett's own "sacred values" are "democracy, justice, life, love and truth." This rigs things nicely. If you refuse his "impeccably hardheaded and rational ontology," then your sacred values must be tyranny, injustice, death, hatred and falsehood. Dennett is the sort of rationalist who gives reason a bad name; and in a new era of American obscurantism, this is not helpful.Via Amy Welborn Posted by Ben Brumfield at February 21, 2006 10:50 AM
I'm sure Alan won't mind if I mention that Stephen Jay Gould popularized that phrase first.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 21, 2006 12:58 PMBen, You might be interested in looking at Brian Leiter's attack on Wieseltier's review of Dennett. You can find it at either Leiter's blog or at Butterflies and Wheels.
Posted by: Ralph Luker at February 21, 2006 03:47 PMHonestly, Ralph, if Leiter attacks something, that automatically raises it in my estimation.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at February 21, 2006 04:28 PMTo clarify my statement now that I'm not holding a baby with my left hand, I'm impressed with Brian Leiter in the same way that I'm impressed with Louis Proyect. They are both highly articulate and intelligent people who have no qualms arguing that good is evil and black is white.
A year or so ago I considered posting on Leiter's essay about the futility of even attempting to persuade conservatives (who he described as rabid extremists, but then illustrated by support for some illuminatingly moderate positions). As I recall (and unfortunately I can't find the relevant post after several minutes searching The Volokh Conspiracy), Leiter actually argued that it was a far nobler use of his talents to vent his spleen taunting them --in the full knowledge that he'd probably even alienate more moderates from his position -- than in attempting to persuade them.
It's difficult for me to imagine anything wronger than his position.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at February 21, 2006 06:52 PMI wouldn't put Leiter in the same class with Proyect, a stalinist automaton, but essentially I agree with you.
Posted by: Ralph Luker at February 21, 2006 10:22 PMThanks for the correction, Alan. I saw Steven Jay Gould in high school when he came to Port Arthur to speak, and remember the lecture fondly. Anything at all seems liberating to a small-town teenager, but his comments on race really made an impression on me. "Pygmies, and everyone else."
It just so happens that the top post at Language Hat today makes a reference to a confrontation between Dennett and Gould. Googling the pair of names makes for fruitful reading.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at February 22, 2006 06:39 AMFor those of you with access, also see Dennett's debate with Searle in the NYRB.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/6628
And probably this one, too:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=1680
I don't think Dennett comes out too well from the first one, at least.
Posted by: Alan at February 28, 2006 11:26 PMYou cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content.
That's a zinger. The Heaven's Gate cult along with most others would be delighted to sign on.
If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason.
A pretty radical statement, and one that I don't think anyone believes except when forced to defend a belief that is fundamentally irrational.
But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason.
Circularity. Even granting it, this is not necessarily the case. It can be a reason based on general principles and still be "creaturely". The only way it cannot be "creaturely" is if it were handed down from God, hence the circularity.
It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection.
...which is as good a mechanism as any to harmonize things with general principles.
The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.)
A telling statement. Mysticism presumably has a similar independence and yet I think there are mystics who the author would vehemently disagree with. Their independence from the animal world (known to others as the real world) does not make them reliable.
If you refuse his "impeccably hardheaded and rational ontology," then your sacred values must be tyranny, injustice, death, hatred and falsehood.
This seems likely to be true, though, keeping in mind I haven't read the book. And presumably it's the reason for the whole incoherent tirade in the first place.
Posted by: Alan at February 28, 2006 11:49 PMI think you're reading the review vastly differently than I am. The paragraph, as I understand it points out the inconsistency in asserting "faith is a by-product of evolution and therefore has no validity", "reason is superior to faith", and then admitting that "reason is a by-product of evolution." Nothing in that seems even controversial to me.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at March 6, 2006 07:31 AM