John Searle, Making The Social World (2010)

The substance of John Searle's most recent book, Making the Social World, is largely covered by the last chapter of his 2008 selection of essays, Philosophy in a New Century entitled "Social Ontology: Some Basic Principles" (see January 21, 2011 post).  I refer the reader back to this earlier post for Searle's discussion of status functions, deontic powers, and desire-independent reasons for action.  This is a discussion of the language-enabled creation of obligations, permissions, rights, responsibilities, duties, obligations and the like (what Searle calls deontic powers) that Searle tells us are the glue of the human social world and collective action.  I wish to cover two topics in this posting:  first, the importance of language in making a social world, and second, the significance of human imagination in Searle's model of the social world. 

Language is the foundation of all social institutions, says Searle. "We will not understand an essential feature of language if we do not see that it necessarily involves social commitments, and that the necessity of these social commitments derives from the social character of the communication situation, the conventional character of the devices, used, and the intentionality of speaker meaning.  It is this feature that enables language to form the foundation of human society in general."  Language, adds Searle, introduces deontology into social relations and how it creates an institutional reality with a deontic power.  The foundation of Searle's thesis is this:  "If a speaker intentionally conveys information to a hearer using socially accepted conventions for the purpose of producing belief in the hearer about a state of affairs in the world, then the speaker is committed to the truth of his utterance."  There is no way, Searle comments, that if I say to someone publicly, intentionally, explicitly, "There is an animal coming toward us," without being committed to the truth of the propositional content that there is an animal coming toward us.  Both the belief and the statement involve commitments, but the commitment of the statement is much stronger, for if the commitment of the privately held belief turns out to be false, I am free to revise it.  In the case of the statement, however, I am committed to not only to revision in the case of falsehood, but I am also committed to providing reasons for the original statement, I am committed to sincerity in making it, and I am publicly responsible if it turns out to be false.  A speech act is more than just an expression of belief; a speech act is a public performance.

To appreciate the significance that Searle attaches to language in humans, it is important to understand what Searle believes language added to our prelinguistic capabilities and therefore ask:  what are the features that prelinguistic human mentality and language have in common (and therefore what did language contribute over and above our prelinguistic mentality)?  The common features, according to Searle, are these:

• Perception.  These are our sensory capabilities.  Perception and the object perceived are causally self-referential, says Searle:  we experience an object only if the presence of the object caused our sensory experience of the object.
• Beliefs, desires, intending, and emotions such as hopes, fears and the like. These are the capabilities of the mind by which it is directed at or about objects and states of affairs in the world.  This is referred to as intentionality (a concept not limited to "intending"). Beliefs, etc. are not causally self-referential.
• Intentional action. This capacity is embraces a causal sequence (intention and action are causally self-referential), assuming that action actually occurs.  There can be a prior intent to act; it can be an intention that is coincident to acting.  All actions require intentions-in-acting, but not all actions require prior intent.
• (At least) short-term memory.  Like intentional action, memory is causally self-referential: we recall something only if we experienced the thing that triggers our present memory of that thing.

Thus, in the cases of perception, memory, and intentional action, there is a match between the mind and the world.  Beliefs, desires, and the like are not necessarily tethered to the world, although they are derivative of perception, memory and intentional action, which are.  Because they are not tethered to the world in the same way, beliefs, desires etc are much more "flexible" in relating to reality.

While denying that he is engaging in speculative evolutionary biology, Searle asks us to imagine hominids with the full range of prelinguistic capabilities just noted, but not having language.  Evolutionary biology has, in fact, established that this scenario likely existed more than 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.  (See January 31, 2013 post) depending on when we determine that language emerged in humans.  What we are capable of achieving with language, says Searle, that we cannot achieve with our prelinguistic consciousness is the ability to manipulate the syntactical elements.  Language consists of sentences composed of syntactical elements that can be manipulated; prelinguistic intentional states are not:  "the dog might think that someone is approaching the door but the dog cannot think the false thought that door is approaching someone."  [This may or may not be true for a dog, but I am skeptical that it is necessarily true for the prelinguistic human --- to be discussed below when I touch on imagination.]  Importantly, speech acts come in five categories:  (i) assertives (representing how things are); (ii) directives (orders, commands); (iii) commissives (promises, pledges); (iv) expressives (apologies, thanks); and (v) declarations.  The first four speech acts have their analogs in intentional states (corresponding to beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions such as fear, hope and the like) and are not causally self-referential.  Declarations are different.  In the case of a declaration, "we make something the fact by declaring it to be the case."   Declarations, on the other hand, have no prelinguistic analog and they are causally self-referential:  the prelinguistic intentional states "cannot create facts in the world by representing those facts as already existing.  This remarkable feat requires language."  This has enormous significance for the construction of a social reality (derived from perception, intentional action, and/or memory).  But through a declaration we have the ability to declare things to be the case that were not necessarily the case prior to the declaration: that I am the shaman of this tribe, I am the leader of this tribe, these five persons comprise our governing council, this piece of paper shall be legal tender for all debts and obligations public or private.  Equally, if not more important for Searle, language creates speaker meaning for those prelinguistic intentional states, and, as noted in the opening paragraph of this post, with respect to those causally self-referential intentional states, language necessarily involves social commitments by declaring what we perceive, intend, or recall to the be the case. And so once we have language, we have a deontology --- the ability to establish duties, obligations, rights and the like that are desire-independent.  With collective acceptance of these duties, obligations, rights and the like, we can have collective intentionality. 

Not everyone concurs with Professor Searle's view on the importance of language.  Frank Hindriks, for example, surmises that collective acceptance and collective intentionality can arise through gesture (including sanctions):

"Consider  Searle’s example of a wall that decays and turns from a physical structure into an institutional boundary (94--‐96).  It is not obvious that any linguistic communication is required in the process.  People can observe each other’s behavior including sanctioning behavior such as frowning when someone crosses the boundary.  At some point it is true that the stones that are left form a boundary, and this fact involves the obligation not to cross it.  The stones form a boundary because the relevant people recognize it as such.  These people believe that it is a boundary, and recognize the deontic powers that come with being a boundary.  In light of this, it seems fair to say that the collective intentional states  that are involved in the constitution of the boundary have the double direction of fit.  Language needs not enter, neither to account for the double direction of fit [causal self-reference] nor to explain the normative nature of this institutional fact.  I am not sure what Searle has in mind when he mentions conventionally encoded commitments, but see no reason to believe that I have left anything out of the picture that essentially involves linguistic conventions.  So it seems that Searle overestimates the role language plays in institutions when he claims language is constitutive of institutions."

As a matter of anthropology and evolutionary biology, Hindriks may be closer to the mark as Chris Boehm's Moral Origins indicates. (See November 21, 2012 post).  Searle admits that cooperation among hominids is a characteristic of pre-linguistic humans.  But Boehm's thesis is that forms of human organization (egalitarian in nature) emerged as early as 150,000 to 200,000 years ago (if not earlier in other homo species), primarily through sanctioning behavior (subtle or lethal), well before language emerged 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.  It may very well be true that the kind of social institutions created by humans for the first time 10,000-35,000 years ago could not have occurred without language, but if Hindriks is correct, as some evidence suggests, then it means that humans were capable of non-linguistic declarations and that "hearer meaning" and collective acceptance in the pre-linguistic world was secured through a punch in the face.  And perhaps by virtue of mirror neurons.  (See October 25, 2011 and September 18, 2009 posts). 

This brings me to the more disappointing accounting in Searle's account of the creation of a social reality, although admittedly he does not ignore the subject.  Professor Searle is certainly correct when he says that what typically gets communicated in speech acts  are intentional states representing the world.  A previous post noted the research that truth telling is the default position of the human brain (see February 4, 2012 post) and this seems to make common sense as well.  But the human capacity to engage in both deception and self-deception cannot be overlooked.  (See February 4, 2012 and June 12, 2011 and May 22, 2011 posts).  This is missing from Searle's analysis, although he expressly acknowledges that the "one faculty that is left out of [his listing of intentional states], because it does not have a direction of fit, is imagination. . . unlike belief, which has the downward direction of fit, or desire, which has the upward direction of fit, my imagining something commits me neither to believing that what I imagine is the case, nor to the wanting it to be the case.  Sometimes one fantasizes what one would like to occur, but it is not an essential feature of fantasy or imagination that they are forms of desire.  One can fantasize what one fears or hates, as well as what one believes might happen, and indeed what one believes could not possibly happen.  There is no responsibility for fitting with imagination.  Another feature peculiar to imaging is that it is, or can be, free voluntary action. . . Imagination will have a role in our account of social ontology, because the creation of a reality that exists only because we think it exists requires a certain level of imagination."  The mistake here, it seems to me, is  a virtual assumption that the truth-telling default position of the human brain is the only position.  We know that is not the case.  We lie and deceive more frequently than we care to admit, and, importantly for this discussion, we do occasionally engage in acts of deception and make our imagination fit the world by declaring it to be the case even though that is inconsistent with the objective facts.  The Catholic Church's denial of the Copernican System is an obvious example.  (See  December 17, 2012 and December 5, 2012 post). 

This is why, in discussing Searle's example of the dog who "cannot think the false thought that door is approaching someone" I questioned whether this was necessarily true for prelinguistic humans.  If a prelinguistic human believed that the earth circles the sun, it is equally possible that the prelinguistic human could have held the false thought that the sun circles the earth.  There is no apparent reason why prelinguistic human mental states are not capable of manipulation on account of imagination. Human social reality can be constructed on the basis of false beliefs and by declaring that to be the case, and Searle admits that this can be the case as when "a community believes that someone has divine powers," where the belief goes beyond the fact.  He admits that "a whole system of status functions may be based on false beliefs," but he says that from the perspective of institutional analysis, it does not matter whether the beliefs are true or false; it only matters whether the people do in fact collectively recognize or accept the system of status functions.  OK.  So we create a "social" reality that is not made of the same the brute physical facts made of "mindless, meaningless, physical particles."  I can accept that, but it seems to contradict the purpose of this book which is "not to allow ourselves to postulate two worlds or three worlds or anything of the sort.  Our task is to give an account of how we live in exactly one world, and how all these different phenomena, from quarks and gravitational attraction to cocktail parties and governments are part of that one world."

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (2010)

Imagine that approximately 160,000 - 200,000 years ago, a huge asteroid miles across is hurtling toward the earth as the earth's gravity draws it in toward a cataclysmic event.  The asteroid strikes the African continent in an area that is now called Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia.  Many forms of life are destroyed by the impact of this asteroid, including the entire population of an incipient large-brained species among the genus Homo, Homo sapiens (subspecies idaltu), that walked upright. Other species, including one which some have labeled Homo rhodensiensis, are destroyed as well.  At the time of this catastrophe, there were relatively small numbers of this incipient species, homo sapiens, alive.  As a consequence, the species homo sapiens went extinct, and modern homo sapiens (subspecies sapiens) never emerged.  To the north of Africa in the area now known as the Middle East and Europe, the species Homo neanderthalensis, who is believed by some to have evolved from a common ancestor with Homo sapiens,  Homo rhodesiensis (or perhaps Homo heidelbergensis), is not directly impacted by this catastrophe.  Only this species within the genus Homo survives.

One of the mysteries of Homo neanderthalensis is whether this species had the capacity for the spoken word and language (see August 31, 2009 post).  The earliest humans (e.g. 160 - 200,000 years ago at the time of our imaginary encounter with the asteroid in Africa) are not believed to have  developed language as we know it.  At best, early humans and some of their predecessors may have enjoyed some kind of capability for communicating by gesture or perhaps making sounds, what some have labeled a proto-language.  Exactly when the human capacity for language evolved is unclear, but it was at least 50,000 years ago ( the time of the out-of-Africa migration) if not earlier, in Africa.  (See also February 15, 2012 post).  Homo neanderthalensis was still a viable north-of-Africa species within this time frame, but if Homo neanderthalensis was already out-of-Africa in this time frame and language first emerged in Africa, this suggests that Homo neanderthalensis may not have had a language capacity.  For purposes of our asteroid story, let us assume that Homo neanderthalensis did not have the capacity for language (despite its large brain) and let us assume, as a consequence of the catastrophe brought about by our imaginary asteroid, that because Homo sapiens went extinct and never invaded the European habitat of Homo neanderthalensis, the latter remained undisturbed by another Homo species.

We can now imagine a number of alternative "histories" over the next tens or hundreds of thousands of years after the asteroid catastrophe for life on earth that might have evolved.  One such history witnesses that Homo neanderthalensis becomes the dominant hominid species on the earth, migrating across to North America and South America, into southern Asia, and back to Africa.  Another history witnesses the extinction of Homo neanderthalensis and the disappearance of the genus Homo entirely from the earth.  Other histories involve one of the first two just described plus the emergence of another large-brained species, perhaps an evolved Neanderthal or perhaps another evolving hominid species in Africa.  Undoubtedly, there are many other such "histories" that can be imagined, but in the interest of keeping these speculations simple, in any of the above scenarios it is possible if not most likely that 160 - 200,000 years after our imaginary asteroid struck the earth, the earth would be much different than it is today.  If the Neanderthals did not go extinct and survived today under the first scenario, we still don't know what their capacity for creating social structures and institutions might have been much less there capacity for creating technology as part of their historical evolution.  There is some evidence that their capacity for creating social structures would have been quite different than homo sapiens as Neanderthals may have lived in much smaller social units comprised of extended families, whereas humans lived in somewhat larger groups whose members included individuals from outside the family.  (See November 21, 2012 post).  It is possible that their brain structures may have been similar to homo sapiens given that the cranial capacity is similar to humans, but this is by no means certain.  What I am getting at, however, is the possibility that Neanderthals may have never had or developed the communications and language skills of humans, and this would have significant impact on how they perceived the world around them, including developing ideas, as homo sapiens later did, of the physical universe beyond the earth or even the biosphere on and around the earth.  In such a circumstance, we can imagine that no species would have developed an idea or belief in a creator of the universe; there would be no idea of a "god," and there would be no religious institutions.  Human social evolution described by Richard Boehm in Moral Origins (November 21, 2012 post) may never occur either. 

Physicist Stephen Hawking is a homo sapien who has spent all his adult life contemplating the physical universe beyond the earth, its origin(s), and the physical laws that describe its behavior.  Together with physicist Leonard Mlodinow (see November 20, 2011 post), they consider three questions, assuming that there are laws of nature:

• What is the origin of the laws?
• Are there any exceptions to the laws, i.e., miracles?
• Is there only one set of possible laws?

The first question is readily recognized as posing the question whether there was a Creator who established the laws of nature?  Or did the laws evolve as a result of some spontaneous event?

The second question examines whether the laws of nature establish a deterministic system or whether there are occasions when the laws are suspended, accomplishing something that physical law would not permit.  This question was resolved by Spinoza in the negative  (see December 17, 2012 post), and Hawking does likewise, although he notes that there is a long line of physicists before him who felt differently.

The third question receives a lot of attention in this book, The Grand Design, and draws on Richard Feynman's sum over histories approach to quantum mechanics.  This is a probabilistic approach to epistemology attributable to the uncertainty (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) in determining the specific historical pathway that an object takes to its present or future position.  For Feynman, the object of interest was a particle that we cannot see.  Particles can take an infinite number of paths to reach an endpoint, and each pathway has a probability associated with it.    As others have explained:

"The crucial point is that these different [probability] amplitudes have a wavelike nature, and as they spread through space they interfere with each other, their respective wave patterns either reinforcing or canceling each other out at various points. And if you sum over all the amplitudes of all the different paths, i.e. you sum-over-histories, then the different amplitudes will reinforce or cancel each other in such a way that the only path that survives this interference process is the one that the particle actually follows."

I'm not sure we can apply the sum-over-histories approach to the non-quantum world that earthbound hominids live in, such as the alternative histories of hominid evolution I described at the top, and it may just be mathematically too difficult because of the difficulty in describing "laws" applicable to animal evolution that would tell us who dies, who survives, and who prevails among those who survive.  But the evolutionary pathway is just as probabilistic as the elements of nature.  The real point here is the analytical model that Hawking brings to bear on looking at the universe:  something he calls model-dependent realism.  This concept goes back to the debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein and what Bohr described as "observer dependent reality."  (See July 30, 2011 post).  For Einstein, he was certain that there was a reality that was independent of the observer; a tree falls in the woods even though no one has witnessed it falling.  For Hawking, our understanding of physical reality is dependent on what the observer perceives and senses, and it is quite possible that different observers will witness the same thing differently.  As noted in a prior post, Michael Shermer, borrowing Hawking's concept and applying it to his views of human belief, described a belief dependent realism.  (See June 12, 2011 post ).  The ultimate question for Hawking (and Shermer) is this:  it is pointless to ask whether a theory or model or belief is real, but only whether the theory or model or belief agrees with observation.  It is possible that more than one theory or model of explains the way things really are and observations can agree with both of them, and Hawking cites particle and wave duality as one example of co-existing models of the same thing.  Likewise, Hawking says "no single theory can describe every aspect of the universe."  It is likely that we will find multiple models explain our observations of different aspect of the universe.  Shermer, of course, is concerned about how certain tendencies of the human mind (biases) color our observations and cause us to believe something that is not real.

This is an epistemological issue.  It is different than the question of whether something actually exists.  Hawking does not deny that the observer and the observed are parts of the world that has an objective existence. 

The Grand Design is devoted in substantial part to explaining that the universe had a beginning and that beginning can have occurred spontaneously.  It then discusses what we know about how the microscopic elements that were present at the spontaneous beginning and, shortly thereafter, could yield the universe of complex compounds that we find in the universe we intelligent humans observe today.  Hawking asks us to think of the expanding universe as the surface of a bubble, and to imagine the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water.  Many tiny bubbles (in our model, corresponding to alternative universes, each with very different or similar sets of physical laws) appear and then disappear again while still of microscopic size.  Since they do not last long, these "universes" (and their different physical laws) do not, as the universe that we humans now observe, develop galaxies and stars needed to create elements heavier than hydrogen, helium and lithium, like carbon that is essential for life and intelligent life.  But then, Hawking invites us to further consider, a few bubbles are able to grow large enough so that they are safe from collapse and they continue to expand at an ever-increasing rate and they form the bubbles of steam we are able to see.  These "bubbles" correspond to that beginning of universes in a state of inflation.  Others have described this scenario as well, such as Steven Weinberg in The First Three Minutes.  In the beginning there were tiny bubbles . . . and now there is a very large universe that includes intelligent life.  No help from a creator is needed to explain how the universe went from Point A to Point B.  But would imagination and storytelling ever have emerged?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent (1875)

The subjects of personal identity and group identity have surfaced in a couple of previous posts in this blog,  (see April 1, 2012,  December 10, 2011 and December 2, 2011 posts), and now personal identity resurfaces in Dostoevsky's The Adolescent.

The circumstances here underlying the search for personal identity are not remarkable:  Dostoevsky's protagonist and narrator, Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruky, has two fathers, a biological father and an adoptive father.   The more unique circumstance is that neither of these "fathers" has played much of a role in his life through adolescence.  Arkady does not really know either father. The adoptive father is a wanderer across Russia who returns home to Arkady's mother once in awhile; the biological father, a nobleman who has squandered his wealth, who like others of his class during the second half of the 19th century seem to flit back and forth between Russia and other European countries, while  arranging for someone to take care of Arkady as he is growing up. Alternatively, Dostoevsky's protagonist is referred to by some as Arkady Andreevich (patronymic name derived from his biological father) and Arkady Makarovich (patronymic name derived from his adoptive father). From which father does Arkady derive his personal identity?  "How can you not feel your father's blood in you?" Arkady is asked at one point, suggesting a blood or genetic basis for identity.  Personal identity, as another posting on this blog has observed, is a matter of autobiographical memory, and is not always a matter of genetic identity.  (See April 8, 2011 and December 2, 2011 posts). 

This is Russia, between the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855) who authorized landowners to free their serfs and Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918), the last of the Romanovs.  It is a period of great change in Russia, including the beginning of the industrial revolution and liberal reforms under Tsar Alexander II (1818-1881), including emancipation of the serfs.  The intellectual air in Russia at the time is full of "ideas," and Dostoevsky, I believe, more than any other Russian writer of his era, brings the exchange and conflict of ideas to dramatic life, not only in The Adolescent, but his more famous novels, Crime and Punishment, The Devils, and The Brothers Karamazov. 

As The Adolescent opens, Arkady, age 20, fresh from completing the equivalent of high school in Moscow, arrives in Petersburg with an "idea" in his mind.  He has developed the naive, if not "adolescent" idea that he can achieve a life of independence of mind and solitude, whereby he is liberated from a life that depends on others.  Moving into adulthood he has to be prepared to no longer be a dependent.  But solitude, he believes, requires"power."  And to achieve power, his idea is to become a "Rothschild."  He is therefore determined to work, earn and save, with "persistence and continuity" until he is financially independent and can control his own destiny. His family now resides in Petersburg, including his adoptive father, his biological father, his mother and sister, as well as coterie of friends of immediate family members.

Ideas have a way of not maturing to actualities, which certainly happens here. As the plot progresses our protagonist is unable to flee the mix of his adolescent friends, family and relatives, and friends of relatives.  Instead of a life of solitude, Arkady encounters an ocean of social interactions, social emotions and feelings (see November 21, 2012 post) and by the end of his narrative he admits that his "idea" is "no longer recognizable."  Instead of working to accumulate the wealth he believed he needed to pursue a solitary life, Arkady believes he must now work to support his mother and his sister.  Even "Rothschild's", as another posting in this blog describes, cannot live and succeed in solitude.  (See June 30, 2012 post).

Arkady's first discovery is that his biological father possesses a moral anchor.  Andrei Petrovich is embroiled in litigation over an inheritance.  After arriving in Petersburg, Arkady is presented with a document, which he is told contains information that is inconsistent with his biological father's claim to the inheritance.  Arkady is presented with his own moral crisis: should he deliver the document to his father? or should he deliver it to the other party to the litigation? or should he conceal it?  After all, there is a possibility that Andrei Petrovich's inheritance might trickle down to his mother and even Arkady.  Arkady is assured that the document has no decisive legal significance because his father would win his case even if the court knew of the contents of the document: the testamentary instrument (will) is clear; the document, on the other hand, contains only precatory language that expresses a hope or a wish and does not create an obligation or a command.  The document, then, presents "a matter of conscience."  Arkady agonizes over the correct course of action before finally deciding to place the document in his father's hands, who in turn, after the court has ruled in his favor, renounces his claim.  Arkady is a "dumbstruck, but delighted" about his father's noble choice.  Arkady repents his own "cynicism and indifference to virtue" in light of his father's example.  Comparing his father to the example of Joshua of Nazareth:  "this man was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found."

The Adolescent reaches a crescendo as Arkady (who is recalling and recording the events of his reunion with his fathers and others a year later) recalls a conservation with his biological father in which the latter imagines a life without God.  "A calm has come, and people are left alone, as they wished:  the great former idea [of god] has left them; the great source of strength that had nourished and warmed them all then is departing, like the majestic inviting sun in Claude Lorrain's painting, but it already seemed like the last day of mankind.  And the people suddenly realized that they remained quite alone, and at once felt a great orphancy.  My dear boy, I've never been able to imagine people ungrateful and grown stupid.  The orphaned people would at once begin pressing together more closely and lovingly; they would hold hands, understanding that they alone were now everything for each other.  The great idea of immortality would disappear and would have to be replaced; and all the great abundance of the former love for the one who was himself immortality, would be turned in all of them to nature, to the world, to people, to every blade of grass.  They would love the earth and life irrepressibly and in the measure to which they gradually became aware of their transient and finite state, and it would be with a special love now, not as formerly.  They would begin to observe and discover such phenomena and secrets in nature as they had never supposed before, because they would look at nature with new eyes, the  eyes with which a lover looks at his beloved. *** Every child would know and feel that each person on earth was like a father and mother to him."  If we stopped loving god, Andrei Petrovich suggests, we would naturally turn to loving each other and becoming more appreciative of nature  after experiencing only a brief period of orphancy.  Profound, but not implausible given what we know about the origins of morality and conscience.  (See November 21, 2012 post). But it may leave one to wonder:  who is the adolescent, the son or the father? And then Andrei Petrovich explains, "this is all a fantasy, even quite an incredible one; but I have imagined it only too often, because all my life I've been unable to live without it and not think of it.  I'm not talking about my faith:  I have no great faith, I'm a deist, a philosophical deist, like all the thousand of us."  Arkady realizes his father's love more mankind is genuine ("the falseness I had feared wasn't there") and he realizes that his father is extremely comfortable with himself --- happy.  "I wouldn't exchange my yearning [for brotherhood among mankind] for any other happiness," his father confesses.  "In this sense, I've always been happy, all my life.  And out of happiness I came to love your mama then for the first time in my life." 

There is more to this novel than what I have focused on, and what I have focused on prefigures themes that later appear in Dostoevsky's final novel, The Brother's Karamazov.  As a first-person narrative written as young Arkady's "notes" of events that occurred only several months earlier, the notes have the character of autobiographical memory that lies at the core of extended consciousness and the autobiographical self.  (See April 8, 2011 post). 

Jose Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda (1982)

While I was reading Jose Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' commentary published in The New York Times titled The Moral Animal caused me to reflect on what I was just reading and connect with some thoughts of writers whom I have read in the past, including Christopher Boehm's Moral Origins (see November 21, 2012 post). The question provoked by the juxtaposition of Rabbi Sacks' commentary and the 1982 novel by Nobelist Saramago, a humanist-atheist, is whether we are a less violent (implication: more altruistic) species now than we were just a few centuries ago. In a book that I have not yet read, The Better Angels of Our Nature,  Steven Pinker answers this question affirmatively. I have read that Pinker's conclusion is well documented, but day-to-day news stories can still make one skeptical about Pinker's conclusion. The numbers may be trending in the right direction, according to Pinker's data, but atrocities still remain.  Some of these atrocities are inspired by religious beliefs, as this year's shooting of a young woman, Malala Yousufzai, by Taliban in Pakistan demonstrates.  And while not likely inspired by religious beliefs, sexual predation on the young by Christian clergy reveals that religious leaders can be just as corrupt, oppressive, and immoral as anyone else.

Sacks' commentary:  "At first glance, religion is in decline. In Britain, the results of the 2011 national census have just been published. They show that a quarter of the population claims to have no religion, almost double the figure 10 years ago. And though the United States remains the most religious country in the West, 20 percent declare themselves without religious affiliation — double the number a generation ago.

 

"Looked at another way, though, the figures tell a different story. Since the 18th century, many Western intellectuals have predicted religion’s imminent demise. Yet after a series of withering attacks, most recently by the new atheists, including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, still in Britain three in four people, and in America four in five, declare allegiance to a religious faith. That, in an age of science, is what is truly surprising.

 

"The irony is that many of the new atheists are followers of Charles Darwin. We are what we are, they say, because it has allowed us to survive and pass on our genes to the next generation. Our biological and cultural makeup constitutes our “adaptive fitness.” Yet religion is the greatest survivor of them all. Superpowers tend to last a century; the great faiths last millenniums. The question is why.

 

"Darwin himself suggested what is almost certainly the correct answer. He was puzzled by a phenomenon that seemed to contradict his most basic thesis, that natural selection should favor the ruthless. Altruists, who risk their lives for others, should therefore usually die before passing on their genes to the next generation. Yet all societies value altruism, and something similar can be found among social animals, from chimpanzees to dolphins to leafcutter ants.

 

"Neuroscientists have shown how this works. We have mirror neurons that lead us to feel pain when we see others suffering. We are hard-wired for empathy. We are moral animals."

 

So far, Sacks has compiled a neat summary of views covered in previous posts in this blog.  (See September 12, 2012, September 17, 2012, November 21, 2012, December 5, 2012, November 9, 2010, October 13, 2010, June 17, 2010, May 12, 2010, November 4, 2009,  September 18, 2009 posts).  His commentary continues:

"The precise implications of Darwin’s answer are still being debated by his disciples — Harvard’s E. O. Wilson in one corner, Oxford’s Richard Dawkins in the other. To put it at its simplest, we hand on our genes as individuals but we survive as members of groups, and groups can exist only when individuals act not solely for their own advantage but for the sake of the group as a whole. Our unique advantage is that we form larger and more complex groups than any other life-form.

 

"A result is that we have two patterns of reaction in the brain, one focusing on potential danger to us as individuals, the other, located in the prefrontal cortex, taking a more considered view of the consequences of our actions for us and others. The first is immediate, instinctive and emotive. The second is reflective and rational. We are caught, in the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s phrase, between thinking fast and slow.

 

"The fast track helps us survive, but it can also lead us to acts that are impulsive and destructive. The slow track leads us to more considered behavior, but it is often overridden in the heat of the moment. We are sinners and saints, egotists and altruists, exactly as the prophets and philosophers have long maintained.

 

"If this is so, we are in a position to understand why religion helped us survive in the past — and why we will need it in the future. It strengthens and speeds up the slow track. It reconfigures our neural pathways, turning altruism into instinct, through the rituals we perform, the texts we read and the prayers we pray. It remains the most powerful community builder the world has known. Religion binds individuals into groups through habits of altruism, creating relationships of trust strong enough to defeat destructive emotions. Far from refuting religion, the Neo-Darwinists have helped us understand why it matters."

 

Up until this last quoted paragraph, Sacks appears to have got it right.  Then he stumbles.  According to Sacks, "[Religion] reconfigures our neural pathways, turning altruism into instinct . . ."  I will concur with Rabbi Sacks that religion is a "powerful community builder" (see May 12, 2010 post)," but as the post discussing Christopher Boehm's Moral Origins documents (see November 21, 2012 post), the evolutionary and cultural pressures that favored altruism and community building among humans preceded religion by tens of thousands and perhaps a hundred thousand years.  Religion, by the time it became a human cultural institution, merely co-opted this pre-existing "instinct."  Sacks claims too much for religion: religion has not configured our neural pathways; the need to survive as a member of a cooperative group favored the development of the social instincts long before religion evolved.  Nor can religion claim that religion necessarily binds individuals into groups through habits of altruism.  Religion binds individuals together in other ways have nothing to do with altruism.  His commentary received a fair amount of constructive criticism, much of which is sincere in my view, as well as praise.  Religion has succeeded because cultural institutions promoting religion, religious institutions, religious rituals, and religious stories are generally successful at capturing the curious imagination of the child before the child has had an opportunity to think critically for itself.  Studies of early-childhood establish that humans seek explanations about the world around them from the very beginning, and religiously "locked-in" parents are significant influencers in guiding their children to the same religious institutions and their stories and values.

So what does any of this have to do with  Baltasar and Blimunda?  Sacks' commentary does not address human violence and does not assign a role to religion in reducing human violence, and my opening paragraph suggests that maybe it did.  But paeans to the virtues of religion and religious institutions and religious leaders in human life, such as Sacks' commentary, often overlook the dark side of religion, of which I cited only two examples above.  And while the early history of the Catholic Church was absorbed in a curious debate about whether a man could be both corporeal and incorporeal,  once the Church was joined at the hip with the State in Rome, religion became a partner in state-sponsored terrorism. It is difficult to describe the history of Judaism (just read the portions of the Bible following the Torah) and Islam much differently. 

In Baltasar and Blimunda, Saramago introduces the reader to the auto da fe  (in Portuguese, "act of faith").  This was the Inquisition's punishment of heretics and non-believers of the Catholic faith.  The most severe form of punishment was execution, including a public burning, some form of torture, or a banishment to an area outside the community after a public shaming.  If the recent story of young Malala Yousufzai's punishment at the hands of Taliban is not enough to convince us that religion is capable of motivating non-altruistic behavior, Saramago's detailing of an auto da fe reminds us, "Oh yes, we used to burn people to death because their religious beliefs differed from ours."  (Today, some merely stone people to death, a practice part of a long religious tradition).  But wait, you may say, did not Christopher Boehm suggests that the development of the Golden Rule and egalitarian sharing in hunter-gatherer societies during the Late Pleistocene, evolve because of just those same kinds of punishment (capital or otherwise) involving shaming?  True, but forcing religious beliefs on others is not (and cannot logically be) contemplated by the Golden Rule.  Correlatively, shaming other humans because they don't agree with your religious beliefs is just as divisive, capable of promoting violence and instability, as it is promoting social cohesion.  Here is Saramago's description of an auto da fe, including sarcastic observations of the rituals, both individual and public:

"Today, however, there is an air of general rejoicing, although that might not be the right expression, because the happiness stems from a much deeper source, perhaps from the soul itself, as the inhabitants of Lisbon emerge from their homes and pour into the city's streets and squares, crowds descend from the upper quarters of the city and gather in the Rossio to watch Jews and lapsed converts, heretics, and sorcerers being tortured, along with criminals who are less easily classified, such as those found guilty of sodomy, blasphemy, rape and prostitution, and various other misdeeds that warrant exile or the stake.  One hundred and four condemned men and women are to be put to death today, most of them from Brazil, a land rich in diamonds and vices, fifty-one men and fifty-three women in all.  Two of the women will be handed over naked to the civil authorities by the Inquisition after being found guilty of obdurate heresy, of having steadfastly refused to comply with the law, and of persistently upholding errors they accept as truths, although denounced in this time and place.  And since almost two years have passed since anyone was burned at the stake in Lisbon, the Rossio is crowded with spectators, a double celebration, for today is Sunday and there is to be an auto da fe, and we shall never know what the inhabitants of Lisbon enjoyed more, autos-da-fe or bullfighting, even though only bullfights have survived [in the 20th century].  Women cram the windows looking on the square, dressed in their Sunday best, their hair groomed int he German fashion as a compliment to the Queen, their faces and neck are rouged, and they pout their lips to make their mouths look dainty, so many different faces and expressions trained on the square below as each lady wonders if her make-up is all right, that beauty spot at the corner of her mouth, the powder concealing that pimple, while her eye observes the infatuated admirer below, while her confirmed or aspiring suitor paces up and down clutching a handkerchief and swirling his cape.  The heat is unbearable and the spectators refresh themselves with the customary glass of lemonade, cup of water, or slice of water-melon, for there is no reason why they should suffer from exhaustion just because the condemned are about to die.  And should they feel in need of something more substantial, there is a wide choice of nuts and seeds, cheeses and dates.  The King, with his inseparable Infantes and Infantas, will dine at the Inquisitor's Palace as soon as the auto da fe has ended, and once free of the wretched business, he will join the Chief Inquisitor for a sumptuous feast at tables laden with bowls of chicken broth, partridges, breasts of veal, pates and meat savouries flavoured with cinnamon and sugar, a stew in the Castilian manner, with all appropriate ingredients and saffron rice.  But the King is so abstinent that he refuses to drink any wine, and since the best lesson of all is a good example, everyone accepts it, the example that is, not the abstinence.

"Another example, which no doubt will be of greater profit to the soul since the body is so grossly over-fed, is to be given here today.  The procession has commenced, the Dominicans in the vanguard carrying the banner of St. Dominic, followed by the Inquisitors walking in a long file until the condemned appear, one hundred and four of them, as we have already stated, all carrying candles and with attendants at their sides, their prayers and mutterings rending the air, by the different hoods and sanbenitos you can tell who is to die and who will be sent into exile, although there is another sign, which never lies, namely that crucifix held on high with its back turned on the women who are to be burned at the stake and the gentle, suffering face of Christ turned toward those who will be spared, symbolic means of revealing to the condemned the fate that awaits them, should they have failed to understand the significance of the robes they are wearing, for these, too, are an unmistakable sign, the yellow sanbenito with the red cross of St. Andrew is worn by those whose crimes do not warrant death, the one with the flames pointing downward, known as the upturned fire, is worn by those who have confessed their sins and may therefore be spared, while the dismal grey cassock bearing the image of a sinner encircled by demons and flames has become synonymous with damnation, and is worn by the two women who are to be burned at the stake."

There is much more to Saramago's description of this public spectacle in paragraphs that follow.  Among the condemned is Sebastiana Maria de Jesus, "one quarter Jewess," a converso who has "visions and revelations that the Tribunal has dismissed as fraudulent."  She "hears heavenly voices, but the judges insist that they are the devil's work."  She has been accused of "intolerable presumption, of monstrous pride, and of offending God," and she has been found guilty of blasphemy, heresy, and evil pride.  She is to be punished by a public flogging and exiled to Angola for eight years. As she is paraded through the streets of Lisbon, she wonders, "Where is my daughter Blimunda?"  Then she briefly catches sight of Blimunda, and at her side is Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco.  Standing behind Blimunda is a stranger she does not know, a man with a missing left hand lost in a recent war that was replaced with a hook, who later introduces himself as Baltasar Mateus.  The sentences and punishments are announced.  "Sebastiana Maria de Jesus had already passed, along with all the others who were sentenced and the procession came full circle, they whipped those who had been sentenced to a public flogging, and burn the two women, one having been garroted first, after she declared that she wanted to die in the Catholic faith, while the other was roasted alive for refusing to recant even at the hour of death, in front of the bonfires men and women began to dance, the King withdrew, he saw, ate, and left, accompanied by the Infantes, and returned to the Palace in his coach drawn by six horses and escorted by the royal guard . . ."  On seeing her mother disappear, Blimunda cries, "Where are we, Who are we, and Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco replies, We are as nothing when compared with the designs of the Lord, if He knows who we are, then resign yourself, Blimunda, let us leave the terrain of God to God, let us not trespass his frontiers, and let us adore Him from this side of eternity, and let us make our terrain, the terrain of men, for once it has been made, God will surely want to visit us, and only then will be world be created."

The fictional story that emerges from this religious atrocity is the meeting of Baltasar and Blimunda and Lourenco:  for Baltasar and Blimunda, a story of love and devotion that is filled with humanity but virtually devoid of religious piety; for Lourenco, a story of scientific exploration that challenges religious belief and superstition.  It is the second decade of the 18th century.  Spinoza has been in the grave for nearly forty years, and Galileo has been dead for almost 80 years. (See December 17, 2012 post).  Bernard Mandeville is writing The Fable of the Bees (see January 30, 2010 post), and stock trading is emerging as a financial force for commerce (see November 16, 2011 post).  As he did in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reiss (see June 28, 2011 post), Saramago weaves his imaginary characters Baltasar and Blimunda against the background of history and historical lives.  Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco is a historical person, and so is the King, Joao V of Portugal, and so is the construction of the Convent at Mafra, which consumes much of Saramago's tale.  The combined power of the clergy and the State committing substantial national economic resources for their own purposes is the background for this love story.  Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco also has his moment of doubt, as he cannot bring himself to substantiate the trinity and he is haunted by the auto da fe.  Lourenco's grand pursuit is the creation of a flying machine.  Toward the end of his life, he is pursued by the Inquisition.  And years later at the end of his life, Baltasar disappears and the book closes with Blimunda, back in Lisbon during an auto da fe, searching for Baltasar when she sees the body of a man burned at the stake whose left hand is missing.

Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell (2011)

In 1632, Galileo Galilei published a book entitled Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.  The book compared the Copernican System, in which the earth is described as orbiting the sun, with the Ptolemaic System, in which everything in the universe circles the earth.  A year later, based on the views expressed in the Dialogue. Galileo was convicted of heresy and the book was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, a list of publications prohibited by the Catholic Church because they were considered immoral due to theological errors.   Galileo knew the Church might be provoked by the book, because it defended the Copernican System.  Despite the fact that three paragraphs in the Bible stated that the earth did not move and the sun circled around the earth, Galileo had hopes he could persuade friends in the Church that the Copernican System was not a theological error.  St. Augustine, after all, took the view that not every word in the Bible was to be taken literally, and this should be the case with respect to the biblical assertions that the earth did not move. Galileo did not prevail with the Church in his defense of the Copernican System.  His book was banned, and he lived another nine years, the remainder of his life, under house arrest.   Of course, we now know that Galileo and Copernicus were right, the Church was wrong and it took the Church a couple of centuries to admit it was wrong.

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, the same year that the Dialogue was published:  a coincidence tinged with irony given the course Spinoza's life would take over the next 45 years.  A Book Forged in Hell, Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age is Spinoza biographer, Steven Nadler's third book about Spinoza's life, but in this book the subject is narrowed to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico Politicus and what prompted Spinoza to not only write the book but also publish it during his lifetime (albeit anonymously, deceptively listing the location and name of the publisher).  Spinoza had written a number of unpublished works, several of which were never completed, and some of which were manuscripts circulated among a small group of intellectual sympathizers who questioned the divinity of Jesus, the nature of God, and organized religion and its relationship to the State.  In 17th century conservative, Calvinist Netherlands, these views were heresy. Fortunately for Spinoza, control of the Dutch Government was in the hands of Johan DeWitt and his States faction who favored religious toleration and opposed government oversight and censorship of religion. Spinoza did not rush to publish, because he knew he faced a Galilean type threat as well.  As Nadler describes it, Spinoza hoped to undercut ecclesiastic influence in politics and other domains and weaken the sectarian dangers facing liberal Netherlands.  Notwithstanding a formal policy of freedom of religion, Spinoza was taking on powerful clerical voices who sought to influence public policy.

In the March 12, 2012 post discussing Spinoza's Emendation of the Intellect (1660), his first unpublished, unfinished manuscript, the origin of Spinoza's post-excommunication intellectual journey is revealed.  "After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life," he wrote, "and I realized that all the things which were the source and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofar as the mind was influenced by them, I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good, one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone affect the mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, in fact, there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity."  He seeks to know "true good" by understanding "the circumstances with which the fictitious, the false, and the doubtful perception are concerned, and how we may be delivered from each of them."  The "true good" can be discovered by being delivered from superstition.  The pursuit of being delivered from superstition remained with Spinoza in writing the Tractatus, and through the end of his life.

By the time Spinoza published the Tractatus Theologico Politicus (Theological Political Treatise) in 1670, he had more or less completed his Ethics, which remained unpublished until after his death in 1677.  The Ethics was Spinoza's systematic view of nature, which he labeled 'god,' expressed in a Cartesian manner of postulates and proofs.  (See March 6, 2012 post).  A few friends had seen manuscripts of The Ethics, but for most reading the Tractatus, they would not have appreciated Spinoza's systematic view of nature, god and religion.  He had a reputation across Europe for being an atheist, although there was nothing in print by his hand that confirmed that reputation.  According to Steven Nadler, correcting that reputation was one of Spinoza's motivations for publishing the Tractatus.  The Tractatus failed to change his reputation, but ironically if we are looking for one book --- more than any other --- to discover the roots (although perhaps not the blueprint) of the American Constitution --- democratic, representative government that protected the individual's freedom to philosophize or practice religion and express himself without public sanction, it would be the reputed atheist's Tractatus.  Modern American religious fundamentalists would shiver and bristle at that notion, but it is undeniable.  Why would they shiver and bristle?  Here is how Nadler's fine biography about a book summarizes Spinoza's views in the Tractatus:

A central tenet of Spinoza's system, as explained in The Ethics, is the unity of nature:  everything in nature consists of substance (what I would label material); nature operates by discoverable laws.  Spinoza does not elaborate on this in the Tractatus, and hence the reader of the Tractatus in Spinoza's lifetime does not fully appreciate the worldview that Spinoza brings to the Tractatus.  The unity of nature has consequences for the proper way to look at religion: mind and body are both part of the single substance; there is nothing in the nature of the infinite universe that is immaterial, there are no forms that exist separate from reality, there are no spirits, no ghosts (holy or otherwise), and there is nothing transcendent.  This leaves little room for the way the human mind typically conceives the attributes of god and the human "soul."  Human mental life is made up of various passions and actions, which are determined just like everything else in nature. We know this now, nearly four and one-half centuries later, and Spinoza was not the first to advance the materiality of everything in the universe.    And even if the reader of the Tractatus in Spinoza's lifetime had read The Ethics and appreciated Spinoza's systematic worldview of the universe, humanity, and mental life, it is doubtful Spinoza would have been able to save his reputation.  While it is true, as I say, that we know now that thought and action are both material, it is also true that we still don't know it now.

Humans are natural born dualists, says Michael Gazzaniga.  (See September 27, 2009 post).  Paul Bloom has documented that dualism emerges early in the child's mind; children naturally see the world as two distinct domains: physical objects and real events, and mental states and entities.  While children show they know they have a brain and they use it for thinking, they do not understand that the brain is needed for physical action and consequently thinking and action are assigned to different parts of reality.  As Pascal Boyer writes in Religion Explained, "A human mind is not condemned to consider and represent only what is currently going on in its immediate environment.  Indeed, human minds are remarkable in the amount of time they spend thinking about what is not here and now.  Fiction is the most salient illustration. . . One of the easiest things for human minds to do is to produce inferences on the basis of false premises,such as, 'If I had had lunch I would not be hungry now.'  This can focus on future possibilities too.  Worries about what would happen if the roof caved in and came crashing down on your head do not require the usual input (e.g., seeing the roof coming down) and do not produce the normal output (an attempt to dash off as fast as possible).  This is why psychologists say that these thoughts are decoupled from their standard inputs and outputs. *** Decoupled cognition is crucial to human cognition because we depend so much on information communicated by others.  To evaluate information provided by others, you must build some mental simulation of what they describe."  Previous posts have elaborated on this decoupling mechanism within the human brain.  (See June 12, 2011 post, June 28, 2011 post, and February 15, 2012 post).  This "decoupling of thoughts from their standard inputs and outputs" is part and parcel of what enables humans to engage in self-deception and deception, the subject of Robert Trivers' The Folly of Fools. (See February 4, 2012 post).  Religion has its foundation in this decoupling.  (December 5, 2012 post, February 4, 2012 post, June 12, 2011 post, May 22, 2011 post and September 9, 2010 post). And as I have said in previous posts, so does science.  (See July 30, 2011 post).  The difference is that science is subject to test and verification. Religion is not and resides entirely in the imagination.  Spinoza's materialism or monism is at the core of his differences with the ecclesiasticals of his time, and it would be at the core of any differences with religious fundamentalists today.

Gods and Prophets.  Nadler describes Spinoza's account of God as follows.  "[B]ehind the major organized religions lies a a certain convenient but ultimately irreverent and harmful conception of God.  The superstitious rites and ceremonies of Judaism and Christianity, calculated to win God's favor and avoid his wrath, rest on the false assumption that God is very much a rational agent, endowed as we are with a psychological life and moral character.  God is, in other words, supposed to be a kind of person, possessed of intelligence, will, desire, and even emotion.  The Judaeo-Christian deity is a wise and just God, a transcendent providential being who has purposes and expectations, makes commands and judgments, and is capable of great acts of mercy and vengeance.***It is precisely this traditional religious picture of God that Spinoza rejects [in The Ethics] as foolish anthropomorphism.*** God is not some goal-oriented planner who then judges things by how well they conform to his purposes.  Things happen only because of Nature and its laws. *** To believe otherwise is precisely what leads to those superstitions that are so easily manipulated by preachers and rabbis."

Spinoza rejects revealed religion.  "Central to all faiths in the Abrahamic tradition is prophecy," Nadler says, "or the idea that certain people are endowed with the special gift to receive and pass on the word of God.  Like the power of diviners and seers of pagan antiquity, this endowment is usually construed as the ability to access information not available to others or by ordinary means.  The prophet may be someone who is the direct recipient of divine revelation, a beneficiary of angelic mediation, or simply an inspired interpreter of signs that God has placed before humankind.  He may have a real foreknowledge of the future, or a less infallible but still reliable ability to predict what the outcome of events will be, based perhaps on special interpretive powers to read the significance of past and present states of affairs.  Prophetic power may, on some accounts, be a supernatural gift or it may be grounded in natural faculties.  The information can come to the prophet by way of visions, or dreams, or (in the rarest instance) it might result from an unmediated encounter with God himself."  The evolution of this profession within human social structures was the subject of the previous post. "In Spinoza's system," says Nadler, "there is no transcendent God exercising supernatural, ad hoc communications.  There is room for divine revelation, but only in a very particular sense.  Because for Spinoza God is identical with Nature, and all human knowledge is natural, it follows that all human knowledge is divine.  If God is Nature understood as active, substantial cause of all things, then whatever is brought about by Nature and its laws is, by definition, brought about by God.  The human mind being as much a part of Nature as anything else is, its cognitive states all follow ultimately from 'God or Nature.'***When 'prophecy' or 'divine revelation' is correctly understood in this broad sense, as whatever knowledge casually and cognitively depends on God, then it includes natural knowledge.  More specifically, it includes philosophy and science, as well as other products of the intellect, and is therefore 'common to us all men."  And here is the crux of what bothers Spinoza about prophecy: prophecy is no more or less divine than any other kind of knowledge including science and philosophy, and prophets, ecclesiasticals, rabbis and preachers have no special claim to the truth and there is no reason why their authority should be superior to any other authority.  We see here, Spinoza continuing the theme that he began with in the Emendation of the Intellect (see March 12, 2012 post):  "I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good, one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone affect the mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, in fact, there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity."  Although Spinoza does not exactly say it this way, Spinoza is telling us exactly what I said two paragraphs ago in the penultimate sentence:  "science is subject to test and verification. Religion is not and resides entirely in the imagination."  For Spinoza, Nadler says, "prophecy is a highly subjective affair.  It is an individualistic product shaped by both nature and nurture.*** Since Joshua was no astronomer, he believed that the earth does not move and that the sun goes around the earth."

Miracles.  Spinoza's treatment of miracles rests on the same foundational view of Nature.  "Nothing happens in Nature that does not follow from her laws . . .her laws cover everything that is conceived even by the divine intellect, and . . . Nature observes a fixed and immutable order."  Belief in miracles, according to Spinoza, is not an expression of divine insight, but of ignorance.  "Miracles and ignorance are the same," wrote Spinoza.  "The word miracle can be understood only with respect to men's beliefs, and means simply an event whose natural cause we --- or at any rate the writer or narrator of the miracle---cannot explain by comparison with any other normal event."  Spinoza does not merely anticipate David Hume nearly a century later, (see February 27, 2011 post) who believed that miracles were not believable because a person does or does not have good reason to believe something, but Spinoza says that miracles are impossible.  This is the Spinoza of the Emendation of the Intellect written ten years earlier in pursuit of a true good that was capable of communicating itself, free of superstition.

Scripture.  If there was one subject in the Tractatus that was likely to confirm in the minds of god-believing persons that Spinoza was an atheist, it was Spinoza's view of scripture.  He was very knowledgeable about the contents of the The Bible.  He studied The Bible closely, and he had studied the views of others who commented on it.  Spinoza was not the first to adopt the view that scripture was a human document --- like a novel or a work of history --- and was not supernaturally delivered.  "It is not a message for mankind sent down by God from heaven."  Spinoza's view of the historical compilation and editing of The Bible is now widely accepted.  The ultimate teaching of scripture, says Spinoza, whether it is the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Gospels, is found in the various expressions of a single, universal mantra:  the Golden Rule (reciprocal altruism).  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  And as the previous series of posts have demonstrated, this universal expression across all cultures has natural, not divine supernatural origins.  (See September 12, 2012 post, September 17, 2012 post, and November 21, 2012 post). 

Judaism and Christianity.  In his discussion of organized religion, Spinoza says that what really defines them is their ceremonial rituals.  These rituals contribute nothing to blessedness.  They contribute only to group identity.  Rituals are not divine or supernatural in their origin.  Organized religions are a source of divisiveness in society.  (See for example December 2, 2011 post and April 1, 2012 post). Nadler points out that Spinoza's critique of organized religion focuses heavily on Judaism, and less so on Christianity.  This led some to believe that he had a favorable view of Yeshua and that he had accepted Christianity.  Nadler dismisses this for the simple reason that Spinoza's systematic worldview of nature, his view of miracles, prophets and God, would not tolerate that conclusion.

Religion and the State.  If Spinoza's views on scripture, organized religion, miracles and prophecy were not enough to alarm the ecclesiasticals, his views on the proper form of government would have alarmed the political leadership across Europe, many of who claimed their political legitimacy by the Divine Right of Kings.  Religion and political power, though separate, were mutually accommodating because they needed each other.  (See previous post).  Religious leadership curried favor with national crowns and was highly influential; political leadership reciprocated to legitimize the purported divine derivation of its authority.  It should not be surprising that ecclesiasticals and monarchs would share a common view of Spinoza.

Spinoza was a social contractarian.  As Nadler writes about Spinoza's views, "Political obligation is, at least in principle if not in historical fact, the result of a rational, voluntary agreement among individuals to hand over their right and power to pursue their own advantage to a common authority and to be governed by the will of all insofar as this will is guided by reason.  What they receive in turn is peace, a more secure life, and the stable enjoyment of the goods they value."  For this reason, individuals submit to an all-powerful state.  But for Spinoza, unlike his contemporary Thomas Hobbes, who shared Spinoza's views on religion, the all-powerful state does not have to invest sovereignty in a single individual or monarchy.  For Spinoza, it can be given to the people at-large.  A democratic polity is more stable from Spinoza's point of view:  when a sovereign becomes tyrannical and self-serving, citizens will resist authority and take back the power they originally gave to the sovereign.  "Democracy is the most natural form of state; approaching most closely to that freedom which nature grants to every man.  For in a democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he is not to be consulted; he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is a a part." 

Notwithstanding his views on democracy, Spinoza was skeptical about the wisdom of the masses.  As Spinoza states in The Ethics, "It rarely happens that men live according to the guidance of reason.  Instead, their lives are so constituted that they are usually envious and burdensome to one another." Nadler is not the first to observe that Spinoza did not hold common humans in high esteem.  This is not to say that he was contemptuous of the masses.  But he did believe that there were certain people who, like Plato's "philosopher king," were "philosophically gifted," and enjoyed a capacity to understand Nature in a way that most people did not.  Those who were philosophically gifted were not enslaved to passions, gullible to superstition, or stuck in ritual.  Obviously, Spinoza would have treated himself as philosophically gifted.  But Spinoza believed firmly that a democratic sovereign would properly reflect the public will and determine the public good.

The democratic state, in Spinoza's view, could not tolerate the intermeddling of the ecclesiasticals, who "represent a threat not only to progress in philosophy and science, but to the well-being of the state as well," says Nadler.  "In fact, the ability of clergy to exercise censorship over philosophical inquiry is directly proportional to the influence in domestic politics.  Spinoza's argument in the Treatise for the freedom of philosophizing in the state is thus, at the same time, an argument for a state in which sectarian religious authorities have no influence over public affairs, including intellectual and cultural matters.  In the end, Spinoza goes even further and argues that religion, to the extent it is a matter of practice and public activity, is to be controlled by the secular leaders of society."  This latter view does not sound entirely in sync with the First Amendment of the American Constitution and it is not.  According to Nadler, Spinoza did believe that when it comes to religious belief, people should be left alone to believe (or not believe) whatever they want.  Furthermore, Spinoza believed that the free expression of one's religious beliefs should be tolerated by the state and the state should not prosecute anyone for heresy or atheism.  But for Spinoza, the expression of religion was not entirely free from political regulation.  That is true for the First Amendment of the American Constitution to a very limited extent, where the Government can show a compelling state interest.  But the First Amendment's separation of church and state has been interpreted by the US Supreme Court to prohibit the State from endorsing a particular set of religious practices or forms of worship.  For Spinoza, the sovereign was responsible for the "interpretation of religion."  The governing body in a democracy has authority to decide how religion is to be translated into practice, since it has the authority to decide what conduct is consistent with the public good. It was Spinoza's view, according to Nadler, that the "greatest threat to civil peace --- both in theory and as ancient (biblical) and contemporary (Dutch) events have shown --- is the divisions introduced into society by sectarian religion.  The multiplication of large, unregulated religious bodies, even the existence of one sizable congregation independent of the official public one, poses a danger to even a powerful and prosperous society.  Organized religions set citizens against each other --- Christians against Jews, Protestants against Catholics, Protestants against other Protestants --- and more important, against the state itself.  As soon as there are alternative sources of authority besides the sovereign, the citizens are divided."   Recall that in Spinoza's view, God is not a ruler, lawgiver.  The sovereign people are lawgivers.  "When priests and preachers acquire the authority to issue decrees and to transact government business, their individual ambitions will know no bounds, and the will each seek self-glorification both in religious and secular matters.  They will fall out among themselves, increasing sectarian divisions in society.  Corruption will necessarily follow, as the affairs of state will be run according to the self-interest of whichever sect happens to gain the reins of power."

But we find in Spinoza's Tractatus the combination of democratic republican government, the free expression of religion and the right of even heretics to be free from government persecution.  What Spinoza is more broadly interested in is the freedom to philosophize, free from not only government persecution but also from religious persecution.  This also reflects the freedom of speech component of the First Amendment as well.  It is this combination of democracy and tolerance that finds its way into the American Constitution and puts Spinoza as the seminal advocate for the political religious foundations that became enshrined in the American Constitution.

As with Galileo's book, the ecclesiastical authorities marshaled support from the political authorities to ban the Tractatus, even in the tolerant Netherlands.   Spinoza was never able to to persuade the Christian community, as he hoped.  It is difficult to categorize Spinoza, including claiming he was an atheist, and this is true for the ecclesiasticals of his time as well the 20th century Nazis who could not figure out why German intellectuals held him in high regard.  (See April 1, 2012 post).  But Nadler correctly concludes, "Without a doubt, the Theological Political Treatise is one of the most important books in the history of philosophy, in religious and political thought, and even in Bible studies.  More than any other work, it laid the foundation for modern critical and historical approaches to the Bible.  And while often overlooked in books on the history of political thought the Treatise also has a proud and well-deserved place in the rise of democratic theory, civil liberties, and political liberalism.  The ideas of the Treatise inspired republican revolutionaries in England, America and France, and it encourage early modern anticlerical and antisectarian movements."

Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil (2004)

Christopher Boehm's thesis (see November 21, 2012 post) is that members of egalitarian late-Pleistocene human hunter-gatherer groups suppressed their egoistic self-interest that had long been a part of their genetic fabric dating back millions of years to their chimpanzee roots and adopted altruistic, cooperative sharing practices in order to avoid ostracism, deprivation and perhaps more severe forms of punishment directed at those group members who cheated on the egalitarian expectations of others in their group.  Survival or "fitness" for continued survival within the group favored those who were able to exercise greater self-control over their egoistic impulses and cohere with the group.  Sharing of meat within a group on roughly equal shares became a key behavioral norm sustaining individual and group success/survival/fitness. 

Michael Shermer would agree with Boehm's thesis, and he even cites Boehm's earlier works on this subject.  Yet while there is some "science" covered in Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil --- including many of the facts and ideas mentioned in the three previous posts --- the book seems largely devoted to defending Shermer's self-described status as a "skeptic" and the view likewise found in Boehm's Moral Origins (see November 21, 2012 post) that the evolution of human morality preceded the development of religion and religious institutions.  Shermer wastes no time asserting that religion co-opted the moral sentiments and behaviors that hominid evolution already established among humans over hundreds of thousand of years resulting in the development of morality and ethics within paleolithic humans.  The significance of Shermer's claim is his conclusion that morality does not need religion or god.  "While individual religious believers may be exceptionally moral and tolerant people, and while religion may inspire some individuals' extraordinary morality and tolerance, religion does not necessarily foster these desirable traits."  The history of religion is littered with intolerance and even hatred of others, particularly those outside of a group, and that is even true today.  Here is what Shermer says:

"At the foundation of the Bio-Cultural Evolutionary model is an evolving moral sense.  By moral sense, I mean a moral feeling or emotion generated by actions.  For example, positive emotions such as righteousness and pride are experienced as the psychological feeling of doing "good."  These moral emotions likely evolved out of behaviors that were reinforced as being good either for the individual or the group.  Negative emotions such as guilt and shame are experienced as the psychological feeling of doing "bad."  These moral emotions probably evolved out of behaviors that were reinforced as being bad for the individual or for the group.  This is the psychology of morality --- the feeling of being moral or immoral.  These moral emotions represent something deeper than specific feelings about specific behaviors.  While cultures may differ on what behaviors are defined as good or bad, the general moral emotion of feeling good or feeling bad about behavior X (whatever X may be) is an evolved emotion that is universal to all emotions."  Later Shermer adds, "[S]pecific behaviors in a culture may be considered right or wrong and these may vary over cultures and history . . .[b]ut the sense of being right or wrong in the emotions of righteousness and pride, guilt and shame, is a human universal that had an evolutionary origin. **** The codification of moral principles out of the psychology of moral traits evolved as a form of social control to ensure the survival of individual within groups and the survival of human groups themselves.  Religion was the first social institution to canonize moral principles, but morality need not be the exclusive domain of religion.  Religions succeeded in identifying the human universal moral and immoral thoughts and behaviors most appropriate for accentuating amity and attenuating enmity.  But we can improve on the ethical systems developed thousand of years ago by people of agricultural societies whose moral codes are surely open to change.***[R]eligion codified these moral principles for sound reasons having nothing to do with divine inspiration.  The moral sentiments and principles came first, evolving over the course of a hundred thousand years of humans living in a Paleolithic environment.  Religion came second, co-opting morality and codifying it to its own end, all of which happened in just the past couple of thousand years.  What would happen if we jettisoned religion altogether?  Would society collapse into immoral chaos?" Shermer asks.  "No, it would not," he responds.  Our moral sense is older than religion and would continue to survive even if a titanic cultural change occurred with the disappearance of religion." 

Both Boehm and Shermer put the origins of moral sentiments in humans --- the equivalent of the Golden Rule --- at about 35,000 years ago.  Religion, a cultural phenomenon emerged later, "as bands and tribes gave way to chiefdoms and states.  Religion encouraged altruism and selflessness, discouraging excessive greed and selfishness, promoting cooperation over competition, and revealing the level of commitment to the group through social events and religious rituals."

The emergence of religion was not a sudden phenomenon, and religion probably did not emerge  to encourage altruism and selflessness. Anthropologists and archaeologists have documented that human social structure likely evolved from egalitarian bands and tribes to chiefdoms to states and nations.  If we accept Boehm's characterization that the hunter-gatherers lived in small, but relatively mobile egalitarian groups (30-100 persons).  There is evidence that the origins of religion are  found here and its origins probably had nothing to do with origins of altruism and morality.  Anthropological studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers reveal a variety of perceptions of supernatural beings, typically animate, but sometimes inanimate aspects of nature that are perceived to be "alive." But as Robert Wright reports in The Evolution of God, if you ask hunter-gatherers what their religion is, they would not know what you are asking about. Religion as we know it does not exist for the hunter-gatherer.  They do believe that a spirit exists that moves animate life, and what the hunter-gatherer is interested in from their spirits is an explanation of why bad things happen and how can things be made better.  Hunter-gatherers do not worship gods; they treat their spirits or gods like other humans. Available evidence indicates that the origins of religious experience lie in shamanism, a spiritual phenomenon  linked to magical practices designed to encourage a successful hunt and healing. Anthropological evidence of shamanism is found as early as the upper paleolithic (10-30,000 years ago). That would place the development of shamanism several thousand years after the origins of morals in humans.

In The Evolution of God (see May 12, 2010 post), Robert Wright suggests how shamans might emerge in an egalitarian environment, citing an example from research on the Crow tribe of the North American Plains:  "any tribesman might become a shaman after going on vision quest and having an apparition signifying his adoption by a particular spirit." He cites the !Kung San where, during an all night curing dance, "any man or woman was eligible to enter a trancelike state and thus summon num, a spiritual healing energy." Shamans often rely on dreams or visions or an altered state of consciousness to bring them special "knowledge," which they believe is possessed uniquely by them and which they translate to prophecy.  But in the end, to maintain one's status as a shaman depended upon their efficacy in curing, causing rain to fall, or ensuring a successful hunt.  If the shaman was not effective, he or she was replaceable.  Wright suggests that shamans may have practiced deception in order to sustain their status.  Successful shamans possess a certain power within their group, but this power may or may not have been necessarily political like the power of a local governor or mayor, says Wright.  Political leadership within a group may have emerged from the leadership of the shaman where the shaman emerged to become a mediators of within group conflict and conflict between groups.

According to Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, archaeological evidence indicates that hunter-gatherer societies evolved to chiefdoms about 5500 B.C., perhaps earlier.  The emergence of chiefdoms however follows by about 4500 years the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, the beginning of the Neolithic Period, when the cultivation of food (as opposed to merely harvesting wild food) would have encouraged settlement rather than nomadic mobility.  As the homo sapien population grew around these settlements, small groups or bands started aligning into communities, perhaps consisting of a thousand or thousands of people.  Characterized by several settled communities controlled by a single leader, equality is no longer a characteristic of the group and heredity is a source of status within the chiefdom.  Hierarchical forms of leadership emerged within chiefdoms.  The chief probably became involved in directing the distribution of food within his communities. 

In describing religion in the age of chiefdoms, Robert Wright writes in The Evolution of God:

"Shamanism, then, turns out to have been the start of something big. This early form of religious expertise, found in hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies, was at most an amorphous leadership. Though the shaman’s claims to supernatural skill earned him or her social status and a kind of power over people’s lives, shamanic influence rarely translated into clear-cut political clout. But as agriculture emerged and chiefdoms crystallized, political and religious leadership matured and fused, and the fusion held these newly complex societies together."

While noting considerable diversity among chiefdoms, Wright describes the Polynesian chiefs studied by anthropologists as possessing a "divine authority," even emanating from the divine and perhaps returning to the divine after death, possessing a divine or supernatural power referred to as mana.  According to Wright, this represented a natural extension of shamanism: "elevate your importance by claiming special access to the supernatural." In chiefdoms, we see the merging of supernatural religion and political leadership.  Wright continues:

"In this phase of cultural evolution ---- with personal policing having lost its charm but with government not yet taking up the slack --- a supplementary force of social control was called for.  Religion seems to have responded to the call.  Whereas religion in hunter-gatherer societies didn't have much of a moral dimension, religion in the Polynesian chiefdoms did:  it systematically discouraged antisocial behavior."

This is the point in time that Shermer is referring to when religion embraced and co-opted morals.  Now human social sanctions were supplemented by threats of supernatural sanctions.  It took religion between 25,000 and 30,000 years of human history, one thousand generations, to embrace the Golden Rule and encourage self-restraint.  Wright concludes, "When you add up all the little ways Polynesian religion encouraged self-restraint ---- enough perhaps to compensate for the absence of a centralized legal system.  And religion in chiefdoms was doing more than fill in for not-yet-invented secular laws; it was paving the way for secular laws."

According to Boehm, morality and altruism emerged when individual humans began to submit to the interest of the hunter-gatherer group.  Submissiveness and obedience became a human trait in the late Pleistocene.  Religion encourages submissiveness, and studies suggest that religion exploits the submissive tendencies of naturally submissive persons.  Robert Wright's reporting on religion in the era of chiefdoms would suggest that chiefs were not submissive, because they viewed themselves as among the gods.  At some point in human history, very recently I submit, religious leaders shed the view that they had some special connection to the supernatural and to gods and became submissive to the god(s) they worshipped.  This may reflect a return, perhaps not completely, to a more egalitarian group environment and it would be interesting to know what prompts this circumstance, but I would suggest that survival as leader in the cultural milieu might have something to do with it as well.  And in that vain, the separation of political leader and the "priestly class" as evidenced in the history of the Jews in the Old Testament may have had something to do with the submissiveness of religious leaders as well.