This is adapted from an e-mail I sent in reply to an argument about to which magazines we would like to subscribe.
I do believe that sexism is defined as discrimination or prejudice, typically
against women. I understand that some, or even most, pornography is made by
abusing the 'stars', both men and women (i.e poor industrial relations, low pay,
limited working rights and so on), but I'd hardly call that sexism. It's just
unpleasant.
I also guess that famous magazines pay really quite well for their pictures, and
I can't understand why a woman earning a living is sexism. I understand that
many women find the concept of pornography distasteful, and would never do it
themselves, but personal taste and sense of disgust is very different from
discrimination.
Pornography shows, overwhelmingly, women because that is what the market seems
to want. I assume that if pictures of naked men were popular they'd be sold too.
If a desire for pictures is so different between the sexes it's not
discrimination. No-one seems to get upset when a man calls himself heterosexual
because he's discriminating against other men. Market forces like this are not
usually called discriminatory.
If you find it objectionable that many men can take pleasure in seeing pretty
women, you're fighting a losing battle, since it is intrinsic to humanity that
we appreciate beauty, and that most men find women sexually appealing. I'm not
entirely sure why being sexually appealing is being discriminated against. Even
if it is, I don't believe that there's any evidence that pornography causes
this, rather than being a result of it.
If, on the other hand, you accept that men might have such instincts, but
believe that they should be controlled, and that pornography is clearly these
instincts being uncontrolled, I have to ask why you find it so necessary to
control other people's behaviours, and why you want to control men's instincts.
Why discriminate against men? Men who examine pornography typically do it in
private and
harm no-one.
If the argument is solely that it might lead them to treat women differently
elsewhere, then I think you'll find yourselves arguing for us to ban, amongst
many, Christianity and Islam, since many preachers of these religions have a
tendency to denounce homosexuals and, to a lesser extent, women, which might
lead the faithful to treat them differently elsewhere in life. Of course, what
we actually find is that even people who explicitly believe that such people are
inferior are able to treat them with respect and dignity in person. How much
more able is a man to do so when rather than being brainwashed by extreme
beliefs he is simply enjoying one thing about women? Being sexually appealing
and a rational, thinking being are not mutually exclusive, unlike being sinful
and inferior and worthy of respect.
I can find nowhere in pornography (assuming it is, as I said, legally produced)
the denial of human rights, respect or dignity. The women in such pornography
would have freely consented to make it, as is their right. If you think that
it's so undignified that we shouldn't allow people to consent to do it, why do
we allow people to work in service jobs at all? I'd call it undignified to model
underwear, although that's not pornography. I'd not be respected working in
MacDonald's or as a waiter in many restaurants.
We don't ban undignified jobs because it's a person's right to decide how much
it is worth to do something unpleasant. Many marxists argue that it is
undignified to work for money at all, and that's their decision, but most of us
have no intention of letting their beliefs rule our lives.
It's also a far cry from discrimination or prejudice and hence sexism.
2.
If you find sexual interactions degrading, that's your own belief, and a
commonly held one. But there's no possible way to justify calling it a universal
truth, and it is up to you to interact with people who agree with you (or not)
as you please. It is not right to impose your beliefs on all others by calling
something offensive to you and therefore immoral even for complete strangers to
make, purchase or enjoy.
In summary, although I can agree that most pornography produced nowadays is not
produced in the most pleasant environment, I don't think that there's any
discrimination instrinsic to pornography, and I'd rather you pointed out the
moral failings of the companies and their production methods than assume that
pornography is evil.
I can also agree that I'd find pornography ... distasteful, but
we can sort that out by voting in the poll, rather than trying to avoid
democratic decisions by calling it offensive. I find it far more offensive that
anyone would seek to control what ought to be a democratic decision by invoking
offence. Pornography would have to be truly discriminatory (and therefore
illegal) before I'd agree that we shouldn't vote on it as we'd vote on anything
else. What if I decided that the Economist, because of its right-wing views, is
offensive? What about the Grauniad, because of its poor English and left-wing
views? How dare you include such scandalous items in the poll? I think we need
another group e-mail apologising for this offensive content too.
If it's legal, then there is the perfect right and
absolute duty to put suggested subscriptions on the poll, whether they're
offensive to someone or not.
[...]'s original complaint suggests that finding the images would make [it] an unwelcoming place to many women, and I agree. I think that not doing the duty to consider all proposals and treat them the same would be even more wrong.
I hope that next time someone finds a thing offensive and considers complaining, my counter-complaint about whether offence is sufficient reason for doing anything about it can be assumed.
If I've missed a vital point in the argument, I'd like to hear it, because I really do feel as though I've missed something important. I truly cannot understand how you link these things together so easily, and I've laid out my guess at the arguments involved to save you time and effort if they are yours.
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Thursday, 15 October 2009
The Selfless Gene
I went to a talk today by Charles Foster, the author of The Selfsih Gene (and many other works too). It was hosted by Oxford Graduate Christian Union, and I had been invited by a friend who is a recent convert to Christianity from depression and hopes, I think, to brighten my cynical outlook in the same way.
He started, edifyingly, by explaining why it is necessary to mention young earth creationism as an important force in this country (as well as in the world, given its porevalence in the U.S.A.). Apparently 1/3 of university students believe in some version of creationism in this country, an astonishing proportion, worrying and worth a discussion all of its own.
He started by explaining that because we cannot quantify the power or effect of natural selection we cannot exclude other forces at work, a point with which Darwin would have agreed, considering natural selection far less important than we do now. This is the first step along a series of Socratic steps in which a play on words or aslightly irrelevant point is used to support the next step. In this case I would contend that until we have proof of other forces, we should assume that they do not exist, it being recognised as foolish to regard as more probable the explanation with unnecessary falsifiable parts ('Occam's Razor').
The next interesting fact was the statement that your life is worth, genetically, 2 brothers and 8 cousins, a truism that I had not yet encountered, and which he used to define the selfish gene explanation of apparent altruism.
He then pointed out that we require professional mathemeticians to calculate elaborate game-theory explanations of some examples of altruism, and that he doubts that natural selection really understands things in that much detail. This is a point that will we will retrun to: natural selection does not need to understand. The model is there already, in nature itself, and selection operates on the results, whether understood or not. The anthropomorphising of selection is not a good argument.
He dismissed memes without much attempt at a full argument, his best suggestion seeming to be that they are considered special to mankind and yet supposedly offer so much power that they should overrule any genetic effect. He thought that other animals should display something biological, and the idea that only man has them as an explanation of why they have not swamped evolution of biology is insufficient.
I disagree with both points. Memes can be found in other animals, such as ravens, which learnt to drop food on pedestrian crossings to get it cracked open by cars but be able to eat it in safety when the crossing was in use.
The reason that memes do not swamp genetics with Lamarckian inheritance is that they spread not only by inheritance but by acquisition. This ensures that they can spread rapidly through a population, with only geographical boundaries, or perhaps the ability of others to learn, preventing their spread. Thus memes operate mostly independently of genetic fitness and the supposedly spooky monstrosity of Lamarckian inheritance is avoided.
Much of the talk was focussed on the apparent altruism in nature not necessarily having a natural explanation, and on his introduction of a separate category of devilry, in the form of many parasites (for example) into nature. This categorisation of nature into altruism, which can be, but isn't necessarily, explained by natural selection, and is compatible with God, and another area which is entirely compatible and explained by natural selection, but appears incompatible with God, speaks for itself. God seems the less likely option. However, he explains that the world itself, perhaps via the devil (a point he did accept implying without objecting when I mentioned it) is disobedient to God's instruction, and therefore parts of it are predatory and not altruistic. Therefore, it seems, because parts of nature are not compatible with a Christian God, God exists!
The convoluted reasoning that allows two categories that between them contain everything (that compatible with God and that not, and therefore compatible with the devil) is no argument at all. The explanation of life that appears to disprove God as work of the devil, and not part of God's plan ( a point he emphasised when I suggested that it could be said to be part of God's plan, on the basis of another part of the talk in which he mentioned that we should celebrate the world's and Adam's disobedience because it gives us the possibility of the heavenly city found in Revelation) rather contradicts his assertion that God can be taken to be omnipotent and omniscient. If God really does want a vegetarian, altruistic world, and this devilry is not part of his overall plan, then he certainly isn't omiscient.
I contend, as Milton shows (by accident) in Paradise Lost that the devil is almost a hero. If his actions are part of God's plan, then as a major agent of God's plan he deserves as much respect as one of the (other) archangels. If he gave us free will and freedom of thought against God's will, then just as the Greek's revered Prometheus, we should respect him for the nobility of the sentiment and sacrifice that made him rule in hell rather than serve in heaven, and gave us the choice to make.
His acceptance of the 'God moves in mysterious ways' as a serious philosophical argument was also galling. Again I will return to Occam's razor to cut out the wanton acceptance of mystery when none is necessary. If we have scientific explanations that do not explain everything, we have learned not to assume supernatural agency. Little demons do not run our computers nor make lightning nor volcanic eruptions. If something has not been explained by science we rationally trust that there is a scientific explanation for two reasons: the empirical reason of science having explained satisfactorily so much already, as compared to the invocation of 'mystery' or the supernatural, which has been falsified in every case; and the principled reason of not invoking extra supernatural qualities to the mystery which are not justified when the thing is a mystery.
I shall expand apon this point. If there is a lak of understanding of what might be termed a phenomenon, we can assume that it is just a mystery, in that we do not understand it, which is in essence a tautology. Or we can assume that it is a supernatural mystery, that it is in some degree beyond our understanding and that it involves extra things in the universe (the supernatural) than we previously supposed existed. I think that Occam's razor does not allow us to make these unjustified assumptions: we should accept that the pnomenon is currently a mystery, but that it is just an example of natural laws that we have yet to fully understand or perhaps even encounter. To assume something other than natural laws is to make a giant assumption which is a far greater leap of faith than is necessary,a dn Occam's razor can be construed to insist on the samllest leaps necessary, if any at all.
FInally, I rather objected to his concentration on suffering (and by implication empathy) as the sole (or perhaps most important) factor in ethics. Suffering defined what he considered bad, and was the way in which he approached the problems of a beneficient God creating a world with badness in it.
I object to the modern preoccupation with suffering as the basis of defining evil. If we take virtue as good, and suffering as neutral, then God's lack of beneficence can be explained solely in terms of us having free will. The natural world, since it is incapable of moral decisions, and therefore of having virtue, is morally neutral. Suffering is not a moral concern except in so far as it is a concern of virtues which are held by free agents. This Stoic idea is one that I would have thought would be a lifeline to Christians wrestling with the problems caused by believing in an amnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and beneficent God. However, my suggestion was roundly refused, with the emotional and irrational point that suffering is bad.
I did point out that the refusal to consider the notion, deeply ingrained in those with extremes of empathy, that suffering might not be the cenral feature of morality, automatically caused refusal of virtue as the defining feature of Good. You can't consider that virtue might replace lack of suffering as the definition of good if you continue to consider suffering as bad!
In summary, there are a number of unnecessary introductions of new concepts to explain things that are already explained, there was a fair amount of re-interpreting the Bible when the passages in question can be more readily explained by the social concerns of the writers (or, as he described them, editors) and there was a strange focus on a belief in philosophy that is not necessarily true but makes his position untenable. Given his dedication to taking what could explain things but doesn't necessarily, I'd have thought that Stoic beliefs would be welcome, not derided.
Just as an aside, one social concern that even mentioned that the editors had was his point that most scholars nowadays believe that Genesis was a polemic against polytheism. This rather undermines his convoluted interpretation that gives it some deep revelatory meaning, again because of Occam's razor. I willa ccept that the English translation changes the meaning deeply, but when the story is already explained as a means to impress the locals with the monotheistic God, who made all that they worship, insightful interpretations, although of academic interest, are not really important.
He started, edifyingly, by explaining why it is necessary to mention young earth creationism as an important force in this country (as well as in the world, given its porevalence in the U.S.A.). Apparently 1/3 of university students believe in some version of creationism in this country, an astonishing proportion, worrying and worth a discussion all of its own.
He started by explaining that because we cannot quantify the power or effect of natural selection we cannot exclude other forces at work, a point with which Darwin would have agreed, considering natural selection far less important than we do now. This is the first step along a series of Socratic steps in which a play on words or aslightly irrelevant point is used to support the next step. In this case I would contend that until we have proof of other forces, we should assume that they do not exist, it being recognised as foolish to regard as more probable the explanation with unnecessary falsifiable parts ('Occam's Razor').
The next interesting fact was the statement that your life is worth, genetically, 2 brothers and 8 cousins, a truism that I had not yet encountered, and which he used to define the selfish gene explanation of apparent altruism.
He then pointed out that we require professional mathemeticians to calculate elaborate game-theory explanations of some examples of altruism, and that he doubts that natural selection really understands things in that much detail. This is a point that will we will retrun to: natural selection does not need to understand. The model is there already, in nature itself, and selection operates on the results, whether understood or not. The anthropomorphising of selection is not a good argument.
He dismissed memes without much attempt at a full argument, his best suggestion seeming to be that they are considered special to mankind and yet supposedly offer so much power that they should overrule any genetic effect. He thought that other animals should display something biological, and the idea that only man has them as an explanation of why they have not swamped evolution of biology is insufficient.
I disagree with both points. Memes can be found in other animals, such as ravens, which learnt to drop food on pedestrian crossings to get it cracked open by cars but be able to eat it in safety when the crossing was in use.
The reason that memes do not swamp genetics with Lamarckian inheritance is that they spread not only by inheritance but by acquisition. This ensures that they can spread rapidly through a population, with only geographical boundaries, or perhaps the ability of others to learn, preventing their spread. Thus memes operate mostly independently of genetic fitness and the supposedly spooky monstrosity of Lamarckian inheritance is avoided.
Much of the talk was focussed on the apparent altruism in nature not necessarily having a natural explanation, and on his introduction of a separate category of devilry, in the form of many parasites (for example) into nature. This categorisation of nature into altruism, which can be, but isn't necessarily, explained by natural selection, and is compatible with God, and another area which is entirely compatible and explained by natural selection, but appears incompatible with God, speaks for itself. God seems the less likely option. However, he explains that the world itself, perhaps via the devil (a point he did accept implying without objecting when I mentioned it) is disobedient to God's instruction, and therefore parts of it are predatory and not altruistic. Therefore, it seems, because parts of nature are not compatible with a Christian God, God exists!
The convoluted reasoning that allows two categories that between them contain everything (that compatible with God and that not, and therefore compatible with the devil) is no argument at all. The explanation of life that appears to disprove God as work of the devil, and not part of God's plan ( a point he emphasised when I suggested that it could be said to be part of God's plan, on the basis of another part of the talk in which he mentioned that we should celebrate the world's and Adam's disobedience because it gives us the possibility of the heavenly city found in Revelation) rather contradicts his assertion that God can be taken to be omnipotent and omniscient. If God really does want a vegetarian, altruistic world, and this devilry is not part of his overall plan, then he certainly isn't omiscient.
I contend, as Milton shows (by accident) in Paradise Lost that the devil is almost a hero. If his actions are part of God's plan, then as a major agent of God's plan he deserves as much respect as one of the (other) archangels. If he gave us free will and freedom of thought against God's will, then just as the Greek's revered Prometheus, we should respect him for the nobility of the sentiment and sacrifice that made him rule in hell rather than serve in heaven, and gave us the choice to make.
His acceptance of the 'God moves in mysterious ways' as a serious philosophical argument was also galling. Again I will return to Occam's razor to cut out the wanton acceptance of mystery when none is necessary. If we have scientific explanations that do not explain everything, we have learned not to assume supernatural agency. Little demons do not run our computers nor make lightning nor volcanic eruptions. If something has not been explained by science we rationally trust that there is a scientific explanation for two reasons: the empirical reason of science having explained satisfactorily so much already, as compared to the invocation of 'mystery' or the supernatural, which has been falsified in every case; and the principled reason of not invoking extra supernatural qualities to the mystery which are not justified when the thing is a mystery.
I shall expand apon this point. If there is a lak of understanding of what might be termed a phenomenon, we can assume that it is just a mystery, in that we do not understand it, which is in essence a tautology. Or we can assume that it is a supernatural mystery, that it is in some degree beyond our understanding and that it involves extra things in the universe (the supernatural) than we previously supposed existed. I think that Occam's razor does not allow us to make these unjustified assumptions: we should accept that the pnomenon is currently a mystery, but that it is just an example of natural laws that we have yet to fully understand or perhaps even encounter. To assume something other than natural laws is to make a giant assumption which is a far greater leap of faith than is necessary,a dn Occam's razor can be construed to insist on the samllest leaps necessary, if any at all.
FInally, I rather objected to his concentration on suffering (and by implication empathy) as the sole (or perhaps most important) factor in ethics. Suffering defined what he considered bad, and was the way in which he approached the problems of a beneficient God creating a world with badness in it.
I object to the modern preoccupation with suffering as the basis of defining evil. If we take virtue as good, and suffering as neutral, then God's lack of beneficence can be explained solely in terms of us having free will. The natural world, since it is incapable of moral decisions, and therefore of having virtue, is morally neutral. Suffering is not a moral concern except in so far as it is a concern of virtues which are held by free agents. This Stoic idea is one that I would have thought would be a lifeline to Christians wrestling with the problems caused by believing in an amnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and beneficent God. However, my suggestion was roundly refused, with the emotional and irrational point that suffering is bad.
I did point out that the refusal to consider the notion, deeply ingrained in those with extremes of empathy, that suffering might not be the cenral feature of morality, automatically caused refusal of virtue as the defining feature of Good. You can't consider that virtue might replace lack of suffering as the definition of good if you continue to consider suffering as bad!
In summary, there are a number of unnecessary introductions of new concepts to explain things that are already explained, there was a fair amount of re-interpreting the Bible when the passages in question can be more readily explained by the social concerns of the writers (or, as he described them, editors) and there was a strange focus on a belief in philosophy that is not necessarily true but makes his position untenable. Given his dedication to taking what could explain things but doesn't necessarily, I'd have thought that Stoic beliefs would be welcome, not derided.
Just as an aside, one social concern that even mentioned that the editors had was his point that most scholars nowadays believe that Genesis was a polemic against polytheism. This rather undermines his convoluted interpretation that gives it some deep revelatory meaning, again because of Occam's razor. I willa ccept that the English translation changes the meaning deeply, but when the story is already explained as a means to impress the locals with the monotheistic God, who made all that they worship, insightful interpretations, although of academic interest, are not really important.
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