Are We Doomed?

by Rebecca Bynum (September 2009)

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism
by John Derbyshire
Crown Forum (September 29, 2009)

Unsurprisingly, Derbyshire describes himself as a biologian, subscribing to biological determinism in every area, even to the extent of the negation of free will. While admitting to a limited scientific understanding of consciousness, Derbyshire asserts:

“I do have an outline picture of what we do and don’t know, though, and a sense of which way the winds are blowing. They are blowing towards determinism, emotion, and error, and away from free will, reason, and judgment.

“Take Benjamin Libet’s results from the 1980s, for instance. Libet found that the subjective experience of willing an act is preceded by the brain activities required to initiate the act. The measured gap between unconscious initiation and conscious decision-making was less than a second in Libet’s experiments, but later researchers have pushed it back to seven seconds.

“Seven seconds! Your brain starts up the neural processes necessary for you to push a button. Seven seconds later you experience the wish to push that button. You then push the button. Where is free will? Where Schopenhauer left it, perhaps. Loosely translated: “We can do what we want, but we can’t want what we want.”

“Libet’s results haven’t gone unchallenged, and there’s now a big literature on volition. There is a good, though early, discussion in Chapter 6 of Daniel Dennett’s 1991 book Consciousness Explained. The results do, however, match what you see everywhere you look in the mind sciences. The ordinary notion of human volition — I perceive a choice; I choose; I act — is only what these neuroscience researchers cheerfully call “folk volition.” It bears as little relation to the actual brain processes involved in volition as the crystal dome of ancient “folk astronomy” does to the actual night sky.”

This kind of thinking makes it very hard to argue in favor of traditional conservative values, freedom of thought and expression among them, and against the kinds of social engineering Derbyshire deplores. His very pessimism, of course, is a value-based reaction to this kind of crass materialistic thinking. Strangely, he acknowledges that the biological robot he claims man is, is simultaneously endowed with a merciful inability to see the truth of his situation. Religion, therefore, may be explained as simply a psychological protective reaction to a cold, harsh, unforgiving material reality.

“’You mean I’m just being dragged through life by a lump of meat?’ I asked a researcher at Tucson, the one who’d presented Libet’s findings. (Libet himself passed away in 2007.) “Probably,” she replied, “but fortunately you’ll never get yourself to believe it.” Mind scientists tend to talk in paradoxes, perhaps to ease the pain of the pessimistic conclusions they keep coming to.”

The opposite conclusion is, in my mind, far more likely to be true. If man were merely a robot, how could be know himself as such? Comprehending values so as to elicit a pessimistic reaction is something no robot could possibly accomplish. Derbyshire talks about the study of consciousness, but that implies a consciousness of consciousness which in turn implies some degree of transcendence as do value judgments. Values are not the result of reason and cannot be discovered by science yet the comprehension of value is an inalienable part of being human.

It is interesting to note the change in Derbyshire’s thought process over the last few years. When he was writing his excellent books on mathematics, one of which I reviewed
What is clear is that Derbyshire considers all religions to be equally crazy and does not consider it worth his time to investigate Islam or to ponder the vast gulf between Islam and other religions:

Here, I must echo the sentiments in the words of Richard L. Rubenstein who wrote:

“As I read the moral indictments of Israel for its alleged human-rights abuses of the Palestinian people by so many of the mainline Protestant denominations and other seemingly well-intentioned individuals and groups, I have the feeling that they are either unaware of or unwilling to confront the true complexity of the struggle between Jews and Muslims over the Jewish presence in any part of Palestine, a presence that radical Muslims characterize as “a crime that must be erased.”
It is certainly difficult not to have that darker thought concerning the attitude of Mr. Derbyshire and others who share his feelings toward Islam and the Middle East. The temptation to place Israel on the table, under the slightest political pressure nowadays, is well advanced – a testament to the moral vacuity and mental laziness of our leaders and pundits.

To comment on this article, please click here.

here.

If you have enjoyed this article, and would like to read more by Rebecca Bynum, click here.

Rebecca Bynum contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all her contributions, on which comments are welcome.