Following my debate with Daniel Dennett, several atheists described Dennett's performance as "pathetic." If you want to see if they are right, you can watch the debate here. The term "pathetic," however, can be used in more than one sense. The Pathetic Fallacy (also called the Anthropomorphic Fallacy) is a term of art that refers to the error of attributing human qualities to inanimate objects. A brilliant recent book argues that this fallacy lies at the heart of the work of thinkers like Daniel Dennett.
Reading Dennett and others, you get the impression that science has demonstrated the material foundations of the human mind. Indeed we as humans are nothing more than atoms and molecules, and our self-conception is a kind of illusion generated by the neurons firing in our heads. Ultimately it is to evolution that we must turn, in Dennett's view, to understand who we are and how we function.
But in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker challenge this materialist understanding as promoted by Dennett and others. Bennett is a leading neuroscientist at the University of Sydney. He also directs the Brain and Mind Research Institute. Reviewing the state of scientific knowledge about the brain, Bennett concludes that the notion that science currently has "major insights into the workings of the synaptic networks in any part of the brain" is both "misplaced" and the product of "hubris." According to Bennett, who knows what he is talking about, Dennett and other non-scientists are portraying science as having figured out things that science is a very long way from figuring out.
Peter Hacker, an Oxford philosopher who is considered the world's leading authority on Wittgenstein, takes Dennett and like-minded writers to task for attributing to an inanimate object, namely the brain, qualities that are properly assigned to human beings like you and me. Hacker cites Dennett as claiming that brains are conscious and gather information and make simplifying assumptions and use supporting information and arrive at conclusions. Hacker argues that this is a classic case of the pathetic fallacy.
In Hacker's view, brains aren't conscious; we are conscious. Brains don't gather or use information; human beings do. Brains don't draw conclusions; you and I do. Of course we use our brains to perceive and reason, just as we use our hands and feet to play tennis. But it is just as absurd to say that my hands and feet are playing tennis as it is to say that my racket is playing tennis. By the same token it is wrong to portray the brain as perceiving, thinking or even being aware of anything.
If it is humans that possess the qualities that Dennett and others attribute to the brain, it follows that the brain is an inanimate object, like the pancreas. We as human beings function with and through the operation of these devices, but it hardly follows that we are "nothing more" than the sum total of them. Materialism--the doctrine that reduces man to his material makeup--is revealed not as a necessary conclusion of modern science but rather as as atheist dogma masquerading as science.
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Daniel Dennett's Pathetic Fallacy
Posted Jan 7th 2008 12:02AM by Dinesh D'Souza
Filed under: Science, Christianity, Controversy, Atheism
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Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 59)
16. My scientific opinion is that Mr Hays has shit for brains, which is a common disease among old farts with nothing better to do than try desperately to convince the MAJORITY that God doesn't exist. Question: Where does the shit go when you die?
monty at 7:55AM on Jan 7th 2008
17. monty; "My scientific opinion is that Mr Hays has shit for brains, which is a common disease among old farts with nothing better to do than try desperately to convince the MAJORITY that God doesn't exist. Question: Where does the shit go when you die?"
This would be the 'jejune name calling' that DD was saying atheists degrade into when their argument falls apart. Oh, wait that wasn't an atheist. The answer I would give to the question buried in that drivel is that either there is an afterlife or there isn't. Belief won't change that. I have a driveway outside my house, your belief or disbelief won't change whether it is there or not.
a born atheist at 8:12AM on Jan 7th 2008
18. Gog created the world in seven days and that's it! It says so in the Bible so it must be true. Bible thumpers have to get with it and get back to reality. Fairy tales don't exist. They only exist in the minds of children.
Rick at 8:35AM on Jan 7th 2008
19. DENA; Mark 13:28-31
"Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation[e] will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."
Basically, the end of the world will occur before the generation Jesus is addressing dies. This supposedly occurred around 33CE. The latest any of them could have possibly been alive was 120CE.
Ryan Anderson at 8:38AM on Jan 7th 2008
20. Dena; "WILLIAM, STOP MAKING UP FAIRY TALES. JESUS NEVER SAID WHEN THE WORLD WILL END. HE DOESN'T KNOW. ONLY GOD KNOWS THE HOUR."
Pardon my ignorance but doesn't the trinity include Jesus? This is what I found about the subject;
The Trinity is the Christian doctrine that God is one Being Who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three persons; the Father, the Son (incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth), and the Holy Spirit.
a born atheist at 8:45AM on Jan 7th 2008
21. In response to the many posts that question Hacker's conclusion that, "brains aren't conscious, we are":
A number of you seem to have the answer - someone with a brain injury or brain disease becomes another person. Case closed. Hacker (and therefore D'Souza) are wrong.
I sincerely wonder how much thought many of the people on this blog have put into their comments. Or how much formal education they have.
Nobody is questioning the importance of the brain in relating to the world. Nobody is questioning the importance of the brain as it relates to individuals being able to express themselves in this world.
What many of you don't understand is that the issue Dinesh is raising happens to be totally metaphysical and therefore exists outside the realm of traditional science. Greater minds than ours still concede this, though some on this blog seem to think that a simple observation of Alzheimer's patients answers the question.
Philosophy 101 presents this question as one of the most enduring, perplexing, and important.
The brain is a middle-man between the conscious person and the world. I am persuaded that Hacker is correct and it only stands to reason that degenerative brain disorders would disrupt the brain/soul relationship. It only stands to reason that any form of brain damage would result in a diminished capacity to function and process.
This reality offers nothing in way of a rebuttal to either Hacker or D'Souza. Unless mid-level philosophy and spurious connections are enough to satisfy you.
Let's hope not.
JSL at 8:58AM on Jan 7th 2008
22. I said it over at Ben Hoard's blog, and I'll say it again:
Dena, stop yelling. It doesn't help your cause any. You just look rude and immature.
If you want to debate, debate like an adult, with facts backing up your claims. The Buybull is not fact, it is mythology. The only thing factual about the Buybull is that it is, indeed, a book.
J Boyd at 9:20AM on Jan 7th 2008
23. Today's article started out as a fair enough delve into philosophical neuroscience, but he had to spoil the whole integrity in the last breath with atheist conspiracy theory.
Mokele-Mbembe at 9:20AM on Jan 7th 2008
24. DD, do Bennett and Hacker claim that we have a soul that outlives our physical bodies? No, I didn't think so.
DD, do you make that claim? Yes, I thought so.
DD, do Bennett and Hacker support your claim. No, I didn't think so.
Joe Bob at 9:20AM on Jan 7th 2008
25. Thanks, JSL.
Galakto at 10:10AM on Jan 7th 2008
26. DD would do well to actually read Wittgenstein:
"The right method in philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. ,the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would not be satisfying to the other --he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly correct method. ... Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
Joe Bob at 9:22AM on Jan 7th 2008
27. It is obvious that when Dennett and others say things like "brains gather information", they are speaking figuratively just as people often do when the describe a car or a truck as "struggling" to make it up a steep hill. Obviously cars and trucks, being non-conscious entities, do not literally "struggle" but nobody is confused by such descriptions except nit-picking dopes like Dinesh D'Souza. St. Paul also utilizes such figurative imagery when he describes the earth as groaning like a woman in labor. I guess he was "pathetic" too.
I find it interesting that we are in the midst of a very exciting primary election season with nary a comment on politics by Dinesh who apparently prefers to replay his debating "glories" over and over in his head. I guess that the Republican Party contenders are so truly "pathetic" that Dinesh would just as soon not think or write about them. And I, for one, cannot blame him on that score.
emelpe at 12:40PM on Jan 8th 2008
28. In Hacker's view, brains aren't conscious; we are conscious. Brains don't gather or use information; human beings do. Brains don't draw conclusions; you and I do. - DD
A number of you seem to have the answer - someone with a brain injury or brain disease becomes another person. Case closed. Hacker (and therefore D'Souza) are wrong.
- JSL
I get the sense here that DD and people who agree with him here are saying that the brain is just a biological appendage like the pancreas or the spleen, and if it were possible for someone to get a 'brain transplant', that somehow the patient would be the same person, with the same memories, same temperment, same reasoning abilities, etc.. just using someone else's brain.
If that is what DD is saying, it has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and that includes all of DDs posts.
Our brains are the repositories of what and who we are. It is the part of our physical bodies that retains all of our mental (and any extension thereof) capacities.
PS - How can DD be so careless in his use of language, that he confuses '(in)animate' with 'conscious'. All of our flesh and organs are 'animate'. Our consciousness (our mind) which is the sum total of our mental capacities & memories, resides exclusively in the brain.
fabio at 9:26AM on Jan 7th 2008
29. The fact that so much about the brain is yet unknown renders this discussion circular, because you have to either presume that you know EXACTLY how the brain functions or that there is a separate conscience/soul etc. So you'll either BELIEVE that the brain is indeed the driving factor in what makes us who we are (as can be argued through cases like Terri Schiavo's) or you believe that there is a something that transcends the physical being, which completely relies on faith and cannot be verified via the scientific method. If you believe the latter, you'll believe it even if every function of the brain was precisely known and could explain every human thought, function and emotion; a reflection of man's search to be significant, the same significance Dinesh seeks through his self-righteous blogs, in which he makes the same argument over and over: unless science produced absolutes (which it never will or it wouldn't be science), I choose faith. You do that, Dinesh, but keep it out of public life, including government.
emma at 9:31AM on Jan 7th 2008
30. Monty:
"My scientific opinion is that Mr Hays has shit for brains, which is a common disease among old farts with nothing better to do than try desperately to convince the MAJORITY that God doesn't exist. Question: Where does the shit go when you die?"
---------------------------------------------
Ewwww.
Do you pray to jesus with that mouth?
William is on a mission to show people that they need to smarten up.
He has nothing to gain from this.
Linda at 9:56AM on Jan 7th 2008