Evolutionary psychology, bourgeois reason, the management of duality & the erasure of history

Evolutionary psychologists should be presumed guilty until proven innocent.

I was amazed to find Christopher Badcock, writing for Psychology Today, advocating Hungarian Esperantist Sándor Szathmári's utopian/dystopian novel Voyage to Kazohinia as a prescient anticipation of Badcock's model of the diametric mind:

 "Voyage to Kazohinia: A Diametric Dystopia" by Christopher Badcock, Psychology Today, May 6, 2017

"The ABC of the Diametric Model, Twenty Years On" by Christopher Badcock, Psychology Today, July 5, 2017

I blogged about these two posts on another of my blogs:

• Voyage to Kazohinia: A Diametric Dystopia (2)
• Voyage to Kazohinia: A Diametric Dystopia

In my work on Szathmári, I have emphasized that this novel embodies a basic cultural and ideological dichotomy of modern civilization in a unique fashion. Badcock in his other work manifests this awareness as well, as well as its relationship to C. P. Snow's "two cultures"--another relationship I have pursued--but he attributes the social configuration to genetic causes. Here are a couple more of Badcock's several contributions to the Psychology Today site:

Brain Imaging Reveals the Diametric Mind: Mentalizing brain areas inhibit mechanistic ones and vice versa. Posted Apr 11, 2014

Diametrically Beyond the Two Cultures: Conflict between science and humanities is rooted in cognition. Posted Aug 29, 2012

Here is a book-length continuation of his original book on the subject:

The Diametric Mind Insights into AI, IQ, the Self and Society: a sequel to The Imprinted Brain.

And here is a related essay referenced by Badcock:

Autism, Psychosis, and the “Two Cultures”: C. P. Snow Reconsidered in Light of Recent Theories about Mentalistic Cognition by Jiro Tanak

Now, the hypothesis that there is a certain structure to the human brain, if there is anything to this model, and that this would have a relationship with the historical development of human institutions, would be a major factor to take into account in understanding why certain modes of thought and behavior are so readily reinforced. But the charlatanism that constitutes a large part of evolutionary psychology obscures the mechanisms and structure of social organization in historical development and uncritically reads society directly off of genetic dispositions.

If you read Badcock's posts and other writings, you may smell something rotten as I do. Reading this sort of material is like reading a parody of the scientific method. The concrete relationship of multifactorial social complexes becomes reduced to the most simplistic schematisms built up on a naive ideological basis. Of course, the irreligionists who gobble up this fare fancy that they have found the master key to irrationality and the reason they think they embody. But this is also a symptom of social and ideological degeneration, bourgeois reason at the end of its rope.

John Horgan on scientific materialism / scientific debate on "nothing"

Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”? By John Horgan. Scientific American blogs: Cross-Check; January 30, 2013.

I have decidedly contrary feelings about this article. Towards the beginning, Horgan states:

. . . science’s limits have never been more glaringly apparent. In their desperation for a “theory of everything”—which unifies quantum mechanics and relativity and explains the origin and structure of our cosmos—physicists have embraced pseudo-scientific speculation such as multi-universe theories and the anthropic principle (which says that the universe must be as we observe it to be because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to observe it). Fields such as neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics and complexity have fallen far short of their hype.

I begin sympathetically. Horgan then cites Thomas Nagel's objections to evolutionary theory (the origin of life itself) and evolutionary psychology, which Horgan shares. Horgan becomes rather confused in his assertions and arguments, thus vitiating his thesis. He should have been more specific in targeting the ideological dimension of science popularization. His discrediting of "scientific materialism" tout court as if it equates with positivism and reductionism discredits his argument.

Horgan concludes:

These qualms asides, I recommend Nagel’s book, which serves as a much-needed counterweight to the smug, know-it-all stance of many modern scientists. Hawking and Krauss both claim that science has rendered philosophy obsolete. Actually, now more than ever we need philosophers, especially skeptics like Socrates, Descartes, Thomas Kuhn and Nagel, who seek to prevent us from becoming trapped in the cave of our beliefs.

Horgan is on the right track regarding the philosophical popularizing of Hawking and Krauss, but otherwise he messes up.

I am now reminded that I need to finish and publish my essay "Can science render philosophy obsolete?". Here is a passage:

Only in the case where our intuitions are completely defeated by scientific knowledge, as in the case of quantum mechanics, could scientific knowledge be viewed as uninterpreted mathematically organized experimentally organized data sets. And yet the notorious history of popularization and mystical appropriations of physics over the past century reveal that no one in practice appropriates physics—the alleged master science—purely as uninterpreted mathematically organized data sets, though that is one ideology of science among others. And in the apprenticeship of physics, students surely create or appropriate some intuitions that allow their models to be graspable, however elusive they may be or inexpressible in ordinary language.

My larger argument is that philosophy has not been rendered obsolete, and such an assertion betrays the naivete of even the greatest of scientists who blithely promulgate such ideological piffle. Horgan, unfortunately, wastes his opportunity to make a meaningful correction. Readers' comments are also uninspiring.

A revealing case study of the issue can be found in a forum moderated by Neil de Grasse Tyson:

2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Existence of Nothing (March 20, 2013)

Here is the YouTube video itself:



Here is some of my running commentary in real time:

Physical, not philosophical question? Understand something, then absence . . . Let's see what develops. Space & time --> create universes? Problem with words indeed. (Krauss)

Objection: vacuum isn't nothing. Krauss perturbed. How, not why? Our universe didn't exist -- gravity with zero energy. Even laws don't have to exist. Multiverse: laws of universe come into existence with universe. Some universes without quantum mechanics? Eve Silverstein: space-time is emergent . . . . dimensions.

8:35 pm: argument over philosophical issues: in history of physics, e.g. Mach on reality of atoms; Einstein vs quantum mechanics . . . . Jim Holt isn't buying the pro-nothing position. Krauss has an interesting spiel, but I'm with Holt so far.

Holt: nothing is not a fruitful philosophical notion.

8:52pm: J. Richard Gott: nothing not even there. Tyson: after death, like before birth: your consciousness does not exist.

8:54pm: Krauss: universe came from nothing. Empty space, no time, no laws: everything came from nothing. Photons come from nothing. (Tyson: wrong.) Universe like zero energy photon. Our universe came from nothing. What if all possible laws exist? ME: incoherent.

8:57pm: Eve Silverstein: nothing ground state of ---- quantum system.

9:00pm: Tyson: nothing behind head of universes .....?? evolution of what's there not there with advance of scientific knowledge. Empty space . . . . now space not empty either . . . . now thinking outside our universe . . . . nothing? "Nothing" elusive . . . . just an illusion? There's always something behind it, even laws . . . . maybe no resolution. Nothing just null set in the final analysis?

9:01pm: Q-A begins.

9:03 pm: Charles Seife: infinity and nothing interdependent concepts.

9:07 pm: Eva: Experimental evidence of nothing? There's evidence of inflationary theory.

9:22 pm Krauss: Why always means how. ME: This I agree with.

Jim Holt and Lawrence Krauss are in vigorous opposition. Holt finds Krauss's assertions about nothing incoherent, as do I. Note for example the oddity of asserting that the laws of physics exist prior to any actual universe: this sounds like Platonism. My fragmentary commentary above doesn't really cover what's going on here; you will have to watch the video. But note how difficult it is to translate physico-mathematical theories into ordinary language. Tyson himself grapples with this difficulty in querying Krauss. He is not vociferous as Holt is, but he seems to find the same difficulties as we laypersons do in making sense of the concept of "nothing" as applied to cosmology. I conclude that those who trumpet that philosophy is obsolete ought instead to refrain from popularization altogether, especially when combined with (anti-)philosophical propaganda.

Raymond Tallis critiques scientism

Raymond Tallis - Undiscovered | New Humanist, Volume 126, Issue 4, July/August 2011

"A misreading of science has persuaded us that we are no more than our evolved brains. But, argues Raymond Tallis, a more expansive philosophy of humanity is mounting a fight-back"

This article makes a good start, but it's still a bit fuzzy. It could have been much better; the author could have delved deeper into the ideology of scientism that keeps the atheist/humanist/skeptics movement willfully ignorant of history and society.

One Marxist view of Dawkins & Harris

This is old stuff, but here's the info. I could quibble over some details, but there are important criticisms here of the political and social ignorance of Richard Dawkins and especially of Sam Harris. These pieces come from the World Socialist Web Site. Sectarian politics notwithstanding, there are some intelligent commentaries from a philosophical perspective.

Atheism in the service of political reaction: A comment on author Sam Harris

By Christie Schaefer, April 16, 2007

In the recent review of Richard Dawkins’ new book, The God Delusion, Joe Kay mentions in passing the author Sam Harris, noting that the idealist standpoint of Harris and some of the other advocates of atheism is often bound up with reactionary political conceptions. (See “Science, religion and s

Science, religion and society: Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion

By Joe Kay, March 15, 2007

In his new book, Dawkins has done us a service, if only in making more acceptable the general proposition that religion and science are at odds with each other, and that it is science that should win out.

Wisdom and Abstract Thought

In my previous post I expressed exasperation with Stephen S. Hall's new book Wisdom. There are a few references in his book that seem to be worth following up.

*     *     *

Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development, edited by Robert J. Sternberg. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Contents:
Preface
Part I. Approaches to the Study of Wisdom:
1. Understanding wisdom R. J. Sternberg
Part II. Approaches Informed by Philosophical Conceptions of Wisdom:
2. Wisdom through the ages D. N. Robinson
3. The psychology of wisdom: an evolutionary interpretation M. Csikszentmihalyi and K. Rathunde
4. Wisdom as integrated thought: historical and developmental perspectives G. Labouvie-Vief
Part III. Approaches Informed by Folk Conceptions of Wisdom:
5. Toward a psychology of wisdom and its ontogenesis P. Baltes and J. Smith
6. Wisdom in a post-apocalyptic age M. J. Chandler and S. Holliday
7. Wisdom and its relations to intelligence and creativity R. J. Sternberg
8. Wisdom and the study of wise persons L. Orwoll and M. Parlmutter
Part IV. Approaches Informed by Psychodevelopmental Conceptions of Wisdom:
9. The loss of wisdom J. A. Meacham
10. Wisdom and reflective judgment: knowing in the face of uncertainty K. S. Kitchener and H. G. Brenner
11. Wisdom: the art of problem finding P. K. Arlin
12. An essay on wisdom: towards symbolic processes that make it possible J. Pascual-Leone
13. Conceptualising wisdom: the primacy of affect-cognition relations D. Kramer
Part V. Integration of Approaches and Viewpoints:
14. Integration J. E. Birren
Author index
Subject index.

"This authoritative volume represents the only complete collection of psychological views on wisdom currently available. Considered an elusive psychological construct until recently, wisdom is currently attracting interest as an independent field. The acclaimed psychologist Robert Sternberg perceived the need to document the progress made in the field, and to point the way for future theory and progress. The resulting book introduces the concept of wisdom, considers philosophical issues and developmental approaches, and covers folk conceptions of the topic. The final chapter presents an integration of the fascinating and comprehensive material."

*     *     *

Paul B. Baltes (1939–2006) appears to be the leading researcher on wisdom. See also the Paul B. Baltes Wisdom Page. And lest we forget, Wikipedia. And here is the book referenced by Hall, available online:

Wisdom as Orchestration of Mind and Virtue by Paul B. Baltes. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 2004.

*     *     * 

The Wisdom Page "is a website dedicated to helping us better understand wisdom — that vitally important but poorly understood pinnacle of human functioning." This site is chock full of resources on the subject.

*     *     *

In December 2003 I approached this question not from what is usually thought of as practical wisdom, but in its historical dimension, linked with the development of the human intellect along with society. See my essay Wisdom and Abstract Thought, which I wrote for discussion with a local philosophy group. Unsurprisingly, it fell on deaf ears.

My point of departure was an aspect of what I found salvageable in Soviet philosophy, namely a correlation of philosophical development with the evolution of the scientific-technological basis of society and social organization. This was a fundamental approach of specialized Soviet philosophy quite different from the way philosophy is taught in these parts, where the best we can do as an alternative to traditional teaching and the wasteland of analytical philosophy is this duplicitous ideological category misnamed "continental philosophy". Though I've cogitated about the relation between wisdom and abstract thinking for years, I decided to pursue the topic after chancing upon Theodore Oizerman's Problem of Wisdom as a Real Problem, a subchapter in Oizerman's Problems of the History of Philosophy. Oizerman is subject to criticism on other grounds, but here is a complement to the ahistorical approach of people like Hall.

Incidentally, the most influential Soviet Marxist developmental psychologist continues to be Lev Vygotsky. Attempts have been made to fold his socially oriented perspective into cognitive science (see my blog entry on this subject), notably:

Frawley, William. Vygotsky and Cognitive Science: Language and the Unification of the Social and Computational Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Neuroscience as ideology: bourgeois wisdom at work

In re:

Hall, Stephen S. Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

"A compelling investigation into one of the most coveted and cherished ideals, 'Wisdom' also chronicles the efforts of modern science to penetrate the mysterious nature of this timeless virtue."

Contents:
PART ONE: Wisdom defined (sort of)
What is wisdom?;
The wisest man in the world: the philosophical roots of wisdom;
Heart and mind: the psychological roots of wisdom
PART TWO: Eight neural pillars of wisdom.
Emotional regulation: the art of coping;
Knowing what’s important: the neural mechanism of establishing value and making a judgment;
Moral reasoning: the biology of judging right from wrong;
Compassion: the biology of loving-kindness and empathy;
Humility: the gift of perspective;
Altruism: social justice, fairness, and the wisdom of punishment;
Patience: temptation, delayed gratification, and the biology of learning to wait for larger rewards;
Dealing with uncertainty : change, "meta-wisdom," and the vulcanization of the human brain
PART THREE: Becoming wise.
Youth, adversity, and resilience: the seeds of wisdom;
Older and wiser: the wisdom of aging;
Classroom, board room, bedroom, back room: everyday wisdom in our everyday world;
Dare to be wise: does wisdom have a future?

See also the web site of Stephen C. Hall.

*     *     *

"Wrong life cannot be lived rightly."

          — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, section 18

This aphorism does not appear in Stephen Hall's book, and Adorno does not appear to be part of the mental universe of Hall's attempt to scientize "timeless virtue". As bourgeois reason totters on its last legs, the latest fad of popular science purporting to explain social and in many cases political behavior is neurobiology. Like all bourgeois scientism, this line of inquiry is predicated on ideological amnesia, an erasure of real history, society, and politics. Granted that both neurobiology and evolutionary theory are essential to comprehension of the material basis of the organism, of everything it is capable of thinking and doing, the conceit here is that the biology of individual cognition in abstraction is proffered as an explanation of how we function in society, and this is why the spate of popular books on the subject is reactionary to the core.

Hall only questions his endeavor in the final chapter, pondering whether a focus on wise individuals only fosters a personality cult and hero worship, distracting from the thing itself. He also contemplates the future of wisdom given the state of consumer culture.

Otherwise, Hall trots out various culture heroes as possible examples of wisdom: Confucius, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Oprah. Again, qualities of wisdom are abstracted out of total social situations, oblivious to the dimension of ideology critique that could be applied to any and all of his examples. 

Anyone who could quote David Brooks even in passing as a person to take seriously betrays a political cluelessness the contemptibility of which defies description.

Vygotsky & Cognitive Science

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) was one of the great pioneers of psychology, with a Marxist perspective that fell into disfavor with the Stalin regime. His Soviet school of psychology nonetheless survived, and he has been influential in the West as well.

I've had this book lying about for years, and stumbling onto to it recently, realized I should move it way up in my reading queue:

Frawley, William. Vygotsky and Cognitive Science: Language and the Unification of the Social and Computational Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

There are some reviews and related articles you will find interesting:

Rosemary Luckin, review, Computational Linguistics, Volume 24, Number 3, pp. 520-524.

William Frawley, Why I am (still) a sociocomputationalist and why you should be, too!

KaiLonnie Dunsmore, Individual Mental Functioning in a Sociocultural Context: Schematic Representations of Cultural Knowledge when Comprehending Text.

Jacques Vauclair and Patrick Perret, The cognitive revolution in Europe: taking the developmental perspective seriously.

My current motivation for taking an interest comes from my perception of how reactionary cognitive science is when applied in an ahistorical manner to social & political problems. Same goes for neuroscience: Sam Harris is a prime example of clueless ideology at work. I have no idea the degree to which the cognitive psychology crowd takes Vygotsky's Marxism seriously.

Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences (1)

Steven; Rose, Hilary; eds. 1980. Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences, with an introductory essay by Ruth Hubbard. Cambridge, MA: Shenkman Publishing Co., 1980. xxix, 363 pp.

This book appeared under other imprints with different titles. I have digitized the table of contents. Note the links on this web page. Joseph Needham's oft-reprinted article can be found here:

"History and Human Values: A Chinese Perspective for World Science and Technology"

Commentary on Needham and related issues can be found elsewhere on this blog. I have more to say about Needham's philosophical blundering. My post on "The Politics of Neurobiology: Biologism in the Service of the State" by Rose & Rose reproduces the first paragraph of the article, along with my snide remarks about historical amnesia and the secular humanist / "new atheist" movement.

It seems that the radical science movement has been all but forgotten. It was a mixed bag, and I have my doubts even about its more rational elements, but this history seems to have been swept under the rug altogether with the radicalism of the 1970s. The first article fairly summarizes the views of Marx and Engels, with some pertinent criticism of Engels' dialectics of nature (p. 14). "The Incorporation of Science" is about the incorporation of science--and science studies--within the capitalist system. Andre Gorz attempts to locate scientists within the class structure. Mike Cooley, who analyzes the labor process in production, is a name familiar to me from elsewhere: I think it is a book called Worker or Bee?. These first four essays survey the general problem of science within the capitalist system.

"The Politics of Neurobiology" antedates the current rage of cognitive science, and the attempts of neurobiologists to read off politics and society from the structure of the brain, a thoroughly ideologically blind and reactionary endeavor.

Many may remember the scientific racism and IQ controversy of the 1970s. I was studying the history of scientific racism while the skeptics movement was preoccupied with astrology and spoon-bending.

Hans Magnus Enzenberger questions the ideology and politics of the then-burgeoning ecology movement (which we now call environmentalism), for example, the then-current "limits of growth" concern.

There are several articles on women's issues and women's place in the sciences.

Sam Anderson's article on "Science, Technology and Black Liberation" reflects the revolutionary ambitions and bombast of the time. Anderson chafes against the "special nigger" status he claims is imposed on black scientists, and bursts with the ideological energy of anti-imperialism and self-reliance (even quoting Kim Il Sung). Such rebellion against bourgeois professionalism was a hallmark of the time, but such impulses ultimately could go nowhere, esp. the impulse not to remain alienated from the black masses at large.

This type of politicization was characteristic of the time and reflected in several of the essays, predating our age of lowered expectations. Of course one must also comb this literature for elements of naivete. Perhaps the most grating element in general is the sympathy for Maoism. I have my reservations about scorching broad-based indictments of "reductionism", but clearly there are real problems addressed by this label.

Three articles are of particular philosophical interest.

Lewontin and Levins articulate and claim a more sophisticated analysis of the phenomenon of Lysenkoism than what is found in other literature. They see it as more than simple bureaucratic despotism, and they also reject Maoist attempts to rehabilitate Lysenkoism. I am not sufficiently acquainted with Lewontin's philosophical proclamations to know how they hold up. I am cautious in making big political and philosophical claims for what later became known as dialectical biology, but I'm sure E.O. Wilson is falsifying history:

"Science and ideology" by Edward O. Wilson, Vol. 8, Academic Questions, 06-01-1995.

I mentioned Needham's article, which I want to return to elsewhere, as the combination of historical materialist analysis and utter philosophical/ideological confusion is noteworthy.

Finally, there is "Ideology of/in Contemporary Physics" by Jean‑Marc Levy‑Leblond which is interesting in a number of respects. I will return to this later. For now I will note that the author addresses the institutionalization and division of labor within physics, and the epistemological problems within it, including education and popularization, and the chronic inadequacy of philosophy of science to adequately address what goes on within physics, most notably quantum mechanics.

Politics of Neurobiology revisited

Biologism is the attempt to locate the cause of the existing structure of human society, and of the relationships of individuals within it, in the biological character of the human animal. For biologism, all the richness of human experience and the varying historical forms of human relationships merely represent the product of underlying biological structures; human societies are governed by the same laws as ape societies, the way that an individual responds to his or her environment is determined by the innate properties of the DNA molecules to be found in brain or germ cells. In a word, the human condition is reduced to mere biology, which in its turn is no more than a special case of the laws of chemistry and hence of physics.

SOURCE: Rose, Steven; Rose, Hilary. “The Politics of Neurobiology: Biologism in the Service of the State,” in Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences, edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, with an introductory essay by Ruth Hubbard (Cambridge, MA: Shenkman Publishing Co., 1980), pp. 71-86.

So begins this essay from the 1970s, when the radical science movement was in full swing. There were various perspectives and agendas in this movement. Part of it was irrationalist in character, another part was overpoliticized, but there was a vigorous questioning of the social and political roles and ideological dimension of the scientific enterprise and various apologists in various fields of scientific endeavor. While the roots of contemporary obscurantism can be found in this period, there was also a vigorous Marxist inquest into the sociology, economics, politics, practices, and ideology of scientific disciplines, again, sometimes subject to bad politicizing and philosophizing, but nonetheless worthy of continued interest. Just as McCarthyism wiped out the history immediately preceding the 1950s in the public mind, so neoliberalism (in its liberal as well as conservative incarnations) has effectively erased the 1970s as an object of popular comprehension.

This historical amnesia is characteristic also of the secular humanist/atheist/skeptical movement in the USA, which now is highlighted as progressive in an age dominated by right-wing politics and manic irrationalism, whereas in the 1960s and '70s this movement was way behind the curve of social and political consciousness. The entire movement, in its desperate effort to bolster reason in a burgeoning new Dark Age, hunkers down behind a shallow scientism that erases society and history from its world view, remains unaware of its own history and of the ideological struggles within the sciences it reveres, and uncritically gobbles up the ideological droppings of its celebrated apologists.

A particularly noxious example of this is the uncritical slobbering over a politically and historically very ignorant man, Sam Harris, whose latest book is all the rage: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. That someone could advertise such banality and peddle it as novelty is a truly remarkable manifestation of a society at the end of its rope.

Sam Harris, Islam, neurophysiology & historical illiteracy

So far on this blog I concentrated my criticism of Sam Harris on his op-ed piece "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals". While he is eloquent on the need to oppose "faith", he is a very ignorant man on most other things. Here is a sample, his most recent piece on the threat of Islam:

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks, The Huffington Post, posted May 5, 2008

Harris complains about the cowardice in the West of publicizing attacks on Islam, the Koran, Muhammed, etc., due to the fear of violent retaliation. He insists that the religion of Islam is intrinsically related to Islamic political violence and wonders where the Muslim moderates are in speaking up against it. He insists on the right of free speech, which he counterposes to the barbarism of Muslims ready to do away with anyone who dares to exercise it in the criticism of Islam. There are, however, some gaps in Harris' argument. He has no real notion of social causality. Doctrines produce behavior, but what produces and sustains doctrines, the interpretation of doctrines, and the translation of doctrines into action? What are the institutions that reinforce dispositions, convey information, and instigate actions? And what about the context in which information is conveyed? The problem begins in the very first sentence:

Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world's most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam.

Wilders is under a death threat for a documentary film denouncing Islam. If Wilders has a right to free speech, and Islam is bad, then surely Wilders should be defended. But note at the outset Wilders is described as "conservative Dutch politician and provocateur". Wouldn't this set off some alarm bell to anyone not in a coma? One might want to know something about what Wilders' politics is all about, how it relates to the Netherlands's Muslim population, and to what extent this population refuses to conform to West European secular democratic norms, and to what extent they are under siege by European right-wing hate groups. What is Wilders' goal in defaming Islam; is it part of an illegitimate assault on the immigrant population? I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I think they are essential to an assessment of the situation.

Or perhaps Wilders' motive and political agenda are irrelevant to the content of his film: if the content is sound, then what does the political context in which it is generated matter? And regardless of the morality of the situation, doesn't Wilders have any absolute right to free speech in any case? Would anything be different were a person of Muslim origin to circulate anti-Islamic materials, as many, including most famously, Ayaan Hirsi Alihas done?

I have no problem with the denigration of Islam as a general principle, but there is no action that doesn't have a context, and we are deprived of the real social context in which Wilders' film is circulating. We don't know, for example, what percentage of the local Muslim population supported or approved of the assassination of Theo van Gogh, or how the information about the provocative cartoons or this film is communicated to the rest of the Muslim world to stimulate retaliation.

What about Harris' characterization of the global geopolitical situation? Can the very concept of "culture war" explain the world situation? Is it true that the the struggle over Islam is the world's most important culture war? And that the "zero-sum conflict" between Islam and civil society makes sense as an explanatory framework for understanding the world system?

The fact is, Harris is an ignoramus. He lacks the elementary tools to analyze society, and he knows nothing of history. He deduces society from fragmentary facts and abstract principles, as if belief systems are suspended in air and just generate social realities . . . or, are just rooted in the physiology of the brain.

Which brings to mind his only area of expertise. On his web site he presents four surveys, one or more of which he requests his readers to fill out, as part of a research project on the neurophysiology of religion:

Research Volunteers Needed

We are preparing to run another fMRI study of belief and disbelief, and we need volunteers to help us refine our experimental stimuli. This promises to be the first study of religious faith at the level of the brain.

I suggest you take a look at one or more of these questionnaires. I filled them all out. Perhaps they are not as idiotic as they seem. I don't remember much about survey design and psychological testing, but I'm guessing that the questions are designed to elicit telltale responses while concealing their purpose from the test-taker, so that the testees reveal more about themselves than they consciously intend. Still, it's hard not to think that these questionnaires are utterly ridiculous and can't possibly measure what they purport to measure. And can you even imagine the ideological biases of the survey designer? And for all we know, people who concoct questionnaires like these themselves belong in a straight jacket and a rubber room.

But more generally, the question must be asked: what can it mean to ascertain religious faith based upon the study of brain physiology? Of course we can gain knowledge about how dysfunctional thinking operates on the basis of the physiological and psychological mechanisms at work. But separated from real behavior in social context, they are just abstractions, descriptions of abstractly delineated processes. Everyone concedes that environmental stimuli trigger these brain processes, but then don't we have to understand just what the "environment" is, and how its structure and history--i.e. the structure and history of society--create a structure and history of responses and dispositions in the brain? How can we actually know about the genesis of and mechanisms of social reinforcement of belief systems by studying brain physiology in abstracto?

It's too bad people like Harris cannot learn the lessons of the Soviet developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky, for starters. The same ideological naivete gets repeated over and over. We get a regression to metaphysical abstractions of social behavior--in-/out-groups, prejudice, etc.--in combination with natural-scientifically conceived biological constants, in order to explain behavior, and real society and history drop out of the picture. Instead of institutional analysis combined with the essential concept of ideology, we get pseudo-scientific garbage like "memes" and pseudo-Darwinian explanations of economic systems and social history. But instead of going after the likes of Dawkins, Shermer, and Wilson, let me focus on the problems of self-enclosed biological explanations.

Yesterday I happened upon perhaps the worst "scholarly" book on bigotry I have ever seen:

Dozier, Rush W., Jr. Why We Hate: Understanding, Curbing, and Eliminating Hate in Ourselves and Our World. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2002. Publisher description.

Perusing the book, and reviewing the bibliography, I am astounded how completely devoid it is of something you will find in all serious books on this subject--real information about society and history. There is no usable social knowledge or information in this crappy book: it's all about brain physiology combined with platitudinizing. I cannot conceive of anything with scientific pretensions more disgraceful.

This is the same clueless ignorant level on which Harris operates. And most other prominent public atheists on the American scene are no better. They are disgraceful representatives of atheism, not because they are too haughty and confrontational in their atheism, but because they are politically bankrupt. With what they contribute to popular enlightenment with one hand, they take back with the other. These people have contributed mightily to the provincialism and miseducation of their fans regarding the nature of their society. Their science-worship itself is a source of ideological mystification.