Conference Report: British Personalist Forum International Conference 2015; Episode 15

The UK Elections are now over and vote-aggedon has apparently averted.  While we wait to see whether the Scottish Lion actually intends to eat the British Bulldog, dipped in chocolate and deep-fried, let us return to our new 96 part series, The 2015 British Personalist Forum International Conference, A Report. 

     We regret to inform our readers that we are presently unable to bring you parts 3 to 14 of the series owing to the libellous and obscene nature of many of the comments made by our correspondent concerning his fellow conference-goers.  We bring you now, therefore:

Episode 15: Two Curious Afflictions and a Diagnosis

Such a cornucopia of clever ideas; do you not agree?  A veritable garden of philosophical delights, both earthly and unearthly.  And yet this was not all there was to see.  For we come now to the large (stolen) Indian jewel in the middle of the shiny gold hat which was our conference: namely, our keynote speaker, Professor Raymond Tallis.  Professor Tallis kindly took time off from saving the NHS in order to come and mediate between the brainy and the beastly.  Using his considerable skills as a medical practitioner, he diagnosed two of the great ills which afflict modern thought. These, he dubbed “Neuromania” and “Darwinitis”.   

     “Neuromania”, as you might guess, is the morbid tendency to identify persons with their brains.   Thanks to developments in the neurosciences, this has become quite fashionable these days.  There have been all sorts of exciting experiments in recent years, such as those by Benjamin Libet.  These experiments generally claim to demonstrate that freewill and other important aspects of consciousness are, in fact, predetermined in or by (I’m never quite sure which) the electro-chemical fizzing between our ears.  They prove nothing of the sort, of course, as Ray clearly showed.  

     Interested readers might also like to have a look at the debate between Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams on ‘The Nature of Human Beings and the Question of their Ultimate Origin’.  Organised by Sophia Europa, specifically by Margaret Yee of St. Cross College, the debate was held at the Sheldonian Theatre in 2012.  A You Tube video of the event can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN4cfh1Fac. 

     This is a subject particularly close to James Beauregard’s heart, for he too is on a mission to point out that persons are much more than electrochemical fizzing.  This, as James has pointed out on more than one occasion, is a Very Important Issue; not least because of the development of neuro-ethics, a new field in which neurological data is regarded as the vital clue to understanding moral decisions.  In abstraction, this would be worrying enough, in the courtroom, as I am told happens in the US, it is quite terrifying.  

     If I am honest, I also find it very annoying that there are people out there confidently writing books on ethics and the deep and difficult questions of our nature with little or no philosophical training.  A background in neuroscience is, it seems all one needs; and, after all, it is not as though one needs to have studied ethics or philosophy to understand the subtle issues involved.

     Back to the Prof.. “Darwinitis”, it turns out, is a peculiar condition in which biological evolution is believed to hold the key to human nature.  Symptoms may also include spots and personal itching, though Ray didn’t actually say so.
     The difficulties with such a claim are many and various.  Evolution itself, when understood as a random process of “natural”, selection is ill-equipped to explain the emergence of complex patterns of existence, such as human consciousness, for example.  More simply, human beings are not merely biological organisms.  They are social and cultural ones too.  But the “rules” of biology don’t apply to cultural institutions or agents; and when they are mistakenly applied the results always turn out to be counter-intuitive, alarming, and flatly contrary to most sensible moral intuitions.  One can;t help wondering whether we haven’t had enough of Social Darwinism already.

     It is worth pointing out that not all evolutionary biologists buy into this absurdly reductive conception of persons and their development. Julian Huxley, for one, seems to have been possessed of a far richer understanding of human existence.  He, at least, was unafraid to talk about the cultural and social nature of persons, not to mention transcendence and spirituality.  True, Huxley thought that the development of personal consciousness in its intellectual and spiritual forms was really a matter of evolutionary processes extending themselves into a new dimension.  But it seems obvious that, in saying so, evolution itself became, for him, a very different kind of metaphor.  

     Biological reductivism isn’t just a kind of category error, however; that is, one where terms belonging to one field -- or, as Wittgensteinians might say, language-game -- are dropped from on high into another, quite different, one.  Worse than that, it also punches dirty great holes in the plot of human history and conscious development.

     What, for instance, is the point of mythologising behaviours which are already conditioned and, in some sense, “underwritten” by evolution?  In the matter of ethical behaviour, for example, the idea seems to be that there is some evolutionary advantage to moral or altruistic behaviour.  Then, in order to make it palatable, we dress these supposedly utilitarian activities up in moral and religious raiment.  The question is, ‘why bother?’ If evolution is doing its (alleged) job properly, then we shouldn’t need to persuade people to do something which they are already doing and which will stop them dying out.  Evolutionary processes have already made such behaviour-patterns rewarding in some way, why bother with all the fancy duds of goodness and rightness too?   

     And it’s not just ethics, is it.

                                         Consider sex.

       That’s enough of that!  I’m sorry but we really must get on.

     The point is, we can’t just get down to doing the deed of darkness without mythologising it in some way.  But what’s the point of that?  Sex, like soup, is nice; but unlike soup it is, by and large, reasonably effective at reproducing the species: there’s your ‘survival value’ right there.  So what, pray tell, is the point in mythologising it the way we do?  If it’s all about evolutionary advantage, that should be enough for anyone; there’s no need to bang on about love and romance and monogamy just so we can bang one another.  Surely something like “phwaor!” would be sufficient preliminaries to dipping your bread.  But of course, it isn’t sufficient for most people, not remotely.  Hearts and flowers and love poetry and so on may be evolutionary overkill but they do seem quite important to the continuation of our species, not to mention our sense of who we are.  

     Besides, if the evolutionary biologists were right, then it would severely cut down on my opportunities to use my very favourite collection of words in the English language; for I am a chap not in search of procreative activities nor simple mating behaviours neither.   I am (with considerable gratitude to H. P. Lovecraft) a chap in search of “that nighted penguin fringed abyss”.

     Romance dead? Not a bit of it.  

       And even if it were, as that dark and crafty, long-faced lover said,

                                         That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may

End up with carpet burns.

     In the end, you may be pleased to know, Ray generously concluded that persons are much more than just a pretty brain-pattern.  What’s more, he was prepared to go so far as to conclude that neither are we merely beasts; this, as I pointed out, despite having just sat down to dinner with us all.

     Considering how flat that, rather good, joke fell on the night, however, I am not so sure.  

     All this was, to some degree, preaching to the choir, of course; and a very good sermon it was too.  If there was any slight issue with his presentation it was that his slide of an MRI brain scan was the wrong way round, as my best beloved -- herself an MRI radiographer -- pointed out.  Shame on you, Professor T., shame on you.  

     At the conclusion of this excellent keynote speech and the exciting discussion which followed it, we did what philosophers off the leash will do: headed to the pub around the corner for a pint or two of large.  Then we went on rampage around Oxford before returning to our gloomy digs.  

     And so, to bed.

     We regret that we have been forced, once again, to end this report at this point.  Given the notoriously lurid imagination of our correspondent, not to mention his excessively “colourful” vocabulary, we trust the reasons for doing so are obvious.  We hope you will return again soon for episode 16 in our new 112 part series: The 2015 British Personalist Forum International Conference, A Report.