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 4 of 59)
46. william hays,
why do you keep on with your drivil? are you on a mission or something? your rants border on hatred for DD when he clearly makes sense. jesus loves you and died for you that you might have eternal life with him. why do you fight so hard against the truth?
brian at 10:48AM on Jan 7th 2008
47. "i find atheism is an assault on all the is rational and reasonable and its very foolish. can i get a witness???????"
brian little b - I can witness that YOU are an assault on all that is rational, reasonable, and you are indeed very foolish.
It's immediately obvious to everyone here.
Well, OK, maybe DENA and RTIA are on your side. You can keep them there.
brandon at 10:49AM on Jan 7th 2008
48. ATHEIST
Reply to: 43. atheists will always pass on being christian because they are blind fol;owing the blind. instead of being scorned they are truly to be pitied. brian
______
One of the reasons why I refuse to take Christianity seriously on any level.... is apparent in brian's posts.
Why would anyone want to wear an "I AM STUPID" sign on their back for the rest of their life?
William Hays at 10:50AM on Jan 7th 2008
49. brian I'll witness.
Maybe Ddinesh IS right your brain IS inanimate
mac65 at 10:52AM on Jan 7th 2008
50. Ah ha ha ha ha.........................
brian little b is back to posting his "bleak" and "hopeless" stuff about atheism, which is just a projection of his own life. (since he has no idea how any of the atheists on this blog live their lives)
I used to repond to those posts with how full and joyous my life is, but he would respond in some childish and petulant manner.
Not worth the effort.
Linda at 10:52AM on Jan 7th 2008
51. Brian, I feel sorry for YOU. My life here is very fulfulling. I have my up's and down's, but fulfilling none the less. It is your OPINION that I am not happy, but you can't know that because you don't know me. I feel sorry for you, because you see the beautiful world here and the life going on all around you as filler until you go to a fictional place (in the sky? in space?) to be an eternal slave ("angel").
"why if this earth and living here is all there is it is a most cruel joke."
WHY?! I don't understand this. WHY is it a "most cruel joke"? Do you not see the beauty everywhere around you? Do you not enjoy your family, friends, pets, a double chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice cream? If this life was all there is, I would be perfectly happy with that. I am having a blast on this world!
You want to believe in an afterlife because you are SCARED that this is all there is.
K at 10:57AM on Jan 7th 2008
52. "You want to believe in an afterlife because you are SCARED that this is all there is."
K, thank you for summing up brian in one sentence. Very nicely done.
brandon at 11:04AM on Jan 7th 2008
53. ATHEIST
Reply to: 45. jesus loves you and died for you that you might have eternal life with him. why do you fight so hard against the truth?
____________
Christianity is a disease. Why do doctors still try to curse a common cold?
Christianity Dumbs People Down.
If you spend decades pretending to talk to a God, or a Jesus, or any Imaginary Friend, you lose contact with reality.
In a Jesuit school, children are rewarded for memorizing False Statements, such as the one Dinesh uses for today's blog.
One reason I label my posts.... is to help people who are trying to compare the "Atheist" posts with the "Christian" posts.
The posts by Christians on this board (generally) display the effects of Dumbing Down. It's interesting to analyze their mistakes in logic. They have been taught that the ways of God are so mysterious and illogical, they have to rely on someone like a Pope to do their thinking for them.
Today, with 6.7 billion people in the world, we obviously could use some artificial birth control to keep the total population down. The current position of the Catholic Church is not going to help "save the planet," especially as they push for new converts in southern Africa.
AIDS is rampant, but Jesuit missionaries announce that the "word of God" prohibits the use of a condom.
William Hays at 11:06AM on Jan 7th 2008
54. brian,
Has it occurred to you that nonbelief in the afterlife comes not from unhappiness or the unwant of eternal life, but that we actually honestly think it doesn't exist? BELIEF is not about what you WANT to believe, it is what you are CONVINCED of.
Mokele-Mbembe at 11:08AM on Jan 7th 2008
55. brian
The most cruel joke may be when the end comes, and it really is the end, you realize that you wasted all the time that you had here on earth. Live a more fulfilling life now. Do your part to make this world a better place. And if you do, that is all anyone can ask. What is irrational about that?
amekf at 11:10AM on Jan 7th 2008
56. Once more Dinesh is crowing victory, on a blog he controls. Personally I think that Dennett was going out on a limb for his argument as he didn't frame it very well. But Dinesh is overlooking one sad fact: a person without a brain is not a person. Without the organ that supports conciousness itself there is no memory, nor opinion, nor response, nor ambition, nor desire that makes a person a person. Dennett was correct in saying the brain gathers information. It collects stimulus from a variety of nerve centers and carries them to the brain. Deprive the brain of that information and it can not convey the impulses to respond.
Dennett's falacy was trying to state that science is unlocking secrets to conciousness and self awareness. Science is unlocking insights into how the brain works, and even more insights into how it stops working, but the one thing science may never explain is why. But why is a very tall order. How is far easier. For example, why is the sky blue? How the sky appears blue is due to simple scattering of light as it enters the earth's athmosphere. The reds, yellows, and greens are all absorbed leaving the shortest wavelengths, the blues and indigos, to penitrate through. But why is blue that particular color? We don't know. Some of the deepest questions of physics and science are as to the why of things.
But strip a person of their conciousness and their personality. Can you honestly call that person a person. Some conservatives thought so when they desperately intervened in the case of Terri Schavo. After her autopsy, the critical scarring upon her brain, which had shrunk to a third its normal size, could never have recovered. The organ that allowed Terri's "Terriness" was gone. What was left was a piece of meat that, left to nature, would have died and rotted as countless people eventually do.
Conciousness is a tricky thing. It's one of those quinticential attributes that humans can't escape. It can be ignored. It can be taken for granted. But it is terribly hard to explain. It has no tangible attributes. It can be affected and manipulated, as any good cigarette smoker knows, but it can not be measured or quantified. What is clear is that Dennett was right in that without the brain, a person no longer exists. His error was in connecting a brain, that tangible organ, to conciousness, that intangible phenomenon.
Somber at 11:13AM on Jan 7th 2008
57. brian,
"bleak and hopeless"
That's not completely wrong. The universe is huge and eternal, we are not, and in the end its truth will swallow us. All life fears its end. It really scares me, but I have to march bravely through this world with the knowledge that this life may be all I'll ever have.
Mokele-Mbembe at 11:15AM on Jan 7th 2008
58. ATHEIST
Anyway, back to my point.
As his brain continues to deteriorate, you can observe Billy Graham.
Does the "person" of Billy Graham change? Do changes to his brain change who he is?
I think the answer is Yes.
You need to understand how complex the brain is. Basic personality traits result from many, many different parts of the brain.
Once you have observed a victim of advanced Alzheimer's change their basic personality... the correct answer becomes obvious.
Our brains are indeed the part of us that thinks. There is NOTHING in our personality that is separate and distinct from the brain.
William Hays at 11:17AM on Jan 7th 2008
59. " Do your part to make this world a better place. And if you do, that is all anyone can ask."
--------------------------------
Amen to that amekf. THIS "realm" is in real peril, we need to do what we can to help it. Even if there were an afterlife, there are generations to think of.
Besides, wasn't it St. James who said "faith without works is dead"?
Linda at 11:18AM on Jan 7th 2008
60. indeed,
i see beautiful life everywhere. just today it is 70 degrees in tennessee. the beauty i see is just a prelude of things to come. the stars i see are just a glimpse of what god has in store for us to see with better eyes. what i have to look forward to is better than this life. because as good as it is it still ends. as much as i find joy in the now, there is more. we are so limited in our capacity to percieve. why its joy now but more later. as a christian i have eternity to spend enjoying god's creation. why would you reject that for future darkness? your out-look is hopeless. hi,linda, i hope your day is well. with all the holiday things blogging just was not on my plate. but i see beauty in all there is i just realize one day i will get old and all the perceptions will fail and then what? 70 years at best and then darkness? no sir!! the light stays on in god's kingdom.praise the lord. not only is it great now, but the future is bright as well!!
brian at 11:19AM on Jan 7th 2008