Philosophy Chronology

Notes for "Breaking the Spell" (2006) by Daniel Dennett

Chapter Two Some Questions About Science [p. 29 - 53]

• "People who want to study religiion usually have an ax to grind. They either want to defend their favorite religion from its critics or want to demonstrate the irrationality and futility of religion, and this tends to infect their methods with bias. " [p. 32]
  
  
• "The question is not whether good science of religion as a natural phenomenon is possible: it is. The question is whether we should do it. " [p. 34]
  
  
• "Research is expensive and sometimes has harmful side effects." [p. 34]
  
  
• "... opinion is divided among those who are already convinced this [scientific study of religion] would be a good idea, those who are dubious and inclined to doubt that it would be of much value, and those who find the proposal evil - offensive, dangerous and stupid." [p. 39]
  
  
• "I appreciate that many readers will be profoundly distrustful of the tack I am taking here. They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that - that's what I am, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do." [p. 53]

In the last quote, the operative word is "some". What convictions is he going to focus on?

Chapter Three Why Good Things Happen [p. 54 - 93]

• "When I began working on this book, I conducted interviews with quite a few people to try to get a sense of the different roles that religion plays in their lives. This was not scientific data-gathering (though I have also done some of that) but, rather, an attempt to set theories and opinions aside and go directly to real people and let them tell me in their own words why religion was so important to them." [p. 54]

This is a bit of a worry. How did he select the people that he interviewed? All people are real people. Why should they be open with him? How open were they? What did they think of the interviews? Etc.

• "According to a recent survey, only about a quarter of the population of the United States understands that evolution is about as well established as the fact that water is H2O. This embarrassing statistic requires some explanation, since other scientifically advanced nations don't show the same pattern. ... But how, in the face of so much striking confirmation and massive scientific evidence, could so many Americans disbelieve in evolution? It is simple: they have been solemnly told that the theory of evolution is false (or at least unproven) by people they trust more than they trust scientists." [p. 60]

• "Lawyers have a stock Latin phrase, cui bono?, which means 'Who benefits from this?', a question that is even more central in evolutionary biology than in law." [p. 62]
  
  
• Dennett describes sexual reproduction among vertebrates as an example of looking at the question of 'Who benefits from this?'. "Mammals, for instance, are hosts to trillions of parasites ... there are trillions of parasites of thousands of different species inhabiting your gut, your blood, your skin, your hair, your mouth, and every part of your body. ... Before a female can mature to reproductive age, her parasites evolve to fit her better than any glove. (Meanwhile, her immune system evolves to combat them, a standoff ...). If she gave birth to a clone, her parasites would ... find themselves at home from the outset. They would already be optimized to their new surroundings. If instead she uses sexual reproduction to endow her offspring with a mixed set of genes (half from her mate), many of these genes - or more directly, their products, in the offspring's internal defenses - will be alien or cryptic to the ship-jumping parasites. Instead of home sweet home, the parasites will find themselves in terra incognita. This gives the offspring a big head start..." [p. 65]

The example is not directly related to Dennett's interest in religion, but it is fascinating nonetheless. I have not seen this argument before. I now know a little more about biology than I did before.

• "There was a time, not so very long ago by evolutionary standards, when there was no religion on this planet, and now there is lots of it. Why?" [p. 70]
  
  
• Dennet describes the low-fat craze of a few years ago when nutritionists thought that the key to preventing obesity was simply to cut fat from the diet. "Now it is emerging that this simplistic approach to dieting is counterproductive: when you strenuously keep your fat-craving system unsatisfied, this intensifies your body's compensatory efforts, leading to overindulgence in carbohydrates. ... It is a story of what can happen when the demands of public health policy - and the demands of the public for simple advice [emphasis added] - run up against the confusing ambiguity of real science." [p. 73]
  
  
• "This concept of cultural replicators - items that are copied over and over - has been given a name by Richard Dawkins (1976), who proposed to call them memes ... cultural transmission can sometimes mimic genetic transmission, permitting competing variants to be copied at different rates, resulting in gradual revisions in features of those cultural items, and these revisions have no deliberate, fore-sighted authors. The most obvious, and well-researched, examples are natural languages. ... The gradual transformations that turned Latin into French and Portuguese and other offspring languages were not intended, planned, foreseen, desired, commanded by anyone." [p. 78 - 79]
  
  
• "For our purposes now, the main reason for taking the memes perspective seriously is that it permits us to look a the cui bono? question for every designed feature of religion without prejudging the issue of whether we are talking about genetic or cultural evolution, and whether the rationale for a design feature is free-floating or explicitly somebody's rationale. This expands the space of possible evolutionary theories, opening up room for us to consider multilevel, mixed processes, getting away from the simplistic ideas of 'genes for religion' at one extreme and a 'conspiracy of priests' at the other extreme and permitting us to consider much more interesting (and more probable) accounts of how and why religions evolve." [p. 82]

 

Philosophy Chronology

Notes for "Breaking the Spell" (2006) by Daniel Dennett

Chapter One Breaking Which Spell? [p. 3 - 28]

• "We often find human beings setting aside their personal interests, their health, their chances to have children, and devoting their entire lives to furthering the interests of an idea that has lodged in their brains." [p. 4]
  
  
• "Muslims ... Christians, Jews, ..., Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists, ... And don't forget the many thousands of secular humanists who have given their lives for Democracy, or Justice, or just plain Truth. There are many ideas to die for." [p. 4]
  
  
• "We have ... the ability to transcend our genetic imperatives. ... How did just one species, Homo sapiens, come to have these extraordinary perspectives on their own lives?" [p. 4]

While I agree that we are the only species with the ability to reflect on our actions, I am not sure I agree with the statement that we have the ability to transcend our genetic imperatives. Our ability to think and reflect on that thinking is part of our genetic imperative. We cannot stop ourselves from thinking.

• "What are the ancestors of the domesticated ideas that spread today? ... The great ideas of religion have been holding us human beings enthralled for thousands of years, longer than recorded history but still just a brief moment in biological time." [p. 6]

The first seven chapters attempt to address this question and the last three chapters then look at religion as it is practiced today.

• "... what we usually call religions are composed of a variety of quite different phenomena, arising from different circumstances and having different implications, forming a loose family of phenomena ..." [p. 7]

Philosophy has a tendency to want to define its terms, but at least Dennett recognizes the fuzziness of the attempt. Here is his definition of religion.

• "Religions ... as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought." [p. 9]
  
  
• "The core phenomenon of religion, I am proposing, invokes gods who are effective agents in real time, and who play a central role in the way participants think about what they ought to do." [p. 11-12]

Dennet clarifies his definition by noting that the agent(s) or god need not be anthropormorphic although many people do use such language as God will answer their prayers, or God created the universe and God have mercy. He also notes that there are people who do not join a group and have individual private religious experiences. He views such people as spiritual but not religious.

• "The problem is that there are good spells and then there are bad spells. ... Religious cults and political fanatics are not the only casters of evil spells today. Think of the people who are addicted to drugs, or gambling, or alcohol, or child pornography. ... Perhaps, while we are at it, we should enquire whether the world would be a better place if we could snap our fingers and cure the workaholics, too - but now I am entering controversial waters." [p. 13]
  
  
• "... we others have no right to intrude on their private practices so long as we can be quite sure that they are not injuring others. But it is getting harder and harder to be sure about when this is the case." [p. 13 - 14]
  
  
• "People make themselves dependent upon many things. Some think they cannot live without daily newspapers and a free press, whereas others think they cannot live without cigarettes. Some think a life without music would not be worth living, and others think a life without religion would not be worth living. Are these addictions? Or are these genuine needs that we should strive to preserve, at almost any cost?" [p. 14]
  
  
• "For many people, probably a majority of the people on Earth, nothing matters more than religion. For this very reason, it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about it. That, in a nutshell, is the argument of this book." [p. 15]
  
  
• "Wouldn't such an exhaustive and invasive examination damage the phenomenon itself? Mightn't it break the spell? That is a good question, and I don't know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. That is why I raise the question, to explore it carefully now, so that we (1) don't rush headlong into inquiries we would all be much better off not undertaking, and yet (2) don't hide facts from ourselves that could guide us to better lives for all." [p. 15]

Yet two pages later Dennett says, "The spell that I say must be broken is the taboo against a forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many." He appears to brush aside his first point that we "don't rush headlong into inquiries we would all be much better off not undertaking. I am also a little bothered by his use of the term scientific. In this context, what constitutes a scientific investigation? I assume it means a recourse to empirical data, yet I am not sure what would constitute data. Also I am not sure what would constitute a theory in this setting. The scientific method has, as one of its tenants, that a theory must be able to be disconfirmed. What exactly is it that is to be disconfirmed?

• "Indeed, many people think that the best hope for humankind is that we can bring together all of the religions of the world in a mutually respectful conversation and ultimate agreement on how to treat one another. They may be right, but they don't know. ... just as many people believe that world peace is less important, in both the short run and the long, than the global triumph of their particular religion over its competition. Some see religion as the best hope for peace, a lifeboat that we dare not rock lest we overturn it and all of us perish, and others see religious self-identification as the main source of conflict and violence in the world, and believe just as fervently that religious conviction is a terrible substitute for calm, informed reasoning. Good intentions pave both roads." [p. 16]
  
  
• " 'Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.' Anonymous. " [p. 17]

 

SUMMARY of the session: A stimulating beginning. The second chapter appears to address my concerns about the nature of a scientific investigation of religion, but I will need to reread it more carefully, and make some notes, before I decide if I agree with Dennett. The making of these notes is an important component, for me, of actually reading the book carefully. Reading is more than simply rapid eye movement. The point is not to read, but to think, and thinking involves a variety of processes. It is these processes that are important, not the actual artifact (i.e. the notes). 11:20 am