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| Nature creates art, reflects Nature (at the Honolulu Zoo, July 2010) |
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| Christopher Hitchens |
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| Jonathan Franzen |
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| Antonio R. Damasio |
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| Sam Harris |
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| Jonathan Safran Foer |
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| Stieg Larsson |
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| Richard Dawkins |
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| Ayaan Hirsi Ali |
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| John Le Carré |
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| Philip Roth |
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| Martin Cruz Smith |
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| Daniel C. Dennett |
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| Nature creates art, reflects Nature (at the Honolulu Zoo, July 2010) |
Nervous systems developed as managers of life and curators of biological value, assisted at first by unbrained dispositions but eventually by images, that is, minds. The emergence of mind produced spectacular improvements in life regulation for numerous species, even when images lacked fine detail and lasted only during the perceptual moment, entirely vanishing thereafter....Damasio's "Rebelliousness" (as in culture's rebelling against and trying to improve nature) I can't but read in the context of this blog's recent theme of a few individuals rebelling against certain aspects of popular (or majority) culture: religious beliefs and practices that rational people would think we could have outgrown, burdensome traditions that tether us to unprofitable pasts, adolescent politics that degrade our national business into playground bullying....
Once self comes to mind, the game of life changes, albeit timidly at first. Images of the internal and external worlds can be organized in a cohesive way around the protoself [a theoretical entity in Damasio's theory of the sequence of brain/mind development] and become oriented by the homeostatic requirements of the organism....[pp. 286-287]
If nature can be regarded as indifferent, careless, and unconscionable, then human consciousness creates the possibility of questioning nature's ways. The emergence of human consciousness is associated with evolutionary developments in brain, behavior, and mind that ultimately lead to the creation of culture, a radical novelty in the sweep of natural history. The appearance of neurons, with its attending diversification of behavior and paving of the way into minds, constitutes a momentous event in the grand trajectory. But the appearance of conscious brains eventually capable of flexible self-reflection is the next momentous event. It is the opening of the way into a rebellious, albeit imperfect response to the dictates of a careless nature.
...The self that I envision as capable of rebelliousness is a recent development, on the order of thousands of years, a mere instant in evolutionary time. That self draws on features of the human brain acquired, in all likelihood, during the long period of the Pleistocene. It depends on the brain's capacity to hold expansive memory records not only of motor skills but also of facts and events—in particular, personal facts and events, those that make up the scaffolding of biography and personhood and individual identity...Last, it depends on the invention of external memory systems parallel to those held by each brain, by which I mean the pictorial representations offered by early painting, carvings, and sculpture, tools, jewelry, funerary architecture, and, long after the emergence of language, written records....[pp. 289-290]
Antonio R. Damasio, in his 1994 book, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, identifies the error of René Descartes [1596-1650] as occurring a few lines after his famous statement, "I think, therefore I am." Says Damasio:Here Descartes was after a logical foundation for his philosophy...But just a few lines below, Descartes clarifies the statement unequivocally:We don't need Damasio to tell us that "from [I think, therefore I am]" Descartes can know no such thing. But here's how Damasio puts it:
From that I knew that I was a substance, the whole essence or nature of which is to think, and that for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this "me," that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and even if body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is. [p. 249]
This is Descarte's error: the abyssal separation between body and mind, between the sizable, dimensioned, mechanically operated, infinitely divisible body stuff, on the one hand, and the unsizable, undimensioned, un-pushpullable, nondivisible mind stuff; the suggestion that reasoning, and moral judgment, and the suffering that comes from physical pain or emotional upheaval might exist separately from the body. Specifically: the separation of the most refined operations of mind from the structure and operation of a biological organism. [pp. 249-250]None of this should be new to us, but of course to many people it is, and they reject it. They persist in Descartes' error, and perhaps even in a moral failure that derives from it:
Versions of Descartes' error obscure the roots of the human mind in a biologically complex but fragile, finite, and unique organism; they obscure the tragedy implicit in the knowledge of that fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness. And where humans fail to see the inherent tragedy of conscious existence, they feel far less called upon to do something about minimizing it, and may have less respect for the value of life. [p. 251]I like to think that Jesus Christ's philosophy of compassion was rooted in his appreciation of this inherent tragedy. He came to be known as "The Man of Sorrows," suffering for mankind (if not also for "lesser" animals on the food chain, like my dog Siegfried and the birds whose still bodies he finds in our back yard). I would like to think that Jesus felt sorrowful for them too. My mother did, and I do.
With somewhat of a shock, I discovered a few minutes ago that the man who said the most flattering thing that I can remember anyone's ever saying to me died only five months ago. Born the same month as my mother (February 1908), Professor Errol E. Harris died this past June, at age one hundred and one! (My mother died in 2005, not long before her ninety-seventh birthday.)Errol Eustace Harris (February 19, 1908 – June 21, 2009) was a contemporary South African philosopher. His work focused on developing a systematic and coherent account of the logic, metaphysics, and epistemology implicit in contemporary understanding of the world. Harris held that, in conjunction with empirical science, the Western philosophical tradition, in its commitment to the ideal of reason, contains the resources necessary to accomplish this end. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2008.My reading this year has been curiously interconnected. In Frank Harris's memoir, My Life and Loves, I read a good deal of his dealings with Cecil Rhodes, whose money founded the university in South Africa from which Professor Harris earned his bachelor's degree. Then, in the course of reading Antonio Damasio's Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, I learned that Professor Harris had himself written books on Spinoza: Salvation from Despair, A Reappraisal of Spinoza's Philosophy (1973), Spinoza's Philosophy, an Outline (1992), and The Substance of Spinoza (1995). These books are of course now on my reading list.
I "postscripted" him the paragraph from Wikipedia and asked whether he knew Harris. He answered that:We were good friends for many years, he contributed to my Festschrift, The Recovery of Philosophy In America, and we took part together in numerous philosophical symposia, etc. He wrote an excellent book on Hegel's Logic. I lost touch with him after I retired and did not know where he was. I did not know that he had passed away; the 101 does not surprise me.How extraordinary! And what a kind and distinguished man Professor Smith is too. I am delighted, honored to be in touch with him.
Apropos my recent interchanges with some "Bible-believing Christians," I was struck by a paragraph in Chapter 7 of Antonio R. Damasio's book I quoted from yesterday:For the [kind of salvation accessible to all through living "a virtuous life in a virtuous civitas, obedient to the rules of a democratic state and mindful of God's nature, somewhat indirectly, with the help of some of the Bible's wisdom"], Spinoza rejects biblical narratives as God's revelation, but endorses the wisdom embodied in the historical figures of Moses and Christ. Spinoza saw the Bible as a repository of valuable knowledge regarding human conduct and civil organization. [p. 274]Spinoza, this atheist with respect to the God of Abraham, was nevertheless plugging the Bible as a force for good in human affairs! (I wonder what the past two thousand years would have been like without the Bible. Too bad that that experiment can't be conducted.) The endnote was even more striking:
Here are Spinoza's words from A Theologico-political Treatise, 1670 (R. H. M. Elwes translation): "Before I go further I would expressly state (though I have said it before) that I consider the utility and the need for Holy Scripture or Revelation to be very great. For as we cannot perceive by the natural light of reason that simple obedience is the path of salvation, and are taught by revelation only that it is so by the special grace of God, which our reason cannot attain, it follows that the Bible has brought a very great consolation to mankind. All are able to obey, whereas there are but very few, compared with the aggregate of humanity, who can acquire the habit of virtue under the unaided guidance of reason. Thus if we had not the testimony of Scripture, we should doubt of the salvation of nearly all men."That stung me into self-awareness. As I was mocking my colleagues' religious beliefs last week, I knew I was doing it and didn't like that I was doing it, but I felt a sort of compulsion to proceed. I'd like to think now that if I'd read this from Damasio beforehand, I'd have held back, tried to emulate Spinoza. What was my need to not just smile and ignore their "sales pitches" but to ridicule and demean them? Why did I need to do that?
This deeply felt attitude gives the lie to the caricatures of Spinoza as the devil incarnate. Late Spinoza advised those around him, who were mostly Christian, to remain within their church, largely the Protestant church. He urged children to attend Mass, and he himself heard sermons by Colerus, the Lutheran pastor who moved into the house Spinoza once rented in the Stilleverkade and became first his friend, then his biographer. Spinoza did not have faith in a provident God or in eternal life, but he never mocked the faith of others. In fact, Spinoza was extremely careful with the faith of the unlearned. He only discussed religion with his intellectual colleagues....[p. 330]
Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003) explores, among other things, the role of feelings in ethics and other social arrangements. Damasio brings the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) into the discussion because of his profound insights into the subject in his Ethics (Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding [Tractatus de intellectus emendatione])1.God has not revealed himself to humans in the ways portrayed in the Bible. You cannot pray to Spinoza's God. [p. 273]Ethics derived from biology, from feeling. Damasio quotes Proposition 18 in Part IV of Spinoza's Ethics:
"...the very first foundation of virtue is the endeavor (conatum) to preserve the individual self, and happiness consists in the human capacity to preserve its self2"...._______________
At first glance the words sound like a prescription for the selfish culture of our times but nothing could be further from their real meaning. As I interpret it, the proposition is a cornerstone for a generous ethical system. It is an affirmation that at the base of whatever rules of behavior we may ask humanity to follow, there is something inalienable: A living organism, known to its owner because the owner's mind has constructed a self, has a natural tendency to preserve its own life; and that same organism's state of optimal functioning, subsumed by the concept of joy, results from the successful endeavor to endure and prevail. Paraphrased in deeply American terms I would rewrite Spinoza's proposition as follows: I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are created such that they tend to preserve their life and seek well-being, that their happiness comes from the successful endeavor to do so, and that the foundation of virtue rests on these facts. Perhaps these resonances are not a coincidence. [pp. 170-171]
Spinoza's best-known recommendation for achieving a life well lived came in the form of a system for ethical behavior and a prescription for a democratic state. But Spinoza did not think that following ethical rules and the laws of a democratic state would be sufficient for the individual to achieve the highest form of contentment, the sustained joy that he equates with human salvation....Many human beings require something that involves, at the very least, some clarity about the meaning of one's life....
...the yearning is a deep trait of the human mind. It is rooted in human brain design and the genetic pool that begets it, no less so than the deep traits that drive us with great curiosity toward a systematic exploration of our own being and of the world around it...The same natural endeavor of self-preservation that Spinoza articulates so transparently as an essence of our beings, the conatus, is called into action when we are confronted with the reality of suffering and especially the reality of death, actual or anticipated, our own or that of those we love....
...From this perspective, any project for human salvation—any project capable of turning a life examined into a life contented—must include ways to resist the anguish conjured up by suffering and death, cancel it, and substitute joy instead3....[pp. 268-271]
You need not be in fear of...God because he will never punish you. Nor should you work hard in the hope of getting rewards from him because none will come. The only thing you may fear is your own behavior. When you fail to be less than kind to others, you punish yourself, there and then, and deny yourself the opportunity to achieve inner peace and happiness, there and then....Spinoza's salvation—salus—is about repeated occasions of a kind of happiness that cumulatively make for a healthy mental condition....[p. 273]
Montesquieu's views on ethics, God, organized religion, and politics are through and through Spinozian and were, unsurprisingly, denounced as such. [p. 256]
Funny thing. I don't believe in god or heaven, but this morning I was feeling so extraordinarily buoyant that, quite spontaneously, I exclaimed to my friend Jeff, "I feel so good—as though I've been apotheosized!" [The painting shown to the right is "The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius" by Giovanni Battista Baciccio (1639-1709). Ignatius is still, I suppose, believed by some to have been literally apotheosized after being killed by one or more lions for the entertainment of the citizens of Rome.]
