Andrew Sullivan hits a new pseudointellectual low

In what I see as possibly his greatest feat of anti-intellectualism since denoting an entire issue of The New Republic to touting the pseudoscientific insights of The Bell Curve, Sully is now hoisting high the old canard that atheists are really religious, too.

I have myself said that Gnu Atheists, in some sociology-type ways, show a mindset similar to fundamentalist-type Christians, and have thus called them atheist fundamentalists. But, I've never claimed that they, let alone non-Gnus, are religious.

He then followed with teh stupidz of claiming religion is in our genes.

Neither one is close to true, in reality. The fact that Sully is arguably a very good representative of the Peter Principle in mainstream media, especially thought and opinion media, on the other hand, is almost ironclad as an argument now.

But, I couldn't let such arrogant, arrant nonsense go unchecked.

Here's a few thoughts I posted on Twitter, with interspersed comment:

Nope on both points
On A., Gnu Atheists are quasi-religious, sociologically, but not metaphysically religious
On B., no, certain genetic-driven tendencies toward imputing agency, or over-imputing agency, is FAR from being in our genes.

— @realDonaldTrump 🌻🚩 (@SocraticGadfly) December 7, 2018

In short, per his Bell Curve love, on B, Sully seems to be doubling down on the pseudoscience of Ev Psych. A Scott Atran or Pascal Boyer will easily steer clear of this while offering much more plausible theories about the origins of what eventually became religious belief mindsets.

Of course, the second point, that religion is in our genes, is not far different from the "intelligence is in our racial heredity" that .@SullyDish claimed as part of fellating The Bell Curve.

— @realDonaldTrump 🌻🚩 (@SocraticGadfly) December 7, 2018

From there, it's off to the land of false analogies, refuted by this:

But Andrew Sullivan, .@sullydish, has yet more teh stupidz.
Claiming that a denial of god is the same as belief in god? That's like claiming that evolutionary biologists who deny creationism are the same as creationists.

— @realDonaldTrump 🌻🚩 (@SocraticGadfly) December 7, 2018

The real problem is Sully's willful ignorance on a fair amount of philosophy. I note that here

And, MORE Andrew Sullivan stupidity. .@SullyDish practices #scientism when he claims science can't replace religion because it's not abt "meaning." Hey, Sully? Way to prove you're willfully ignorant of #philosophy. It can indeed discuss meaning where science doesn't .@mpigliucci

— @realDonaldTrump 🌻🚩 (@SocraticGadfly) December 7, 2018

and here:

Sullivan gets even worse, himself using the word "scientism" later on after having strawmanned science for not being scientism. And, on issues of "meaning" and philosophy, he misappropriates John Gray while ignoring likes of Hume and Camus from philosophical greats

— @realDonaldTrump 🌻🚩 (@SocraticGadfly) December 7, 2018

Finally, Sullivan shows his misunderstanding of the political movement he claims to represent.

.@mpigliucci Sullivan gets worse from there. (And, you need to pass this part on to Dan Kaufman.) He goes into "classical liberal" mode and claims that politics without religion is illiberal. https://t.co/vcclblD88m

— @realDonaldTrump 🌻🚩 (@SocraticGadfly) December 7, 2018

Tosh. Both here and in Europe (and the Anglosphere across the world), many politicians and political thinkers are both classical liberals and irreligious.

The embodied version of the self is real

Is it really true, as people such as Gnu Atheist Alex Rosenberg and a person on Twitter claim, that there is no such thing as an I?

I think not.

I've long believed that Dan Dennett was on the right track, if not necessarily fully right, on subserves and consciousness "bubbling up." I have believed with Daniel Wegner that this means (without supporting determinism) that free will as classically defined by a Cartesian free willer doesn't exist any more than a Cartesian self-meaner. I've accepted any selfhood we have is changing, as well as fleeting to grasp. And, I've long held fast to the validity of David Hume's "whenever I try to grasp myself" idea.

But, the degree to which nailing down an "I" is a hard problem doesn't mean that an I is nonexistent, and contra Rosenberg, it sure as hell doesn't mean that Kandal and other neuroscientists have proven it doesn't exist.

Reality?

It's more subtle than that. No surprise.

It starts with consciousness as embodied cognition. Contra Rosenberg, consciousness doesn't exist in brains but in bodies. Per Dennett's heterophenomenology, I grasp the "I" that is you by seeing you in action. I impute agency by seeing you in action, even if I also accept that the creator of that agency is fluid. The existence of agency is different from the staticness of it. 

Ditto, you grasp the "I" that is me in just the same way. And, we accept the reality of these heterophenomenological determinations through social interactions.

For people who claim no "I" exists, like this guy?

If you knew me yesterday, you no longer know me anymore. I grow daily.#Change https://t.co/X7WWBqjwyC

— Psychology ۞ Pнιℓσѕσρнυѕ ۩ (@PsychologyDoc) November 28, 2018

 

Wrong.

If this were literally true, the following corrolaries: 

1. There would be no "I." (Arguably, there isn't a unitary I, but ... )

2. "You" couldn't know "yourself"

3. We'd arguably be living in a world of mass solipsism

4. None of this is new. See Heraclitus, Hume & Nelson Goodman.

Ultimately, this, like some things, may not be provable by science, but even before this point, Rosenberg is into the waters of scientism. 

And, we don't live in a world of mass solipsism, because we are social animals.

This is another thing that modern neuroscience also misses. After all, you can’t put a family, a Friday night poker game, a Tuesday morning kaffeeklatch or other social groups all in one ginormous MRI machine.

In turn, this is why philosophy of science, or even more, philosophies of individual sciences are needed. That’s why good (better than Dennett) cognitive philosophy or philosophy of mind is needed for cognitive science and neuroscience.

But, Alex Roseberg is like a self-discipline hating philosopher. (He’s not the only one; they do exist.)

The reality, as I see it, is what I was hinting at above. Selves do exist. They exist as individual, embodied-cognition consciousnesses interact with and define each other, and as subselves within those consciousnesses interact with each other.

Not a glitzy definition, but it’s as simple and as straightforward as I can make it.