tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163559542024-03-18T10:46:51.195+00:00Darwinian Conservatism by Larry ArnhartTraditionalist conservatives and classical liberals need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human nature supports Burkean conservatives and Lockean liberals in their realist view of human imperfectibility, and in their commitment to ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires, cultural traditions, and prudential judgments. Arnhart's email address is larnhart1@niu.edu.Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comBlogger1453125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-78636771694678359812024-03-13T20:00:00.001+00:002024-03-14T09:27:58.613+00:00After Joy's Death: How C. S. Lewis Lost His Faith in the Rational Defense of Christianity<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz8WAIyJlwIrN9oAMOHWgvIOVZt_cCZ2XdS8053oYt4FOlUMyTe1N0-hp94Q7Fj8mML379O9E_KrsFRiHv6ScaSKO6657KGFwuMFPZv186CW4_pcwqEZX2o_8l83-qre49sUTUv0l0o3Bg58OGJ5MILsnzIfrIg4tEF_4BZzE3hwk46cGJAI8QpQ/s1632/JoyandLewis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1632" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz8WAIyJlwIrN9oAMOHWgvIOVZt_cCZ2XdS8053oYt4FOlUMyTe1N0-hp94Q7Fj8mML379O9E_KrsFRiHv6ScaSKO6657KGFwuMFPZv186CW4_pcwqEZX2o_8l83-qre49sUTUv0l0o3Bg58OGJ5MILsnzIfrIg4tEF_4BZzE3hwk46cGJAI8QpQ/s320/JoyandLewis.jpg" width="235" /></a></div><p> Joy and Jack Lewis in Oxford at Their Home ("the Kilns")</p><p><br /></p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQm0VYBOp_H6b7li0BDe-LG5_qyYVK-_uJ_g-Rp0tHizUiO9osiIgOz8O51TdGO5VyAiZpHJBgOhxmykinPh1olfHlR0vNVtImx4mZAXf4pPUb1TDv3MJ8YoXCzcdbQC9SFPm9hKIsy8BySi1xHIopb-nE5omqGva7kvvr8VvgARZnsKv2VWUd4Q/s656/Joy.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="656" data-original-width="445" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQm0VYBOp_H6b7li0BDe-LG5_qyYVK-_uJ_g-Rp0tHizUiO9osiIgOz8O51TdGO5VyAiZpHJBgOhxmykinPh1olfHlR0vNVtImx4mZAXf4pPUb1TDv3MJ8YoXCzcdbQC9SFPm9hKIsy8BySi1xHIopb-nE5omqGva7kvvr8VvgARZnsKv2VWUd4Q/s320/Joy.webp" width="217" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div> Joy Davidman at a Younger Age in New York City<p></p><p><br /></p><p>After writing a series of posts on C. S. Lewis a month ago, I thought I had said enough about him for now. But one unanswered question about him has continued to bang around my brain. </p><p>William Nicholson raised the question in <i>Shadowlands</i>--his 1985 television screenplay, 1989 stage play, and 1993 screenplay for the motion picture (with Anthony Hopkins as Lewis and Debra Winger as Joy Gresham). Based on his careful reading of Lewis's writings, Nicholson tells the love story of Lewis and Gresham and Lewis's suffering when she dies from cancer after only three years of joyful marriage.</p><p>Nicholson's play has two acts (Nicholson 1991). Act One begins with Lewis lecturing to a popular audience and asking: "If God loves us, why does He allow us to suffer so much?" Lewis's answer is that God uses suffering to teach us that we need God--that we need God to save us from life in this world so that we can enter another world after death where we can live our "real life." </p><p>In a subtle way, Nicholson's play leads us to wonder whether Lewis's personal experience with the pain of suffering Joy's death forced him to doubt this faith in God's goodness and love for human beings. My hesitant conclusion is that in his grief, Lewis wavered in his Christian faith, but he did not lose it, although he did lose his faith that Christianity could be rationally defended as supported by evidence. In other words, Lewis resolved that he would <i>believe</i> that God is good, and that eternal bliss is achieved in another world after death, even though all the evidence from his suffering contradicted this belief.</p><p>In <i>Mere Christianity</i>, Lewis wrote: "I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it" (123). After the death of Joy, Lewis changed his mind, because then he asked us to accept Christianity by faith even when the weight of the evidence is against it. If I am right about this, then after a long life of trying to engage in the Reason/Revelation debate (particularly, in the Oxford Socratic Club), Lewis decided that such debate was impossible, because there is no common ground ("the weight of the evidence") on which rational debate could be conducted.</p><p>In the lecture at the beginning of Act One, Lewis asserts that while "God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy," "He wants us to be lovable." And to make us lovable, God must use suffering to break through our selfishness.</p><blockquote><p>"God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in the world, and that mechanism is suffering. To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't He wake us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be awakened is the dream that all is well."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"Now that is the most dangerous illusion of them all. Self-sufficient is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"God loves us, so He makes us the gift of suffering. Through suffering, we release our hold on the toys of this world, and know our true good lies in another world."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"We're like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of His chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. The suffering in the world is not the failure of God's love for us; it is that love in action."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial is no more than the shadowlands. Real life has not begun yet" (2-3).</p></blockquote><p>In Act One, Nicholson tells the story of Jack and Joy becoming friends. Joy had been a Jewish communist atheist in New York City who converted to Christianity, and who had been deeply influenced by reading Lewis's writings. She was forced to divorce her husband because of his sexual affairs with other women and his drinking. She moved to London, became a good friend of Lewis's, and then moved to Oxford to be close to Lewis. When she discovered that her visa for staying in England would not be renewed, Lewis agreed to marry her so that she could have British citizenship. They agreed that this was not a "real" marriage, but only a way to continue their friendship. But the audience for the play and the movie can tell that they have fallen deeply into romantic love, although neither one will acknowledge this.</p><p>But then at the end of Act One, Joy is walking in her home and falls to the floor. A bone in her leg has broken because she has a cancer that has spread into her skeleton. Doctors will tell her that her cancer will probably kill her in a short time.</p><p>Act Two begins with Lewis delivering another popular lecture on suffering and the goodness of God that closely resembles the lecture at the beginning of Act One. But Lewis starts this second lecture by reflecting on Joy's suffering:</p><blockquote><p>"Recently, a friend of mine, a brave and Christian woman, collapsed in terrible pain. One minute she seemed fit and well. The next minute she was in agony. She is now in the hospital, suffering from advanced bone cancer, and almost certainly dying. Why?"</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"I find it hard to believe that God loves her. If you love someone, you don't want them to suffer. You can't bear it. You want to take their suffering onto yourself. If even I feel that, why doesn't God? Not just once in history, on the cross, but again and again? Today. Now."</p></blockquote><p>He then goes on to make the same argument he had made in the first lecture about how God uses suffering to teach us that "our true good lies in another world." But Nicholson has this note at the beginning of Act Two for whoever plays the part of Lewis: "As the talk proceeds, there are signs that he is using it to persuade himself of a belief that is beginning to slide. However, at this stage, he hardly realizes this process himself" (59).</p><p>Through the rest of Act Two, we see the ever deeper crisis of faith for Lewis. Lewis and a friend of his who is an Anglican priest pray that God will intervene to give Joy a miraculous recovery. And indeed her cancer does go into remission, and her doctors say it looks like a miracle. But Lewis tells Joy that "Miracles frighten me," because "I'm frightened of loving God too much for giving you back to me. That way, I could just as easily hate God, later" (81).</p><p>After two years of delightful life together, the cancerous growth returns, and Joy dies. Lewis is thrown into the deepest grief and he tells his friends that his faith makes no sense of what has happened. He tells his brother Warnie: "I'm so terribly afraid. Of never seeing her again. Of thinking that suffering is just suffering after all. No cause. No purpose. No pattern. No sense. Just pain, in a world of pain" (97).</p><p>As she was dying, Joy had worried about Jack's grief. She told him: "What I'm trying to say is that pain, then, is part of this happiness, now. That's the deal" (90).</p><p>Lewis repeats this thought from Joy in the last words of the play, when he says: "I find I can live with the pain, after all. The pain, now, is part of the happiness, then. That's the deal. Only shadows, Joy" (100).</p><p>The movie differs in two ways. In the play, Lewis is imagining himself speaking to Joy. In the movie, he is speaking to Douglas, his stepson. And in the movie, Lewis ends with "That's the deal."</p><p>By dropping the sentence "Only shadows, Joy," Nicholson might be implying that Lewis is wavering in his belief that this life is only "shadows" of the "real life" after death in another world. That "the pain, now, is part of the happiness, then" is "the deal" in <i>this </i>life, and there's no promise of <i>another</i> life.</p><p>In any case, Lewis seems to have concluded that the Christian faith in the good and loving God cannot be defended rationally based on evidence.</p><p>Shortly before he moved to Cambridge University in 1954, Lewis read his last paper to the Oxford Socratic Club on April 30, 1953 (Hooper 1979: 170-172). The paper was called "Faith and Evidence," and Professor H. H. Price, the Professor of Logic at Oxford who was an agnostic, responded to the paper. Lewis's paper was later published under the title "On Obstinacy in Belief" (Lewis 2017).</p><p>Lewis began by noting that in some of the papers read to the Oxford Socratic Club, people contrasted the Christian attitude of believing without evidence or despite the evidence against it and the scientific attitude of proportioning the strength of one's belief to the evidence and withdrawing belief for which there is insufficient evidence. If this were true, Lewis observed, these two groups of people would have nothing to say to one another, and neither side could comprehend the other.</p><p>But in fact, Lewis argued, this contrast is not true. Usually, even when there is some evidence that appears to contradict Christian beliefs, there is also some favorable evidence. Some of the favorable evidence is "in the form of external events: as when I go to see a man, moved by what I felt to be a whim, and find he has been praying that I should come to him that day" (2017, 25). Therefore, answered prayer is an example of evidence favoring Christianity, even though it is not absolutely conclusive empirical proof.</p><p>In his essay on "The Efficacy of Prayer," Lewis referred to the miraculous recovery of Joy in answer to prayer as an example of this. </p><blockquote><p>"I have stood by the bedside of a woman whose thighbone was eaten through with cancer and who had thriving colonies of the disease in many other bones as well. It took three people to move her in bed. The doctors predicted a few months of life; the nurses (who often know better), a few weeks. A good man laid his hands on her and prayed. A year later the patient was walking (uphill, too, through rough woodland) and the man who took the last X-ray photos was saying, 'These bones are as solid as rock. It's miraculous" (2017: 2).</p></blockquote><p>But, a few years after this essay was first published, and after Joy's death, Lewis wrote this in <i>A Grief Observed</i>, his notebook of his thoughts about grieving for her death:</p><blockquote><p>"Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language. What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, 'good'? Doesn't all the <i>prima facie </i>evidence suggest exactly the opposite? What have we to set against it?"</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>. . .</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"What chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H. [Joy] and I offered and all the false hopes we had. Not hopes raised merely by our own wishful thinking; hopes encouraged, even forced upon, by false diagnoses, by X-ray photographs, by strange remissions, by one temporary recovery that might have ranked as a miracle. Step by step we were 'led up the garden path.' Time after time, when He seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"I wrote that last night. It was a yell rather than a thought. Let me try it over again. Is it rational to believe in a bad God? Anyway, in a God so bad as all that? The Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile?" (42-43)</p></blockquote><p>One sees here that while Lewis did not doubt God's <i>existence</i>, he did doubt His <i>goodness</i>, because all evidence was against it and in favor of God as the Cosmic Sadist. So, in <i>A Grief Observed</i>, he wrote: "Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'" (18-19).</p><p>But then in the last lines of <i>A Grief Observed</i>, Lewis indicated that God's goodness would be vindicated by Joy's mystical union with God in Heaven: "How wicked it would be, if we would, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, 'I am at peace with God.' She smiled, but not at me. <i>Poi si torno all' eterna fontana</i>" (89). The last line is from Canto 31 of Dante's <i>Paradiso</i>, where Dante described Beatrice looking at him for the last time in Paradise: "So I prayed; and as distant as she was, she smiled and gazed at me. <i>Then she turned back to the Eternal Fountain."</i></p><p>But notice that Lewis must rely on Dante's poetic invention without offering any evidence supporting the belief in Joy's eternal bliss.</p><p>In some of her last words to Lewis, Joy professed to believe this, but she suggested a lack of confidence: "Only shadows, Jack. That's what you're always saying. Real life hasn't begun yet. You'd just better be right" (91).</p><p>Joy and Jack <i>believed</i> this as a matter of blind faith even though the weight of the evidence was against it. They had lost their faith in the rational defense of Christianity.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Hooper, Walter. 1979. "Oxford's Bonny Fighter." In James T. Como, ed., <i>C. S. Lewis a the Breakfast Table, and Other Reminiscences</i>, 137-185. New York: Macmillan.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1952. <i>Mere Christianity</i>. New York: Macmillan.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1989. <i>A Grief Observed</i>. New York: HarperCollins.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 2017. <i>The World's Last Night, and Other Essays</i>. New York: HarperOne.</p><p>Nicholson, William. 1991. <i>Shadowlands</i>. New York: Penguin. </p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-33564501858319063232024-03-04T20:06:00.007+00:002024-03-05T12:37:46.920+00:00The Supreme Court Rejects the Original Meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the Trump Disqualification Case<p> I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2023/09/does-original-meaning-of-14th-amendment.html">argued</a> that under the original meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Donald Trump is disqualified from holding any public office in the United States. Consequently, I <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-colorado-supreme-court-rules-that.html">agreed</a> with the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court that Trump was disqualified from running for the presidency. But still I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-congress-but-not-supreme-court.html">suggested</a> that the Congress should debate the possibility of granting Trump amnesty.</p><p>I have also said that this illustrates the evolutionary psychology of constitutional law: human beings have an evolved mental capacity for symbolism that allows them to create the moral idea of someone having the authority of a president as prescribed by the language of a constitution.</p><p>Today, the Supreme Court released its <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-719_19m2.pdf">opinion</a> in <i>Trump v. Anderson</i> overturning the Colorado Supreme Court decision. Remarkably, the Justices were unanimous in concluding that state governments and state courts do not have the power to enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates. They give two reasons for this. First, they are unanimous in saying that allowing the states to enforce Section 3 would create "a chaotic state-by-state patchwork" of standards for applying Section 3. Second, five of the Justices believe that enforcement of Section 3 requires congressional enforcement under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. </p><p>This is a bad decision because both of these reasons violate the original meaning of Section 3. Thus, we see here a clear case in which the originalist Justices on the Court have departed from the original meaning of the Constitution.</p><p>The worry about a chaotic patchwork of state court decisions makes no sense. Clearly, state courts have the power to interpret the U. S. Constitution as applied to the cases that come before them. When the state courts disagree in their interpretations, then one of the primary functions of the United States Supreme Court is to resolve these disagreements by declaring a uniform interpretation. So, in this case, the U.S. Supreme Court needed to formulate uniform standards for interpreting Section 3 as applied to Trump. There is nothing in the 14th Amendment that denies the power of state courts to interpret that amendment subject to review by the Supreme Court.</p><p>Moreover, the Constitution clearly grants to state governments and state courts the power to judge the constitutional qualifications of candidates for federal office--for example, the requirements that the president must be at least 35 years old and a "natural born" citizen of the United States. In a 2012 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, Neil Gorsuch upheld a Colorado state official's decision to bar from the ballot a presidential candidate who was not a natural born citizen. The Colorado Supreme Court decision in December cited this opinion by Gorsuch. But now that Gorsuch is on the U.S. Supreme Court, he is contradicting this earlier decision without any explanation for why he is doing this.</p><p>Nothing in the 14th Amendment limits the pre-existing power of state courts and ultimately the Supreme Court to adjudicate a presidential qualifications dispute before the election. The majority in this case, however, claim that Section 5 of the 14th Amendment means that Section 3 cannot be enforced by the courts without congressional legislation.</p><p>Section 5 reads "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." Notice that this says "power" and not "<i>the</i> power." Nor does it say "<i>exclusive </i>power" or "<i>sole </i>power." Elsewhere, the Constitution does speak of "the sole Power" (Art. 1, sec. 2, cl. 5, and sec. 3, cl. 6) and "exclusive Legislation" (Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 17).</p><p>In Art. I, sec. 10, "No State shall" is used for more than 15 prohibitions. This phrase "No State shall" also appears in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. But this does not appear in Section 5 of the 14th Amendment.</p><p>Furthermore, it has been generally understood in many Supreme Court opinions that state courts and state governments can enforce the provisions of the 14th Amendment even without any congressional enforcement legislation under Section 5. Otherwise, as the Colorado Supreme Court observed, Congress could nullify the 14th Amendment by not passing enacting legislation. Why should Section 3 be any different? Today's decision does not even ask that question much less answer it.</p><p>Today's decision also makes a deceptive argument about the "lack of historical precedent" for the "state enforcement of Section 3 against federal officeholders or candidates in the years following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment" (p. 9 of the Per Curiam decision). In a footnote, they admit: "We are aware of just one example of state enforcement against a would-be federal officer. In 1868, the Governor of Georgia refused to commission John Christy, who had won the most votes in a congressional election, because--in the Governor's view--Section 3 made Christy ineligible to serve. But the Governor's determination was not final; a committee of the House reviewed Christy's qualifications itself and recommended that he not be seated. The full House never acted on the matter, and Christy was never seated."</p><p>The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has <a href="https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/past-14th-amendment-disqualifications/">published</a> a good chart of all the cases of "Public Officials Adjudicated to be Disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment." There are only eight individuals on this list, which includes John Christy. And, indeed, Christy is the only example of a state enforcement of the Section 3 disqualification against a candidate for federal office.</p><p>But the Supreme Court Justices are silent about the obvious explanation for why this list is so short. There are two reasons for this. First, it was so well understood that former Confederates who had taken an oath to support the Constitution before the Civil War were disqualified from holding public office under Section 3 that they either did not seek office, or they petitioned for amnesty. In fact, <a href="https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Confederate-Amnesty-Petitions-PI_0233_Select-Committee-on-Reconstruction-1867-71.pdf">thousands</a> of former Confederates petitioned the House Select Committee on Reconstruction of the 40th and 41st Congresses (1867-1871) asking that Congress remove their Section 3 disqualification.</p><p>The second reason for why the list is so short is that the Section 3 disqualification for most former Confederates was in effect for less than four years. The 14th Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868; and Congress passed the Amnesty Act on May 22, 1872, which granted amnesty to most of the ex-Confederates.</p><p>The Supreme Court says nothing about this history, which shows clearly that everyone understood the original meaning of Section 3 that anyone who had violated his oath to support the Constitution by engaging in insurrection was disqualified from public office at the federal or state level.</p><p>So, it's clear that in order to rule in Trump's favor, the originalists on the Supreme Court had to disregard the original meaning of the 14th Amendment. Of course, the five originalists (Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Alito) had to do this to win the votes of the four Justices who are not originalists (Roberts, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson).</p><p>Here's what the Court should have done. They should have upheld the Colorado Supreme Court's decision that as an insurrectionist who violated his oath of office to support the Constitution, Trump is disqualified for public office under Section 3. But they should also have noted that deciding whether disqualifying Trump would be good for the country is a political question rather than a judicial question; and if two-thirds of each House of Congress want to grant amnesty to Trump, they can do that under Section 3.</p><p>Actually, the Congress has already passed a general amnesty law--the Amnesty Act of 1872--that could be interpreted as suspending Section 3 after 1872:</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote>"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each house concurring therein), that all political disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Representatives of the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States."</blockquote><p>The language here--"all persons whomsoever, except . . ."--would seem to have set aside Section 3 from all future application after 1872. But I remain undecided about this. </p><p></p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-48068392380897046232024-03-03T11:01:00.000+00:002024-03-03T11:01:37.756+00:00Fabienne Picard Responds to "Religious Experience in the Brain"<p>Dr. Fabienne Picard has sent me a message in response to my posts on the neurology of ecstatic epilepsy and religious experience. She has given me permission to publish that message here.</p><p>Dr. Picard is an Associate Professor at the Medical School of Geneva, and she is a Senior Attending Physician in the Epilepsy Unit at the Department of Neurology, University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland.</p><p>Here is her statement.</p><p><br /></p><p>I am happy you were interested in ecstatic epilepsy, but there are a few misunderstandings.</p><p>I totally agree that ecstatic epilepsy is not the only way to have spiritual/ecstatic/mystical/religious experiences. I agree they are possible also through the normal functioning of the brain, for instance, in response to religious/meditation practices (probably through the letting go of all the system of predictions and anticipations forming the predictive coding system).</p><p>I have talked a lot with Buddhist experts who experienced the same ecstatic phenomena through meditation and a body scan session, so a functional alteration of brain functioning achieving the same state of clarity/revelation may occur.</p><p>There are people with ecstatic epilepsy reporting religious experiences. I have not published all the cases I have collected up to now. In my opinion, each person interprets the state in his way according to previous religious or non-religious beliefs/context. Some people with ecstatic epilepsy told me that "if I was religious, I would have believed it was a meeting with God . . ."</p><p>Because of the ineffability, people try to find a way to describe it in a sense such that other people could have a vague idea of it, maybe they "embellish" with images or interpret with their beliefs. Maybe the "light" descried by St. Paul was an image of the clarity he experienced, because there are no words to express the sudden mental clarity. For St. Paul, we do not have descriptions of convulsive seizures (contrary to Dostoevsky, St. Theresa of Avila, Ramana Maharshi, Akbar, emperor of the Mughal Empire); so, I cannot affirm St. Paul had ecstatic epilepsy, but it remains a possibility.</p><p>The fact that all patients stimulated within the dorsal anterior insula did not experience an ecstatic phenomenon does not remove any credibility to what we found. For primary cortices such as the primary motor cortex, each stimulation (in roughly the same region) in any patient gives rise to a movement. Such complex cognitive states are not so easy to induce, probably some individuals are more prone to them, even when related to meditation or prayers or to the use of psychedelics (only 15-20% of people have mystical experience under psilocybin, so there should be some predisposition to have it or not).</p><p>Even for other symptoms, such as deja vu, the stimulation of the entorhinal cortex does give rise to these symptoms only in a certain percentage of people. The important thing is that only the stimulation of the anterior insula gives rise to such experience, and not all the stimulations by other electrodes in other parts of the brain (in the 6 or 7 patients now with ecstatic epilepsy and the one without ecstatic epilepsy).</p><p>Regarding the descriptions of the 52 patients with ecstatic seizures, sometimes the descriptions lacked details (I really took time to let them describe more and more in detail), but the neurologists probably understood it was amazing for the patient. My first patients, before taking time and explaining to me which extraordinary feelings they felt, only explained to the previous physicians that they had a warmth in the body or lightness rising in the head or like bubbles rising in the head . . . ! </p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-32160152145152226712024-03-01T19:00:00.004+00:002024-03-02T19:20:36.353+00:00Religious Experience in the Brain: Saint Paul's Mystical Visions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinlBES3jCYGFw2uOf078wg51IeXpYKKmv91r3Enb7pXeLA3Rbh5Br5uO8GM7pp0zySAfrVQpcxq-zgtiBGQhPv-ejlJ-Y5PnwcO3PWqgBVBKDV_EDmkWQthyXXBUPbkgQ_X-NMvtF9cMN4fNwka2rBGaAAI8U2kzp92zELhgUCNDxwHMdxBP9Bfg/s900/conversion-of-saint-paul-michelangelo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="868" data-original-width="900" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinlBES3jCYGFw2uOf078wg51IeXpYKKmv91r3Enb7pXeLA3Rbh5Br5uO8GM7pp0zySAfrVQpcxq-zgtiBGQhPv-ejlJ-Y5PnwcO3PWqgBVBKDV_EDmkWQthyXXBUPbkgQ_X-NMvtF9cMN4fNwka2rBGaAAI8U2kzp92zELhgUCNDxwHMdxBP9Bfg/s320/conversion-of-saint-paul-michelangelo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> Michelangelo's "Conversion of Saint Paul," a Fresco in the Sistine Chapel<br /><p><br /></p><p>In my previous post, I might have conveyed the impression that religious experience can be fully explained by ecstatic epilepsy triggered in the anterior insula. If I did, that's a mistake that I need to correct. I should have been more emphatic about the disclaimer that I put near the end of the post: "Of course, this does not mean that ecstatic epilepsy is the only source in the brain for religious experience. There are other ways in which the brain might facilitate human access to the divine (Nelson 2011; Newberg 2018)." I can illustrate this point by considering the neurobiology of Saint Paul's ecstatic mysticism.</p><p>In his classic study of Paul's mysticism--<i>The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle </i>(1931)--Albert Schweitzer briefly mentioned the possibility that Paul's mystical visions could have come from seizures. Since then, others have suggested that Paul's visions were caused by ecstatic epileptic seizures. And, as I indicated in my previous post, Fabrienne Picard has identified the anterior insula as the primary brain structure for the sort of ecstatic seizures experienced by Paul. But in her book on the neurobiology of Paul's ecstatic experiences, Colleen Shantz concluded that "the suggestion that Paul's visions were caused by epileptic seizures should be laid aside or, at the very least, bracketed as an insufficient explanation" (2009: 151).</p><p>Although there are a few cases--such as Dostoevsky--where ecstatic epilepsy seems to be crucial for religious experience, these cases are so rare that they cannot explain most religious experience. Epilepsy itself affects only a small minority (between 4 and 10 per 1,000) of every human population. And among those with temporal lobe epilepsy, less than 5% have ecstatic experiences.</p><p>The rarity of ecstatic epilepsy is evident in the work of Picard. In one review article, she surveyed a total of 55 individuals who have had ecstatic seizures, based on reports from 1951 to 2015 (Gschwind and Picard 2016). As I noted in my previous post, Picard's most dramatic evidence for her "anterior insula hypothesis" comes from his treatment of epileptic patients in Geneva, Switzerland. In treating one patient with ecstatic epilepsy, she found that he could induce ecstatic auras by the electrical stimulation of her anterior insula. Even more amazing, she found that he could induce ecstatic auras by the electrical stimulation of the anterior in one patient with temporal lobe epilepsy who had never had ecstatic experiences previously. But then, after reporting these cases, she made a remarkable admission: "It must be specified that the induction of an ecstatic aura through the stimulation of the dorsal part of the anterior insula is not the rule, as there are many patients in whom stimulations of this region did not give rise to ecstatic experience" (Picard 2023: 1375). Shouldn't this failure to replicate her findings count as a falsification of her hypothesis?</p><p><br /></p><p>EXPLAINING PAUL'S MYSTICAL VISIONS?</p><p>Picard could support her hypothesis if she could show that people with ecstatic epileptic seizures have religious experiences like those of Paul's mystical visions as reported in the New Testament. But she fails to do that.</p><p>Acts 9:3-9 describes the famous conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul had been persecuting the Christians, and he was traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus where he planned to take some Christians as prisoners. But then he had an amazing experience of conversion:</p><blockquote><p>"As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from Heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' 'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. 'Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.' The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he could see nothing. So, they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days, he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything."</p></blockquote><p>In Damascus, a disciple named Ananias had a vision in which the Lord told him that he was to meet Paul, restore his vision, and tell him that he had been chosen to proclaim Jesus to the Gentiles and the Jews.</p><p>Later, Paul said he should be considered an apostle of Christ because he had seen and talked with Christ like the original apostles. Writing to the Corinthian Christians, he even described his experience in ascending into Heaven:</p><blockquote><p>"I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know--God knows. And I know that this man--whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows--was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell" (1 Cor. 12:1-4).</p></blockquote><p>Here Paul might have shown the influence of some Jewish mystical traditions. Some Jewish texts identified "paradise" as the restoration of Eden in Heaven that might be established in the renewed Earth. There was disagreement about the number of heavens, but the most common view identified three or seven heavens. The "third heaven" was probably the highest heaven, where God was.</p><p>So, if Picard were right about the anterior insula being the prime locus for religious experiences like this, we would predict that people having ecstatic epileptic seizures in the anterior insula would report visions and revelations similar to what Paul reported. But when we examine the 52 cases of ecstatic seizures surveyed by Gschwind and Picard, and look at the signs of ecstatic experience, we see very little resemblance to what Paul reported (Gschwind and Picard 2016: 4-9). We see a lot of vague descriptions of a euphoric state such as "sensation of joy," "pleasant butterfly in stomach," "sudden feeling of happiness," "calm euphoria," "feeling union with the whole world," "feeling like orgasm," and "intense feelings of bliss and well-being." But in these 52 cases, there is only one reference to "heaven," one reference to "paradise," three references to "God," and no references at all to Jesus Christ. This hardly looks anything like Paul's mystical experiences.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE NEED FOR A COMPLEX NEUROBIOLOGICAL MODEL</p><p>If there is any neurobiological explanation for religious experiences like those of Paul, it must be more complex than simply identifying the posterior insula as the prime mover. That more complex neurobiological model has been emerging in the research surveyed by people like Shantz (2009) and Andrew Newberg (2018). In contrast to Picard's attempt to explain religious experience as caused by a brain disorder--temporal lobe epilepsy--Shantz and Newberg see religious experience as made possible by the normal functioning of the brain in response to religious practices that alter the brain.</p><p>There have now been over one hundred neuroimaging and physiological studies of people engaged in religious activities such as rituals, meditation, prayer, and speaking in tongues (glossolalia), which work on the autonomic nervous system to induce the altered states of consciousness that constitute ecstatic religious experiences. This can work on the sympathetic nervous system (the arousal system) to induce states of hyperarousal and ultimately a feeling of ecstasy. Or this can work on the parasympathetic system (the quiescent system) to induce states of hyperquiescence and ultimately a sense of bliss.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jA1NyCE4M2g" width="320" youtube-src-id="jA1NyCE4M2g"></iframe></div><br /><p> A Ten-Minute Video on the Autonomic Nervous System</p><p><br /></p><p>For example, Newberg and his colleagues have led neuroimaging studies of a group of Franciscan nuns engaging in the spiritual practice of centering prayer (Newberg 2018: 214-19). Centering prayer requires that one concentrate one's attention on a particular prayer or phrase from the Bible and meditate on its meaning with one's eyes closed for a prolonged period--from twenty minutes to several hours. Over time, the spiritual state of the person deepens until they feel open to God's presence.</p><p>Although the technique of centering prayer was first developed by some Trappist monks in the 1970s, it draws from the tradition of contemplative prayer that stretches back to the early days of Christian monasticism.</p><p>Newberg and his colleagues have found that centering prayer begins with increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, particularly in the right hemisphere, and in the anterior cingulate gyrus, which are involved in focusing attention. The prefrontal cortex must then activate the thalamus, which can block sensory information getting into the parietal lobe, so that fewer distracting outside stimuli arrive in the visual cortex and parietal lobe. A primary function of the parietal lobe is to gather all the sensory information we receive and use it to give us a spatial representation of our body in the world. So that blocking sensory information from entering the parietal lobe can blur the boundaries between self and world, and we can feel a sense of oneness with everything in the universe, which could explain the experience of the nuns feeling intimately connected to God in their centering prayer. Centering prayer is also associated with important structures in the limbic system such as the amygdala that are involved in intense emotions.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF PAUL'S ASCENT INTO HEAVEN</p><p>This doesn't explain much about the specific content of Paul's ecstatic visions. But as Shantz argues, a neurobiological reading of 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 can illuminate two of the puzzling features of Paul's ecstatic experience--his confusion about the location of his body and his inability to speak about what he heard in heaven (Shantz 2009: 93-109). Paul said that when he ascended into Heaven, he did not know whether he was "in the body or apart from the body." And he "heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell." Why was Paul so bewildered about his body? And why was he so confused about how to describe his experience?</p><p>To answer the first question, as Shantz suggests, we can begin by considering how our normal experience of our body depends on the representation of our body in our brain. Our brain carries a neural map of our body--sometimes called the homunculus map--composed of two maps: a set of sensory correlates on our parietal lobes and a set of motor correlates on our frontal lobes. Amazingly, these bodily coordinates are mapped out on our brains from our toes to our tongue. This neural mapping of the body is connected with the somaesthetic association area in the parietal lobes, with the right parietal lobe being predominantly in control.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUYlS1f0CqXLPlRWbfE8kcS4ZJKtFrRUiALl5eFJGabx4VotLWiMTp7hN6wsBwdB9VH7XdFGZz6EnXoSpIQyjIIuUKv2JALFtqHsZTayj8jcLDSH63Gl35H-f7CG5CsQ0OQYIznKSqCxGoNHbBdUvgwItRcSLhbNzZpB4qXQvFxChvwLrrFz1Fjw/s599/homunculus-map-spencer-sutton.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="599" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUYlS1f0CqXLPlRWbfE8kcS4ZJKtFrRUiALl5eFJGabx4VotLWiMTp7hN6wsBwdB9VH7XdFGZz6EnXoSpIQyjIIuUKv2JALFtqHsZTayj8jcLDSH63Gl35H-f7CG5CsQ0OQYIznKSqCxGoNHbBdUvgwItRcSLhbNzZpB4qXQvFxChvwLrrFz1Fjw/s320/homunculus-map-spencer-sutton.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> The Homunculus Map<div><br /></div><div><br /><p>The normal functioning of this somatosensory representation of the body in the brain gives us our subjective sense of our embodiment and the orientation of our body in space. But as I have noted in some <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=somatoparaphrenia">previous posts</a>, damage to the right cerebral hemisphere (such as from stroke) can produce a loss of body identity, such as in somatoparaphrenia, when people feel that their left leg or arm is not really theirs. </p><p>Shantz suggests that Paul's ecstatic experience of trance put him into an altered state of consciousness that was "somewhere between" the "healthy and impaired functioning" of the brain's somatosensory experience of bodily identity (98). Although she does not cite any specific neurobiological studies of ecstatic experiences to support this idea, she speculates that Paul's religious mind could have altered (through prayer or other religious activities?) the functioning of his brain so that, on the one hand, the bodily sensations from his body and from his somatosensory cortex were blocked from consciousness, but, on the other hand, the neural impulses from the orientation association area were intensified.</p><p>This then leads Shantz into her explanation of Paul's experience in ascending into Heaven:</p><blockquote><p>". . . The human mind is left to interpret this strange combination of neurological silence and noise in an intelligible way. Thus, the body is perceived as present, but its sensations--its weight, boundaries, pain, or voluntary motion--are all absent from consciousness. In an attempt to interpret these phenomena as coherently as possible, ecstatics frequently report the sensation of floating or flying without physical boundaries between themselves and the people and objects in their awareness. Not surprisingly, descriptions of ascent are also common in interpretations of ecstatic experiences. Paul's ascent is among them. Like other ecstatic thinkers, Paul genuinely could not know the status of his body by using the sensate signals that would normally inform him. The question of whether he was in the body or outside it is not simply a rhetorical means of dismissing the issue; it is rather an account of one of the phenomena of trance" (98).</p></blockquote><p>This is a speculative explanation. But if we assume that for every mental experience there must be some neural correlates in the brain, then, as an extrapolation from what we know about the normal and abnormal functioning of the brain's system for bodily awareness, this is a plausible neurobiological explanation of how Paul's ecstatic experience of ascending to Heaven arose from his brain. </p><p>In principle, we could find experimental support for this by doing brain imaging studies of people having ecstatic experiences comparable to Paul's. And yet, in this reliance on brain imaging research, we should always keep in mind, <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2008/06/brain-imaging-is-not-mind-reading.html">as I have argued</a> in previous posts, that brain imaging is not mind reading. For example, while fMRI detects blood flow in the brain, it's a matter of interpretation as to what that reveals about the structure and functioning of the brain. Moreover, none of this research gives us direct access to the subjective consciousness of the people we are studying: ultimately, scientific observers must rely on the patients' verbal reports of what they are thinking and feeling. Neurologists like Picard face the same problem: when they electrically stimulate some part of a patient's brain, they cannot know what is happening in the patient's mind until the patient reports what he thinks is happening in his mind.</p><p>But then what would be the neurobiological explanation for the ineffability of Paul's experience--his confusion about how or even whether he could describe his experience? This is a general problem for the scientific study of religion because so much of religious experience is reported as indescribable in ordinary language, and this creates the suspicion that the object of such ineffable experience is not real.</p><p>As with her answer to the first question, Shantz's answer to this question is speculative, and yet plausible so far as it is grounded in present neurobiological knowledge of how some brain activity in the right hemisphere can be ineffable when it is cut off from the language centers in the left hemisphere (101-108).</p><p>The primary language centers of the brain are all in the left hemisphere--Broca's area, Wernicke's area, the angular gyrus, and the primary auditory cortex. And yet the right hemisphere does seem to process the emotional nuances of language.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dUrE2t7AfOw375ZZQekzq7Pgno0F4hrmda2fLApKIoLN7CCzhCa0fnm662ddOdyReFIoI9hY1b95FrAEstNdYfuGEyzZoqB-PYw031S6eYTynb_eQjGalb6VWJTcpBWbwuFYCXxTP-WY-Q6orQM_1D54AQNkLQkoeLNNTKhtiT0dWlOjSGQ9bw/s1024/language-centers-l.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dUrE2t7AfOw375ZZQekzq7Pgno0F4hrmda2fLApKIoLN7CCzhCa0fnm662ddOdyReFIoI9hY1b95FrAEstNdYfuGEyzZoqB-PYw031S6eYTynb_eQjGalb6VWJTcpBWbwuFYCXxTP-WY-Q6orQM_1D54AQNkLQkoeLNNTKhtiT0dWlOjSGQ9bw/s320/language-centers-l.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Brain imaging studies of people during altered states of consciousness (such as that induced by hallucinogenic drugs, meditation, and speaking in tongues) show brain activity dominated by the right hemisphere rather than the left hemisphere. We can infer, therefore, that if mystical experiences like Paul's ascent to Heaven arise primarily from the right hemisphere of the brain, the language processing centers in the left hemisphere might struggle to express these experiences in clear language. <p></p><p>But then since we have no direct access to the mind of Paul or any other mystic, or any other human being for that matter, we must rely on their verbal or written reports of their mystical experiences. And so, to the extent that mystical experiences are truly ineffable, we cannot understand what they are--unless, of course, we have mystical experiences of our own.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE NATURAL EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE BRAIN</p><p>So what does all of this tell us about the truth or falsity of religious claims, or whether God--or any supernatural being--really exists?</p><p>The scientists studying the neurobiology of religious experience often report that people who have had an ecstatic experience say that it was "infinitely more real" than any other experience in their life. Does that intense feeling of the reality of the supernatural object of their experience prove the real existence of the supernatural? Or could this subjective imagination of the reality of the supernatural be delusional? After all, even religious believers often dismiss the religious experiences of people in different religious traditions as illusions. For example, most religious believers who are not Mormons will doubt whether Joseph Smith really did meet the Angel Moroni, who delivered to him the golden plates on which was written the Book of Mormon. And, of course, skeptics or atheists do not see religious experiences as testifying to the truth of religious claims about the supernatural.</p><p>But still it's hard to see how we could ever prove that there has never been a true revelation of the supernatural through religious experience. And that's why the Reason/Revelation debate remains unresolvable.</p><p>I see the neurobiology of religious belief as evidence for there being a natural desire for religious experience rooted in the evolved nature of the brain. Some of the evolutionary psychologists of religion (like Justin Barrett) will see this as showing that God guided natural human evolution so that the human brain would be naturally inclined to belief in God. Others will see this natural evolution of religious belief as an evolved propensity of the human brain to delusional belief in God. As far as I can see, evolutionary neurobiology is open to either interpretation.</p><p>As I have argued in some <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=emergence+of+the+soul+in+the+brain">previous posts</a>, what we see here is the natural emergence of the soul in the brain. Some religious believers will say that the creation of the human soul was a supernatural miracle by God acting outside the natural order of evolution. But some theistic evolutionists will say that God chose to use the natural evolution of the brain so that the soul could emerge in the brain.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Gschwind, Markus, and Fabienne Picard. 2016. "Ecstatic Epileptic Seizures: A Glimpse into the Multiple Roles of the Insula." <i>Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience</i> 10:21.</p><p>Newberg, Andrew. 2018. <i>Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality</i>. New York: Columbia University Press.</p><p>Picard, Fabienne. 2023. "Ecstatic or Mystical Experience through Epilepsy." <i>Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience</i> 35 (9): 1372-1381.</p><p>Schweitzer, Albert. 1931. <i>The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle</i>. New York: Henry Holt.</p><p>Shantz, Colleen. 2009. <i>Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle's Life and Thought</i>. New York: Cambridge University Press.</p><p><br /></p></div>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-58856704899339747522024-02-20T19:02:00.003+00:002024-03-02T20:35:29.144+00:00Mystical Experience Through Ecstatic Epilepsy Triggered in the Anterior Insula<p>People with ecstatic epilepsy have epileptic auras in which they have mystical experiences. In recent years, there has been growing evidence that this experience is triggered in the anterior insula in the temporal lobe of the brain. This raises the question of whether all religious experience can be explained as rooted in the brain, and perhaps crucially in the anterior insula, as a product of the evolutionary history of the brain. Does this show that there is a natural desire for religious experience as rooted in our evolved human nature? If this is so, then we must wonder whether this is or is not a sign of the real existence of a transcendent realm of divinity that is the object of mystical experience.</p><p><br /></p><p>DEFINING RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND MYSTICISM: WILLIAM JAMES</p><p>To begin, despite the difficulties of definition in this whole area of human experience, we must define what we mean by mystical experience; and in doing that, we must also define religious experience in so far as it is rooted in mystical experience. I have found William James in <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience </i>(1902) to be a helpful starting point.</p><p>James distinguished two branches of religion--institutional religion and personal religion. Institutional religion is about theology, ceremony, and ecclesiastical organization, by which the social life of religious believers is structured--the external life of a religious group. By contrast, personal religion is about the inner life of each believer as he conducts his own religious feelings, thoughts, and activities. James chose to concentrate on personal religion because it seemed more fundamental than institutional religion. Theological, ceremonial, and ecclesiastical traditions of every religion depend upon the personal religious experience of their founders. For example, Paul is often considered the founder of the Christian church, but his authority to preach to the early Christian churches depended on his mystical experiences--such as his conversion on the road to Damascus--in which he saw and heard Jesus Christ and received a direct revelation from God.</p><p>James proposed:</p><blockquote><p>"Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us <i>the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.</i> Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow" (James 1987: 36).</p></blockquote><p>He then proposed defining mysticism as having four marks. 1. <i>Ineffability</i>: By this negative trait, no mystical experience can be adequately reported in words, because it can be known only by direct experience--by being felt rather than understood. 2. <i>Noetic quality</i>: Although it is a state of feeling, a mystical experience does convey a profound mental clarity or revelation of the deepest truths about the universe, often an ecstatic sense of oneness with Everything or the Transcendent Order. 3. <i>Transiency</i>: Mystical states can be experienced for only brief periods of time--from a few minutes to an hour or two. 4. <i>Passivity</i>: Although mystical states can be facilitated by exercises such as meditation, prayer, and reading of spiritual texts, when the mystical consciousness arises, it feels as though it was compelled by a higher power beyond the person's will (James 1987: 343-44).</p><p><br /></p><p>WHAT IS ECSTATIC EPILEPSY?</p><p>Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy in which people have mystical experiences during the aura before the onset of convulsive epileptic seizures (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10513764/">Picard 2023</a>). (In Greek, <i>ekstasis </i>means "standing outside oneself.") Epilepsy affects a small minority (between 4 and 10 per 1,000) of every human population. It has occurred in every culture throughout history. It is most easily recognized in its convulsive form, in which people suddenly fall to the ground, lose consciousness, and writhe with seizures. </p><p>In ancient Greece, it was called the "sacred disease" because it appeared to be caused by divine inspiration. Around 400 BC, Hippocrates (or someone belonging to the Hippocratic school of medicine) wrote <a href="https://archive.org/details/hippocrates02hippuoft/hippocrates02hippuoft/page/126/mode/2up?view=theater">"On the Sacred Disease,"</a> in which he began by dismissing the popular belief in epilepsy's divine origin: "The disease called sacred . . . appears to me no more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from which it originates, like other affections." And, in particular, epilepsy is caused by the brain: "Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations."</p><p>Since the end of the nineteenth century, neurologists have understood that epilepsy is caused by sudden, abnormal electrical discharges in the cortex of the brain (Sacks 2012). In generalized seizures, the electrical discharge comes from both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously. In a grand mal seizure, the person falls to the ground with convulsive twitching of the muscles and loses consciousness within seconds. In a petit mal seizure, a person loses consciousness for only a few seconds without realizing what has happened. And even the people around him might not notice anything unusual, as they continue talking with him.</p><p>In contrast to such generalized seizures, partial or focal epilepsy arises from a particular area of brain damage or sensitivity that can be genetically inherited or acquired by injury. Focal conscious seizures are often called "auras," which are sometimes warnings that convulsive seizures with loss of consciousness will soon follow. During an aura, depending on the location of the seizure in the brain, there will be different kinds of sensory or psychic hallucinations. So, for example, a seizure in the olfactory area of the brain might produce strange smells, or a seizure in the visual cortex might produce visual hallucinations.</p><blockquote><p>"The symptoms of partial seizures depend on the location of the focus: they may be motor (twitching of certain muscles), autonomic (nausea, a rising feeling in the stomach, etc.), sensory (abnormalities or hallucinations of sight, sound, smell, or other sensations), or psychic (sudden feelings of joy or fear without apparent cause, deja vu or jamais vu, or sudden, often unusual, trains of thought). Partial seizure activity may be confined to the epileptic focus, or it may spread to other areas of the brain, and occasionally it leads to a generalized convulsion" (Sacks 2012: 134).</p></blockquote><p>What are here identified as "hallucinations" need to be distinguished from illusions and delusions. In his <i>Principles of Psychology</i>, James explained:</p><blockquote><p>"Hallucinations usually appear abruptly and have the character of being forced upon the subject. . . .They are often talked of as mental <i>images</i> projected outwards by mistake. But where a hallucination is complete, it is much more than a mental image. <i>A hallucination is a strictly sensational form of consciousness, as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there.</i> The object happens not to be there, that is all" (James 1983: 758-59). </p></blockquote><p>In ecstatic temporal lobe epilepsy, the hallucinations are mystical experiences of ecstatic or transcendent joy or heavenly bliss, with a feeling of certainty or clarity in the revelation of divine truth (Picard 2023). For example, one of the first clear reports of ecstatic epilepsy came from Fyodor Dostoevsky, who described his epileptic seizures in his letters and notebooks, and then he described characters in five of his novels as having similar experiences--such as Prince Myshkin in <i>The Idiot</i> (Voskuil 2013). On one evening before Easter, Dostoevsky was talking with friends about religion. Then, when a bell tolled midnight, he shouted, "God exists, He exists." Later, he described his experience in a letter:</p><blockquote><p>"The air was filled with a big noise, and I tried to move. I felt the heaven was going down to earth, and that it had engulfed me. I have really touched God. He came into me, yes God exists, I cried, and I don't remember anything else. You all, healthy people, can't imagine the happiness which we epileptics feel during the second or so before our fit. . . . I don't know if this felicity lasts for seconds, hours, or months, but believe me, for all the joys that life may bring, I would not exchange this one.</p></blockquote><p>We might assume that people who are already predisposed to religious belief are most likely to have religious seizures. But doctors who study ecstatic epilepsy have reported some cases of people with no religious belief having a religious conversion as a result their mystical seizures. Kenneth Dewhurst and A. W. Beard (1970) provided some examples of this. One was a bus conductor who had an ecstatic seizure while collecting fares:</p><blockquote><p>"He was suddenly overcome with a feeling of bliss. He felt he was literally in Heaven. He collected the fares correctly, telling his passengers at the same time how pleased he was to be in Heaven. . . . He remained in this state of exaltation, hearing divine and angelic voices, for two days. Afterwards he was able to recall these experiences, and he continued to believe in their validity."</p></blockquote><p>But then, three years later, after three seizures over three days, he said that his mind had "cleared," and he had lost his faith. His religious conversion had been overturned, and he had been converted to atheism! One of Fabienne Picard's epileptic patients was an atheist physicist who became a Christian after having experienced ecstatic seizures. Oddly, then, these ecstatic conversions can go from atheism to religion or from religion to atheism.</p><p><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00021/full">Gschwind and Picard</a> (2016) surveyed 52 cases of epileptic patients who had had ecstatic auras. Some of the most common descriptions of what the patients reported included: ineffable joy, extreme happiness as if one being in Heaven, feeling union with the whole world and with god, feeling like an orgasm, bright and expanding light, complete mental clarity, everything is joined together in one whole, certainty immune to rational doubt, and intense feelings of bliss and well-being.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE ANTERIOR INSULA HYPOTHESIS: FROM SELF-OWNERSHIP TO RELIGIOUS ECSTASY</p><p>In 2009, Picard and A. D. (Bud) Craig proposed the hypothesis that the primary brain structure involved in ecstatic epilepsy was the anterior insula deep in the temporal lobe.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kzcFpYYe8_NWMaf4h1o3bslxpjJpNOF7m7uYQwKJTY70_pE_GzVSawKkLgxCfzyMZwq-1qU9CY7cg-8sH82fNKqU1NXIRUCuWZpkp7ipfqh_jKHxR0ViZiaSeqQ6RTbZ_nRDTDFqrERva1oQSrWSdgwd2j9OUTlgTYVaZrsOOmdI3G-lcp_oAQ/s474/insula.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="344" data-original-width="474" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kzcFpYYe8_NWMaf4h1o3bslxpjJpNOF7m7uYQwKJTY70_pE_GzVSawKkLgxCfzyMZwq-1qU9CY7cg-8sH82fNKqU1NXIRUCuWZpkp7ipfqh_jKHxR0ViZiaSeqQ6RTbZ_nRDTDFqrERva1oQSrWSdgwd2j9OUTlgTYVaZrsOOmdI3G-lcp_oAQ/s320/insula.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee;">I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Craig+insula">written</a> previously about Craig's studies of the insula. He has shown that t</span><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">he insular cortex is a crucial part of the neural network of the brain that supports interoceptive self-awareness and self-ownership of one's body and the social emotions in which concern for oneself is extended to concern for others. In understanding this, social neuroscience provides the evolved biological ground in the brain for what John Locke identified as human self-ownership or self-concern that is extended to concern for others in mammalian animals like humans. The Lockean natural right to property is rooted in this natural sense of self-ownership.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The most dramatic evidence for the anterior insula hypothesis to explain ecstatic epilepsy has come from Picard's treatment of epileptics at the University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland (Picard 2023). Working with a patient with ecstatic epilepsy, who was undergoing presurgical evaluation with intracerebral electrodes, she recorded spontaneous seizures that were associated with electrical discharges in the anterior insula. Moreover, her ecstatic auras could be reproduced through electrical stimulation of her anterior insula. Even more amazing than that, Picard found that she could induce ecstatic auras by the electrical stimulation of the anterior insula in one patient with temporal lobe epilepsy who had never had ecstatic experiences previously!</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">If we're persuaded by this evidence that ecstatic epilepsy is somehow connected to the anterior insula, then the next question would be how to explain this: What exactly is happening in the anterior insula to cause ecstatic seizures? Picard's primary hypothesis for answering this question proposes "that temporary disruptions to activity in the anterior insula could interrupt the generation of interoceptive prediction errors, and cause one to experience the absence of uncertainty, and thereby, a sense of bliss," because this would "mimic perfect prediction of the body's physiological state" (Picard 2023: 1372).</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Craig has claimed that the posterior insula is the primary place in the brain for the representation of interoceptive signals--the signals of the internal physiological state of the body--and integrating those signals with signals from the external environment. The signals are combined with information from limbic and frontal cortices, and then they are represented as consciously experienced feelings in the anterior part of the insula.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Picard has extended Craig's theory through the theory of predictive coding that has become popular with many neuroscientists (Clark 2023). The idea of predictive coding is that rather than passively perceiving reality, our mind actively predicts it. Before our brain receives external signals from our environment and internal signals from our body, our brain has already made top-down predictions about what those signals are likely to be; and then when the real bottom-up signals arrive in the brain, they are compared with the prediction. The mismatch between the prediction and the real incoming signals provides a prediction error, which can then be used to change the future prediction.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Picard's theory is that an epileptic seizure in the anterior insula can interrupt the predictive coding system, so that a person in the ecstatic state will feel the internal state of his body and the external state of his environment as if he had predicted them perfectly. This would create a sense of clarity, certainty, and unity with everything in the world, resulting in a feeling of perfect, even heavenly, bliss.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Even if this theory proves not to be completely correct, it does look like the kind of theory that would explain how an epileptic seizure in the anterior insula could produce an experience of mystical ecstasy in contact with the divine.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Of course, this does not mean that ecstatic epilepsy is the only source in the brain for religious experience. There are other ways in which the brain might facilitate human access to the divine (Nelson 2011; Newberg 2018).</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">"ALL ARE DIVINE, AND ALL HUMAN"</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">Does this mystical experience affirm the reality of the supernatural realm that fulfills our deepest longings for eternal happiness? Some of us will say no, because, as James said, it's a hallucination--"a strictly sensational form of consciousness, as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there," but "the object happens not to be there, that is all." Others will say yes, because, as C. S. Lewis said, the natural desire for Joy manifest in mystical experience is a sign of the real existence of the object that would satisfy that desire. I see no way to prove which answer is correct.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">Even if we are convinced by a neurological explanation of how mystical experiences arise in the brain, that does not prove that those experiences are pure hallucinations. After all, God could be using the neural apparatus of the brain as a medium for revealing His truth--a natural cause for a supernatural Revelation.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">Something like this might have been intimated by Hippocrates at the beginning of "On the Sacred Disease" when he said that epilepsy was "<i>no more</i> divine than other diseases" that have natural causes. At the end of his essay, he declared:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">"The disease called the Sacred arises from causes as the others, namely, those things which enter and quit the body, such as cold, the sun, and the winds, which are ever changing and are never at rest. And these things are divine, so that there is no necessity for making a distinction, and holding this disease to be more divine than the others, but all are divine, and all human."</span></span></blockquote><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">In my next post, I will consider the case of St. Paul. His mystical vision on the road to Damascus might have been caused by an ecstatic epileptic seizure. But it's not clear to me that that would deny the possibility that it was also a revelation from God.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">REFERENCES</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Clark, Andy. 2023. <i>The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality</i>. New York: Pantheon Books.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Dewhurst, Kenneth, and A. W. Beard. 1970. "Sudden Religious Conversions in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy." <i>British Journal of Psychiatry </i>117: 497-507.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Gschwind, Markus, and Fabrienne Picard. 2016. "Ecstatic Epileptic Seizures: A Glimpse into the Multiple Roles of the Insula." <i>Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience </i>10:21.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">James, William. 1983. <i>Principles of Psychology.</i> Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">James, William. 1987. <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i>. In <i>Writings 1902-1910</i>, 1-477. New York: The Library of America.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Nelson, Kevin. 2011. <i>The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for the God Experience. </i>New York: Dutton.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Newberg, Andrew. 2018. <i>Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality</i>. New York: Columbia University Press.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Picard, Fabienne. 2023. "Ecstatic or Mystical Experience Through Epilepsy." <i>Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience</i> 35 (9): 1372-1381.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Picard, Fabienne, and A. D. Craig. 2009. "Ecstatic Epileptic Seizures: A Potential Window on the Neural Basis for Human Self-Awareness." <i>Epilepsy and Behavior </i>16: 539-546.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Sacks, Oliver. 2012. <i>Hallucinations</i>. New York: Random House.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;">Voskuil, Piet H. A. 2013. "Epilepsy in Dostoevsky's Novel." <i>Frontiers in Neurology and Neuroscience </i>31: 195-214.</span></p><p></p><br style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;" />Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-68077377834277257432024-02-15T20:56:00.000+00:002024-02-15T20:56:03.855+00:00C. S. Lewis on the Fringes of Mysticism<p>I have been wondering whether evolutionary psychology and cognitive science can explain the varieties of religious experience. In particular, I have been thinking about the essential religious experience of mysticism--the immediate sense experience of the divine by seeing, hearing, or feeling the Transcendent Order behind or beyond Nature. I am considering whether mystical experience ultimately expresses the shamanic ecstasy or awe before the Numinous that was the original religious experience in prehistoric foraging bands of human beings, which C. S. Lewis identified as "the seed of religious experience."</p><p>A preeminent example of Christian mysticism in the New Testament is the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul was a Jewish leader who persecuted the Jewish Christians. He was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus where he would persecute the Christians there. Suddenly, a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard the voice of Jesus asking him why he persecuted Jesus. Those travelling with Paul saw the light and heard a sound, but they did not hear or see Jesus. When Paul rose from the ground, he was blind, and would remain blind for three days. In Damascus, Ananias, a Christian disciple, had a vision of Jesus telling him that Paul would be chosen to preach Christ not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. When Ananias placed his hands on Paul, Paul's sight was restored, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit and baptized. He began to preach that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God. This provoked the Jews to persecute him. Some of the Roman rulers believed that he was insane (Acts 9:3-19; 22:6-21; 26:12-24).</p><p>Although he was not one of the original apostles, Paul claimed that his having seen Jesus entitled him to be considered an apostle. "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" (1 Corinthians 9:1). He interpreted his mystical vision as a direct revelation from Jesus: "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:11-12). He even claimed to have ascended into "the third heaven" and up to "paradise"--"whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know--God knows" (2 Corinthians 12:1-4). Paul also affirmed one of the fundamental themes of mysticism--deification. As believers contemplate God, they become like God. As Paul said: "we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate (or reflect) the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18).</p><p>As the most popular Christian writer of the past one hundred years, Lewis offers a good entry into the modern Christian understanding of mysticism. David Downing has shown in his book <i>Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C. S. Lewis</i> (2005) that Lewis studied the history and literature of mysticism throughout his life, and the themes of mysticism ran through his writings. The title of Downing's book refers to a passage where Lewis describes his conversion in mystical terms: "Into the region of awe, in deepest solitude there is a road right out of the self, a commerce with . . . the naked Other, imageless (though our imagination salutes it with a hundred images), unknown, undefined, desired" (<i>Surprised by Joy</i>, 221). </p><p>In one of his letters, Lewis defined mysticism as "a kind of direct experience of God, immediate as a taste or colour" (<i>Letters</i>, 3:109). This echoes the language of Evelyn Underhill, whose work on mysticism Lewis studied, who described mysticism as "the direct intuition or experience of God." She claimed that while "every human soul has a latent capacity for God," mystics have "realized this capacity with an astonishing success" (<i>Mystics</i>, 9, 11).</p><p>Lewis denied that he himself was a mystic. In his <i>Letters to Malcolm</i>, he observed: "You and I are people of the foothills. In the happy days when I was still a walker, I loved the hills, and even mountain walks, but I was no climber. I hadn't the head. So now, I do not attempt the precipices of mysticism" (85). In a private letter to a woman who was troubled by some shocking passages in the Bible, Lewis wrote: "But why are baffling passages left in at all? Oh, because God speaks not only for us little ones but for the great sages and mystics who <i>experience </i>what we only <i>read about</i>, and to whom all the words have therefore different (richer) contents" (<i>Letters</i>, 3:357).</p><p>But even if Lewis was not a mystic, he developed the mystical theme of deification. He interpreted Paul's teaching about how reflecting God's glory transforms Christians into God's likeness by saying "a Christian is to Christ as a mirror is to an object" (<i>Christian Reflections</i>, 6). He repeatedly used this metaphor of spiritual growth as mirroring Christ. Thus, "every Christian is to become a little Christ" (<i>MC</i>, 153). "The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God" (141). In Heaven, we will be "gods and goddesses" (175). We will be "true and everlasting and really divine persons only in Heaven" (<i>WG</i>, 174-75).</p><p>Since Lewis was not a mystic, he could not directly experience--he could not really <i>see--</i>the divinization of human beings in Heaven. He could only <i>imagine </i>what this is like and express this through metaphorical imagery. So, at the end of his Narnia Chronicles--his fairy-tale for children that has sold over 100 million copies, which has become a series of major motion pictures--he evoked a figurative image of eternal bliss in Heaven. At the end of <i>The Last Battle</i>, Aslan the Lion--the Christ-like ruler of Narnia--has been speaking to the characters about how they now must die and then enter the real Narnia, where they will live forever. Lewis has Jewel the Unicorn declare:</p><blockquote><p>"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!" (196).</p></blockquote><p>Then Lewis writes about death and eternal life in the last sentences of <i>The Last Battle</i>: </p><blockquote><p>"And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before" (210-211).</p></blockquote><p>In his "spiritual biography of C. S. Lewis," Devin Brown adapted these words to give a vision of Lewis (Jack) after death entering Heaven:</p><blockquote><p>"And for us this is the end of Jack's story, and we can most truly say that he lived happily ever after. But for Jack, it was only the beginning of the real story. All his life in this world and all his adventures on earth had only been the cover and the title page: now at last he was beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before" (224).</p></blockquote><p>But while Lewis could only evoke the reality of Heaven through the metaphorical language of a fairy-tale, mystics like Paul could actually <i>see</i> Heaven through mystical hallucinations arising from ecstatic experiences in their brains, particularly through ecstatic epilepsy. That's the topic for my next post.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES </p><p>Brown, Devin. 2013. <i>A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis</i>. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.</p><p>Downing, David C. 2005. <i>In the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C. S. Lewis</i>. Downer's Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1955. <i>Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life</i>. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1960. <i>Mere Christianity</i>. New York: Macmillan.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1964. <i>Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer</i>. New York: HarperCollins.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1973. <i>Christian Reflections</i>. Edited by Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1980. <i>The Weight of Glory, and Other Essays</i>. New York: HarperCollins.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1984. <i>The Last Battle</i>. New York: HarperCollins.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 2007. <i>The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963</i>. Edited by Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins.</p><p>Underhill, Evelyn. 1964. <i>The Mystics of the Church</i>. New York: Schocken.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-71778888669860744282024-02-11T17:44:00.002+00:002024-02-11T17:44:53.805+00:00The Failure of C. S. Lewis's Moral Argument for God<p> In Mark St. Germain's play "Freud's Last Session," but not in the movie, there is one scene where Freud and Lewis disagree about the source of morality (14):<br /></p><p>LEWIS. We have to begin by accepting that there's a moral law at work ---</p><p>FREUD. I don't accept it. There is no moral law, only our feeble attempts to control chaos.</p><p>LEWIS. Moral codes have existed throughout time. Tell me one civilization that admired theft or cowardice. Mankind has never rewarded selfishness.</p><p>FREUD. Selfishness rewards itself.</p><p>LEWIS. Then the Nazis are right in their actions?</p><p>FREUD. Of course not.</p><p>LEWIS. So there is a morality you're comparing them with. A man can't call a line crooked unless he knows what a straight line is.</p><p>FREUD. Ah! Geometric morality.</p><p>LEWIS. Moral conscience is something we're born with. It grows as we do. When I was younger, I thought about right and wrong as much as a baboon thinks about Beethoven.</p><p>FREUD. And this "conscience" is God-created?</p><p>LEWIS. Yes.</p><p>FREUD. Ha. I am laughing. You might argue God did an adequate job with the sunset, but as far as "conscience," he failed completely. What you call "conscience" are behaviors indoctrinated into children by their parents. These become the crippling inhibitions they struggle with all their lives.</p><p>Here Lewis is alluding to his moral argument for the existence of God, or what he calls in <i>Mere Christianity </i>"right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe" (17-39). All human beings--or all normal human beings--have a sense of right and wrong, of what they and others <i>ought </i>to do or <i>ought not</i> to do. Even though human beings often disobey this moral law, they show their knowledge of this moral law by feeling guilt and shame when they disobey. And while there is a lot of variation across cultures in their moral standards, there is remarkable agreement: for example, all agree that lying, stealing, murder, and betrayal of one's friends are wrong. "It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table" (20). And so, "it begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behavior, and yet quite definitely real--a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us" (30). This intimates "the idea that in the Moral Law somebody or something from beyond the material universe was actually getting at us" (36). At some point, you realize "that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power" (39). There is "a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong" (34). Here we see what Lewis identifies in <i>The Problem of Pain</i> as the third stage of religious development--when human beings believed that the Divine Power before whom they felt dread and awe was the source and the enforcer of the Moral Law.</p><p>But Lewis never provides a compelling argument for why the reality of the moral law of right and wrong <i>proves</i> the reality of a Divine Power behind that law. After all, we could follow the lead of the ethical naturalists--from David Hume to Charles Darwin to Edward Westermarck--in explaining this universal moral law as rooted in a universal human nature shaped by natural evolution. We could explain the common moral rules as arising from the natural needs and desires common to all human beings. The natural desires for self-preservation and for respect for life, persons, and property shape the moral rules in all societies.<br /></p><p>Even Lewis seems to agree with this when he identifies this Moral Law as "the Law of Human Nature." One can see this in his book <i>The Abolition of Man</i>, where he speaks of the Moral Law as the <i>Tao </i>or Way that is universal to all human societies. I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Lewis+Tao">written</a> about this in some previous posts.</p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Although natural moral law is often assumed to come from a supernatural lawgiver, Lewis insists that understanding the </span><em style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Tao</em><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"> as natural law does not require any belief in the supernatural. He writes:</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: #fff9ee;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">"Though I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian, I am not here attempting any indirect argument for Theism. I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reasoning as having absolute validity: that any attempt, having become skeptical about these, to reintroduce value lower down on some supposedly more 'realistic' basis, is doomed. Whether this position implies a supernatural origin for the </span></span></span><em style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Tao</em><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"> is a question I am not here concerned with" (61).</span></blockquote><p>It seems, then, that there is no necessity for grounding the Moral Law in "a Something which is directing the universe."</p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"></span><p></p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-54038573972938608992024-02-10T18:49:00.004+00:002024-02-12T19:08:03.483+00:00Did C. S. Lewis's Natural Desire for Joy Show the Supernatural Reality of God and Heaven?<p>The end of the movie--but not the stage play--"Freud's Last Session" suggests that Freud has been persuaded by Lewis's Argument from Desire for the reality of Heaven. </p><p>On his train back to Oxford, Lewis looks at the book that Freud had slipped into his coat pocket. It's Freud's copy of Lewis's book <i>The Pilgrim's Regress </i>(Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 2014, originally published in 1933).<i> </i>Lewis sees that Freud has written inside the book "from error to error, one discovers the entire truth." Lewis smiles as his train enters a tunnel, and then the movie fades out.</p><p>The quotation is so enigmatic that most viewers will be confused as to what it means, although they can see that Lewis is pleased or amused by it. As I noted in a previous post, the quotation is an altered version of a quotation from Francis Bacon: "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion."</p><p>Anyone who has read <i>The Pilgrim's Regress</i> could see how this applies to the book. It's the story of the pilgrim John whose journey to an enchanting island takes him through adventures with a series of people, most of whom are allegorical representations of various errors that he must avoid. In the "Afterword to the Third Edition" of the book, Lewis explained it as a depiction of his own experience of intense Desire as he progressed "from 'popular realism' to Philosophical Idealism; from Idealism to Pantheism; from Pantheism to Theism; and from Theism to Christianity" (231). In later writings--particularly, in <i>Surprised by Joy </i>(1955)--Lewis called this Desire Joy, and he said that "in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else" (17).</p><p><br /></p><p>THE ARGUMENT FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF JOY</p><p>In the "Afterword" and in <i>Surprised by Joy</i>, Lewis indicated that there is a peculiar mystery about the <i>object </i>of this Joyful Desire. When people feel this Desire, they think they know what they are desiring. A child looks wistfully at a distant hillside and thinks he would be happy "if only I were there." Or he reads a fairy tale and thinks he would be happy if that fairy-tale land really existed. A man in love thinks he would be happy if he possessed the perfect beloved. Or a man longs to travel to foreign lands, and he thinks he would be fulfilled if he could see visit those places. Or a man driven by ambition to gain great status and power thinks he would be happy if he could satisfy that ambition. Or a man absorbed by his studies in philosophy or science thinks he would be fully satisfied if only he could achieve a full intellectual understanding of his subject. </p><p>Lewis claims that by his own experience he has proven all of these impressions to be wrong. Every one of these supposed <i>objects </i>for this Joyful Desire is inadequate because having any of these objects would not satisfy the Desire.</p><blockquote><p>"It appeared to me therefore that if a man diligently followed this desire, pursuing the false objects until their falsity appeared and then resolutely abandoning them, he must come out at last into the clear knowledge that the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given--nay, cannot even be imagined as given--in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience. This Desire was, in the soul, as the Siege Perilous in Arthur's castle--the chair in which only one could sit. And if nature makes nothing in vain, the One who can sit in this chair must exist" (<i>PR</i>, 237).</p></blockquote><p>Lewis concludes that the One who can sit in that chair is God. So our search for Joy can be satisfied by nothing in the natural world but only by our entering the supernatural Heaven where we will be united with God. Freud was perhaps suggesting his agreement--"from error to error, one discovers the entire truth."</p><p>But is this really the truth? Has Lewis made a cogent argument for this conclusion? John Beversluis (<i>C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion</i>) has made a good case for saying No. And I agree with Beversluis that Lewis's desire for Joy--for religious transcendence--is not evidence for the transcendent reality of God and Heaven. </p><p>But I disagree with Beversluis's claim that this is not a natural desire at all. There are good reasons for believing that the desire for religious transcendence is one of the 20 natural desires of our evolved human nature, although the natural reality of this desire neither proves nor disproves the supernatural reality of its transcendent object.</p><p>As Beversluis indicates, Lewis's Argument from Desire can be framed schematically as either deductive or inductive. The deductive version goes like this (Beversluis, 41):</p><p>1. Nature makes nothing in vain, that is, every natural desire has an object that can satisfy it.</p><p>2. Joy is a natural desire, but not for any natural object because no object in the natural world can satisfy it.</p><p>3. Therefore, Joy is a desire for an object beyond the natural world and that object must exist.</p><p>Lewis suggested this deductive form when he used the word "must" in his conclusion: "And if nature makes nothing in vain, the One who can sit in this chair <i>must</i> exist."</p><p>The inductive version of the argument goes like this (Beversluis, 43):</p><p>1. Many natural desires have objects that can satisfy them.</p><p>2. Joy is a natural desire for a kind of satisfaction that no object in the natural world can satisfy.</p><p>3. Therefore, Joy is a desire for an object beyond the natural world and that object probably exists.</p><p>Lewis suggested this inductive form when he used words like "a pretty good indication" and "most probable explanation." In "The Weight of Glory," he wrote:</p><blockquote><p>"Do what they will, then, we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy. But is there any reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction to it? 'Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.' But I think it may be urged that this misses the point. A man's physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man's hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it <i>a pretty good indication </i>that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called 'falling in love' occurred in a sexless world" (<i>The Weight of Glory, </i>New York: HarperCollins, 2001, pp. 32-33, italics added).</p></blockquote><p>In <i>Mere Christianity</i>, he wrote:</p><blockquote><p>"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, <i>the most probable explanation</i> is that I was made for another world" (120, italics added). </p></blockquote><p>In his play (p. 16), but not in his screenplay for the movie, Mark St. Germain has Lewis repeat this passage but without the sentence on sexual desire. </p><p>Beversluis correctly observes that Lewis's argument--in both its deductive and inductive forms--fails. The deductive argument fails because it begs the question at issue: the major proposition <i>assumes</i> that "every natural desire has an object that can satisfy it," but that's what Lewis needs to prove.</p><p>The inductive argument rests on a false analogy: it's not at all clear that the desire for supernatural transcendence is a natural desire <i>of the same kind</i> as the natural human desires for food and sex or the duckling's natural desire to swim. From the fact that the natural desires for food, sex, and swimming have natural objects that can satisfy them, it does not follow that a natural desire for a supernatural bliss probably shows that there really is a supernatural object that can satisfy it.</p><p>The natural desire for religious transcendence is <i>different in kind</i> from all other natural desires, because it is the only natural desire that aims at a supernatural end that cannot be achieved in the natural world. Beversluis contends that this desire is so radically different from all other natural desires that it should not be considered a natural desire at all. Here is where I disagree with him.</p><p>Although Lewis does not explain what he means by natural desires, his examples--human desires for food and sex and a duckling's desire to swim--suggest that he means innate desires that arise spontaneously in all normal members of a species as part of their evolved nature. Natural desires are evolutionary adaptations that are necessary for the survival and reproductive success of a species. But, Beversluis observes, Lewis's Joy does not seem to be biologically instinctive in this way, because it is not necessary for the survival or reproductive success of the human species. Moreover, if it were an instinctive desire of evolved human nature, one would expect to find evidence that it is universal for all human cultures throughout human history; but Lewis has not provided such evidence (45, 52-53).</p><p><br /></p><p>LEWIS ON THE NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE</p><p>Lewis does suggest, however, an evolutionary explanation of religious experience that could be judged in the light of the modern evolutionary psychology and cognitive science of religion. Showing the influence of Rudolf Otto's <i>The Idea of the Holy </i>(London: Oxford University Press, 1923), Lewis sketches the evolutionary development of religion through four stages in the Introduction to <i>The Problem of Pain</i> (16-25). The first stage is what Otto called the experience of the <i>Numinous</i>--the feeling of dread and awe in the experience of the uncanny. Otto coined the word "numinous" from the Latin word <i>numen </i>for "divinity." According to Lewis, this arose first among prehistoric human beings. "Now nothing is more certain than that man, from a very early period, began to believe that the universe was haunted by spirits" (17). This dreadful and awful feeling of ghostly invisible spirits was "the seed of religious experience" (<i>God in the Dock, </i>189).</p><p>The second stage in religious evolution came with the human feeling that there is a moral law--the sense that we "ought" or "ought not" to engage in certain kinds of conduct. Human beings agreed in prescribing this moral law although they often failed to obey it.</p><p>The third stage in religious development was when human beings identified the Numinous Power as the guardian of that moral law. The Jews in the Hebrew Bible show this identification of the Numinous with the moral law: God is righteous and loves righteousness.</p><p>Finally, in New Testament Christianity, a man is born who claims to be the son of, or the same as, that Numinous Power who is also the giver of the moral law. The teaching of the New Testament--the incarnation of Jesus as both human and divine and the promise that his sacrificial death and resurrection will redeem sinful human beings so that they can be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven--is the completion of all previous religious development. Because now, for the first time in history, human beings can satisfy their deepest natural desire for supernatural happiness by being resurrected after death to eternal life in the presence of God, and thus return to the true home from which they came.</p><p>Lewis suggests that this evolution of religious experience through four stages could be explained in two ways. It could be a fully natural evolution of human religious experience through four stages of the biological and cultural evolution of the human mind. Or it could be that at each of these four stages of natural evolution, there was some human experience of a supernatural Revelation from God.</p><p>As I have indicated in some <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=c+s+lewis+theistic+evolutionist">previous posts</a>, Lewis was a theistic evolutionist, who thought there was no conflict between the natural science of evolution and the supernatural Revelation of Christianity, because Christians should see that God could carry out His will through the natural process of evolution along with some supernatural interventions into natural history (such as the Incarnation of Christ).</p><p>So, when prehistoric human ancestors first began to experience the Numinous--feeling dread and awe in the belief that "the universe was haunted by spirits"--Lewis says there are only two possible explanations:</p><blockquote><p>"There seem, in fact, to be only two views we can hold about awe. Either it is a mere twist in the human mind, corresponding to nothing objective and serving no biological function, yet showing no tendency to disappear from that mind at its fullest development in poet, philosopher, or saint: or else it is a direct experience of the really supernatural, to which the name Revelation might properly be given" (<i>Mere Christianity</i>, 20-21).</p></blockquote><p>Presumably, most readers of this passage will dismiss the first alternative--"a mere twist in the human mind"--as unsatisfactory, and thus they might think there is no good alternative to Revelation as an explanation. But here Lewis displays one of his favorite rhetorical tricks--the false dichotomy. Anyone who knows anything about the evolutionary psychology of religion will know that to explain the appearance of the first religious experience of a world "haunted by spirits" in human evolution, we are not forced to choose between "a mere twist in the human mind" that is inexplicable and a Revelation that erupts miraculously in human experience. </p><p><br /></p><p>THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE</p><p>In saying that a mental capacity for religious experience would be "serving no biological function," Lewis adopted the position of <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Darwin+Alfred+Russel+Wallace">Alfred Russel Wallace</a>, who agreed with Charles Darwin in developing the theory of evolution by natural selection, but who denied that this could explain the higher mental and moral capacities of human beings. Wallace argued that since the mental power for religious experience does not serve any biological need for survival and reproduction, this mental power could not have evolved by natural selection. So natural selection shaped the "animal nature" of human beings but not their "spiritual nature," which must arise from "the unseen universe of Spirit."</p><p>But now the <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Justin+Barrett+Hume">evolutionary psychology of religion</a>--as developed by Justin Barrett, Jesse Bering, and others--can show how although the propensity to religious experience has not evolved directly to serve a biological function, it has evolved as a <i>byproduct</i> of innate mental mechanisms directly shaped by biological evolution for detecting agency--for identifying objects in the environment (particularly, animals and other human beings) that move themselves for the sake of goals as guided by mental states like beliefs and desires. Once such agents have been detected, the human capacity for mind-reading generates predictions about the mental states of these agents and how these mental states might direct their actions. As naturally social animals whose survival and reproductive fitness has depended on a subtle negotiation of the complex social interactions among human agents, human beings have been endowed by evolution with intuitive mental tools necessary for social life.</p><p>For that reason, our agency detection device becomes hypersensitive: we detect agency based on limited evidence. Particularly, in urgent situations of distress, where we cannot account for what is happening based on natural causes, we are quick to infer supernatural agents at work. We then want to negotiate with these supernatural agents--spirits, ghosts, or gods--to protect ourselves from harm. All human societies throughout history show this natural propensity to believe in supernatural agents to be a human universal. The original expression of that religious experience was in our hunter-gatherer ancestors who had shamans as mediators with supernatural agents, and who lived in a world "haunted by spirits"--feeling the awe and dread of the Numinous, which Lewis saw as "the seed of the religious experience."</p><p>The subsequent development of religion beyond this original experience of awful spirits came through cultural evolution, in which some religious traditions had a selective advantage in that some were better than others in satisfying the innate mental tools of the evolved human mind for detecting supernatural agency. Justin Barrett has argued that the Abrahamic monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--are more naturally attractive to the human mind, because the human mind is naturally inclined to believe in the divine traits of the Abrahamic God--God as moral, God as superknowing, God as immortal, God as superpowerful, and God as Creator. This would confirm Lewis's claim that Judaism and Christianity became the most humanly satisfying forms of religious development.</p><p>But this Darwinian science of the biological and cultural evolution of religion as culminating in Abrahamic monotheism does not either prove or disprove the real supernatural existence of the Abrahamic God. A Christian evolutionist like Justin Barrett can see this as showing that the natural evolution of religious belief is compatible with believing in the truth of Revelation, because we can believe that God used the evolutionary process to create a human mind that would have a desire for religious transcendence that would be fulfilled by faith in the revealed truth of God and Heaven. But an atheistic evolutionist like Jesse Bering can see this natural evolution of religious belief as showing the natural human propensity for believing religious illusions.</p><p>Thus, Lewis's natural desire for Joy--for the Paradise of eternal life with God in Heaven--does not by itself prove the reality of that supernatural object of his desire.</p><p>We are left, then, with the unresolvable debate between Reason and Revelation, in which neither side can refute the other. But as Lewis saw in his many years of debating atheists and skeptics in the Oxford Socratic Club, a modern liberal social order can secure the freedom of thought that makes it possible to have such a public debate that would not be possible in a more theocratic or illiberal social order.</p><p>And even if the Socratic and Darwinian <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Darwin+zetetic+">zetetic philosophers</a> lack the absolute knowledge or wisdom that would be necessary to refute Revelation, they can find such joy in the philosophic life of loving wisdom even without ever fully achieving it that they can attain the natural happiness possible in this life, so that they need feel no longing for a supernatural happiness in some heavenly afterlife. Those living the philosophic life might even find joy in understanding--in at least some limited way--that everything in the Universe, and even the Universe itself, must <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2023/05/five-cosmological-theories-of-how-it.html">eventually die</a>.</p><p>I have written about the <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Heaven+Hell">evolution of Heaven and Hell</a> and given some reasons for agreeing with Wallace Stevens that <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Wallace+Stevens+Death+Mother+of+Beauty">"death is the mother of beauty."</a></p><p>Lewis was mistaken in thinking his desire for Joy was a desire for Heaven. A deathless life in a heavenly paradise would not satisfy us, because it would not be a <i>human</i> life at all.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-23195607753653759312024-02-03T14:51:00.002+00:002024-02-03T14:51:52.422+00:00Can Socratic Argument Prove the Existence of God? C. S. Lewis's Answer<p>Before I examine Lewis's argument from desire for the existence of God, I should explain what Lewis thought generally about rational arguments for the existence of God.</p><p>As the founding President, and most active member, of the Oxford Socratic Club from 1942 to 1954, Lewis was eager for Socratic debate between Christians and unbelievers because he was sure that Christianity could be defended against its opponents by rational argument and evidence (Hooper 1979). In his statement on "The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club," he explained: "Socrates had exhorted men to 'follow the argument wherever it led them': the Club came into existence to apply this principle to one particular subject-matter--the <i>pros </i>and <i>cons </i>of the Christian Religion" (Lewis 1970: 131). </p><p>Lewis disagreed, therefore, with those Christians who believed that their religious life was based on faith alone without any appeal to reason. If Christianity is not reasonable, Lewis insisted, then it cannot be credible at all.</p><p>In contrast to my claim that there can be no final resolution to the Reason/Revelation debate, Lewis argued that even if Reason can neither prove nor refute the truth of Revelation, Reason is on the side of Revelation at least to some degree. But then, we must wonder what it means for Reason to favor Revelation <i>to some degree</i>?</p><p>Lewis's clearest explanation was in his reply to a paper by H. H. Price on "Is Theism Important?" read to the Oxford Socratic Club. Lewis suggested that we need to distinguish two kinds of Faith (Lewis 1970: 186-91). Faith-A is "a settled intellectual assent" to the existence of God as First Cause. Faith-B is "a trust, or confidence, in the God whose existence is thus assented to," which is the faith that Christians have in the God of the Bible--the Creator who created human beings in his Image, and who sent His Son to redeem them from their sinful state, so that they could have eternal life in Heaven. Faith-A is the Theism that arises from philosophical arguments (such as the Argument from Design) for the existence of a philosophical God, which is not strictly a religious state. Faith-B is a religious faith that this God is actually the Christian God of the Bible, and the New Testament identifies this faith as a "gift" from God through the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Ephesians 2:8).</p><p>This distinction between the two kinds of faith runs throughout Lewis's apologetic writings. So, for example, in <i>Mere Christianity</i>, Lewis argues for the existence of "a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears to me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong." But then he warns his reader: "I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology" (34). Similarly, in <i>Miracles</i>, he says: "I do not maintain that God's creation of Nature can be proved as rigorously as God's existence" (Lewis 1966: 33; 1974: 50).</p><p>In <i>Surprised by Joy</i>, his spiritual autobiography, Lewis distinguished between his conversion to Theism in 1929 and his conversion to Christianity in 1931: "It must be understood that the conversion recorded in the last chapter was only to Theism, pure and simple, not to Christianity. I knew nothing yet about the Incarnation. The God to whom I surrendered was sheerly nonhuman" (228-30).</p><p>As I said in some previous posts, at least one of the philosophical atheists who were active in the Oxford Socratic Club--<a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=antony+flew">Antony Flew</a>--seemed to have been converted to Theism at the end of his life. And <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Darwin+God+as+First+Cause">Charles Darwin</a> was open to scientific and philosophical arguments for God as First Cause. But neither Flew nor Darwin were ever converted to Faith-B--to believing in the God of the Bible.</p><p>But as I will indicate in my next post, I am not persuaded that Lewis's Argument from Desire--from the experience of Joy--is a good argument supported by evidence for the existence of God, and for this as a first step to faith in the Christian God.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Hooper, Walter. 1979. "Oxford's Bonny Fighter." In James T. Como, ed., <i>C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table, and Other Reminiscences. </i>New York: Macmillan.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1952. <i>Mere Christianity</i>. New York: Macmillan.</p><p>________. 1955. <i>Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life</i>. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.</p><p>________. 1966. <i>Miracles: A Preliminary Study</i>. New York: Macmillan.</p><p>________. 1970. <i>God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics</i>. Ed. Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing.</p><p>________, 1974. <i>Miracles: A Preliminary Study</i>. Revised edition. New York: HarperCollins.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-51639810618192274252024-01-28T18:56:00.001+00:002024-01-28T18:56:54.298+00:00The Argument from Desire: C. S. Lewis in "Freud's Last Session"<p>RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY?</p><p>"I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it." </p><p>That was C. S. Lewis's claim in <i>Mere Christianity </i>(123) that he had rational arguments for showing how the weight of the evidence supported Christianity. In the Reason/Revelation debate, Lewis thought that Reason could prove, or at least render probable, the truth of Christian Revelation. </p><p>If Lewis was right about this, that would deny my contention that while there is an evolved natural desire for religious transcendence, or for what Lewis calls "Joy," the existence of this desire provides no evidence for the real existence of the supernatural object--God--that would satisfy this desire.</p><p>That all of Lewis's rational arguments for Christianity fail has been well-argued by John Beversluis in <i>C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion</i> (2007), which is the only book-length critical study of Lewis's apologetic writings. My thinking about Lewis has been influenced by Beversluis.</p><p>Most of Lewis's arguments for Christianity and against atheism show up in Mark St. Germain's "Freud's Last Session"--both the play and the movie. Here and in subsequent posts, I will start with the texts of the play (first published in 2010) and the <a href="https://www.sonyclassics.com/assets/screenplays/freudslastsession/freudslastsession-screenplay.pdf">screenplay</a> for the movie released a few weeks ago. My references to the screenplay will be to the scene numbers. As I have indicated, St. Germain draws most of his material from Armand Nicholi's book <i>The Question of God</i> (2002).</p><p>In a later post, I will consider William Nicholson's stage play and movie screenplay "Shadowlands," which tells the story of Lewis's marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham and her tragic death from cancer, after only a few years of marriage, which threw Lewis into a dark crisis of faith. In the movie "Shadowlands," Anthony Hopkins played Lewis; in the movie "Freud's Last Session," Hopkins plays Freud in his debate with Lewis. </p><p>These plays and movies are impressive examples of how popular culture in a modern liberal social order can probe into the deepest questions raised by the Reason/Revelation debate. I do not know of any historical evidence that anything like this has been possible in any illiberal societies. On the contrary, in the illiberal closed societies of the past, such a public debate about religious orthodoxy and atheism would have been considered dangerously subversive of the social order. </p><p>Doesn't this refute those many critics of liberalism (like Patrick Deneen) who whine about the moral, intellectual, and spiritual degradation coming from liberal culture? Doesn't this support those proponents of liberalism (like Deirdre McCloskey) who celebrate the human excellence that comes from the bourgeois virtues of a liberal culture?</p><p>I should note, however, that the movie "Freud's Last Session" has not been very popular. When I saw it, there were no more than a dozen people in the theater. The original stage play was more successful. In 2012, when I saw the play twice at the Mercury Theater in Chicago, and I helped to lead a discussion of the play with the audience after they had just seen it, I saw large audiences that wanted to talk about the play. </p><p><br /></p><p>DOES THE DESIRE FOR JOY POINT TO GOD?</p><p>In both plays and both movies, Lewis's primary argument is that the desire for Joy points to God as the supernatural object that will satisfy that desire.</p><p>Lewis's argument elicits this conversation in St. Germain's play:</p><p>LEWIS. None of us are born with desires unless satisfaction for them exists.</p><p>FREUD. Not true.</p><p>LEWIS. It is.</p><p>FREUD. Example?</p><p>LEWIS. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim, water exists to do it. So if I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most likely explanation is that I was made for another world.</p><p>FREUD. You have just abandoned facts for fairy tales. Our deepest cravings are never satisfied or even identified. In German we call it '<i>Seinsucht</i>,' a longing. For years I have felt this. A strong desire to walk in the woods with my father, as I did when I was young. He would hold my hand, but I would always pull away and run from him as fast as I could, deep into the trees.</p><p>LEWIS. What were you running to?</p><p>FREUD. Perhaps I ran to be alone or to escape from my father. I only know the desire was overwhelming.</p><p>LEWIS. I call that desire "joy."</p><p>FREUD. "Joy."</p><p>LEWIS. I don't know a better word for it. I felt it for the first time through a sort of "woods" as well.</p><p>FREUD. Yes?</p><p>LEWIS. I wasn't yet six. My brother Warren brought a biscuit box into the nursery that he decorated with moss and twigs, tiny stones and flowers. A toy forest. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I still do. The moment I saw it, it created a yearning I never felt before.</p><p>FREUD. To live in a tiny Eden with a tiny God.</p><p>LEWIS. God never entered my mind.</p><p>FREUD. And this "joy" you equate with an inherent desire for a Creator.</p><p>LEWIS. Yes.</p><p>FREUD. You were led to God by a biscuit tin.</p><p>A slightly altered version of this conversation appears in the movie (31-33). What they say here is taken directly from Nicholi's book, and what Lewis says is taken directly from Lewis's writing--particularly <i>Mere Christianity </i>and <i>Surprised by Joy</i>. </p><p>Keep in mind that the book <i>Mere Christianity </i>originated as a series of Lewis's radio broadcast talks on the BBC in 1942. In the midst of the terrifying turmoil of World War Two in Great Britain, Lewis was speaking to a general audience of ordinary English people in a calmly conversational tone about "the case for Christianity." Lewis was asked to give these talks by a BBC producer who thought the radio audience would want to hear them as they worried about whether religion could help them make sense of the war. It is fitting, therefore, that the conversation between Freud and Lewis in "Freud's Last Session" is set on September 3, 1939, the day that Great Britain's war with Nazi Germany began.</p><p>A crucial passage in <i>Mere Christianity </i>is in his chapter on "Hope," which is about the hope for Heaven (118-21). Lewis writes:</p><blockquote><p>". . . when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us. Now there are two wrong ways of dealing with this fact, and one right one."</p></blockquote><p>One wrong way is the "fool's way"--he "goes on all his life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are after." The other wrong way is the Disillusioned "Sensible Man" who decides that the whole thing is adolescent moonshine, and that grown-up people learn to settle for the modest pleasures of life rather than strive for an unattainable infinite happiness.</p><p>The right way is the Christian Way. The Christian says:</p><blockquote><p>"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."</p></blockquote><p>Those who scorn the Christian Way will ridicule the idea of Heaven by saying that they do not want "to spend eternity playing harps." But, of course, this is a silly objection because it fails to see that the metaphorical imagery of Heaven will always be "a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible." And "musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity."</p><p>In <i>Surprised by Joy--</i>Lewis's spiritual autobiography, the story of his conversion to Christianity--he described his search for Joy--"an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other desire"--and said that "in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else" (6-8, 17-18, 73, 78, 169-70, 220-222).</p><p>Reading these passages from Lewis's writings makes the story of "Freud's Last Session" more comprehensible than it would otherwise be. For example, many viewers of the movie will be confused by the prolonged depictions of Lewis's sexual affair with Janie Moore and the lesbian liaison of Freud's daughter Anna and her lover Dorothy Burlingham, to which Freud objects because of his perverse sexual attachment to his daughter. </p><p>What does all of this frisson of sexual feeling have to do with Lewis and Freud's debate over God? The answer is that this is all about Lewis's argument from Joy, and for Lewis sex is often a poor substitute for Joy. At the end of the screenplay for the movie, as Lewis is leaving Freud's house, he sees Anna and Dorothy meeting: "Anna turns and smiles at seeing her. Lewis watches their joy in seeing each other, and the two embrace. Lewis realizes their intimacy and looks disappointed, then back at the house, better understanding Freud's struggle" (131).</p><p>Similarly, understanding Lewis's account of music as stirring the joyful emotions of "ecstasy and infinity" explains the place of music in the play and the movie. Freud repeatedly turns on his radio to hear news announcements and political statements about the threat of war, but as soon as the broadcast switches from news to music, Freud turns off the radio. Lewis asks Freud why he never wants to hear music (122). </p><p>FREUD. I object to being manipulated. To me, it's all church music.</p><p>LEWIS. My objection to church music is that it trivializes emotions I already feel. I think you're afraid to feel them at all.</p><p>For Freud to reject all music as "church music" suggests that music often elicits deep emotions of transcendence that he does not want to feel.</p><p>At the end of the movie, Anna and Dorothy sit together near Freud in his living room. Earlier in the movie, we have learned that Freud had always forbidden Anna to bring Dorothy to his house. But now Freud sits quietly at his radio listening to music.</p><blockquote><p>"MUSIC swells -- Anna looks to her father, surprised to see him listening to music. He turns, meets her eyes."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"Freud then stares at the radio, listening intently, trying to decipher what he should feel" (137).</p></blockquote><p>The play ends here. The movie adds two scenes with Lewis travelling by train back to Oxford. In the first scene, Lewis falls asleep on the train, and he dreams that he is walking in a forest: "The forest is golden now, shimmering between reality and fantasy. The brightness of a single beam of light stops him. He shields his eyes, trying to see--His expression changes, astonishment, awe, at what he--."</p><p>Then, the screaming of the train's breaks jolts him awake. As he reaches down for his bag, he feels the book in his pocket that Freud had given him. He looks at the book and sees that it is his own book <i>Pilgrim's Regress. </i>So while Freud earlier in the day had said he had not read this book, which includes a satirical character named Sigismund Enlightenment, Lewis now sees that Freud had indeed read the book. Inside the book, Freud had written: "From error to error, one discovers the entire truth." Lewis smiles as he reads this, and the train enters a tunnel.</p><p>This quotation is often attributed to Francis Bacon, although the correct quotation is "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion," which appears in Bacon's <i>New Organon </i>(II.20), Bacon's book on scientific method. Apparently, it means that the scientific pursuit of truth requires formulating clear interpretations or hypotheses about nature that can be tested and usually falsified, so that from error, the truth might eventually emerge. Lewis's <i>Pilgrim's Regress</i> is about Lewis's search for meaning and spiritual truth--through the story of the pilgrim John--in which he must meet many people with mistaken views of the world. In writing this quotation as a response to Lewis's book, Freud suggests that Lewis really is pursuing the truth in the right way.</p><p>In all of this, we can see how "Freud's Last Session"--both the play and the movie--is slanted in favor of Lewis's side of the debate with Freud. The title "Freud's Last Session" is ambiguous. It could mean that Freud is psychoanalyzing Lewis to free him from his religious illusions. But by the end of the story, we see that Freud is the patient, and Lewis is the doctor. At one point in the movie, we see Freud laying on his own couch as he speaks with Lewis.</p><p>As I indicated in my previous post, "Freud's Last Session" does not present us with a fair debate because it shows us that Lewis is so superior to Freud--morally and intellectually--that this gives Lewis an unfair advantage over Freud in the debate.</p><p>Lewis did not seek out this kind of debate, in which he was sure to defeat a weaker opponent. On the contrary, for twelve years, he was the President of the Oxford Socratic Club, which brought together the smartest Christians, atheists, and agnostics for debates about Christianity and atheism. Participants included some of the best philosophers and scientists of the day--such as Elizabeth Anscombe, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin, Antony Flew, C. E. M. Joad, Gilbert Ryle, and C. H. Waddington. Lewis was President of this club from its founding in 1942 until he left for Cambridge in 1954. At its founding, he wrote a statement about how the club would be Socratic in the sense that Christians would agree to debate their opponents while accepting the principle of Socrates that "we must go wherever the wind of the argument carries us" (Plato, <i>Republic </i>394d; Lewis, "The Founding of the Socratic Club," 131).</p><p>The Oxford Socratic Club met every Monday evening during term from 8:15 pm to 10:30 pm. On one Monday, a Christian would deliver a paper on a certain topic, and then another person would deliver a paper criticizing the first paper. On the following Monday, the first speaker would be a non-Christian, followed by a Christian. The meetings were open to all Oxford students and faculty as well as the general public. Usually, it was standing-room-only. And the discussions would continue late into the night. Lewis almost never missed a meeting.</p><p>This is the kind of open public debate over Reason and Revelation that began in England in the <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2019/08/reason-revelation-and-miracle-of.html">Metaphysical Society</a> that met from 1869 to 1880, which was made possible by the liberal culture that had emerged in England at that time.</p><p>So if we were to rewrite "Freud's Last Session" to make it more like the debates in the Oxford Socratic Club, we would need to introduce a third debater who would be Lewis's intellectual equal and thus able to really challenge him. As I suggested in my previous post, we should look for someone like David Hume or a Humean philosopher who could turn the debate into something like Hume's <i>Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion</i>.</p><p>A Humean philosopher (like John Beversluis) could seriously challenge, perhaps even refute, Lewis's argument from desire by showing that Lewis's search for Joy does not necessarily point to the reality of God. That will be the question for my next post.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Beversluis, John. 2007. <i>C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion</i>. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1955. <i>Surprised by Joy</i>. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1960. <i>Mere Christianity</i>. New York: Macmillan.</p><p>Lewis, C. S. 1970. "The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club." In <i>God in the Dock, </i>130-34. Edited by Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans Publishing.</p><p>Nicholi, Armand. 2002. <i>The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. </i>New York: Free Press.</p><p><br /></p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-31172744162083829202024-01-14T19:10:00.003+00:002024-01-21T10:27:30.019+00:00Are Religious Believers Happier Than Unbelievers? Sigmund Freud Debates C. S. Lewis<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hPJM9lEMyV4" width="320" youtube-src-id="hPJM9lEMyV4"></iframe></div> The Trailer for "Freud's Last Session"<p></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p>In 2012, I wrote some <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=C+S+Lewis">posts</a> on C. S. Lewis as depicted in Mark St. Germain's play "Freud's Last Session"<i> </i>(2010)<i>. </i>This play is based on Armand Nicholi's book <i>The Question of God </i>(2002), which presents the debate between Sigmund Freud and Lewis over "God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life." This book was based on a course on the Freud-Lewis debate that Nicholi had taught for 35 years at Harvard University. In 2004, PBS broadcast a four-hour series of programs based on Nicholi's book. St. Germain's play is a fictional portrayal of a conversation between Freud and Lewis at Freud's home in London on September 3, 1939, the day Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, and twenty days before Freud ended his life by suicide at age 83.</p><p>Now, a film version of this play has been released. St. Germain has written the screenplay with the help of Matthew Brown, the Director of the movie. In the movie, Anthony Hopkins plays Freud, and Matthew Goode plays Lewis. (Some years ago, Hopkins played the role of Lewis, while Debra Winger played Joy Gresham, in "Shadowlands," a movie about the poignant story of Lewis's marriage to Gresham and his grief over her death from cancer after only a few years of a joyful marriage.)</p><p>Although I have not yet had a chance to see the new movie, I have read the <a href="https://www.sonyclassics.com/assets/screenplays/freudslastsession/freudslastsession-screenplay.pdf">screenplay</a>. I have been comparing the movie screenplay with St. Germain's stage play and with Nicholi's book.</p><p>One reason for my interest in this debate between Freud and Lewis is that it helps me to reexamine my claim that the natural desire for religious understanding is one of the twenty natural desires of our evolved human nature. Is that true? And if it is, does that natural desire for God give us any reason to believe that God really exists, as Lewis asserted? Or is that natural longing for God only delusional wish-fulfillment, as Freud asserted? Does an evolutionary science of religion support Lewis or Freud? </p><p>Do the book, the play, and the movie come down on one side or the other of this debate? In deciding this debate, are the biographies of the debaters more decisive than their arguments, because the biographies show which way of life is happier and more fulfilling?</p><p>Before considering the other questions, I will take up those last two question in this post.</p><p>In his book, as in his course at Harvard, Nicholi claimed that to properly assess the debate between Freud and Lewis, it was not enough to study their arguments as presented in their writings, because we needed to study their biographies. "Their arguments can never prove or disprove the existence of God. Their lives, however, offer sharp commentary on the truth, believability, and utility of their views" (5). We can then "see if their biographies--how they actually lived their lives--strengthen or weaken their arguments and tell us more than their words convey" (9).</p><p>This combination of arguments and biographies in Nicholi's book is represented dramatically in St. Germain's stage play and screenplay as a philosophical dialogue--rather like a Platonic dialogue in which we can judge both the arguments and the characters of the interlocutors.</p><p>When Nicholi's book was first published in 2002, Ken Gewertz wrote an <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/09/harvard-gazette-the-question-of-god/">article</a> on the book for <i>The Harvard Gazette</i>. He observed: "As he does in his seminar, Nicholi avoids taking sides in the debate, but rather allows Freud and Lewis to speak for themselves. He also examines their lives to detrmine the impact of their beliefs. Ultimately, the book asks the question, which man was happier, more satisfied? Is it better to be a believer or an unbeliever?"</p><p>When Gewertz directly posed this question to Nicoli, he maintained a "spinxlike reticence"--saying that he did not take sides in the debate. "What I do is try to present an objective, dispassionate, critical assessment of both worldviews."</p><p>"Nicholi's book, however, tells another story," Gewertz insisted. Because "in response to the question of happiness, the evidence is clear: Lewis wins, hands down." </p><p>As I indicated in my previous posts on Nicholi's book, I think Gewertz was right: even though Nicholi professed to be even-handed in his presentation of the debate between Freud and Lewis, Nicholi was clearly biased in favor of Lewis, because he showed us how Lewis's conversion to Christianity led him to a life that was happier and healthier than Freud's life, which confirmed that Lewis had the better argument because he had the better life. Although it is not quite as clear as it is in the book, both the play and the movie tend to favor Lewis over Freud.</p><p>The problem with this, however, is that in selecting Freud as Lewis's opponent, Nicholi gave Lewis an unfair advantage. Nicholi could have selected a far more formidable opponent--someone like David Hume, for example--who would have been intellectually and morally superior to Freud, and who would have shown that a skeptic or atheist can live a happy and fulfilled life.</p><p>It was too easy for Nicholi to show Freud's intellectual and moral failures and thus make Lewis look good by comparison. For example, Freud explained religious belief as childish wish-fulfillment--as an expression of the child's helplessness and longing for a father-figure, so that God becomes an exalted father. And since the child's attitude to the father shows ambivalence (both love and fear), God must be both feared and loved.</p><p>But then, as Nicholi says, Lewis "astutely notes" that Freud's argument about our ambivalence in our wishes about our father and our God can work both ways: our wish that God <i>not </i>exist should be as strong as the wish <i>for </i>his existence (42-47). Lewis reports that before his conversion at age 33, he was a staunch atheist who wished that God <i>not </i>exist, because this satisfied Lewis's wish that he be left alone, free from any "transcendental Interferer." Freud's atheism could be explained the same way--as satisfying his wish that God not exist and as an expression of his ambivalent feelings about his father. Indeed, Freud's life-long vehemence in attacking religious belief showed an obsessive wish to be free from God's authority. Both the play and the film versions of "Freud's Last Session" depict Freud's angry struggle against God, which Freud himself described as a struggle against a "longing" for God that haunted his whole life.</p><p>Nicholi also noticed this in Freud's letters, which are full of phrases such as "if God so wills," "the good Lord," and "until after the Resurrection." Of course, we could dismiss this as a casual use of figures of speech. But then, Freud would say that even a slip of the tongue should be revealing (50-51). This comes up in both the play and the movie.</p><p>One can see here and throughout Nicholi's book the signs of Nicholi's background as a physician and psychiatrist. He was a clinical psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. His clinical work and research concentrated on studying the emotional development of children and young adults. As part of that work, he studied the psychology of religious conversion among young people, including students at Harvard. He first discovered Lewis when he was a medical intern, and he read Lewis's <i>The Problem of Pain</i> with the hope that this would help him deal with the suffering he was seeing in his patients. That would explain his interest in teaching a course on Freud and Lewis for Harvard students.</p><p>In his book, Nicholi repeatedly cited the psychiatric and medical research--conducted by himself and others--on the psychological effects of religious conversion (46-47, 52-53, 80, 92-94, 114-15, 141-43, 155-59, 251-52). He reported that this research denied Freud's claim that religious believers are delusional and emotionally ill and confirmed Lewis's claim that religious believers are generally happy and healthy human beings.</p><p>In 1974, Nicholi published an article in the <i>American Journal of Psychiatry </i>that reported his study of 17 Harvard undergraduates who had experienced a religious conversion. He interviewed these students and also people who had known them before and after their conversion. He found that conversion had enhanced rather than impaired their "functioning." Each of them showed "a marked improvement in ego functioning, a radical change in life style with an abrupt halt in the use of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes; improved impulse control, with adoption of a strict sexual code demanding chastity or marriage with fidelity; improved academic performance; enhanced self-image and greater access to inner feelings; an increased capacity for establishing close, satisfying relationships; improved communication with parents, though most parents at first expressed some degree of alarm over the student's rather sudden, intense religious interest; a positive change in affect, with lessening of 'existential despair'; and a decrease in preoccupation with the passage of time and apprehension over death" (80).</p><p>Nicholi found that Lewis showed the same beneficial consequences from his conversion: "both Lewis and each of the students, after their conversion, found their new faith enhanced their functioning. They reported positive changes in their relationships, their image of themselves, their temperament, and their productivity. People who knew Lewis and those who knew the students before and after their transition confirmed these changes" (94). This evidence denies Freud's claim that religious believers suffer from "obsessional neurosis" or "hallucinatory psychosis." "If Freud analyzed Lewis," Nicholi argued, "the evidence suggests that he would not have dismissed him as dysfunctional. . . . Freud would have observed that the transition Lewis experienced matured him emotionally and did not impair, but enhanced, his functioning."</p><p>In contrast to Lewis, Nicholi observed, Freud was an arrogant and mean-spirited man who argued violently with most of his friends and professional colleagues. He thought most human beings were despicable. In one letter, he wrote: "I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In may experience, most of them are trash" (181).</p><p>Freud often fell into deep bouts of depression and despair. He found little joy in life. And he feared death. To escape the pain of his cancer at the end of his life, he committed suicide.</p><p>Remarkably, in contrast to his reputation for teaching sexual freedom, Freud's sex life was very limited. He did not marry until he was 30, and apparently he had no sexual experience before marriage. With his wife Martha, he had six children in eight years. But he had long periods during which, as he reported in a letter to a friend, "we are now living in abstinence." At the age of 39, after the birth of his last child, Anna, Freud stopped all sexual relations with his wife permanently. He also warned people about the dangers of masturbation because it caused mental illness.</p><p>Freud was very close to his daughter Anna, who followed the lead of her father in becoming a psychoanalyst. When Freud's friend Ernest Jones suggested that he was interested in a personal relationship with Anna, Freud told him to stay away, and that Anna had agreed not to consider marriage without Freud's approval. Anna never did marry.</p><p>Nicholi had visited Anna's clinic in London. In talking with her secretary Gina Bon, he once asked her why Anna had never married. She answered sternly, "Don't ever ask that question."</p><p>In St. Germain's play and movie, Lewis notices Freud's seemingly incestuous feeling for Anna. And when Lewis asks Freud about this, Freud refuses to talk about it. Lewis also notices Anna's apparently lesbian partnership with Dorothy Burlingham.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGMqxGL8GmGaO_mOG9JbhO8Me7kmwq7qDCtORBCBppLTucWaacxFjlUJvWgfGFqxRUvYy4UWZNu1XYmBQEJuU4FC6TAKDutebZ4Wm2d4yPep751NgVVS0MtgHD1W2zAkXb3M03kTfzcwSSm7uZfxFCVatbKOmTAoHD065CcC7z4hDYKuQdkkxUnA/s445/FreudSigmundAnna.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="330" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGMqxGL8GmGaO_mOG9JbhO8Me7kmwq7qDCtORBCBppLTucWaacxFjlUJvWgfGFqxRUvYy4UWZNu1XYmBQEJuU4FC6TAKDutebZ4Wm2d4yPep751NgVVS0MtgHD1W2zAkXb3M03kTfzcwSSm7uZfxFCVatbKOmTAoHD065CcC7z4hDYKuQdkkxUnA/s320/FreudSigmundAnna.jpg" width="237" /></a></div><p>In the movie, Lewis saw this photograph of Freud and Anna in Freud's office, and he noticed that this could be easily mistaken for a young woman with her suitor.</p><p>In the play and the movie, after Lewis has questioned Freud about his relationship with Anna, Freud responds by questioning Lewis about why he has never married and about his relationship with the older woman living with him. This comes up briefly in the play, and it becomes a big part of the movie.</p><p>When Lewis went to France as a young soldier in World War One, he became friends with Edward "Paddy" Moore; and the two of them made a promise to one another that if one of them was killed, the other would take care of his parent. Paddy was killed. And Lewis kept his promise: he moved in with Paddy's mother--Janie Moore--and her daughter Maureen. Lewis was 20 years old, and Janie was 46. Lewis's mother had died when he was 9, and he spoke of Mrs. Moore as his surrogate mother. But Lewis and Mrs. Moore also became lovers.</p><p>Nicholi dismisses this story in one sentence: "Some biographers have speculated that Lewis and Mrs. Moore wee lovers, but the evidence weighs against it" (34). But now the evidence strongly favors this story. Walter Hooper worked briefly as a secretary for Lewis, and after Lewis's death in 1963, Hooper devoted his life to writing about Lewis and editing his papers and letters. In an <a href="https://wadecenterblog.wordpress.com/2021/12/08/walter-hooper-interview/">interview</a> that was published after Hooper's death in 2020, he said that Owen Barfield, one of Lewis's closest friends, had reported that Lewis had told Barfield that he had in fact been Janie's lover, but that after Lewis's conversion, he had broken off their sexual affair.</p><p>Lewis then remained chaste until he became friends with Joy Davidman Gresham in 1952 and then married her in 1956. She became ill with cancer shortly after their marriage. She recovered for a few years, but then died in 1960. Joy and Lewis enjoyed three years and four months of a deeply loving marriage. In letters, Joy and Lewis spoke openly about their sexual happiness. Lewis said that they "feasted on love; every mode of it," so that "no cranny of heart or body remained unsatisfied" (158).</p><p>Nicholi concludes that Lewis enjoyed a more active and satisfying sexual life than did Freud, because after Lewis's conversion, he lived by the Christian standard of sexual love expressed only in a faithful marriage, so that he and his wife could love one another as persons rather than sexual objects.</p><p>Of course, Lewis's marriage cannot come up in St. Germain's play and movie, where the story does not extend beyond 1939.</p><p>All of this does, I think, support Nicholi's conclusion that Lewis's life as a Christian was morally and intellectually superior to Freud's life as an atheist. But, again, as I said at the beginning, this fails to consider the possibility that there are better examples than Freud of how atheists or skeptics might live good lives. </p><p>I have written about <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2022/06/adam-smith-on-death-of-his-friend-david.html">David Hume</a> as one famous example of a philosophical skeptic who seemed to live a happy and flourishing life. When his friend Adam Smith described Hume as "both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit," this got Smith into trouble with the many Christians who wanted to hear that Hume's fatal illness during the last year of his life had shaken him with the fear of death and perhaps forced him to plead with God for forgiveness as he faced the prospect of eternal damnation. </p><p>Now, I understand that St. Germain could not have added Hume to his play to meet with Freud and Lewis, because the fictional meeting occurs on September 3, 1939, and Hume had died in 1776! But he could have added a contemporary of Freud and Lewis--Edward Westermarck--the Finnish philosopher and sociologist who was a Humean skeptic and ethical subjectivist. So, Westermarck could have defended the Humean position as an alternative to both Freud and Lewis. </p><p>Coincidentally, Westermarck died in Finland on September 3, 1939! But St. Germain could have imagined Westermarck being in London on that day just before his death.</p><p><br /></p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-59697691943289320632024-01-07T17:12:00.003+00:002024-01-07T17:14:13.759+00:00The Congress--But Not the Supreme Court--Should Debate Amnesty for Trump<p>I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Trump+14th+Amendment+insurrection">argued</a> that while Donald Trump is disqualified from public office by the first sentence of Section Three of the 14th Amendment, it might be politically prudent for the Congress to exercise its power under the second sentence in Section Three to grant him amnesty.</p><p>We need the Supreme Court to decide the <i>constitutional</i> question of the original meaning of the <i>first </i>sentence in Section Three as applied to Trump. But we also need the Congress to decide the <i>political </i>question of applying the <i>second </i>sentence of Section Three to Trump's case, in deciding whether it would be politically prudent to grant him amnesty.</p><p>Last Wednesday, Trump's lawyers filed a <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/9a52ab1adf471cda/dfe18fa1-full.pdf">Petition for Writ of Certiorari</a> with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking that the Court consider overthrowing the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court ordering that Trump be excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot. With amazing speed, the Court granted certiorari two days later on Friday. The Court is scheduling oral arguments for February 8. The Colorado Republican primary is scheduled for March 5 ("Super Tuesday"). The Colorado Supreme Court stayed its ruling until January 4, 2024, and announced that the stay would be extended automatically if Trump sought review by the U.S. Supreme Court before that date.</p><p>Here's the text of Section Three of the 14th Amendment:</p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."</span></p></blockquote><p>There have been four kinds of arguments (three constitutional arguments and one political argument) against declaring that Trump is disqualified from running for the office of the President under Section Three. The first kind of constitutional argument is that Section Three does not apply to the President, because the presidency is not an "office . . . under the United States," and because the President takes a special oath that is not an oath "to support the Constitution." This argument is not persuasive because the Constitution does refer to "the Office of the President," and because the presidential oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" is surely an oath "to support the Constitution."</p><p>The second kind of constitutional argument is the claim that while Section Three is about the disqualification to "hold any office" under the United States, this does not disqualify a presidential candidate from <i>running </i>for the office. This is not persuasive because the names of presidential candidates cannot properly be put on a primary ballot or an election ballot if they are disqualified from holding the office. Just as someone who is not a natural-born citizen of the United States cannot run for the office of presidency, someone disqualified under Section Three cannot run for that office.</p><p>The third kind of constitutional argument is that in Section Three the disqualification comes only from those who have violated their oath to support the Constitution by having "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States, and Trump's influence over the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6th was not an engagement in insurrection. That is not persuasive because the evidence that he did indeed engage in insurrection is powerful enough that the majority of both the House and Senate (in their vote on impeachment) agreed that he was an insurrectionist, and the evidence gathered by the Select Committee of the House to Investigate the January 6th Insurrection confirmed this conclusion.</p><p>The most popular argument against disqualifying Trump under Section Three is the political argument that this would violate the most fundamental principle of representative democracy that the people should be free to choose those who govern them. That's the argument stated in the first paragraph of the Petition from Trump's lawyers, and that's the kind of objection that one hears most often.</p><p>But as I have indicated in previous posts, Section Three anticipates and responds to this argument by allowing the Congress to make a political judgment as to whether disqualifying someone under Section Three is politically prudent or not. It does this in the second sentence: "But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."</p><p>Indeed, after the Civil War, and after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the Congress did grant amnesty to many former Confederates. And in 1872, the Congress passed the Amnesty Act, which removed the Section Three office-holding disqualification from all but the most prominent Confederates (such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee). Amazingly, even in the 1970s, the Congress granted symbolic amnesty to Davis and Lee!</p><p>So, why isn't Congress debating legislation for granting amnesty to Trump? I have noticed only one commentator--<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/opinion/trump-supreme-court-colorado-ballot.html">Gerard Magliocca</a> writing in the <i>New York Times</i>--has pointed to the oddity that those making the political argument against disqualifying Trump ignore the fact that Section Three allows Congress to make the political judgment as to whether it is prudent to disqualify Trump. Disqualifying Trump under Section Three is not anti-democratic if the democratically elected representatives of the people in Congress have decided that they will not debate this question.</p><p>It is strange that most people, including the Congress, seem to be assuming that it's the role of the Supreme Court to decide this question. Certainly, the Court has the authority to resolve the <i>constitutional </i>arguments about interpreting Section Three as applied to Trump. But the <i>political </i>argument over the prudence of disqualifying Trump should be resolved by a political debate in Congress over whether it would be best for the country to give Trump amnesty.</p><p>That Section Three of the 14th Amendment allows for this shows how well-crafted that amendment is.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-26103370698537852942024-01-04T18:46:00.003+00:002024-01-06T19:00:36.856+00:00The Evolutionary History of the Jews in the Levant Up to 1914<p>The current military conflict between Hamas and Israel should be understood in the context of the deep evolutionary history of the Jews in the Levant. Knowing that evolutionary history will also help us understand Israel's Declaration of Independence as compared with the American Declaration of Independence. </p><p>For me, the three books that are most helpful in sketching this history is Martin Gilbert's <i>Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict </i>(10th ed., 2012), the <i>NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible</i>, with editorial notes and commentary by John Walton and Craig Keener (2016), and John Walton's <i>Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament</i> (2018).</p><p>There are three interrelated themes in this history--Jewish theology, Jewish ethnicity, and Jewish militarism. The survival and identity of the Jewish people as a people has depended on their defining themselves as the chosen people of the God Yahweh (as distinct from the other gods in the ancient Near East), who is the God of their ancestral ethnic group (the "God of the fathers," the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"), and also the God of Battle who defeats the deities of the enemy, although Yahweh can also fight against Israel when they became unfaithful to Him.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvVss466EScUfC7eaB6JXrPZHzW5dsfmws8yiZV2o9lJWViTlugiGpX8-hbn0bn9KFXmdYLVyBL1uKBAl-fkuhTtYjdcOOn7w5sN_tfrtPmQEQGt24k62_OH5oAqwONbbpPO3cOXCTOiwPwmYfqE0sqcUvDDh5KrzYoBRZERz9bOStI2HMjJnqBA/s991/Levant.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="991" data-original-width="922" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvVss466EScUfC7eaB6JXrPZHzW5dsfmws8yiZV2o9lJWViTlugiGpX8-hbn0bn9KFXmdYLVyBL1uKBAl-fkuhTtYjdcOOn7w5sN_tfrtPmQEQGt24k62_OH5oAqwONbbpPO3cOXCTOiwPwmYfqE0sqcUvDDh5KrzYoBRZERz9bOStI2HMjJnqBA/s320/Levant.webp" width="298" /></a></div><br /><p>Archaeological evidence of Paleolithic human and hominid species in the Levant suggest that the primary route for the migration of human ancestors out of Africa and into Eurasia over one million years ago went through the Levant. The oldest Neolithic agricultural settlements are also found here, dating from around 20,000 to 9,000 BC. So, it is probably here that human hunter-gatherers first shifted from foraging to farming. Later, the first small towns and cities (such as Uruk) appeared from 5,000 to 3,000 BC. We also see the rise of agrarian states and their evolution up to global empires (Liverani 2014). I have written about this in <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=farming+against+the+grain">previous posts</a>. The Jewish people emerged out of this genetic and cultural evolution of humanity in the Levant.</p><p>According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jews originated as the children of Abraham, who was born around 2166 BC in Ur in southern Mesopotamia (what is now southern Iraq). Abraham had been born into a family that was polytheistic and did not worship Yahweh (Jos. 24:2,14). When Yahweh appeared to Abraham, Yahweh did not demand worship or rituals. Rather He made an offer to Abraham. Yahweh told Abraham to migrate to the land of Canaan with the promise that there his people would someday become a great nation:</p><blockquote><p>The LORD had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Gen. 12:1-3).</p></blockquote><p>In effect, John Walton has observed, in one of his notes in the <i>NIV Cultural Backgrounds Bible, </i>Yahweh was offering Abraham a grant of land that would secure the survival, flourishing, and identity of his family and extended ethnic group:</p><blockquote><p>"God's covenant with Abram targets the most essential elements of identity in the value system of the ancient Near East. Land was connected to one's survival, livelihood, and political identity (more so than self). Inheritance fixed one's place in the family and ensured that the generations past would be remembered in the present and future. When Abram gave up his place in his father's household, he forfeited his security. He was putting his survival, his identity, his future and his security in the hands of the Lord."</p></blockquote><p>Yahweh had said: "Go from your country, your people, and your father's household." Walton explains:</p><blockquote><p>"One reason God may ask Abram to leave these behind is because it is in these three connections that one related to deity. The gods one worshiped tended to be national or city gods ('country'), the clan god ('people'), or ancestral gods, i.e., ancestors who have taken a place in the divine world ('father's household'). As Yahweh severed the ties Abram would have had with other deities, he then filled the resulting void as the only God Abram would need" (<i>NIV Cultural Backgrounds Bible</i>, 33).</p></blockquote><p>I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=John+Walton">written previously</a> about how Walton's account of the "cultural context" of the Hebrew Bible supports the position of theistic evolution as advocated by Deborah Haarsma, Francis Collins, and others. These are believing Christians who argue that Christian theism and Darwinian evolution are compatible because God has acted through genetic and cultural evolution. Walton's contribution is in showing how God revealed Himself in the Hebrew Bible by conveying His message through the language and ideas of ancient Near Eastern culture while gradually correcting the mistakes in that culture. And, thus, Walton explains: "One of the main reasons God makes a covenant with Abram is in order to reveal what he is really like--to correct the false view of deity that people have developed. But this is projected to take place in stages, not all at once" (34). Of course, Jews will not agree with the Christian claim that the prophecies of a Messiah in the Hebrew Bible are fulfilled in the New Testament's revelation of Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God.</p><p>According to the Bible, Abraham lived in Canaan for a hundred years--from his arrival in 2091 BC to his death in 1991 BC. But then, within a little over one hundred years after his death, his descendants migrated to Egypt, where they lived for over 500 years.</p><p>Having become enslaved in Egypt, the Israelites escaped from Egypt under the leadership of Moses and entered the Desert of Sinai around 1446 BC. They camped for almost a year at the foot of Mt. Sinai, where Moses received Yahweh's law for His people.</p><p>Then, just before starting their 40-year march through the desert on their way to Canaan, Yahweh ordered Moses to take a census for the purpose of military conscription--counting every man 20 years old or more in each of the 12 tribes of Israel. Yahweh then ordered the arrangement of the tribal camps and the marching orders of the tribes (Numbers 1-2, 10:11-33). The people of Israel were then ready to move through the desert and into Canaan as a well-organized army.</p><p>Their divine wars of conquest were brutal: they were commanded "in the towns of those peoples whom Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them" (Deu. 20:16-17). So, for example, when the Israelites conquered the Midianites and killed all the men, Moses was angry that they had allowed the women and children to live; and he commanded: "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man" (Numbers 31:17-18). </p><p>Remarkably, modern Jews and Christians (such as Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI) have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2011/10/pinker-and-pope-condemn-religious.html">condemned</a> the divinely sanctioned violence of the Hebrew Bible. Is it possible that the Jews misinterpreted Yahweh's message? Or was such violence justified in the circumstances the Jews faced?</p><p>After 40 years of wandering in the Sinai desert, the Israelites entered Moab (around 1406 BC) on the eastern banks of the Jordan river, where they could see Canaan. Moses died, and the leadership of Israel passed to Joshua. Yahweh told Joshua that he must cross the Jordan River and begin the conquest of Canaan, which would fulfill Yahweh's promise that all of this land would belong to Israel (Jos. 1:1-6). The fall of Jericho became the first victory in Joshua's military campaign of conquest.</p><p>Around 1375 BC, Joshua died. At his death, there were still large areas of Canaan that had not fallen to conquest by the Jews; and so, they were still at war with their enemies. </p><p>Israel was governed by the elders of each tribe who exercised the senior leadership in making judicial and administrative decisions in the towns and tribes. The assembly of elders represented the people in making major decisions. These ruling councils of elders were common in the ancient Near East. I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=council+democracy">written about this previously</a> as showing the early evolution of "council democracy" in Mesopotamia and among many tribal societies such as the Huron of Canada that John Locke had studied in his reading of Gabriel Sagard.</p><p>In time of war, the elders could ask someone they trusted to become a judge to lead them in war. Unlike the English term "judge," judges in the Biblical book of Judges did not exercise judicial activity. Rather, they were military chieftains. Whenever the people of Israel fell away from Yahweh and worshipped other gods, Yahweh allowed the people to be defeated by raiders in war. Then, the people would cry for help, and Yahweh would raise up a judge to lead them against their enemies (Judges 2:6-19).</p><p>For example, when the Israelites began to serve foreign gods and no longer served Yahweh, he allowed the Ammonites to attack them. Then, the Israelites asked Yahweh to rescue them; and the elders of the people sought for someone who would become their leader in attacking the Ammonites. The people and their elders made an agreement with Jephthah, who was a mighty warrior, to become their judge, their head and commander. Jephthah then challenged the Ammonites: "I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong by waging war against me. Let the LORD, the Judge, decide the dispute this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites" (Judges 11:27). And, indeed, Yahweh did allow Jephthah to defeat the Ammonites in battle.</p><p>Like many of the other gods in the ancient Near East, Yahweh was seen by the Israelites as a divine warrior who decided whether his people won or lost their battles with their enemies. But the Bible also indicates that Yahweh was not so all-powerful that He could decide by Himself the outcome of any battle. His followers won their wars only when they were well-trained, well-armed, and guided by military leaders who were shrewd in their tactics and strategy.</p><p>Consider, for example, the stories of Ehud and Deborah. After being under the oppressive rule of Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years, the Israelites cried out to Yahweh for help. He gave them Ehud as a deliverer (Judges 3:12-30). The Israelites sent him with tribute to Eglon. Ehud had been trained as an ambidextrous warrior, so that he could be equally effective in holding weapons with either his left or his right hand. He made a double-edged sword, which would be good for stabbing straight into a man's body. He strapped the sword to his right thigh so that it was hidden under his clothing. Since most men are right-handed, and they wear their sword on their left side, Ehud's dagger hidden on his right side would probably not be noticed by Eglon's bodyguards. After Ehud had presented his tribute to Eglon, he told Eglon: "I have a secret message for you." The king told his attendants to leave the room. </p><p></p><blockquote>"Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his palace and said, 'I have a message from God for you.' As the king rose from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, and his bowels discharged. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. Then Ehud went out to the porch; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them."</blockquote><p>By the time the servants had unlocked the room and found the king dead, Ehud had escaped. He then gathered the Israelites for a surprise attack on the Moabite soldiers, and they killed them all. Moab was then subject to Israel, and there was peace for eighty years. </p><p>Later, however, the Israelites fell under the oppressive rule of Jabin king of Canaan for twenty years. Jabin's rule over them was enforced by his army, commanded by Sisera, which had "nine hundred chariots fitted with iron" (Judges 4:1-3). Once again, the Israelites cried to Yahweh for help. At the time, Israel was being led by Deborah, a prophet, who spoke for Yahweh. She sent for Barak and told him to organize ten thousand men for an attack on the Canaanites. </p><p>But she knew it would be difficult to fight against Sisera's "chariots fitted with iron." Years before, Yahweh had led the men of Judah against the Canaanites: Yahweh "was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron" (Judges 1:19). Although chariots are useless in the hill country of Judah, they are formidable weapons in the valleys and river plains.</p><p>Deborah devised a plan to blunt the effectiveness of the chariots. She lured Sisera into moving his chariots and troops to the Kishon River where Barak's men were prepared for battle. She anticipated that because of recent rains, the Kishon River plain would be flooded, and thus the overflowing river would create a muddy battlefield in which the chariots would be bogged down. As a result, Sisera's army was utterly destroyed (Judges 4:4-17, 5:4-5, 20-21, 31).</p><p>And yet, after over 300 years of being ruled by judges acting as military leaders, the people of Israel and their elders decided that they wanted a king to rule over them, so that they could be like all the other nations with kings. They asked the prophet Samuel to appoint a king. Yahweh told Samuel to warn them about how oppressive kingly rule would be. "But the people refused to listen to Samuel. 'No!' they said. 'We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.' When Samuel heard all the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. The LORD answered, 'Listen to them and give them a king'" (1 Samuel 8:19-21). </p><p></p><p>Yahweh revealed to Samuel that Saul was to be anointed the king. "Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it on Saul's head and kissed him, saying, 'Has not the LORD anointed you ruler over his inheritance" (1 Sam. 10:1). Later, David became the second king when the people of Judah anointed David king over the tribe of Judah (2 Sam. 2:4).</p><p>So, what's the significance of the "anointing" of the ruler? Walton observes: "Anointing is known from Hittite enthronement texts . . . . It is possible that anointing represents a contract between the ruler and the people, hence the anointing of David by the people in 2 Sa 2:4. Texts from Nuzi show individuals anointing each other when entering a business agreement" (476). Understanding anointing as a contract between ruler and ruled might explain the recent <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=King+Charles+III">anointing</a> of King Charles III.</p><p>The Israelites established an independent kingdom under the kingly rule of first Saul, then David, and then Solomon (1050-930 BC). This Kingdom of Israel had the most extended territory that Israel would ever have.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGNPxZ3zjBrsVTGiJVXJM8CHTaLGP7rV0U0ouobmS9kNCTsrQtYnGlZTAxQ9yiJjqWyy3A-ry6GuqC8n9u7ZwSLRb5wrDGubhz7HHqNZ2XODshGGeLzrj-6k133JTdgGxiN7XxgfPBZKf53xZv4Z67ihhcq2snnFt3FsaacyHXj6rCPyEhSr4xUQ/s720/Israel-under-David.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="577" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGNPxZ3zjBrsVTGiJVXJM8CHTaLGP7rV0U0ouobmS9kNCTsrQtYnGlZTAxQ9yiJjqWyy3A-ry6GuqC8n9u7ZwSLRb5wrDGubhz7HHqNZ2XODshGGeLzrj-6k133JTdgGxiN7XxgfPBZKf53xZv4Z67ihhcq2snnFt3FsaacyHXj6rCPyEhSr4xUQ/s320/Israel-under-David.webp" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj38-5hMGu7j_NvbRE9FJ9_F353y4CNRMS3h-7ZGg6sgnNUCi2C729FG3CP7rKVdxNybMTBZHJdw5dxfpxRrZLz8zACgdp9I1Nm1E_zoAMAv1wK15GKFXPDRcldeIl5YFNsOD_-bPPJ3tJag-yaW3jB9Q3bowLN0DFDQmrw_V61737jURX8v99CXg/s720/Israel-under-Solomon.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="578" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj38-5hMGu7j_NvbRE9FJ9_F353y4CNRMS3h-7ZGg6sgnNUCi2C729FG3CP7rKVdxNybMTBZHJdw5dxfpxRrZLz8zACgdp9I1Nm1E_zoAMAv1wK15GKFXPDRcldeIl5YFNsOD_-bPPJ3tJag-yaW3jB9Q3bowLN0DFDQmrw_V61737jURX8v99CXg/s320/Israel-under-Solomon.webp" width="257" /></a></div><br /><p>John Locke thought this Biblical history of Israel under the rule of their judges and first kings showed how political societies originally evolved in human history out of the state of nature by the consent of the people who needed a military leader. The story of Jephtha illustrates this. The people selected him as a judge because they needed his military leadership against the Ammonites: "<i>And the People made him head and captain over them</i>, Judg. 11. 11, which was as it seems, all one as to be <i>Judge</i>" (<i>ST</i>, 109). Locke also sees in the dispute between Jephtha and the Ammonites the need for what Locke called "an appeal to Heaven." When there is a dispute, and the question is, <i>who shall be Judge?, </i>then if there is no Judge on Earth, "the <i>Appeal </i>lies to God in Heaven," and God will judge by the clash of armies in a battle. Jephtha appealed to Heaven by fighting the Ammonites and defeating them (<i>ST</i>, 20-21, 109).</p><p>For Locke, this becomes a general principle for settling political disputes about ultimate authority--such as when the people believe their ruler has exercised absolute, arbitrary power to which they have not consented. To the question, <i>Who shall be Judge? </i>The answer is, <i>The People shall be Judge. </i>And the judgment of the people will be expressed by their violent resistance to unjust power. So, the appeal to "<i>God </i>in Heaven" is actually an appeal to the People, who are willing to fight for their rights (<i>ST</i>, 232, 240-43).</p><p>I <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2012/12/john-locke-and-appeal-to-heaven-flag.html">have written</a> about how this Lockean idea of the Appeal to Heaven entered the American Revolutionary War in the "Appeal to Heaven" flag. As far as I can tell, Locke coined this term "Appeal to Heaven." Although he derives the idea from the Biblical story of Jephtha, the phrase does not appear in the Biblical text. (Amazingly, there are reports now that in recent years, American Christian Nationalists have adopted the "Appeal to Heaven" flag as their banner!)</p><p>Locke also sees that the establishment of a kingship in Israel was by consent of the people: "the Children of <i>Israel</i> desired a King, <i>like all the nations to judge them, and to go out before them, and to fight their battels, </i>1<i> Sam. </i>8. 20. God granting their Desire, says to <i>Samuel, I will send thee a Man, and thou shalt anonit him to be Captain over my People Israel, that he may save my People out of the hands of the Philistines, </i>c. 9. v. 16. As if the only <i>business of a King</i> had been to lead out their Armies" (<i>ST</i>, 109). The people of Israel wanted a king, for the limited purpose of leading them in war, and God granted their desire.</p><p><i>Vox populi, vox Dei</i>? In fact, in the early 18th century, some Whig pamphlets in England adopted this slogan as an implied Lockean teaching: an appeal to Heaven is actually an appeal to the People, because the voice of the People is the voice of God.</p><p>Around 930 BC, after the death of King Solomon, a tribal civil war split the kingdom into two independent kingdoms--the northern kingdom of Israel (or Samaria) and the southern kingdom of Judah--which covered most of the Southern Levant, except for the Philistine settlements in the southwest (from Jaffa to Gaza) and the Phoenician settlements in the northwest.</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObGMwMcwGlweggDk-ogjmZzkOYXtm5Rgxz_39nKwpgl-AwUtGyBV7FMT_MrKut5kJ157aNN6V30vap44YKewcQOBzPuh4XmjfqOCeq1GzzkPNTnMc_XuXXyOmuvm868i8KyAt17G1O-UjTgl8SbX9KBZgcrlXzNpd3DNGeCnQqzEqXBIKhb1miQ/s1320/israel_and_judah1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1320" data-original-width="1128" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObGMwMcwGlweggDk-ogjmZzkOYXtm5Rgxz_39nKwpgl-AwUtGyBV7FMT_MrKut5kJ157aNN6V30vap44YKewcQOBzPuh4XmjfqOCeq1GzzkPNTnMc_XuXXyOmuvm868i8KyAt17G1O-UjTgl8SbX9KBZgcrlXzNpd3DNGeCnQqzEqXBIKhb1miQ/s320/israel_and_judah1.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Around 722 BC, the Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire. In 586 BC, the Southern Kingdom fell to the Babylonians, who conquered Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon's Temple, and sent many if not most of the Jews into exile in Babylon and elsewhere.</p><p>In 538 BC, Babylon fell to the Persian Empire. The Persian King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and build the Second Temple. For that, Cyrus was said to be anointed by God to save the Jews (Isa. 41:1-7, 44:28-45:7). But many of the Jews chose to remain in Babylon or scatter elsewhere.</p><p>It might seem strange that Cyrus is identified as Yahweh's "anointed" one, because the Hebrew word for "anointed" (<i>mashiyach</i>) is the word for "messiah." As I noted in <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Handel+Messiah">previous posts</a>, the New Testament cites these Old Testament references to the "messiah" as prophecies of the coming of Jesus; but the context for these Old Testament references usually make clear that they refer to political leaders like Cyrus. This is odd because Yahweh actually says to his anointed Cyrus: "you do not acknowledge me" (Isa. 45:4-5). Cyrus did not worship Yahweh. So, how can Cyrus be the Messiah? (Surprisingly, some of Donald Trump's Christian supporters have identified him the <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Trump+Cyrus">new Cyrus</a>--the political leader anointed by God to be the Messiah for America!)</p><p>Walton explains that while the Hebrew term "messiah" developed "an eschatological significance in Israel of a promised deliverer," it also had a more ordinary political significance as the anointing of a leader such as a priest or king. So, even though Cyrus assumed the "anointed" role of the Davidic monarchy in restoring the people of Israel to their land and rebuilding the Temple, he was not the eschatological deliverer, although he was God's deliverer of the Jews from the Babylonian exile.</p><p>To explain why Cyrus chose to become Yahweh's messiah for Israel, Walton points to the text on the "Cyrus Cylinder" that is now held in the British Museum. (Just a few months ago, I saw the Cyrus Cylinder at the Museum for the first time.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2wxhaTndaXrBITJLZp__SjY1gU6DABYRL0vRK2qNboO6OOxg-tOQgzL1wMFk2LsyGAw_tcpYI6LgqMdmjC-UXSUkWasKqcZU9wpnhcTShNPwPoSpQkvNFxngcY-97iWMIrDE0OIGidbRbdNoS0LAdUey6kfuPoljqBA7XBja9UZXVKGoJPExrlQ/s474/Cyrus%20Cylinder.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="474" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2wxhaTndaXrBITJLZp__SjY1gU6DABYRL0vRK2qNboO6OOxg-tOQgzL1wMFk2LsyGAw_tcpYI6LgqMdmjC-UXSUkWasKqcZU9wpnhcTShNPwPoSpQkvNFxngcY-97iWMIrDE0OIGidbRbdNoS0LAdUey6kfuPoljqBA7XBja9UZXVKGoJPExrlQ/s320/Cyrus%20Cylinder.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> The Cyrus Cylinder in Room 52 of the British Museum in London<br /><p><br /></p><p>The Cyrus Cylinder is a clay barrel with a text in Akkadian cuneiform attributed to Cyrus the Great. It was found in 1876 at the ancient site of the Mesopotamian city of Babylon. It dates to the 6th century BC. A translation of the text can be found in James Pritchard's <i>Ancient Near Eastern Texts</i> (1969, 315-316). The text is Cyrus's account of how he conquered Babylon, restored the Babylonian worship of Marduk, and freed the people in Babylonian exile to return to their native lands and renew their religious traditions.</p><p>Although the text makes no reference to Israel or to Israel's God, Walton thinks the text confirms what Isaiah says about Cyrus in releasing the Jews from exile. Cyrus claims to worship Marduk, and he acknowledges that other peoples worship different gods who control their own people. Cyrus is willing to seek the support of those other gods. Walton explains this as a mutually beneficial arrangement:</p><blockquote><p>"In a polytheistic system, adding deities is not a theological problem. In fact, in claiming support from a new god, the theologically neutral becomes an economic and political advantage. Cyrus thus had no problem in recognizing Yahweh, though he would not have personally worshiped him, since such recognition cost nothing but gained the support of Yahweh worshipers through their tribute and allegiance. Polytheistic priests of the newly recognized god would also likely expect royal support for their religious endeavors, so they also benefited" (1190).</p></blockquote><p>Some people today have seen the Cyrus Cylinder as an early document of "human rights" that upholds the natural right to religious liberty and toleration. Even if that's an overstatement, there might be some truth to it. </p><p>Some Biblical scholars have argued that from the evidence of the Hebrew Bible and recent archaeological studies of the Levant, we can infer that it was in response to the catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon's Temple that the Jews were led to Biblical monotheism. Originally, Yahweh was one of many gods in the Ancient Near East. The people of Israel adopted Yahweh as their premier god or divine patron, but they also worshipped other gods (Deu. 29:24-28). Then, after their exile from Jerusalem, they explained this as Yahweh's punishment for not obeying his laws. And if Yahweh had the power to use Cyrus as the Messiah for the Jews, that proved that Yahweh was all-powerful (2 Chronicles 36:11-23; Ezra 1:1-11). In this way, the Jews moved from seeing Yahweh as <i>one </i>god to seeing Him as the <i>only </i>god: Yahweh became the exclusive and unitary, invisible, transcendent, and universal God. Yahweh was the particular God of the People of Israel, but also the universal God over all humanity. </p><p>Some Biblical scholars have called this the "the invention of God" (Romer 2015). But the theistic believer (Jewish, Christian, or Muslim) can say that this shows how God revealed Himself by communicating to Israel through the cultural context of their time and gradually drew them out of their familiar polytheistic theology until they recognized Him as the only God.</p><p>For more than a thousand years, before the Arab conquest in 636 AD, the Jews were the main settled population of Palestine. Although they were often conquered, they had long periods of political independence, such as the Hasmonean Jewish Kingdom (165-63 BC). In 70 AD, in response to a Jewish revolt against Roman rule, the Romans captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple and the city, and took many Jews as captives to Rome.</p><p>From 637 to 1099 AD, the Jews in Palestine were ruled by Arab Muslims, who tolerated the Jews and their religious practices, although the Jews were sometimes badly treated. From 1099 to 1291, the Jews were persecuted and killed by Christian Crusaders. The Jews fought on the side of the Arabs against the Crusaders. The Muslim Mameluks expelled the Crusaders in 1291, and ruled until 1516. During this time, many European Jews moved to Palestine to escape persecution in Europe.</p><p>After 1517, under the Ottoman Turks, Palestine continued to be a place of refuge for persecuted Jews. Sometimes they were badly treated by the Ottoman rulers, but at least the Jews were better off in Palestine than in Europe. Jerusalem became a center of Jewish learning. And by 1880, the majority of the population of Jerusalem was Jewish. In four Holy Cities in Palestine--Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed--there was continuous Jewish settlement from Biblical times.</p><p>From 1880 to 1914, as the Zionist movement gained influence, there was increasing Jewish migration into Palestine. Jews developed land that they had purchased from European, Turkish, and Arab landlords. Tel Aviv became the first town founded entirely by Jews. By 1914, the population of Palestine was about 500,000 Arabs and 90,000 Jews. During this period, there was growing violent conflict between Arabs and Jews, with some Arab leaders demanding that Constantinople prohibit Jewish migration and settlement.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Gilbert, Martin. 2012. <i>The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict</i>. 10th edition. New York: Routledge.</p><p>Liverani, Mario. 2014. <i>The Ancient Near East: History, Society, Economy</i>. New York: Routledge.</p><p><i>NIV</i> <i>Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. </i>2016. Edited with Notes and Commentaries by John Walton and Craig Keener. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.</p><p>Pritchard, James B., ed. 1969. <i>Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament</i>. 3rd edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</p><p>Romer, Thomas. 2015. <i>The Invention of God</i>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</p><p>Walton, John. 2018. <i>Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible.</i> 2nd edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-35597722878596005342024-01-04T00:22:00.003+00:002024-01-04T12:49:21.929+00:00Roger D. Masters, 1933-2023: Natural Right and Biology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllqGwV-wo3y8P8opAnNbaT8hTmL34U8auf_TpqizXau7fHIus9eyYQrC-WjJLpZlm8YYwmKPom12KiOgW8M7pfXSC1Jz59PlIcSailgXeN9IDpFpRUFJo5ZeR9yCE4TIElpv_jydLzCipTQkNhtU9JnUODnzOESb6K9W2TIlojfDM33-j2dMDWA/s499/RogerMasters.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="384" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllqGwV-wo3y8P8opAnNbaT8hTmL34U8auf_TpqizXau7fHIus9eyYQrC-WjJLpZlm8YYwmKPom12KiOgW8M7pfXSC1Jz59PlIcSailgXeN9IDpFpRUFJo5ZeR9yCE4TIElpv_jydLzCipTQkNhtU9JnUODnzOESb6K9W2TIlojfDM33-j2dMDWA/s320/RogerMasters.jpg" width="246" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB2X4JgXD3jMnW8_uuEX0FPs84bxkndQNIwzlW7UZPbW1tj91GqWH1jQOoGC4rBuoLi5hC1oHTs4Inp-T9WsTCVsnD7GLy0CkdJLMZY6SINwVyvB4qCFKfSgDyT8ekTwtuX6ItOXTrOETXacl0gAeiwWSNvqZ5WrIlgM7MaiGxcRpGhGWYf4Wl4Q/s251/Roger-D.-Masters-Political-Science-1967-250x250.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="251" data-original-width="250" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB2X4JgXD3jMnW8_uuEX0FPs84bxkndQNIwzlW7UZPbW1tj91GqWH1jQOoGC4rBuoLi5hC1oHTs4Inp-T9WsTCVsnD7GLy0CkdJLMZY6SINwVyvB4qCFKfSgDyT8ekTwtuX6ItOXTrOETXacl0gAeiwWSNvqZ5WrIlgM7MaiGxcRpGhGWYf4Wl4Q/s1600/Roger-D.-Masters-Political-Science-1967-250x250.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><br /><p>Roger D. Masters died in Hanover, New Hampshire, on June 22, 2023. He was a longtime Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. He was the man who first stimulated my thinking about how evolutionary biology might be applied to political philosophy--and particularly, how it might solve what Leo Strauss called "the problem of natural right."</p><p>He was born in Boston in 1933. He graduated from Harvard University in 1955. He completed two years of military service. Then he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1961, studying under Leo Strauss, who supervised his dissertation on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. After teaching for five years in the Political Science Department at Yale University, he began his position at Dartmouth in 1967. He served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. He was one of the founders of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences.</p><p>With the publication of his book <i>The Political Philosophy of Rousseau </i>(Princeton University Press, 1968), he became one of the preeminent interpreters of Rousseau. He published translations of Rousseau. With Christopher Kelly, he edited <i>The Collected Writings of Rousseau</i>. He also wrote many articles and books on other political philosophers, including Aristotle and Niccolo Machiavelli.</p><p>He is best known for arguing that modern evolutionary biology of human nature can illuminate some of the fundamental debates in political philosophy. One can see that in his books <i>The Nature of Politics </i>(1989), and <i>Beyond Relativism: Science and Human Values </i>(1993).</p><p>Towards the end of this life, he studied the possible effects of toxic lead on the development of the brain in ways that might promote a tendency to violence.</p><p>Roger's profound influence on me began in 1978 when I heard him present a paper on "Classical Political Philosophy and Contemporary Biology" at the meetings of the Conference for the Study of Political Thought in Chicago. He argued that modern evolutionary biology could support Aristotle's conception of natural right. I was fascinated. In 1998, my book <i>Darwinian Natural Right </i>was in a way an elaboration of his idea.</p><p>Roger invited me to meetings of the Gruter Institute. We were together at many gatherings of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences. And in 1996, I participated in a NEH/NSF Summer Institute at Dartmouth College that he directed on "Biology and Human Nature."</p><p>I have written about Roger on <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Roger+Masters">this blog</a>. My fullest account of Roger's thinking was my book chapter--"Roger Masters: Natural Right and Biology"--for <i>Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime </i>(1999), edited by Kenneth Deutsch and John Murley.</p><p>Here are four paragraphs from the beginning and ending of that piece.</p><p>As compared with other students of Leo Strauss who became prominent political scientists, the intellectual career of Roger Masters seems strange. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Masters wrote his dissertation on Jean-Jacques Rousseau under Strauss's supervision. He then established his scholar reputation in the 1960s through his writings on Rousseau's political philosophy. At that point, it appeared that Masters would follow the same path taken by many of Strauss's students who have devoted their lives to writing meticulous commentaries on the classic texts of political philosophy. </p><p>But after publishing his book on Rousseau in 1968, Masters began to write about evolutionary biology. For example, he suggested that Rousseau's account of man in the original state of nature should be compared with recent studies of orangutans as evolutionary ancestors of human beings; and he argued that Aristotle's claim that human beings are by nature political animals was confirmed by recent sociobiological theories of human evolution and animal sociality. Most recently, he has explained Machiavelli's concept of political leadership as rooted in a natural tendency to dominance hierarchies that human beings share with other primates. The history of political philosophy is largely a debate about human nature. And Masters believes that debate can be clarified, if not even resolved, by appealing to Darwinian theories of human nature. To many of Strauss's students, such ideas seem ridiculously perverse. Yet a few Straussians have been persuaded by Masters that this turn to Darwinian biology is essential for solving what Strauss called "the problem of natural right."</p><p>In his effort to root the idea of natural right in modern natural science, and thus solve what Strauss believed was the fundamental problem of natural right--that science seems to have refuted the teleological conception of nature--Masters challenges the dichotomies that have traditionally separated the humanistic study of ethics from the scientific study of nature. There is no absolute gap between mechanism and teleology if a full explanation of living beings requires accounting for formal and final causes as well as material and efficient causes. There is no absolute gap between <i>is </i>and <i>ought </i>if human morality is founded on a natural moral sense. There is no absolute gap between nature and freedom if human freedom expresses a natural human capacity for deliberate choice. and there is no absolute gap between nature and nurture if habituation and learning fulfill the natural propensities of human beings. If Masters is right in these claims, then the science of the human good is part of the science of human nature.</p><p>Although I find the arguments of Masters largely persuasive, I suspect that many readers will disagree. As Strauss indicated, most contemporary scholars have responded to the apparent refutation of ancient naturalism by modern natural science in one of two ways--reductionism or dualism. The reductionists will agree with Masters that moral feelings are governed by the emotional control centers of the brain, but they will conclude from this that belief in the objectivity of morality is only a useful illusion. The dualists, including many of the students of Strauss, will insist that human biology is irrelevant to human ethics and politics, because human beings as rational beings differ in kind and not just in degree from all other animals, and for that reason Darwin's evolutionary account of human morality and intellect is wrong. Yet for those of us who regard both of these opposing positions as inadequate, the alternative o0ffered by Masters in his attempt to solve the problem of natural right is one of the most exciting intellectual projects of our time.</p><p>I regret that I had little contact with Roger in the last years of his life. I wish that I had told him how much I had benefited from our philosophic friendship.</p><p>I will remember him.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-80836389783588078242023-12-29T21:03:00.001+00:002023-12-29T21:10:13.158+00:00Can Israel's Declaration of Independence Resolve Israel's Current Crisis?<p>2023 has been an important year for thinking about Israel. First, since 2023 is the 75th anniversary of the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state as announced in Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, there has been a lot of discussion of the Declaration and of how it might illuminate the history of Israel's successes and failures. This discussion has been deepened by the publication of two books--Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler's <i>Israel's Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation's Founding Moment </i>(Cambridge University Press) and Daniel Gordis's <i>Impossible Takes Longer: 75 Years After its Creation, Has Israel Fulfilled Its Founders' Dreams </i>(HarperCollins). Rogachevsky and Zigler offer a history of how the Declaration was written and how it has been interpreted. They have summarized their argument in an <a href="https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/uncategorized/13858/israels-declaration-of-independence-a-biography/">article</a> for the <i>Jewish Review of Books</i>. Gordis uses the Declaration as a statement of the high standards for judging whether Israel has fulfilled the hopes of its founders.</p><p>A second reason for why 2023 has been a year for thinking about Israel is that it has been a year of crises in Israel--both domestic and international. The domestic crisis arose after the election in November 2022, when Benjamin Netanyahu managed to put together a ruling coalition of the Likud party with several far-right parties, which looked to many people to be an extremist government that might destroy Israel's liberal democracy. </p><p>The first proposal from the new government was to have the Knesset enact a series of laws for "judicial reform" that would effectively weaken if not completely deny the power of the Supreme Court to overturn laws and administrative policies that seemed to violate human rights. Proponents of this proposal said it was necessary to protect the democratic rule of the majority against the excessive power of unelected judges. But opponents said this would eliminate the institutional checks and balances that protect individual rights from being infringed by otherwise unchecked legislative or executive power. The opponents organized mass public protests and strikes over many months that threatened to paralyze the social and economic life of the country. Perhaps most disturbing was that some military reservists said they would refuse to show up for military service.</p><p>In his Afterword to his book, Daniel Gordis warned that this showed the danger coming from "the most extreme government in Israel's history" (290). Gordis also coauthored an <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/an-open-letter-to-israels-friends-in-north-america/">essay</a>--"An Open Letter to Israel's Friends in North America"--asking North American Jews to join the protesters in Israel in opposing the government's threat to Israeli liberal democracy.</p><p>Neil Rogachevsky has joined Gordis in opposing the proposals for judicial reform. Far from supporting the rule of the majority, these proposals, Rogachevsky <a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/israel-zionism/2023/03/israels-other-tyranny-of-the-minority/">argues</a>, actually show the tyranny of the minority, because Netanyahu's government has promoted these proposals only to satisfy the demands of the Haredi ultra-Orthodox religious minority parties in his coalition who want to protect their special legal privileges against the Supreme Court's claim that this violates the principle of equality of rights. In 2012, the Supreme Court overturned a law that secured the deferment of military service for Haredi students because this violated the principle in the Declaration of Independence that Israel "will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex."</p><p>Then, however, on October 7, this intense debate over the judicial reform proposals was quieted by the attacks on Israel launched by Hamas from Gaza. Netanyahu has assembled a new coalition of parties that normally oppose one another that are now part of a "national unity" government in wartime. </p><p>So now, Israel faces the second crisis of 2023--a bloody war against Hamas that renews the endless conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This conflict has lasted for over a hundred years because there seems to be no peaceful resolution between the Zionist demand for a Jewish state in which Palestinian Arabs will always be a minority and Jews the majority and the Palestinian claim that all of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians.</p><p>Both of these crises point to the fundamental problem of how to achieve the equality of natural rights proclaimed by the Israeli Declaration of Independence in the circumstances of the Middle East. How can there be equality of rights for all ethnic and religious groups if the ethnic identity of Israel as a Jewish state must necessarily be Jewish, thus favoring Jews over non-Jews? If the ethnic identity of Jews depends on the Jewish religion, does that require some form of Jewish theocracy? Or must secular Jews have equal rights with religious Jews? In other words, if "the People" consent to government to secure their natural rights, who are "the People"? What makes a People a People? And who has the authority to interpret and enforce those equal natural rights of the People?</p><p>In some future posts, I will consider whether the Israeli Declaration of Independence suggests answers to those questions, and thus could resolve the crises that Israel now faces.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-387479990096325952023-12-20T16:54:00.009+00:002024-01-07T11:49:49.554+00:00Constitutional Originalism Defeats Trump in the Colorado Supreme Court Ruling<p> A few months ago, I <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2023/09/does-original-meaning-of-14th-amendment.html">wrote</a> about how some conservative lawyers have argued that the original meaning of the 14th Amendment in Section Three disqualifies Donald Trump from any office under the United States because he engaged in insurrection on January 6th, 2021. Yesterday, the Colorado Supreme Court <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/9927fc28f3500b61/96292b55-full.pdf">agreed</a> with this argument--in the case of <i>Anderson v. Griswold</i>--in declaring that Trump cannot appear on the Colorado Republican presidential primary ballot in 2024. Now, surely, the U.S. Supreme Court will have to rule on this case.</p><p>Here's the language of Section Three:</p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"></span></p><blockquote>"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."</blockquote><p>A group of Colorado electors eligible to vote in the Republican presidential primary filed a petition in the Denver District Court invoking Colorado's Election Code and asking that the court rule that Trump may not appear on the Colorado Republican presidential primary ballot. Since Trump "engaged in insurrection" against the Constitution, and thus violated his oath to support the Constitution, they argued, he is disqualified under Section Three from holding any office under the United States. </p><p>Remarkably, while the District Court decided that Trump had indeed engaged in insurrection on January 6th, it also decided that the Section-Three disqualification from future public office did not apply to Trump for three reasons. (1) The Presidency is not an "office, civil or military, under the United States." (2) The President is not an "officer of the United States." And (3) the presidential oath set forth in Article II of the Constitution is not an oath "to support the Constitution of the United States."</p><p>The 4-to-3 majority of the Colorado Supreme Court persuasively argues that while the District Court was right to see that Trump was an insurrectionist, it was wrong in claiming that Section Three did not apply to him. The language of the Constitution makes it clear that the Presidency is an "office" under the United States, that the President is an "officer" of the United States, and that the President's special oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" is an oath to "support the Constitution."</p><p>Since the Colorado Supreme Court's decision rests on an "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution, we will see whether the originalists on the U.S. Supreme Court are willing to uphold this originalist jurisprudence in deciding against Trump.</p><p>The dissenters on the Colorado Supreme Court do have one good argument against the majority's decision--that the Colorado Election Code does not give courts the authority to adjudicate Section Three challenges to the qualifications of presidential candidates. But the fact that the Colorado Election Code does require identifying the "qualified candidate" in a presidential primary surely opens it up for voters to challenge the qualifications of a presidential candidate under Section Three.</p><p>It is notable that the majority decision quotes from a decision by Neil Gorsuch in a Federal Circuit Court case in Colorado--before he became a Supreme Court Justice--in which he upheld the authority of the Colorado Secretary of State to exclude a naturalized citizen from the presidential ballot. Gorsuch said that it is "a state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process" that "permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office" (32). Presumably, the standards for "constitutionally prohibited from assuming office" must include not only the minimal qualifications for the President in Article II but also the disqualification of insurrectionists in Section Three of the 14th Amendment. To be consistent with this earlier opinion, Gorsuch will have to rule against Trump.</p><p>If the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Colorado Supreme Court's originalist reading of the Constitution as disqualifying Trump from holding public office, that will confirm my argument often made on this blog that Trump's biggest mistake as President was allowing the Federalist Society to dictate his nominees to the federal bench, because judges who follow the original meaning of the Constitution will not rule in Trump's favor.</p><p>There are, however, some plausible arguments that SCOTUS could use to overturn the Colorado decision. For example, one of the dissenters in the Colorado decision (Justice Samour) argued that the expedited procedures in the Election Code did not give President Trump adequate due process of law in that his lawyers did not have enough opportunity to contest the judgment of the majority that Trump had engaged in insurrection. SCOTUS could point out that Section One of the 14th Amendment says that no State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." It could be claimed that the Colorado Supreme Court has deprived Trump of his liberty to run as a candidate for the Presidency without sufficient due process of law.</p><p>But the court is unlikely to reach that conclusion. This is not a criminal case in which Trump is being charged with the federal crime of insurrection. If he were, he would have all the procedural requirements of due process. Being disqualified to serve in public office under Section Three of the 14th Amendment is not a criminal punishment but a constitutional punishment for those who have violated their oath to support the Constitution by engaging in insurrection. The congressional Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol conducted an elaborate fact-finding investigation that concluded that Trump was ultimately responsible for the insurrection. The Colorado Supreme Court decided that that was admissible in court to determine Trump's disqualification under Section Three.</p><p>In the Colorado decision, the four justices in the majority were Monica Marquez, William Hood, Richard Gabriel, and Melissa Hart. The three in the minority were Brian Boatright (Chief Justice), Carlos Samour, and Maria Berkenkotter. The three in the minority all graduated from the University of Denver Law School. The four in the majority graduated from Yale Law School (Marquez), the University of Pennsylvania Law School (Gabriel), the University of Virginia Law School (Hood), and Harvard Law School (Hart). All were appointed by Democratic governors.</p><div>In Colorado, the state constitution requires that in appointing justices to the court, the Governor must choose between three individuals recommended by a bipartisan commission. As a result, the Colorado Supreme Court is generally perceived as much less politically partisan than is the U.S. Supreme Court. After their first two years on the court, justices must run in a state-wide retention election. Thereafter, they must run every 10 years for retention by the voters. So, it is not right to identify them as "unelected judges," as some critics have.</div><p></p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-68197157221721466302023-12-17T17:38:00.002+00:002023-12-18T12:29:58.170+00:00A Darwinian Liberal Defense of Israel<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m19F4IHTVGc" width="320" youtube-src-id="m19F4IHTVGc"></iframe></div><p> The History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict in 11 Minutes</p><p><br /></p><p>The fighting between Hamas and Israel has renewed the endless debate over the Israel-Palestine conflict. The argument on the Palestinian side of this debate is well stated by Rashid Khalidi in <i>The Hundred Years' War on Palestine </i>(2020). On the side of Israel, the best book is Alan Dershowitz's <i>The Case for Israel </i>(2003). One of the best histories of the Arab-Israeli conflict--using annotated maps--is Martin Gilbert's <i>Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict </i>(10th edition, 2012). Although it is generally historically accurate, Gilbert's book is slanted to the side of Israel.</p><p>The fundamental issue here is suggested by the subtitle of Khalidi's book: "A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017." Is it true that the Palestinians fighting against Israel have been resisting the settler colonialism of the Israeli Jews who have taken Palestinian land by violent conquest? Or is it rather the case that the Israelis have been fighting in defense of Israel's right to exist against Arab terrorists who want to destroy Israel?</p><p>I will offer a Darwinian liberal argument for why Israel is indeed defending its natural and historic right to exist as a state against Arab terrorist attacks that have no moral justification.</p><p><br /></p><p>HERZL AND ZIONISM</p><p>This all began over a century ago, at the end of the 19th century, with the emergence of the Zionist movement, which sought to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, where the ancient Jews had lived for long periods as an independent state before they were conquered by the Romans and then defeated in a revolt against Roman rule, 66-73 AD. </p><p>During the six centuries after the Roman conquest, some Jews remained in Palestine. In 637 AD, Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslim Arabs. From 637 to 1099, the Arabs were generally tolerant towards their Jewish subjects, although the Jews were often mistreated. From 1099 to 1291, the Christian Crusaders persecuted and killed the Palestinian Jews; and the Jews fought alongside the Arabs against the Crusaders. In 1291, the Muslim Mamluks expelled the Crusaders and ruled until 1516. During this time, many Jews came to Palestine to escape from persecution in Christian Europe.</p><p>After 1517, Palestine was under the colonial rule of the Ottoman Turks until they were defeated by the British in World War I. Although the Jews were often mistreated by the Ottoman Muslims, the Jews of Europe continued to move to Palestine because the European Christians persecuted and expelled the Jews. Between 1880 and 1914, over 60,000 Jews entered Palestine, mostly from Eastern Europe and Russia. The Jews purchased their land, often wasteland, from European, Turkish, and Arab landlords. In 1909, some Jews founded the first entirely Jewish town--Tel Aviv--on the sandhills north of Jaffa.</p><p>In 1896, Theodor Herzl's <i>The Jewish State </i>was published in Germany and Austria. (Herzl coined the term "Jewish state.") This became the manifesto of the Zionist movement with Herzl as its leader. He convened the first international Zionist conference in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, wrote a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/David-Ben-Gurion-on-Theodor-Herzl-2215526">short biography</a> of Herzl showing how the establishment of Israel as a state in 1948 was the fulfillment of Herzl's vision.</p><p>Herzl said that the Jews would want "sovereignty over a strip of territory" in Palestine, and "we should there form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism" (Herzl 2019, 11, 43). This is the language of European colonization. Remarkably, Herzl never mentions the Palestinian Arabs as possibly resisting Jewish "sovereignty" over their territory. Actually, Herzl knew very little about Palestine. His one and only visit to Palestine was in 1898, two years after the publication of his book.</p><p>Herzl was a secular Jew. And he promised that the Jewish state in Palestine would not be a theocracy, because the Jewish priests would have no political power. "Every man will be free and undisturbed in his faith or his disbelief as he is in his nationality. And if it should occur that men of different creeds and different nationalities came to live amongst us, we should accord them honorable protection, and equality before the law. We learned toleration in Europe" (61). But notice his oddly hypothetical language--"<i>if </i>it should occur that men of different creeds and different nationalities came to live amongst us"--as if Palestine were not already populated by a Muslim majority.</p><p>As Khalidi indicates, Herzl's diary shows that he had actually begun to think about the need to move the native Arab Palestinians out of their land. In 1895, he wrote:</p><blockquote><p>"We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly" (Khalidi, 4).</p></blockquote><p>Khalidi has found an exchange of letters between Herzl and Khalidi's great uncle--Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi--that shows how Islamic leaders in Palestine feared an attempted Jewish conquest of their land. Yusuf Diya had been an Ottoman government official in various positions--including mayor of Jerusalem. On March 1, 1899, he sent a seven-page letter to the French chief rabbi, with the hope that it would be passed on to Herzl. And, indeed, Herzl replied to him on March 19.</p><p>Yusuf Diya wrote about his admiration for Judaism and his recognition of the persecution suffered by the Jews in Europe. He saw that Zionism was "natural, beautiful and just," and, "who could contest the rights of the Jews in Palestine? My God, historically it is your country!"</p><p>But then he warned that trying to establish a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would create conflict between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Palestine. Although it was right for the Zionists to find a homeland somewhere in the world, Palestine was not the place because "Palestine is an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and more gravely, it is inhabited by others." For that reason, it would be "pure folly" for Zionism to try to take over Palestine. He concluded with a plea: "in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone" (Khalidi, 4-5).</p><p>In his reply, Herzl ignored this plea and the warning that the Arab Palestinians would resist being ruled in a Jewish state. Herzl reassured Yusuf Diya that the native Palestinian Muslims would benefit from Jewish immigration: "It is their well-being, their individual wealth, which we will increase by bringing in our own. . . . In allowing immigration to a number of Jews bringing their intelligence, their financial acumen and their means of enterprise to the country, no one can doubt that the well-being of the entire country would be the happy result."</p><p>Here Khalidi sees the condescending arrogance of every colonial settler movement that will try to force an indigenous people to give up their homeland and be ruled by another superior people.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE CASE FOR ISRAEL AND THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION</p><p>To defend Israel against the charge that Zionism aimed to establish a colonialist, imperialist Jewish state that would displace the Palestinians and colonize all of Palestine, one must reject two extremist positions. Khalidi rightly rejects the extremist Zionist slogan that Palestine was "a land without a people for a people without a land," because this denies the fact that Palestinian Arabs were roughly 95 percent of the inhabitants of Palestine in 1914 (11). But he should also reject the extremist Palestinian claim that in 1914, there were a Palestinian state and a Palestinian people that were displaced by a Jewish violent conquest that established the state of Israel, and therefore the state of Israel has no right to exist.</p><p>Between these two extremist positions, the reasonable and fair resolution of the Palestinian/Israel conflict would be dividing the land of Palestine into two states--one predominantly Arab and the other predominantly Jewish. But while Jewish Israeli leaders have repeatedly agreed to this solution, Muslim Arabic leaders have repeatedly rejected it.</p><p>The Jews who immigrated to Palestine before World War I were not carving a Jewish homeland out of a pre-existing Palestinian state. There had never been a Palestinian state in this area since the Jews had their state there before the Roman conquest. The Palestinians were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. </p><p>By 1914, there were roughly 500,000 Arabs in Palestine, and roughly 90,000 Jews. So, while the Arabs were the majority, the Jewish minority was sizable; and in some parts of Palestine, the Jews were the majority (Gilbert, 3).</p><p>Moreover, the Jews who settled in Palestine had not entered through force of arms. They had purchased land from landlord owners.</p><p>Many Arabs responded to this with aggressive violence. Between 1886 and 1914, Jewish settlements were repeatedly attacked by Arab bands (Gilbert, 4).</p><p>The British conquered Palestine in 1917-1918. On November 2, 2017, Lord Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary in the Lloyd George ministry, issued the "Balfour Declaration": "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country" (Gilbert, 8).</p><p>To stop this "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, armed Arab bands attacked Jewish agricultural settlements in 1920-1921. Arabs demanded that the British give them representative institutions so that the Arab majority could stop all Jewish immigration. Although the British rejected this demand, they did try to reduce Jewish immigration, and Transjordan (now Jordan) was completely closed to Jewish settlement in 1921.</p><p>Jewish immigration to Palestine increased after Hitler came to power in 1933. From 1933 to 1936, the Jewish population of Palestine increased from 230,000 to 400,000, which constituted one third of the Arab population. In 1936, the Arabs launched massive attacks on the Palestinian Jews.</p><p>In 1936, the British Government appointed the Peel Commission to study the problems of Britain's Mandate over Palestine. In 1937, the Commission recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with a British controlled corridor from Jaffa to Jerusalem.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizMabUsEdiY9oTTdT2Q_KRro6IZ1ACt3Td3Nz8tK9MF-ZIH7YUiOrDSGTxOolWDThcleu8HLzATCVW9ecnGSoHGp2hitf8Fwm2au9hrUi6cm0d2QwjpidrMFmsTDH6NoIBpXnORdOb2LjemLKkJ5MnZ3o5NQURjZCUrix3jXgrGS9HRfsG9fhbwQ/s707/PeelCommissionPartition.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="322" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizMabUsEdiY9oTTdT2Q_KRro6IZ1ACt3Td3Nz8tK9MF-ZIH7YUiOrDSGTxOolWDThcleu8HLzATCVW9ecnGSoHGp2hitf8Fwm2au9hrUi6cm0d2QwjpidrMFmsTDH6NoIBpXnORdOb2LjemLKkJ5MnZ3o5NQURjZCUrix3jXgrGS9HRfsG9fhbwQ/s320/PeelCommissionPartition.gif" width="146" /></a></div><br /><p> The Peel Commission Partition Plan, 1937</p><p><br /></p><p>After an intense debate, the Jewish leaders agreed to accept this plan for creating two separate states. The Arab leaders rejected it.</p><p>This set the pattern that would be followed throughout the history of the Palestine-Israeli conflict. Whenever a two-state solution was proposed, the Jewish leaders would accept it, and the Arab leaders would reject it. In 1947, the United Nations proposed a partition of Palestine into two states. The Jewish leaders accepted it and declared the independence of Israel in 1948. The Arab leaders rejected the UN's partition plan and launched a massive war against Israel as soon as independence was declared.</p><p>Another chance for a two-state solution came with the Barak-Clinton peace proposals of 2000-2001. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was known as someone desperate to achieve peace between Palestinians and Israel. In negotiations between Barak and PLO leader Yasser Arafat organized by President Bill Clinton, Barak agreed to give the Palestinians almost everything they had demanded--a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, control over the Temple Mount, 95 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip returned to Palestinian rule, and $30 billion dollars to help the 1948 Palestinian refugees. Amazingly, Arafat rejected the offer without even offering a counterproposal. He just walked away. Then he ordered terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli civilians. This provoked an Israeli overreaction and the election of a hawkish general (Ariel Sharon) as prime minister, who promised a brutal response to terrorism (Dershowitz, 117-22).</p><p><br /></p><p>JUST WAR AGAINST TERRORISM</p><p>Palestinian terrorist attacks are designed to provoke Israel into an overreaction that kills many innocent Palestinians, which arouses a world-wide condemnation of Israel for violating human rights. That's what Hamas has done in the present conflict. The attacks on Israel on October 7 were targeted at innocent civilians. Israel has retaliated with attacks on Hamas, but since Hamas hides behind civilians, these attacks on Hamas inevitably kill many innocent people.</p><p>In accordance with international standards of just war, Islamic terrorism is unjust because it directly and intentionally targets civilians for attack, while Israel's defensive actions directly attacking military targets are just because civilian deaths are unintended side-effects of attacking combatants. This distinction is clear in the different training for Islamic terrorists and for Israeli soldiers. The terrorists are ordered to kill as many innocent civilians as possible. The Israeli soldiers are ordered to risk their own lives to reduce the risks for the civilian population. It can be argued, as Dershowitz does, that no country facing terrorist attacks has been more protective of innocent civilians than Israel (Dershowitz, 140-53).</p><p><br /></p><p>RIGHTS FROM WRONGS</p><p>Israel's right to exist and right to self-defense are examples of what Dershowitz has called <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Dershowitz">"rights from wrongs."</a> From our historical experience with injustice, we learn to assert those rights necessary to avoid the wrongs of injustice. So, from the experience of the unjust treatment of the Jews throughout their history, and particularly during the Holocaust, we have learned the need for the Jews to have the right to defend themselves and for a Jewish state to have the right to exist.</p><p>This thought is implicit in what John Locke says about how the law of nature arises in the state of nature, the experience of being the victims of aggressive violence taught human beings that they needed the right to defend their life, liberty, and property from attack, and thus the right to punish those who violate the law of nature.</p><p><br /></p><p>FREEDOM IN ISRAEL</p><p>Another piece of evidence for the Darwinian liberal defense of Israel is its ranking on the Human Freedom Index. As I have indicated in previous <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Human+Freedom+Index">posts</a>, the Human Freedom Index includes many indices of both personal freedom and economic freedom that make it a good measurement of freedom as understood by classical liberalism.</p><p>Israel ranks at 62 out of 165 countries. Although it's not close to the top, it's slightly above the average for the world, and it's well above the average for its region--the Middle East and North Africa. For example, Jordan ranks at 108, Lebanon at 121, Turkey at 130, Saudi Arabia at 159, Egypt at 161, Iran at 162, Yemen at 164, and Syria at 165. So, while some of these Islamic Arabic countries rank at the absolute bottom, Israel looks good as a unique land of freedom in that part of the world.</p><p>That Israeli devotion to freedom was manifested in its Declaration of Independence of 1948, which will be the subject for my next post.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Dershowitz, Alan. 2003. <i>The Case for Israel</i>. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.</p><p>Gilbert, Martin. 2012. <i>The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict</i>. 10th edition. New York: Routledge.</p><p>Herzl, Theodor. 2019. <i>The Jewish State</i>. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.</p><p>Khalidi, Rashid. 2020. <i>The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017</i>. New York: Henry Holt and Company.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-50379969989688348132023-12-11T15:57:00.001+00:002024-02-25T13:57:24.734+00:00The Natural Desire for Property Is Rooted in the Lockean Liberal Principle of Self-Ownership: A Response to Pascal Boyer <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Recently, <i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences</i> has published an article by Pascal Boyer--"Ownership Psychology as a Cognitive Adaptation"--along with 31 commentaries on the article and Boyer's response. I wrote one of the commentaries.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Here I will provide Boyer's abstract for his article, my commentary, and then some comments on the argument for self-ownership in some of the other commentaries and Boyer's response.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">BOYER'S ABSTRACT</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">"Ownership is universal and ubiquitous in human societies, yet the psychology underpinning ownership intuitions is generally not described in a coherent and computationally tractable manner. Ownership intuitions are commonly assumed to derive from culturally transmitted social norms, or from a mentally represented implicit theory. While the social norms account is entirely <i>ad hoc</i>, the mental theory requires prior assumptions about possession and ownership that must be explained. Here I propose such an explanation, arguing the intuitions result from the interaction of two cognitive systems. On of thee handles competitive interactions for the possession of resources observed in many species including humans. The other handles mutually beneficial cooperation between agents, as observed in communal sharing, collective action, and trade. Together, these systems attend to specific cues in the environment, and produce definite intuitions such as 'this is hers,' 'that is not mine.' This computational model provides an explanation for ownership intuitions, not just in straightforward cases of property, but also in disputed ownership (squatters, indigenous rights), historical changes (abolition of slavery), as well as apparently marginal cases, such as the questions, whether people own their seats on the bus, or their places in a queue, and how people understand 'cultural appropriation' and slavery. In contrast to some previous theories, the model is empirically testable and free of <i>ad hoc </i>stipulations" (Pascal 2023). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">MY COMMENTARY</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The psychology
of ownership is rooted in self-ownership.
The human brain has an evolved interoceptive sense of owning the body
that supports self-ownership and the ownership of external things as extensions
of the self-owning self. In this way,
evolutionary neuroscience supports a Lockean liberal conception of equal
natural rights rooted in natural self-ownership.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Boyer argues persuasively for the interaction of two
cognitive systems to explain the psychology of ownership.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">But in doing this, he fails to recognize that
there is a third cognitive system for </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">self-ownership</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> that is the true
root of the evolutionary psychology of ownership.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">In explaining “the interaction of cognitive
systems that are not about ownership as such,” Pascal ignores the evolved
intuitive psychology of self-ownership, which really is “about ownership as
such.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">At the center of Boyer’s model is the “conceptual tag”
of “(Agent, thing).” This assumes
without explanation that human beings have an intuitive sense of themselves as <i>agents</i>
who claim <i>ownership </i>of <i>things</i>.
He provides no evolutionary explanation for why and how human beings
have this intuition. The best
explanation for this is the evolved neurobiology of self-ownership and
self-owning agency: if human beings did not have any sense of owning
themselves, they could not claim ownership of things external to them as
extensions of their self-owning selves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">John Locke saw that the natural desire for ownership
or property was rooted in the natural psychology of self-ownership—that “every
Man has a Property in his own Person,” and this “no Body has any Right to but
himself” (1988, 287). Boyer points to
Locke’s theory of property in explaining why labor is relevant to
ownership. But Boyer fails to see the
importance of Locke’s claim about self-ownership in supporting the natural
right to property as the fundamental principle of Lockean liberalism, and how evolutionary
psychology can explain this as grounded in the evolved neurobiology of the
human brain.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Lockean liberals have seen slavery—the institution by
which one person can own another person—as the most radical denial of the
natural right of everyone to own oneself.
In considering the case of slavery, Boyer explains abolitionism as a
widening of the “moral circle” to include slaves, but he does not acknowledge
that at the center of that “moral circle” is the self-owning human being recognizing
other human beings as self-owners.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">This was made clear by abolitionists such as Frederick
Douglass, who ran away from his enslavement and became a leading abolitionist
orator. Douglass said that even in
childhood, he held onto one idea for freedom and against slavery: “Every man is
the <i>original, rightful, and absolute owner of his own body</i>; or in other
words, every man is himself, is <i>his </i>self, if you please, and belongs to
himself, and can only part from <i>his </i>self-ownership, by the commission of
a crime” (1991, 42). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Now we can see how this sense of each person’s
self-ownership arises in the evolved neuroanatomy of the brain to serve the
survival and well-being of the human animal.
We can understand this as expressing interoception—the neural perception
of the state of the body (Ceunen, Vlaeyen, & Van Diest 2016; Tsakiris &
De Preester 2019).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The research on interoception shows that our self-awareness
arises from the feelings that we have from our bodies as a neural integration
in insular cortex of the signals of the condition of the body. The interoceptive neural network, having its
core in the anterior insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, provides
the basis for the subjective awareness of our bodily emotions and social
feelings, including pleasure, anxiety, trust, and anger (Craig 2015).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The brain’s interoceptive feeling of self-ownership
includes feeling whether other people are likely to be helpful or harmful to
oneself, as in the brain’s ability to discriminate trustworthy faces and
untrustworthy faces, or the propensisty to punish people who make unfair offers
in an Ultimatum Game. Our brains evolved
to protect ourselves from threats and to seek out cooperative relationships in
ways that secure our survival and well-being.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">This explains the evolved basis in the brain for
Douglass’s Lockean liberal principle of self-ownership in human nature. In running away from his slave master, and
then in arguing for the abolition of slavery, Douglass expressed the evolved
natural propensity of the human brain for self-ownership and for moral
resentment against those who would threaten the natural human right to
self-ownership. Moreover, Douglass
extended this liberal principle of natural human equality in self-ownership to
support other natural human rights—including women’s rights, the rights of
immigrants, and religious liberty (Buccola 2012).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Brain disorders can disrupt this sense of bodily
self-ownership. One example of this is <i>somatoparaphrenia
</i>(derived from three Greek words denoting “body outside the mind”). People who have had strokes in the right
hemisphere of the brain sometimes suffer through a short period in which they
deny that their left leg or arm belongs to them. They can <i>see </i>that their left arm or
left leg is attached to their body, but it doesn’t <i>feel</i> like it’s part
of their body (Antoniello & Gottesman 2017; Feinberg et al. 2010; Gandola
et al. 2012; Vallar & Ronchi 2009). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Comparing the studies of somatoparaphrenia, similar bodily
disorders, and illusions such as the rubber hand illusion, in which the brain
is tricked into feeling that a rubber hand is one’s own hand, provides evidence
for what Frédérique de Vignemont (2020) calls the Bodyguard Hypothesis: the brain
has evolved to protect the body through neural circuits that have a protective
body map that creates a sense of bodily ownership and affective motivation to
behave in ways that protect the body identified in the body map. Syndromes of disowning one’s body occur when the
body map does not represent a limb that feels alien. Illusions of body ownership occur when the
body map mistakenly represents something as a body part. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Evolution by natural selection favors those
psychological propensities rooted in the brain that enhance our chances for
self-preservation, which includes a sense of personal identity expressed in our
owning and protecting our bodies, and then extending that sense of
self-ownership into the ownership of external property that belongs to us. In this way, evolutionary neuroscience
supports a Lockean liberal conception of equal natural rights rooted in natural
self-ownership (Arnhart 1995, 1998, 2016).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>References</i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Antoniello,
D., & Gottesman, R. (2017) Limb misidentification: A clinical-anatomical prospective
study. <i>Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience</i> 29:284-88.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Arnhart,
L. (1995) The new Darwinian naturalism in political theory. <i>American
Political Science Review</i> 89:389-400.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Arnhart,
L. (1998) <i>Darwinian natural right: The biological ethics of human nature</i>.
The State University of New York Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Arnhart,
L. (2016) <i>Political questions: Political philosophy from Plato to Pinker</i>. Waveland Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Boyer, Pascal. (2023) Ownership psychology as a cognitive adaptation: A minimalist model. <i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences</i> 46, e323: 1-68. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X22002527</span></span></p>
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do you feel? An interoceptive moment with your neurobiological self</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. Princeton University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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Frederick Douglass papers: Volume 4</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">,
ed. J. W. Blassingame & J. R. McKivigan. Yale University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Feinberg, T., Venneri, A., Simone, A. M., Fan, Y.,
& Northoff, G. (2010) The neuroanatomy of asomatognosia and
somatoparaphrenia. </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Journal
of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">81:276-81.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Gandola, M., Invernizzi, P., Sedda, A., Ferre, E.
R., Sterzi, R., Sherna, M., Paulesu, E., & Bottini, G. (2012) An anatomical
account of somatoparaphrenia. </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Cortex</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> 48:1165-78.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Locke, J. (1988) </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Two
treatises of government.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> Cambridge
University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Tsakiris, M., & De Preester, H., eds. (2019) </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The interoceptive mind: From
homeostasis to awareness</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. Oxford
University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.5in;">Vallar, G., & Ronchi, R. (2009)
Somatoparaphrenia: A body delusion. A review of the neuropsychological
literature. </span><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Experimental
Brain Research</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.5in;"> 192:533-51.</span> </p><p><br /></p><p>BOYER'S RESPONSE TO THE ARGUMENT FOR SELF-OWNERSHIP</p><p>I was surprised to see that 7 of the 31 commentaries agreed with my argument for rooting the moral right to ownership in self-ownership (Hood 2023; Kemmerer 2023; Merker 2023; Nancekivell and Pesowski 2023; Rochat 2023; Starmans 2023; Wispinski, Enns, and Chapman 2023). Some of the commentators express this idea as understanding owned items as components of the "extended self." Others express this explicitly as ownership founded in our sense of our ownership of our bodies.</p><p>Boyer rejects this by arguing: "we do not need to postulate any psychological processes, beyond two mechanisms (competitive acquisition and mutualistic cooperation) that are already independently documented in a vast literature. By contrast, the extended-body or extended-self metaphors are additional mechanisms postulated specifically in order to explain ownership phenomena" (Boyer 2023, 61).<br /></p><p>But this does not refute my argument that Boyer's "conceptual tag" of "(Agent, thing)" assumes without explanation that human beings have an intuitive sense of themselves as <i>agents</i> who claim <i>ownership </i>of <i>things</i>. The best explanation for this is the evolved neurobiology of self-ownership and self-owning agency.</p><p>In his one attempt to answer my argument, Boyer says that he can provide an evolutionary explanation for intuitions of associations between agents and things by saying that there were selective pressures in early human evolution that would have favored recognizing the claims of agents to the ownership of territories and tools, and he cites the commentary by Merker. </p><p>But Boyer is silent about the fact that Merker grounds this ownership psychology in "our sense of ownership of our bodies as the central invariant of resource acquisition," and from there "the sense of ownership extends out, on a species-specific basis, to various extra-corporeal objects and circumstances in which a sense of ownership may be invested." And so, for example, when our early human ancestors invested labor and deliberate effort in fashioning stone tools, they would have claimed ownership of those tools (Merker 2023, 41-42).</p><p><br /></p><p><i>References</i></p><p>Hood, Bruce. 2023. "Ownership as a Component of the Extended Self." <i>BBS</i> 46, e323: 36-37.</p><p>Kemmerer, David. 2023. "Ownership Language Informs Ownership Psychology." <i>BBS</i> 46, e323: 39-40.</p><p>Merker, Bjorn. 2023. "Invested Effort and Our Open-Ended Sense of Ownership." <i>BBS</i> 46, e323: 41-42.</p><p>Nancekivell, Shaylene E., and Madison Pesowski. 2023. "Ownership as an Extension of Self: An Alternative to a Minimalist Model." <i>BBS</i> 46, e323: 45-47.</p><p>Rochat, Philippe. 2023. "Primordial Feeling of Possession in Development." <i>BBS</i> 46, e323: 49-50.</p><p>Starmans, Christina. 2023. "Autonomy, the Moral Circle, and the Limits of Ownership." <i>BBS</i> 46. e323: 52-53.</p><p>Wispinski, Nathan J., James T. Enns, and Craig S. Chapman. 2023. "Hold It! Where Do We Put the Body?" <i>BBS</i> 46, e323: 57-59.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-23923924723877742172023-12-07T19:59:00.005+00:002023-12-07T20:36:45.610+00:00Caster Semenya and the Biological Justification for Sex-Segregated Sports<p>Over the years, I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Caster+Semenya">written</a> about the case of Caster Semenya--the Olympian and World Champion runner who has been excluded from running as a woman because she is a chromosomal (XY) male with a disorder (or difference) of sexual development. The International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF)--now named World Athletics--has banned her from running as a woman because she has the elevated testosterone levels of a man that give her an unfair advantage over women in athletic competition.</p><p>In her new book--<i>The Race to Be Myself </i>(Norton, 2023)--she says that her case is "about the struggle for universal human rights" (304); and for this reason, she has appealed her case to the European Court of Human Rights. I have argued that the natural desire for sexual identity is one of the twenty natural desires of evolved human nature. Semenya identifies herself as a "masculine woman" with the "natural body" of a chromosomal male with some of the bodily traits of a woman--such as a vagina but no penis (1-2, 173, 184, 279, 283, 303). She says that her body is not a man's body. Nor is it the body of a transgender woman. Does she have a natural human right to express her sexual identity as a "masculine woman" by competing athletically with other elite women runners?<br /></p><p>I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=natural+desire+for+sexual+identity+mostly+binary">argued</a> that the natural desire for sexual identity is (mostly) binary. <span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">For most of us, our biological sex is clearly male or female. And for most of us, our gender identity corresponds to our sexual identity as male or female. But in rare cases, an individual's sex is a biological mosaic of male and female traits. Semenya is one of those rare exceptional cases, as she herself says. Is it therefore fair to exclude her--as a chromosomal male with a female gender identity--from competing in women's races? Should she either compete with other men, or artificially reduce her testosterone levels to the female range, and then compete with women? Or should she compete in a third category--"intersex"? There is a tragic conflict of desires here between Semenya's desire to run as a "masculine woman" in women's races and the desire of biologically typical women to compete with other biologically typical women.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">Although I lean to the side of the IAAF in this debate, I see good arguments on both sides; and so, I remain undecided.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">MORAL DISAGREEMENT AND VARIABLE DESIRES</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The fundamental problem here is the moral disagreement that arises from naturally variable desires, and the need for prudence or practical judgment to resolve such cases. I identified this problem in <i>Darwinian Natural Right </i>(44-49).</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">If the good is the desirable, and if there is a natural pattern of desires for human beings that includes the twenty natural desires, why do human beings fall into moral conflict? The pervasiveness of moral disagreement is the one fact most often cited by proponents of moral relativism, who believe there are no natural, universal standards for resolving moral debate. It does not follow, however, from the fact of moral controversy that there are no natural standards for moral judgment.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">There are four sources of moral disagreement: fallible beliefs about circumstances, fallible beliefs about desires, variable circumstances, and variable desires. In considering variable desires, we see both normal (typical) and abnormal (atypical) variation. The normal variation arises from age, sexual identity, and individual temperament. Natural human diversity is such that the young do not have exactly the same desires as the old, men do not have exactly the same desires as women, and individuals with one temperament do not have exactly the same desires as those with another temperament. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The abnormal variation in desires arises from abnormality in innate dispositions or in social circumstances. So, for example, while human beings are normally social animals with social desires that incline them to feel the pleasures and pains of those close to them, a few human beings are psychopaths who lack the social desires that normally characterize human beings, and these people are moral strangers who are not open to moral persuasion.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Intersex individuals like Semenya show an atypical variation in their desire for sexual identity. Semenya's "natural body" (as a biological male with some female traits) inclines her to identify herself as a "masculine woman," who does not fit into the sexually binary categories of men's and women's athletics.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">SEMENYA'S AMBIGUOUS SEXUAL IDENTITY</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Here's how Semenya describes her sexual identity:</span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">"I have what is called a difference in sex development (DSD), an umbrella term that refers to the varying genetic conditions where an embryo responds in a different way to the hormones that spark the development of internal and external sexual organs. To put it simply, on the outside I am female, I have a vagina, but I do not have a uterus. I do not menstruate, and my body produces an elevated amount of testosterone, which gives me more typically masculine characteristics than other women, such as a deeper voice and fewer curves. I cannot carry a child because I don't have a womb; but, contrary to what many people think, I do not produce sperm. I can't biologically contribute to make new life" (1-2).</span></blockquote><p>Semenya says that at puberty, she developed typically masculine features, and she began fantasizing about girls. She announced to her friends and family that she was "into girls" (54-55). Later, she developed romantic feelings for a girl that she married. At the marriage ceremony, Semenya dressed as a man, while her bride dressed as a woman. She thought this was right because she had always been very masculine. She and her wife now have two children by IVF. She denies that she is a lesbian (193, 212, 248, 269).</p><p>Semenya's "difference in sex development" is 5a-Reductase 2 Deficiency, which is caused by a mutation in the gene encoding the enzyme 5a-reductase type 2 (5aR2). 5aR2 catalyzes the transformation of testosterone (T) to 5a-dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which drives the process of the sexual differentiation in the external genitalia during the development of the male fetus in the womb. 5aR2D in chromosomal males arises from deficient 5aR2 activity, resulting in decreased DHT levels. Consequently, at birth, males will show ambiguous genitals--a micropenis or no penis and what looks like a vagina. Sometimes, as in Semenya's case, these biological boys will be raised as girls. But then at puberty, these biological males develop typically masculine features, because pubertal virilization is driven by elevated testosterone rather than DHT.</p><p>The circulating testosterone concentrations in Semenya's bloodstream is within the range for typical adult males (from 8 nanomoles per liter [nmol/L] to 25 nmol/L), which is much higher than the range for typical adult females (0.4 nmol/L to 2 nmol/L). The International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) has said that this has given Semenya an unfair advantage in competing with women. One can see this just by looking at the World Records for Running. In every event, from the 100-meter race to the marathon, the world record times for men is lower than for the women. For example, in Semenya's best event--the 800-meter race--the world record for men is 1:40.91, while the world record for women is 1:53.28. The IAAF has pointed to scientific studies concluding that the primary reason for this large sex difference in athletic performance is exposure to high levels of endogenous testosterone in males beginning at puberty. These male advantages associated with higher testosterone are considered the justification for sex-segregated sports (Hunter et al. 2023). </p><p>In 2009, the IAAF told Semenya that she could compete in women's events only if she took estrogen pills that would reduce her testosterone levels to no more than 10 nmol/L for six months. Notice that this is still far above the range for typical females. In later years, the IAAF changed its regulations to drop the maximum level of testosterone first to 5 nmol/L and then to 2.5 nmol/L (Semenya, 195, 267, 299). For over five years--from January of 2010 to August of 2015--Semenya took the estrogen pills. By June of 2010, her testosterone had dropped below the 10 nmol/L maximum; and she was then free to run in IAAF races. Once again, she was winning 800m races with good times like 1:59.90 and 1:58.16. Any time under 2 is a good time for an elite female runner. But still these times were well above her gold-medal-winning time of 1:55.45 at the Berlin World Championships.</p><p>After IAAF lost a court case in 2015 about their testosterone regulations for women, the regulations were dropped, and Semenya stopped taking the estrogen pills. One year later, Semenya won the gold medal for the 800m at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics with a time of 1:55.28. <span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">8 women ran in the 800 meters women's final. Of those 8, 3 of them were chromosomal (XY) males with disorders of sex development (DSD) who identify themselves as women. Those 3 intersex women have levels of testosterone far higher than normal for women. These 3 were the winners of the race: Caster Semenya (Gold), Francine Niyonsaba (Silver), and Margaret Nyaira Wambui (Bronze). One of the women who lost that race--Great Britain's Lynsey Sharp--expressed her frustration in televised interviews with having to compete against intersex individuals with the unfair advantages that come from male testosterone levels. She and other female runners called for the IAAF to impose new regulations that would ban biologically male DSD athletes from women's events.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">In 2018, the IAAF announced new rules: athletes with DSD competing with women in the 400m, 800m, and 1500m distances would have to lower their testosterone levels down to 5 nmol/L for a period of six months before they were eligible to compete. Then, in the spring of this year, the IAAF announced new regulations requiring women with DSD to lower their testosterone to 2.5 nmol/L or below for a continuous twenty-four months. Semenya is contesting those new rules in her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.</span></p><p><br /></p><p>THE IAAF'S BEST ARGUMENT</p><p>In her book, Semenya gives her version of her dispute with the IAAF as presented in 2019 at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland (Semenya 274-88). Reading this along with a recent article by scientists supporting the IAAF's position (Hunter et al. 2023) makes clear the best arguments on both sides of this debate.</p><p>The best argument for the IAAF is that the biological basis of sex differences in athletic performance show that biological males--including those with DSD--have an unfair advantage in athletic competition with women, and therefore fairness requires that these men be excluded from women's athletic events.</p><p>This argument makes three claims. First, in elite athletic competition, the performance of men tends to be superior to that of women. Second, a primary reason for this is the sex differences in anatomy and physiology as determined by sex chromosomes and sex hormones, so that adult men on average are typically stronger, more powerful, and faster than women of similar age and training. Third, biological males with DSD (such as 5a-reductase 2 deficiency) will on average have this male advantage over women in athletic competition. Semenya seems to accept the first two claims, but she rejects the third one.</p><p>The claim of male athletic superiority is easily supported by glancing at the world records for athletics. Consider just the racing events, for instance, in which all of the world record times for men are faster than those for women. In the 800m race, the world record for men is 1:40.91, set by David Rudisha running for Kenya at the 2012 Olympic Games. The record for women is 1:53.28, set by Jarmila Kratochvilova running for Czechoslovakia at the Munich World Championships in 1983. In the Marathon, the world records were set just two months ago. The men's record is 2:00:35, set by Kelvin Kiptum running for Kenya at the Chicago Marathon. The women's record is 2:11:53, set by Tigst Assefa running for Ethiopia at the Berlin Marathon.</p><p>One good criticism of this kind of evidence is that what looks like a male superiority in biological ability is really only a consequence of the differences in the cultural circumstances of men and women. For a long time, women have been discouraged from participating in athletic activity. In 1896, at the first Olympic Games in the modern era (in Athens, Greece), no women were allowed to compete. In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon as an officially registered competitor. In 1984, the first women's Olympic marathon was held in Los Angeles. It was not until 2021, that there were similar numbers of women and men at the summer Olympics in Tokyo. So, historically, women have had much less time and opportunity to develop their athletic skills than the men have.</p><p>In 1992, the journal <i>Nature </i>published an article by two biologists with the title "Will Women Soon Outrun Men?" (Whipp and Ward 1992). They pointed out that over the previous century, both men and women were improving their world record times in racing, but the rate of improvement for women was double that for men. The predicted that if these trends continued into the future, the world record times for women in the marathon would be the same or better than those for the men by 1998. They also predicted that the records in all other racing events would be no different for men and women by the middle of the 21st century.</p><p>This has not happened, however, because beginning sometime after about 1985, the rate of improvement in women's running times began to slow and level out, so that there has been no intersection with the times for men. In all of the running events, the gap between men's and women's world records is narrower than it has even been, but it's still there.</p><p>The best explanation for this continuing performance gap, according to the second claim of the IAAF, is that this shows biological sex differences:</p><blockquote><p>"Sex differences in athletic performance that involve strength, power, and/or endurance are sizable and determined by biological differences between males and females. Adult men ov average are stronger, more powerful, and faster over short and long distances than women of similar age and training status. The sex differences emerge with the onset of puberty, coinciding with the increase in endogenous sex hormones, in particular testosterone in males . . . . The sex differences in the world records and best performances of many athletic events that rely on endurance and muscular power ranges from 10% to 30%. . . . The largest sex differences are apparent for sports and events relying more on muscular power such as in weightlifting, jumping events, and short distance swimming. . . ." (Hunter et al. 2023: 2332-33).</p></blockquote><p>On the other hand, sports that rely less on muscular power such as archery and shooting show minimal sex differences in performance.</p><p>But even if we agree with all this--that typically biological males tend on average to have an advantage in athletic competition over typically biological females--it's not clear that this must hold true for atypically biological males with DSD like Semenya.</p><p> </p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">SEMENYA'S BEST ARGUMENT</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Consider what Semenya says here:</span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">". . . The IAAF's position was that women with high testosterone levels had an unfair advantage equal to the advantage that male athletes had over female athletes. On its face, this is ridiculous. We are not men. I am a great runner, and I train with men, some of whom I can maybe give a hard time to on my best day, just like any other elite female athlete could, but I have never been able to even approach an elite male runner's times. Likewise, there are plenty of men who normal 'male' testosterone levels whose only hope of beating a female athlete with 'female' levels is in their dreams" (238).</span></blockquote><p>In fact, Semenya observes: "The IAAF knew that not one woman with a confirmed DSD diagnosis had ever even approached the running times of male elite runners" (269). If biological males with DSD have the same advantage as normal males over women in athletic competition, then why don't runners like Semenya achieve the same running times as elite male runners? Since Semenya's running times are within the range of other elite female runners, that suggests that she does not have an unfair male advantage over her competitors.</p><p>To counter this argument from Semenya, some IAAF officials have accused her of cheating by running slower than what she is capable of, thus hiding the fact that she has the same male advantage as other elite male runners (Semenya 281-83). But this is implausible. Throughout her running career, Semenya's great ambition has been to break the world record time for the 800m in the women's event, but she has never done that. If she was easily capable of breaking this record, why would she slow herself down and fall short of the record?</p><p>There is one alternative explanation. Most men with normal male testosterone levels cannot run faster than elite female runners; and even most good male runners who can run as fast as elite women cannot run as fast as elite male runners. Is Semenya a good male runner who is good enough to compete with elite female runners, thus showing his male advantage, but not good enough to compete with elite male runners? If so, could this be true for other "46 XY males with DSD"?</p><p>I don't have good answers to those questions.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">AN "INTERSEX" OLYMPICS?</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">In any case, we should consider that one way out of this debate would be to create a third category for sexually segregated athletic competition--"intersex" events in which atypicaly males/females could compete against one another. This would be similar to what is done now with the Paralympic Games--a highly successful event for athletes with disabilities.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Kenya's Margaret Wambui--the biological male with DSD who won the bronze medal in the 2016 Olympic 800m event when Semenya won the gold--has proposed this. But Semenya rejects it.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">REFERENCES</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Hunter, Sandra K., et al. 2023. "The Biological Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance: Consensus Statement for the American College of Sports Medicine." <i>Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise </i>55: 2328-2360.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">Semenya, Caster. 2023. <i>The Race To Be Myself: A Memoir</i>. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; font-size: 15.4px;">Whipp, Brian J., and Susan A. Ward. 1992. "Will Women Soon Outrun Men?" <i>Nature</i> 355 (January 2): 25.</span></span></p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-86283590941475011892023-12-05T17:55:00.002+00:002023-12-05T17:57:56.770+00:00The Evidence for Women and Men as (Persistent) Hunters<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGA5SIN_-2Dlnnln0nYDMp4LEq4pNz3SQgk9zcIKP39gc77ZfRyJJhstFFDSGpku2PWeJ7Z8ZT2A_xfAebkyqZ0TtvqCw_aO8yvMFrM-ci0htIMLuXGb0UyuUwk_RjWjlAD768m_jvrX5OO1N9sn3rME-fIPaA72jba9DJE_boVrNzDd8_eCkFow/s1200/Sophie%20Power.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGA5SIN_-2Dlnnln0nYDMp4LEq4pNz3SQgk9zcIKP39gc77ZfRyJJhstFFDSGpku2PWeJ7Z8ZT2A_xfAebkyqZ0TtvqCw_aO8yvMFrM-ci0htIMLuXGb0UyuUwk_RjWjlAD768m_jvrX5OO1N9sn3rME-fIPaA72jba9DJE_boVrNzDd8_eCkFow/s320/Sophie%20Power.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>A Famous Photograph of the Ultrarunner Sophie Power in 2018, Who Was Running the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc Race in the Alps, While Breastfeeding Her Child at Rest Stations<p></p><div><br /></div><div>One of the best arguments of Cara Ocobock and Sarah Lacy for "Woman the Hunter" is that the physiology of women's bodies and brains gives them an endurance activity advantage over men, and this would have made Early Stone Age women good as persistent hunters who chased their prey over long distances. But because of Ocobock and Lacy's false view of the "Man the Hunter" theory as denying women's participation in hunting, they mistakenly criticize the proponents of the persistence hunting hypothesis for assuming that only men engaged in persistence hunting. They thus fail to see how recognizing that men have predominated in hunting that requires endurance running is compatible with recognizing that women in foraging societies have often engaged in endurance running in hunting and scavenging for food.</div><div><br /></div><div>The most important proponents of the persistence hunting hypothesis have been Daniel Lieberman, Dennis Bramble, and Louis Liebenberg (Bramble and Lieberman 2004; Liebenberg 2006). The idea was first suggested by David Carrier (1984). The best <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3716644/lieberman_marathon.pdf?sequence=3">short summary</a> of the reasoning is Lieberman and Bramble's "The Evolution of Marathon Running" (2007). I <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Lieberman+persistence+hunting">first wrote</a> about this in an essay six years ago. Some critics have dismissed the endurance running hypothesis as implausible (Pickering and Bunn 2007). Lieberman and his colleagues (2007) and Liebenberg (2008) have replied to these critics.</div><div><br /></div><div>The reasoning begins with the observation that humans are unique among primates in their capacity for endurance running, defined as the ability to run at a high speed over long distances (over three miles) using aerobic metabolism. Chimpanzees can only rarely sprint for short distances, and they never run marathon-length distances. While most mammals good at running can out-sprint humans, humans can outrun most of them over long distances. Sometimes they can even outrun horses in hot weather.</div><div><br /></div><div>This raises the questions of <i>how</i>, <i>when</i>, and <i>why</i> this uniquely human capacity for running long distances evolved.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>How?</i> The mass-spring mechanics of human running depends on storing spring-like energy in the tendons and ligaments of the legs and feet. The largest tendon in the body is the Achilles tendon, which connects the calf muscles to the heel bone. The non-human African apes do not have a well-developed Achilles tendon. Humans also have long legs relative to body mass, more compact feet, and relatively short toes. These and other bodily traits provide the energetic needs of human running.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is also a need to stabilize the body's center of mass during running. The trunk and neck of human runners are forwardly inclined in running, which creates a tendency to pitch forward. The human body has many features that help to stabilize the trunk, including a greatly enlarged gluteus maximus. This is the single largest muscle in the body and one of the most distinctive features of the human body--our big butts.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXontq9pyKAK43ROzjE46_yzf8fhvixjHxD-Uhjo93kkJkKmjdZw5LWd6KejG2t2FZz0nlLo99Yz6xlAZbRgCtnIF-9hx-xwoZxkZfrImdx58mK9Ad8uJfp0EVZChY1RIIHQR2P5vnyRtgzHHW1KxyOgiddAvGrgrwukIH2p5xXi1Wtw-P3FdPJw/s800/Gluteus_maximus_muscle,_artwork.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXontq9pyKAK43ROzjE46_yzf8fhvixjHxD-Uhjo93kkJkKmjdZw5LWd6KejG2t2FZz0nlLo99Yz6xlAZbRgCtnIF-9hx-xwoZxkZfrImdx58mK9Ad8uJfp0EVZChY1RIIHQR2P5vnyRtgzHHW1KxyOgiddAvGrgrwukIH2p5xXi1Wtw-P3FdPJw/s320/Gluteus_maximus_muscle,_artwork.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The greatest physiological challenge for runners is heat. Running generates as much as ten times more internal heat in the body than walking. Runners must cool down to avoid hyperthermia. Most mammals cannot run over long distances without suffering hyperthermia, particularly in hot weather. Humans are unique in their ability to run long distances in hot weather, because of their many eccrine sweat glands and reduced body hair that allow for dissipating heat more effectively than other mammals who cool the body by panting. This reliance on sweating for thermoregulation does, however, create the problem of high water and salt demands for human runners.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>When?</i> The fossil evidence for the first emergence of endurance running in our hominid ancestors is hard to interpret. But Lieberman and his colleagues believe that this likely arose first about 2 million years ago with <i>Homo erectus</i>, because most of the structural bases of endurance running in the skeleton are present in early <i>H. erectus</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Why? </i>Archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that endurance running evolved when our early hominid ancestors became carnivorous hunters and scavengers without sophisticated projectile weaponry. As I have indicated in some <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Shea+lithic+projectile">previous posts</a>, stone-tipped spears appeared first about 200,000 years ago, and the bow and arrow arose not much earlier than 50,000 years ago.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first hunters probably had no weapons better than stones and untipped spears. They could have scavenged carcasses left by lions, but to do this, they would have had to run to the carcasses before hyenas arrived. It is hard (and dangerous) to kill large animals with a spear. But in hot weather, human hunters could have persistently chased their prey until the animal was driven to hyperthermia, and then it could be safely killed at close range.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ethnographic studies of hunter-gatherer societies in the modern world have few reports of persistence hunting, because recent foragers have not needed to rely on this hunting strategy. Hunting with projectile weapons, hunting dogs, and other hunting tools works better. And yet, persistent hunting has been documented for the Kalahari Bushmen, the Tarahumara of northern Mexico, the Navajo and Paiutes of the American Southwest, and the Australian Aborigines (Lieberman et al. 2007; Lieberman et al. 2009; Lieberman et al. 2020). There is a good <a href="https://cybertracker.org/video-persistence-hunting/">YouTube video</a> of persistence hunting in the Kalahari.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Woman the Persistent Hunter?</i> Even if we are persuaded by Ocobock and Lacy's claim that women in foraging society hunted, we might assume that it would have been hard for women to engage in persistence hunting, particularly when they were encumbered by caring for young children. But that picture of Sophie Power breastfeeding her three-month-old child while running a 105-mile race in the Alps is for Ocobock and Lacy a vivid refutation of that assumption. Yes, of course, she needed some help from her husband, who transported the child between rest stations. But we know that women in foraging societies have generally relied on "alloparenting" (relatives and friends helping women with their childcare), and so this could have allowed them to run down prey over long distances.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ocobock and Lacy concede that men do have a "power activity advantage" that would have made them good hunters--the advantage that comes from high testosterone that increases muscle growth, more type II ("fast-twitch") fibers, a larger heart and lungs, a greater number of red blood cells for carrying oxygen, and increased glycogen utilization.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, on the other hand, they stress the "endurance activity advantage" of women over men, because women have more type-I ("slow-twitch") fibers that increase endurance, greater fat stores that aid endurance, and higher estrogen levels that enhance athletic performance in various ways (Ocobock and Lacy 2023a).</div><div><br /></div><div>Until recently, female ultra-racers like Sophie Powers have finished with slower times than the fastest men. But now the women are sometimes winning these ultramarathon races. In 2019, Jasmine Paris had the overall winning time for the 268-mile Spine Race through England and Scotland. Perhaps this shows what their Early Stone Age female ancestors could do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ocobock and Lacy (2023b) complain that the proponents of the persistence hunting hypothesis assume that such hunting was exclusively male:</div><blockquote><div>"Bramble and Lieberman's (2004) introduction to the persistence hunting hypothesis never mentions sex, so it is not clear whether values given related to human endurance running are averages of both sexes or are exclusively male. They describe the <i>Homo </i>form in contrast to <i>Australopithecus </i>in what could be interpreted to be male or masculine terms, e.g., 'tall, narrow body form,' 'low, wide shoulders,' 'narrow pelvis' (348) along with masculine figures, as if it were obvious that the endurance runners of human evolution were male, and it need not be explicitly stated. A discussion of sex and female endurance capabilities would actually further their argument if it were acknowledged and included rather than defaulting to males alone" (3).</div></blockquote><p>Ocobock and Lacy are mistaken about this. They ignore the many places in Lieberman's writing where he explicitly indicates that women have sometimes engaged in persistence hunting, and that they are as capable of endurance running as men are. For example, in his book <i>Exercised </i>(2021), he writes: "These traditions remind us that running was never just for men. If you attend any major race today, women comprise half the runners, thanks to pioneers like Bobbi Gibb and Katherine Switzer. Although men do most hunting in hunter-gatherer societies, women also sometimes persistence hunted, and they ran races both sacred and secular" (213). He has also quoted from Nisa, a San hunter-gatherer, recounting cases in which she used endurance running in hunting. He sees this as showing: "Hunting is generally a male activity in recent hunter-gatherer societies, but older children and women (the latter unaccompanied by6 children or infants) who were good at endurance running would also have been effective persistence hunters with little risk" (Lieberman et al. 2009: 84, 86). Lieberman has also written an article arguing that the wider pelvis of women does not impede their locomotion, and that "women and men are equally efficient at both walking and running" (Warrener et al. 2015). Ocobock and Lacy actually cite this article, but without acknowledging that this denies their claim that Lieberman ignores women's capacity for endurance running and persistent hunting.</p><p>This all reinforces my general point that even if men in foraging societies have been <i>predominantly </i>the hunters, some women have often been hunters, even persistent hunters.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Bramble, Dennis M., and Daniel E. Lieberman. 2004. "Endurance Running and the Evolution of <i>Homo</i>." <i>Nature </i>432: 345-52.</p><p>Carrier, David R. 1984. "The Energetic Paradox of Human Running and Hominid Evolution." <i>Current Anthropology</i> 25: 483-95.</p><p>Liebenberg, Louis. 2006. "Persistence Hunting by Modern Hunter-Gatherers." <i>Current Anthropology</i> 47: 1017-25.</p><p>Liebenberg, Louis. 2008. "The Relevance of Persistence Hunting to Human Evolution." <i>Journal of Human Evolution</i> 55: 1156-59.</p><p>Lieberman, Daniel E. 2021. <i>Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and <br />Rewarding</i>. New York: Vintage.</p><p>Lieberman, Daniel E., and Dennis M. Bramble. 2007. "The Evolution of Marathon Running." <i>Sports Medicine</i> 37: 288-90.</p><p>Lieberman, Daniel E., et al. 2007. "The Evolution of Endurance Running and the Tyranny of Ethnography: A Reply to Pickering and Bunn." <i>Journal of Human Evolution</i> 53: 439-42.</p><p>Lieberman, Daniel E., et al. 2009. "Brains, Brawn, and the Evolution of Human Endurance Running Capabilities." In Frederick Grine, John G. Fleagle, and Richard E. Leakey, eds., <i>The First Humans--Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus </i>Homo<i>, </i>77-92. New York: Springer.</p><p>Lieberman, Daniel E., et al. 2020. "Running in Tarahumara (Raramuri) Culture: Persistence Hunting, Footracing, Dancing, Work, and the Fallacy of the Athletic Savage." <i>Current Anthropology</i> 61: 356-79.</p><p>Ocobock, Cara, and Sarah Lacy. 2023a. "Woman the Hunter." <i>Scientific American</i> 329 (November): 22-29.</p><p>Ocobock, Cara, and Sarah Lacy. 2023b. "Woman the Hunter: The Physiological Evidence." <i>American Anthropologist, </i>1-12.</p><p>Pickering, Travis Rayne, and Henry T. Bunn. 2007. "The Endurance Running Hypothesis and Hunting and Scavenging in Savanna-Woodlands." <i>Journal of Human Evolution</i> 53: 434-38.</p><p>Warrener, Anna G., Kristi L. Lewton, Herman Pontzer, and Daniel E. Lieberman. 2015. <i>PLoS ONE</i> 10 (3): e0118903.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-57637435335347470832023-11-28T21:30:00.001+00:002023-11-28T21:35:53.236+00:00Woman the Hunter? But Not Predominantly?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivIqBj8Cyf85iXx-m8zBe0x_2WrW41sb78Yfev5RmWqx3VDOkm12WM7MrybXycMXUGvR8CQF9niEt_lvtx3Rbw-cI0Z9mzVNn72BJ0VI0KqRrjGow0Evf65TntIpqQ-HSzMCA4T1we25Jf0DytbXVj-j0THWBXUcyqiqAnf-LWpQgygh9U1yCUCw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="512" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivIqBj8Cyf85iXx-m8zBe0x_2WrW41sb78Yfev5RmWqx3VDOkm12WM7MrybXycMXUGvR8CQF9niEt_lvtx3Rbw-cI0Z9mzVNn72BJ0VI0KqRrjGow0Evf65TntIpqQ-HSzMCA4T1we25Jf0DytbXVj-j0THWBXUcyqiqAnf-LWpQgygh9U1yCUCw" width="259" /></a></div><br />An Artistic Rendering of an Ancient Female Hunter Using an Atlatl to Hunt Vacunas in the Andean Highlands of Peru (Based on an Archaeological Discovery by Randall Haas and His Colleagues)</div><p><br /></p><p>The <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/">cover article</a> for the November issue of <i>Scientific American</i> is "Woman the Hunter" by Cara Ocobock and Sarah Lacy. This article briefly summarizes the argument and evidence that Ocobock and Lacy have recently elaborated in two articles for <i>American Anthropologist</i>. Much of the research that they cite in these articles has come up in some of my <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=woman+the+hunter">previous posts</a> on this "Woman the Hunter" thesis.</p><p>Ocobock and Lacy frame their argument as a refutation of the book <i>Man the Hunter</i>, edited by Richard Lee and Irven DeVore, and first published in 1968. This collection of papers was the first extensive survey of the hunter-gatherer way of life that was considered the first stage of human evolutionary development. One of the central themes of the book was the sexual division of labor in the foraging for food, in which men were predominantly the hunters of wild animals, and women were predominantly the gatherers of wild plants.</p><p>Contrary to what Ocobock and Lacy repeatedly assert, the authors in <i>Man the Hunter </i>did <i>not</i> say that "only men hunted" or that "women were excluded from hunting" (see Ocobock and Lacy 2023a: 24; Lacy and Ocobock 2023: 2-3, 5-6, 9). The claim of the "Man the Hunter" hypothesis was that while <i>some</i> women in foraging societies <i>sometimes</i> hunted, men were <i>predominantly </i>the hunters. So, when Ocobock and Lacy present evidence that some foraging women hunted, and thus refute the idea that only men hunted, they are attacking a straw man (or straw woman).</p><p>Ocobock and Lacy offer three kinds of evidence for "Woman the Hunter"--ethnographic, archaeological, and physiological. While this evidence does show that some foraging women hunted and that modern women today still have the mental and physical capacities required for hunting, this does not deny the fact that in foraging societies, hunting (and particularly the hunting of big mammals) has been <i>mostly</i> a male activity. </p><p>Moreover, what they say about the comparative athletic physiology of men and women confirms that men have a power activity advantage, while women have an endurance activity advantage. This explains why someone like Caster Semenya--a chromosomal (XY) male with some external female features--has an unfair male advantage in competing with women in an 800-meter race but not in a 5,000-meter race.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE ETHNOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE</p><p>In their <i>Scientific American </i>article, Ocobock and Lacy report:</p><blockquote><p>". . . A recent study of ethnographic data spanning the past 100 years--much of which was ignored by <i>Man the Hunter </i>contributors--found that women from a wide range of cultures hunt animals for food. Abigail Anderson and Cara Wall-Scheffler of Seattle Pacific University and their colleagues report that 79 percent of the 63 foraging societies with clear descriptions of their hunting strategies feature women hunters. . . ." (29).</p></blockquote><p>What Ocobock and Lacy fail to make clear for their readers, however, is that this study found that in these 50 foraging societies, <i>some </i>women <i>sometimes </i>engage in hunting. This was said to refute "the traditional paradigm that women exclusively gather, and men exclusively hunt" (Anderson et al. 2023: 7). </p><p>As I pointed out in my post on this article, t<span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">he authors do a good job in refuting the idea that men are exclusively the hunters and women exclusively the gatherers. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">James Woodburn expressed this idea in the original </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Man the Hunter </i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">volume when he said: "Hunting is done exclusively by men and boys" (Woodburn 1968, 51). But this one sentence is the only place in the book where this claim is made. No one else said this. The other authors explained that while hunting is "predominantly men's work," some women do sometimes hunt: "women's hunting activities are confined to small animal hunts, communal hunts in which they take part in driving, and, very rarely, individual hunts of larger animals" (Lee and DeVore 1968: 74, 187). They would have agreed with Robert Kelly (2013, 218-24) that while hunting is not done exclusively by men, it is</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">predominantly </i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">done by men, particularly the hunting of big game. So, the difference between men and women is a matter of</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">degree</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> rather than</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">kind</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">.</span></p><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">None of the evidence in Anderson et al.'s article shows that women are the same as men in the regular hunting of large game. Consider, for example, three societies where they see women hunting large game—the !Kung San, the Hadza, and the Bakola. According to their authority for the !Kung San, although there are a few cases of women hunting small game, "basically they leave hunting to the men" (Lee 1979, 235).</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br aria-hidden="true" /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to their authority for the Hadza, although "the common view that males only hunt and females only gather is not true," it is nevertheless true that women mostly hunt small animals, and there is "a marked division of foraging labor" between men and women (Marlowe 2010, 269).</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br aria-hidden="true" /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to their authority for the Bakola, although the women participate in hunting, gathering "is reserved mostly for women and children" (Ngima 2006, 58); women participate in net hunting, but only as beaters and not as hunters (51, 57, 65-67); and women are excluded from ceremonial net hunting (66).</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br aria-hidden="true" /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">They cannot point to any evidence for a hunter-gatherer society where the hunting of big game is predominantly by women, or at least equally with men.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anderson and her colleagues also cite the example of the Agta people of the Philippines. Ocobock and Lacy repeat this claim: "Agta women hunt while menstruating, pregnant, and breastfeeding, and they have the same hunting success as Agta men" (Ocobock and Lacy 2023a: 29). But they fail to point out that very few Agta women hunt (fewer than 100 in a population of 9,000), while all Agta men do hunt; and the most serious female Agta hunters are those who are sterile, those with children old enough to care for themselves, or those beyond their childbearing years (Kelly 2013: 218-22).</span></div></div><p><br /></p><p>ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE</p><p>In their paper on the archaeological evidence for "Woman the Hunter," Ocobock and Lacy present some indirect evidence that men and women in the Paleolithic might have been engaged in similar activities. But that there might be evidence that women were engaged in hunting big game animals just as much as men is suggested in only one sentence: "In some cases, the grave goods and paleopathology agree in demonstrating women were well-practiced projectile hunters, such as at the Peruvian Early Holocene site of Wilamaya Pratxa (Haas et al. 2020)" (Lucy and Ocobock 2023: 7).</p><p>As I indicated in my post on the article cited here by Ocobock and Lucy, Richard Haas and his colleagues have provided us what looks like one clear case of an ancient female hunter. In 2018, Haas's team excavated an archaeological site called Wilamaya Patjxa in the Andean highlands of southern Peru at an elevation of 12,877 feet. They found five human burial pits with six individuals. Two of these individuals were associated with projectile points from the Early Holocene (beginning around 12,000 to 11,500 years ago). </p><p>One of these two individuals--the Wilamayo Patjxa individual 6 (WMP6)--was identified as a 17-19 year old woman, which was determined by studies of her bones and tooth enamel protein. She was associated with stones that were identified as an integrated toolkit for hunting. There were stone projectile points that could have been used to kill big game. There were other stones that could have been used for dressing the game and red ochre nodules for tanning hides. There were some mammal bone fragments that could have been from one of the species endemic to the Andean highlands--vicuna (a relative of llamas) or taruca (a species of deer). As depicted in their artistic rendering of WMP6 hunting, Haas's team speculated that she used an atlatl made from a camelid radioulna bone to throw a spear at a vicuna. However, there is nothing that looks like an atlatl at the burial site. (I have a <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-atlatl-spear-thrower-in-cultural.html" style="color: #993300; text-decoration-line: none;">post</a> on the evolution of the atlatl.)</p><p>And yet, even if one agrees that this is good evidence for identifying WMP6 as a female hunter of big game animals, one must then ask whether this is only one isolated case or part of a general behavioral pattern. To find the evidence for a general pattern of female hunting, Haas's team reviewed the reports of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene burials in the Americas. They identified 429 individuals from 107 sites. They found 27 individuals from 18 sites who were associated with big-game hunting tools. Of theses, 11 of the individuals from 10 sites were identified as female, and 16 individuals from 15 sites were identified as male. They see this distribution--11 female hunters and 16 male hunters--as "statistical parity" between males and females in hunting behavior, which supports "the hypothesis of non-gendered big-game hunting among early populations."</p><p>This step in their argument has been identified by their critics as the weakest part of their reasoning. Notice that Haas and his colleagues have to assume that in ancient burials, "the objects that accompany people in death tend to be those that accompany them in life" (Haas et al. 2020, 5). So, if individuals are buried with hunting tools, that proves that they were hunters. Robert Kelly, Ben Potter, and others challenge this assumption: that individuals were buried with hunting tools does not directly prove that they were hunters. Burial goods are symbolic offerings from the living to the dead, and the interpretations of their meaning are often ambiguous.</p><p>This problem is particularly clear in the case of the two female individuals buried at the Upward Sun River site in Alaska (dated to around 11,500 years ago), which has been studied by Potter and his colleagues (2014). One individual was estimated to have died a few weeks after birth, and the other was identified as a late-term fetus. Four antler rods, two large dart points, and a third biface lithic tool were found associated with these two individuals. Potter's team observes: "The presence of the hafted points may reflect the importance of hunting implements in the burial ceremony at USR and within the population as a whole" (17064). Potter's team does not see this as evidence that females were hunters in this ancient population of hunter-gatherers. But Haas and his colleagues, in their online Supplement to their article, write: "The Upward Sun River females are both infants and thus were not hunters per se, although they appear to have been gendered in a way that recognized females as being associated with big game hunting." So although these infants were not hunters, burying them with hunting tools was a symbolic ritual statement that they <i>could have </i>become hunters if they had lived to adulthood! Potter disagrees. In an email message to me, he wrote: "I think the most parsimonious and plausible interpretation of the hunting implements in the infants' grave is that they represent symbolic 'sacrifices' of perfectly usable hunting weapons by the father(s)."</p><p>There is another closely related problem here that Haas's team makes clear in their online Supplement but not in their article. In determining whether females were buried with big-game hunting tools, they distinguish "secure" evidence and "tentative" evidence. They also distinguish between "securely associated with big game hunting tools" and "securely identified as a big-game hunter burial." There are "secure cases in which context, sex, and date estimates are each determined to be secure," and there are "tentative associations" where the evidence for context, sex, and dating is not so secure.</p><p>The WMP6 burial and the two Upward Sun River burials are the <i>only </i>female burials <i>securely </i>associated with <i>big game hunting tools</i>. But the two Upward Sun River burials are <i>not </i>securely identified as <i>big game hunter burials. </i>Consequently, in their Supplement, Haas's team concludes: "the WMP6 burial is the only burial securely identified as a big-game hunter burial in the entire sample of late Pleistocene and early Holocene burials in the Americas. Under the most conservative criteria, we identify one female hunter burial and no male hunter burials." </p><p>Remarkably, this statement is hidden away in the Supplement, and it does not appear in the article. In effect, this concedes the point made by the critics--that Haas and his colleagues have at best found only one case of a female hunter burial, which suggests that while some individual females in hunter-gatherer societies will become hunters, there is still generally a sexual division of labor in which men hunt and women gather.</p><p>The 8 cases where Haas's team think they see "tentative" evidence for the burial of a female big-game hunter are actually quite dubious. Consider this example, which they report: "Ashworth Shelter is a rockshelter site in Kentucky . . . . The following summary is based on Walthall's review (<i>46</i>). A primary inhumation identified as an adult female had a Kirk style projectile embedded in a vertebra and a second point located near the left patella."</p><p>Haas's team here is relying on an article by John Walthall (1999), in which he reports the findings of Philip DiBlasi (1981) in a Master's Thesis at the University of Louisville, which is available <a href="https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1341&context=etd#:~:text=A%20NEW%20ASSESSMENT%20OF%20THE%20ARCHAEOLOGICAL%20SIGNIFICANCE%20OF,following%20Reading%20Committee%3A%20Thesis%20Director%20Stuart%20E.%20Neff" style="color: #993300; text-decoration-line: none;">online</a>. In describing "burial #4" in the Ashworth Shelter, DiBlasi writes:</p><blockquote><p>"As mentioned above, a projectile point was found imbedded in the body of the third thoracic vertebra. This projectile entered from the left rear of the individual splitting the neural arch between the left superior and inferior articulating surfaces and the spinous process. The extreme distal portion (tip) of the projectile entered the dorsal surface of the body of the vertebra with sufficient force to split the vertebra in half. The left superior articular surface of the fourth vertebra was also damaged."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"A wound of this type would have caused death almost immediately. The most apparent cause of death would have been hypotensive shock resulting from the direct reflex shock to the central nervous system caused by the impact and resulting rebound of the spinal cord. . . Paralysis of intercostal muscles would make breathing impossible, again causing death within a short period of time" (1981, 74-75).</p></blockquote><p>Neither DiBlasi nor Walthall identify this as evidence that this individual had been a female hunter. After all, how can the fact that she was killed by a projectile point thrust into her back with sufficient force to split her spine in half be even "tentative" evidence that she was a big-game hunter?</p><p>The careful reader might well conclude that the most important sentence in the writing of Haas and his colleagues is not in their published article but in the online Supplement to the article: "Thus the WMP6 burial is the only burial securely identified as a big-game hunter burial in the entire sample of late Pleistocene and early Holocene burials in the Americas."</p><p>The archaeological evidence for "Woman the Hunter" seems very skimpy indeed.</p><p><br /></p><p>In my next post, I will take up Ocobock and Lacy's physiological evidence for female versus male athletic advantages, which they offer as evidence that women have the physiological capacity for hunting, particularly hunting that requires endurance running.</p><p><br /></p><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">REFERENCES</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit;">Anderson, Abigail, Sophia Chilczuk, Kaylie Nelson, Roxanne Ruther, and Cara Wall-Scheffler. 2023. "The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women's Contribution to the Hunt Across Ethnographic Contexts." </span><i>PLoS ONE</i> 18(6): e0287101.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">DiBlasi, Philip. 1981. "A New Assessment of the Archaeological Significance of the Ashworth Site (15Bu236)." A Master's Thesis. University of Louisville</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Haas, Randall, et al. 2020. "Female Hunters of the Early Americas." <i>Science Advances </i>6: 1-10.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Kelly, Robert L. 2013. <i>The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lacy, Sarah, and Cara Ocobock. 2023. "Woman the Hunter: The Archaeological Evidence." <i>American Anthropologist, </i>1-13.<i> </i>DOI: 10.1111/aman.13914</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lee, Richard B. 1979. <i>The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society.</i> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lee, Richard B., and Irven DeVore, eds. 1968. <i>Man the Hunter. </i>Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Marlowe, Frank W. 2010. <i>The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania</i>. Berkeley: University of California Press.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ngima Mawoung, Godefroy. 2006. "Perception of Hunting, Gathering, and Fishing Techniques of the Bakola of the Coastal Region, Southern Cameroon." <i>African Study Monographs, </i>Suppl. 33: 49-69.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ocobock, Cara, and Sarah Lacy. 2023a. "Woman the Hunter." <i>Scientific American</i>. November: 23-29.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ocobock, Cara, and Sarah Lacy. 2023b. "Woman the Hunter: The Physiological Evidence." <i>American Anthropologist</i>, 1-12. DOI: 10.1111/aman.13915.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Potter, Ben A., et al. 2014. "New Insights into Eastern Beringian Mortuary Behavior: A Terminal Pleistocene Double Infant Burial at Upward Sun River."</span><span style="font-size: 15.4px; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-size: 15.4px; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. </i><span style="font-size: 15.4px; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">111, no. 48: 17060-17065.</span></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="font-size: 15.4px;">Walthall, John. 1999. "Mortuary Behavior and Early Holocene Land Use in the North American Midcontinent." <i>North American Archaeologist </i>20: 1-30.</p></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Woodburn, James. 1968. "An Introduction to Hadza Ecology." In Lee and DeVore, 49-55.</div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div class="x_elementToProof" style="background-color: #fff9ee; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></p></div>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-55296409708800815852023-11-26T20:52:00.000+00:002023-11-26T20:52:06.827+00:00Captain Preston's Popular Lockeanism<p>David Armitage repeatedly identifies the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence as a statement of "abstractions" that had nothing to do with the practical reality of declaring independence and fighting a revolutionary war. But if Locke was right about the emergence of natural liberty in the state of nature as the environment of evolutionary adaptation in which human nature was shaped, then that liberty is not a philosophical abstraction but a practical expression of a natural human instinct and popular human folkways.</p><p>Consider this story that has often been told by historian David Hackett Fischer (<i>Liberty and Freedom </i>[2005], 1-2):</p><p><br /></p><p>In the year 1843, a bright young scholar named Mellen Chamberlain [21 years old] was collecting evidence on the origins of the American Revolution. He interviewed Captain Levi Preston, ninety-one years old, a cantankerous Yankee who had fought on the day of Lexington and Concord.</p><p>"Captain Preston," the historian began, "what made you go to the Concord fight?" The old soldier bristled at the idea that anyone had made him fight.</p><p>"What did I go for?" he replied. The scholar missed his meaning and tried again.</p><p>"Were you oppressed by the Stamp Act?"</p><p>"I never saw any stamps," Captain Preston answered, "and I always understood that none were ever sold."</p><p>"Well, what about the tea tax?"</p><p>"Tea tax? I never drank a drop of the stuff. The boys threw it all overboard."</p><p>"But I suppose you had been reading Harrington, Sidney, and Locke about the eternal principle of liberty?"</p><p>"I never heard of these men," Captain Preston said. "The only books we had were the Bible, the Catechism, Watts' Psalms, and hymns and the almanacs."</p><p>"Well, then, what was the matter?"</p><p>"Young man," Captain Preston replied, "what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had been free, and we meant to be free always. They didn't mean we should."</p><p><br /></p><p>Captain Preston did not need to read Locke to want Lockean freedom. Wanting to be "free always" was rooted in his ordinary experience of life. As historian T. H. Breen has observed, even without ever reading Locke, Captain Preston and the other American insurgents were <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=T+H+Breen">"popular Lockeans"</a>--people whose desire to be free was part of their nature and their way of life.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-71472642646658132542023-11-26T18:15:00.001+00:002023-11-26T18:19:28.618+00:00The Lockean Liberal Evolution of Symbolic Niche Construction in the Declaration of Independence: A Declaration of "Free and Independent States"<p>The Lockean social contract theory of morality and politics rests on the idea that human beings mentally create social institutions through <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=symbolic+niche+construction">collective recognition</a> of those institutions as symbolic realities, which Locke identified as the language of "mixed modes." While other animals can mentally create <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2010/04/animal-culture-wars.html">cultural traditions</a>, only human beings have the evolved cognitive capacity to create collective <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Jablonka+symbolism">symbolic traditions</a>, because human beings are unique in having 16 billion neurons in their <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Herculano-Houzel">cerebral cortex</a>, which probably gives them the capacity for collective symbolism.</p><p>The human capacity for language and symbolism enables us to create a reality by representing that reality in our minds as existing and agreeing among ourselves to accept that reality as existing, which allows us to create a social and institutional reality out of language, symbolism, and collective intentionality.</p><p>If Lockean social contract reasoning can be understood as symbolic evolution and niche construction, then Lockean liberalism can be understood as the symbolic niche construction of liberal institutions. We can see this manifested in the Declaration of Independence, particularly in its famous second paragraph that echoes Locke's <i>Second Treatise </i>("We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .).</p><p>The Declaration of Independence is what John Searle calls a Declaration of Status Function, which has the form "X counts as Y in C." So, for example, a twenty-dollar bill has monetary value as long as we recognize that a twenty-dollar bill (X) counts as currency (Y) in the monetary system of the United States (C). Similarly, the American Revolutionaries declared that "these United Colonies [X] are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States [Y]" in the European system of states [C]. The success of that Declaration depended on whether in their "decent respect to the opinions of mankind," they could persuade world opinion to recognize their status as "Free and Independent States." </p><p>Their success depended on both the intellectual persuasiveness of their reasoning in the Declaration and the forceful persuasiveness of their winning the Revolutionary War. Of those people both inside and outside the American colonies who were not persuaded by the intellectual argument of the Declaration, many were persuaded to accept it once the Americans had won the war. Going to war to settle the dispute was what Locke called the <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Appeal+to+Heaven">"Appeal to Heaven"</a>--the appeal to the "God of Battles."</p><p>In March of 1776, the Continental Congress asked for prayers "that it may please the Lord of Hosts, the God of Armies, to animate our officers and soldiers with invincible fortitude." In the following October, King George III issued a Proclamation "putting Our Trust in Almighty God, that he will vouchsafe a Special Blessing on Our Arms, both by Sea and Land" (Shain 2014: 407-408). This is the same as what Abraham Lincoln saw in the Civil War: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other" (Second Inaugural Addess). The "God of Armies" will decide.</p><p>The first major victory for the Americans was in the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. When French King Louis XVI saw this, he agreed to a formal Franco-American alliance. This proved to be a turning point in the war (Weddle 2021). If the British had won that battle, that might have been enough to refute the Declaration of Independence. As I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=might+makes+right">argued</a> in previous posts, there is a sense in which might <i>does </i>make right.<br /></p><p>The Continental Congress was a practical demonstration of the truth of the Lockean principles of the Declaration of Independence. Acting in a state of nature, the Congress exercised the Lockean executive power of the law of nature in punishing Great Britain for violating that natural law, in establishing the Continental Army to settle the dispute by force of arms, and in instituting a new government to secure their natural rights.</p><p>There are many good objections to my Lockean and Darwinian reading of the Declaration of Independence. And over the years, I have responded to most of them. </p><p>But I haven't yet answered in full an objection suggested by David Armitage in his important book--<i>The Declaration of Independence: A Global History</i>. 2026 will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As its subtitle indicates, Armitage's book is a global history of the Declaration from 1776 to the end of the twentieth century, concentrating mostly on its implications for international law, particularly as expressed in the many "Declarations of Independence" from Vermont in 1777 to Eritrea in 1993. The American Declaration of Independence was the first of over one hundred such declarations over the past 250 years.</p><p>Armitage claims that the primary purpose of the Declaration of Independence is prominently stated in the opening and closing sentences of the Declaration. It begins with one long sentence:<br /></p><blockquote><p>"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."</p></blockquote><p>It concludes:</p><blockquote><p>"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."</p></blockquote><p>This shows, Armitage observes, that this was a "document of state-making" declaring that these previously dependent colonies in the British Empire were now free and independent states in the international system of states. "The rest of the Declaration," he explains, "provided only a statement of the abstract principles upon which the assertion of such standing within the international order rested, and an accounting of the grievances that had compelled the United States to assume their independent station among 'the Powers of the Earth'" (17, 66). Therefore, the abstract principles in the second paragraph (about the rights to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness") were "strictly subordinate to these claims regarding the rights of states, and were taken to be so by contemporaries, when they deigned to notice the assertions of individual rights at all" (17). </p><p>But notice that in the first sentence, it's "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" that "entitle" this "one people" to claim a "separate and equal station" among "the Powers of the Earth." And so, the immediately following paragraph ("We hold these truths . . .") explains exactly how the Laws of Nature and Nature's God "entitle" them to become free and independent states. Even Armitage says that their claims to independent statehood "rest upon" these principles, which provide the foundation for their claims. This denies his attempt to denigrate the second paragraph as unimportant or dispensable, because this paragraph constitutes the indispensable ground for entitling them to independence as states.</p><p>At the end of the Declaration, the Continental Congress claimed to act "in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies" to declare that the colonies are "Free and Independent States." But the Congress had no legal authority under British law to do this. Their authority came from the Laws of Nature and Nature's God, as stated in the second paragraph, that entitled them to secure the "unalienable Rights" of men by exercising the "Right of the People" to "alter or abolish" a government that fails to secure their natural rights and "to institute new Government . . . as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."</p><p>As I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Arcenas+Locke+Declaration+of+Independence">argued</a>, not only the second paragraph but the whole of the Declaration of Independence echoes the language and principles of Locke's <i>Second Treatise of Government</i>. This is certainly true for the Declaration's claims about "free and independent states." In the state of nature, men are "by Nature, all free, equal, and independent," and no one can be subjected to the political power of another without his consent (<i>ST</i>, 95). But while once people have formed political societies by consent, they have left the state of nature, the governments they have formed are in themselves in a state of nature: "all <i>Princes </i>and Rulers of <i>Independent</i> Governments all through the World, are in a State of Nature" (<i>ST, </i>14). These governments can enter into international agreements by mutual consent, but as long as they are politically independent of one another, they are in an international state of nature, and each government is naturally equal and independent.</p><p>This Lockean understanding of the law of nature in the international state of nature was elaborated in Emer de Vattel's <i>Law of Nations</i> in 1758:</p><blockquote><p>"Nations being composed of men naturally free and independent, and who, before the establishment of civil societies, lived together in the state of nature,--nations or sovereign states are to be considered as so many free persons living together in the state of nature."</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"It is a settled point with writers on the natural law, that al men inherit from nature a perfect liberty and independence, of which they cannot be deprived without their own consent. In a state, the individual citizens do not enjoy them fully and absolutely, because they have made a partial surrender of them to the sovereign. But the body of the nation, the state, remains absolutely free and independent with respect to all other men, all other nations, as long as it has not voluntarily submitted to them" (Vattel 2008: 68).</p></blockquote><p>Armitage recognizes Vattel's book as "the standard text on the subject in Europe and the Americas for more than half a century," and thus the best guide to the American understanding of how people can claim the rights and powers of "free and independent states" as rooted in the law of nature. But he does not recognize how this contradicts his argument that the appeal to the law of nature in the Declaration's second paragraph is unnecessary for the primary purpose of the Declaration in declaring independence for the United States in the international system of states.</p><p>Armitage also argues that the many declarations of independence after 1776 show the unimportance of the second paragraph of the Declaration in the global history of the document: "The earliest imitations of the Declaration in Europe and beyond set the pattern for most later documents by taking the Declaration's opening and closing sentences as their template while overlooking the self-evident truths of the second paragraph" (113). Surveying the more than one hundred such documents, he says that "relatively few . . . contained a declaration of individual rights that paralleled the second paragraph of the American Declaration" (104).</p><p>But Armitage's reader should notice that of the ten declarations that he reproduces in his book, seven contain passages that echo the language of the second paragraph (187, 199, 205, 211-12, 217-18, 227-29, 231, 239-40). For example, the Manifesto of the Province of Flanders (January 4, 1790) opens by saying; "Since it has pleased Divine Providence to restore our natural rights of liberty and independence by severing the bonds that once fastened us to a Prince and House whose domination was ever harmful to the interests of Flanders, we feel obliged to recount for present and future generations the events which inspired and accomplished this happy Revolution" (187). The Declaration of Independence by the People of Texas (March 2, 1836) appeals to "the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable right of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right toward themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their welfare and happiness" (212).</p><p>Even those declarations that do not explicitly speak of the "natural rights of liberty and independence" do <i>implicitly</i> assume the natural right to government by consent of the governed and the right to overthrow governments that do not secure the natural rights of the people. After all, any group of people who declare their independence from an established government and their right to establish a new government are engaged in an extralegal act that can only be justified by an implicit appeal to a natural right beyond positive law.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Armitage, David. 2007. <i>The Declaration of Independence: A Global History. </i>Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</p><p>Shain, Barry Alan, ed. 2014. <i>The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context: American State Papers, Petitions, Proclamations, and Letters of the Delegates to the First National Congress</i>. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.</p><p>Vattel, Emer de. 2008. <i>The Law of Nations</i>. Eds. Bela Kapossy and Richard Whatmore. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.</p><p>Weddle, Kevin J. 2021. <i>The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution</i>. New York: Oxford University Press.</p><p><br /></p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-13377639955075465842023-11-10T20:44:00.000+00:002023-11-10T20:44:06.644+00:00The Lockean Evolutionary State of Nature in the First Continental Congress: A Response to Barry Alan Shain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcOqaZZRyx2K30kijcpZB-qR4yBd08pGO8Pu-SyO5EV0vGpeFkzeYXspAQVPfAJtyUw2tHmL0OiKCoROmRdPYD8iFh2ItPjlOD7dkM1Go9zZZVrMIitVza1vHihnoQyUsOdy9PwUHgEr_Y0iHZnRO9eK071j5RJsmjUKeI6Sqof2F2RRI-0gFUpQ/s1537/HenryPatrickWeAreInaStateof%20Nature.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="967" data-original-width="1537" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcOqaZZRyx2K30kijcpZB-qR4yBd08pGO8Pu-SyO5EV0vGpeFkzeYXspAQVPfAJtyUw2tHmL0OiKCoROmRdPYD8iFh2ItPjlOD7dkM1Go9zZZVrMIitVza1vHihnoQyUsOdy9PwUHgEr_Y0iHZnRO9eK071j5RJsmjUKeI6Sqof2F2RRI-0gFUpQ/s320/HenryPatrickWeAreInaStateof%20Nature.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>In John Adams' Notes on the Debates in the Continental Congress, September 6, 1774, Patrick Henry Declares: "We are in a State of Nature, Sir."</p><p><br /></p><p>I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=state+of+nature+continental+congress">said</a> that the American Revolution began when some of the delegates to the First and Second Continental Congresses saw that they were in a state of nature, and that they could exercise the natural right of the people to establish a new government to secure their rights. This Lockean liberal understanding of what they were doing was then eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence, particularly in its famous second sentence ("We hold these truths . . .").</p><p>And yet, many scholarly interpreters of the American Revolution claim that this account of the debates that led to the Declaration of Independence is deeply mistaken. For example, Barry Alan Shain has argued this in his edited book--<i>The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context </i>(Liberty Fund, 2014)--which is a massive collection of material related to the first three national congresses: the Stamp Act Congress (October 7-25, 1765), the First Continental Congress (September 5-October 26, 1774), and the Second Continental Congress (May 10, 1775, to March 1, 1781).</p><p>In his Introduction to this book, Shain explains that in the scholarly study of the thinking that led to the Declaration of Independence, there are at least seven different schools of interpretation. Of these seven, Shain suggests that what he calls "the Imperial school" interpretation is strongly confirmed by the documents he has collected in his book. According to the Imperial school, the debates that led to the American Revolution were part of a unique historical situation--the British Imperial Crisis (from the Stamp Act Crisis of 1763 to the end of the American Revolution in 1783)--which was a seemingly irresolvable debate over how to protect the British political rights of the American colonists, within the British Empire, while maintaining Parliament's supremacy in Great Britain. This was not, therefore, Shain argues, a debate about universal natural rights of all human beings (as assumed by Lockean liberals), but rather it was a debate about the civil rights of British citizens under the British Constitution.</p><p>If this is true, then the natural rights theorizing of the Declaration of Independence (particularly in the second sentence) is not an accurate expression of colonial political thinking over the preceding twelve years of debate over the rights of the colonists in the British Empire. Shain agrees with the conclusion of Charles McIlwain (one of the first Imperial school scholars) in his book <i>The American Revolution</i>:</p><blockquote><p>"The Declaration of Independence is a totally different kind of document from any of its predecessors. For the first time the grievances it voices are grievances against the King, and not against Parliament. It is addressed to the world, not to Great Britain, and naturally the ground of such a protest will be one understood by a world that knows little of the British constitution and cares less: it will be based on the law of nature instead of the constitution of the British Empire."</p></blockquote><p>Shain asserts: "The readings that follow, I believe, will offer copious and compelling support for McIlwain's conclusion" (8).</p><p>Moreover, he believes that the readings he has chosen for his book should have a higher level of interpretive authority than other collections of source materials on the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Presumably, the documents for the three continental congresses, with delegates selected to represent all of the colonies, express a broad range of views of continental constituencies, rather than particular individuals, cities, or colonies. </p><p>I am not persuaded, however, that those documents for the continental congresses really do support the conclusion of McIlwain and Shain that prior to the summer of 1776, the majority of the congressional delegates appealed to the legal rights of the colonists under the British Constitution, while refusing to appeal to any supposed natural rights or law of nature.</p><p>Consider, for example, the debate in the First Continental Congress over how to understand the rights of the colonies. There were 56 delegates from 12 colonies. On the second day that the Congress met, September 6, 1774, after Patrick Henry's declaration that "we are in a state of nature," the Congress resolved to appoint delegates to a committee to examine the colonies' rights and to compile a list of grievances.</p><p>In his <i>Diary</i>, John Adams <a href="https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-01-03-02-0016-0022">described</a> the debate in this committee: </p><blockquote><p>"The two Points which laboured the most, were 1. Whether We should recur to the Law of Nature, as well as to the British Constitution and our American Charters and Grants. Mr. Galloway and Mr. Duane were for excluding the Law of Nature. I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it, as a Resource to which We might be driven, by Parliament much sooner than We were aware. The other great question was what Authority We should conceed to Parliament: whether We should deny the Authority of Parliament in all Cases: whether We should allow any Authority to it, in our internal Affairs: or whether We should allow it to regulate the Trade of the Empire, with or without any restrictions" (<i>Diary and Autobiography</i> [Harvard University Press, 1961], 3:309).</p></blockquote><p>According to Shain, Adams here joined the "radicals" or "republicans" in the Congress in appealing to the law of nature, while Galloway and Duane were on the side of the "moderates" or "loyalists" in appealing only to the British Constitution. But while Shain says the loyalists were the majority, I don't see the evidence for that.</p><p>In his book, Shain includes Adams' <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0004-0006-0010">notes</a> of the debate for September 8, 1774, which Shain describes as "one of the most theoretically rich documents in this collection" (Shain, 220-25). In this debate, only three individuals reject the appeal to the law of nature--John Rutledge of South Carolina, James Duane of New York, and Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania--a small minority in the Congress, which had 56 delegates.</p><p>Richard Henry Lee begins by claiming: "The Rights are built on a fourfold foundation--on Nature, on the british Constitution, on Charters, and on immemorial Usage."</p><p>John Jay agrees: "It is necessary to recur to the Law of Nature, and the british Constitution to ascertain our Rights." He also says that the colonists had a right to emigrate from England, and "Emigrants have a Right, to erect what Government they please."</p><p>But Rutledge disagrees: "An Emigrant would not have a Right, to erect what Government they please."</p><p>Lee responds: "Cant see why We should not lay our Rights upon the broadest Bottom, the Ground of Nature. Our Ancestors found here no Government."</p><p>But Rutledge insists: "Our Claims I think are well founded on the british Constitution, and not on the Law of Nature."</p><p>Duane agrees: "Upon the whole for grounding our Rights on the Laws and Constitution of the Country from whence We sprung, and Charters, without recurring to the Law of Nature--because this will be a feeble Support."</p><p>Lee appeals to the state of nature: "Life and Liberty, which is necessary for the Security of Life, cannot be given up when We enter into Society."</p><p>Rutledge disagrees: "The first Emigrants could not be considered as in a State of Nature--they had no Right to elect a new King."</p><p>Galloway joins with Rutledge and Duane in rejecting the state of nature: "I have looked for our Rights in the Laws of Nature--but could not find them in a State of Nature, but always in a State of political Society. I have looked for them in the Constitution of the English Government, and there found them. We may draw them from this Source securely."</p><p>Notice that while the radicals appeal <i>both</i> to the laws of nature <i>and </i>to the British Constitution, the three loyalists here argue that any appeal to the British Constitution must exclude any appeal to the law of nature. </p><p>As far as I can tell, Galloway, Rutledge, and Duane are the only delegates who here reject any consideration of the law of nature. But all three contradict themselves within a few weeks by voting for resolutions that invoke the law of nature.</p><p>On September 17, the Congress was presented with the "Suffolk Resolves," resolutions approved by delegates from several towns and districts in Suffolk county of Massachusetts bay, the county that included Boston (Shain, 146-51). They were written by Joseph Warren, with help from Samuel Adams, who were leading radicals in Massachusetts. The Resolves defended the colonial rights of Massachusetts as "derived from nature, the constitution of Britain, and the privileges warranted to us in the charter of the province," rights to which they are "justly entitled by the laws of nature, the British constitution, and the charter of the province." On September 18, the Continental Congress approved resolutions endorsing the Suffolk Resolves and asking that they be published in the newspapers. By approving these resolutions, Galloway, Rutledge, and Duane appeared to implicitly endorse the appeal to the law of nature.</p><p>Then, on October 20, the Congress approved a plan for establishing the Continental Association to enforce a colonial boycott of British goods (Shain, 181-86). Part of that plan was that a committee be chosen by popular election in every county, city, and town, which would identify those people who were violating the boycott so that they could be punished by public shaming and ostracism. John Adams called this Continental Association "the commencement of the American Union," because this was the first time that the American people had established something like a national governmental authority. Since the Continental Congress had no legal authority under the British Constitution to do this, the Congress was implicitly exercising the natural right of the people in a state of nature to establish new governmental institutions to secure the public good. By voting for this, Galloway, Rutledge, and Duane were implicitly appealing to the law of nature in a state of nature.</p><p>Shortly before the Congress adjourned on October 26, the Congress approved a "Bill of Rights and List of Grievances," with language that anticipated in many ways the Declaration of Independence. In this Bill of Rights, they declared "THAT the inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters, have the following RIGHTS." The first in the list of rights was "THAT they are entitled to life, liberty, and property: and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent" (Shain, 212). In voting for this, Galloway, Rutledge, and Duane recognized those "immutable laws of nature."</p><p>Of these three people, Galloway was the only one who ultimately decided to take the loyalist position against the Declaration of Independence and its appeal to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." In the First Continental Congress, he had proposed a "Plan of Union" that would have unified the colonies within the British Empire (Shain, 155-174). This plan would have established an American legislature for regulating the general affairs of America, while each colonial legislature would continue to regulate its internal affairs. General regulations could be proposed by either the new American legislature or by the British Parliament, but the enactment of these regulations would require the assent of both. After debating Galloway's plan, the Congress voted against accepting it; and the record of the plan was expunged from the congressional <i>Journal</i>.</p><p>In his speech arguing for his Plan, Galloway warned that if the Plan was rejected, the colonies would remain disunited, without any national government. "That while they deny the authority of Parliament, they are, in respect to each other, in a perfect state of nature, destitute of any supreme direction or decision whatever, and incompetent to the grant of national aids, or any other general measure whatever, even to the settlement of differences among themselves" (Shain, 168).</p><p>But when the Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775, it exercised the natural right of the people in a state of nature to establish a new government, because this Continental Congress acted as a provisional national government that managed the revolutionary war and approved the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Articles of Confederation in 1777, which were ratified in 1781. </p><p>In 1775, Galloway quit the Pennsylvania Assembly and refused to serve in the new Continental Congress. He opposed the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. After the Declaration was signed, he fled to New York to join the British and become a top advisor to William Howe, the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America. After the British captured Philadelphia in September, 1777, Howe appointed him as one of the administrators over the city. When the British left Philadelphia in June of 1778, Galloway escaped to England. For the rest of the war, he was a leader of the loyalist colonists in England.</p><p>In contrast to Galloway, Rutledge and Duane both served in the Second Continental Congress, supported the Declaration of Independence, and served in the new national government. Duane eventually became a federal judge appointed by George Washington. Rutledge became a Justice (and later Chief Justice) of the United States Supreme Court.</p><p>So it seems that Galloway was the member of the Continental Congress who persisted in his loyalist denial that the American colonists had any natural right to declare their independence and "to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."</p><p>Many of the loyalists like Galloway joined the British in fighting the American revolutionaries. And as I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Locke+Appeal+to+Heaven">argued</a>, the debate between the loyalists and the revolutionaries was ultimately decided by what Locke called an "Appeal to Heaven"--an appeal to the God of Battles. The Second Continental Congress recognized this in their "Second Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer," of March 16, 1776, where they appealed to "the God of Armies, to animate our officers and soldiers with invincible fortitude, to guard and protect them in the day of battle, and to crown the continental arms, by sea and land, with victory and success" (Shain, 407).</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-14272124461355377432023-11-03T18:37:00.000+00:002023-11-03T18:37:35.647+00:00The Evolution of Religious Pluralism Refutes Integralist Orthodoxy and Supports Lockean Liberal Christianity<p>I have long <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=natural+desire+religious+understanding">argued</a> that the desire for religious understanding is one of the twenty natural desires of our evolved human nature. If the good is the desirable, then we can judge the goodness of a social order by how well it secures the conditions for human beings to pursue the satisfaction of those natural desires. The Catholic integralists will say that a Catholic integralist regime is the best social order because it enforces belief in the one true religion and thus satisfies the natural desire for religious understanding. But are mistaken because they fail to see that the evolved natural desire for religious understanding is pluralistic in that human beings disagree in what they believe to be the true religious experience of the transcendent world. </p><p>In a new book--<i>All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism</i>--Kevin Vallier has developed this point as the fundamental weakness in integralism: since religious pluralism is natural to human beings, integralism's attempt to suppress religious pluralism contradicts human nature. Vallier acknowledges but does not develop Robin Dunbar's evolutionary explanation of this natural religious pluralism. Neither Vallier nor Dunbar see how this evolutionary science of religious pluralism support's John Locke's liberal theology of Christianity--that since "everyone is orthodox to themselves," there is no set of universal doctrines binding on all Christians; and therefore, there is no orthodoxy strictly speaking that can be properly enforced by government. </p><p>For this reason, a Lockean liberal social order that secures religious liberty is the best regime for promoting the pluralistic pursuit of religious happiness. It does this by creating a marketplace of religion in which churches compete for customers, and those churches that best satisfy the desire for religious experience increase their share of the market.</p><p><br /></p><p>VALLIER'S CRITIQUE OF CATHOLIC INTEGRALISM</p><p>Vallier begins by developing what he regards as the two strongest arguments favoring integralism. But then he counters this with three arguments that refute integralism. The three arguments against integralism are all rooted in the problem of natural religious pluralism. Vallier does not see, however, that the problem of pluralism also subverts his two arguments favoring integralism.</p><p>The two arguments in support of integralism are the <i>history argument</i> and the <i>symmetry argument</i>. The history argument is that for many centuries the practice of the Catholic Church has been to strive for a coercive political authority in enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, and the traditional teaching of the Church in authoritative Church documents has supported this practice. But that history is a history of the Church's attempts to suppress religious pluralism by coercively punishing heretics, apostates, and schismatics. Far from favoring integralism, this is a history of integralism's failure to achieve any stable agreement on the truth of the Church's view of orthodoxy.</p><p>Beginning in the early history of the Christian Church, there have been constant battles with one group of heretics after another. For example, between AD 150 (with the Marcionist schism) and 1054 (with the Great Schism that separated the Latin Church in the West from the Greek Orthodox Church in the East), there were at least twenty-two <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism_in_Christianity">major schisms</a> in Christianity.<br /></p><p>The Church Councils that met during the first five centuries of Christianity were called to rule against the numerous heresies that sprang up, many of which had to do with how to understand the place of Jesus Christ in the Trinity. The first Council of Nicaea in 325 ruled against Arianism--the anti-Trinitarianism of Arius, an Alexandrian priest, who believed that while Jesus was the Son of God, he was not equal to God. The Council of Ephesus in 431 ruled against Nestorianism--the teaching of Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, that the incarnate Christ had two separate natures--one divine and the other human--and that Mary was only the mother of the human Jesus, and thus not the Mother of God. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 ruled against the view of the Coptic Churches that Christ had only one divine nature (monophysitism) and in favor of the view that Christ had two distinct natures, one divine and one human, but united in one person (dyophysitism). The Coptic Churches continue today in North Africa, the Near East, and Ethiopia.</p><p>This persistence of religious pluralism weakens not only the history argument for integralism but also the symmetry argument. What Vallier calls the symmetry argument is that governments should promote not only the natural goods of human life but also the supernatural goods such as salvation. Governments should treat these goods symmetrically. </p><p>But Vallier does not see how religious pluralism denies that these goods are symmetrical, because while human beings can agree on the general character of the natural goods, they cannot agree on the doctrines necessary for securing the supernatural goods.</p><p>Vallier does see how religious pluralism sustains his three arguments against integralism--the <i>transition argument</i>, the <i>stability argument, </i>and the <i>justice argument. </i>The transition argument is that Catholic Integralism is infeasible because there is no realistic way to transform modern liberal societies that are religiously pluralistic into integralist societies that coercively enforce Catholic orthodoxy.</p><p>The stability argument is that even if a Catholic integralist order could be established, it would be so unstable because of religious pluralism that it would quickly collapse.</p><p>The justice argument is that while the integralists rightly recognize the injustice of forced baptism as a denial of religious liberty, they do not see the injustice of denying the liberty of baptized Christians to dissent from the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Because of the natural human propensity to religious pluralism, any attempt to enforce Catholic orthodoxy in a large community must engage in unjust coercion. </p><p>Vallier summarizes these three arguments against Catholic integralism in one sentence: "You can't get there, you can't stay there, and it's unfair" (226).</p><p>For an integralist social order to be feasible, stable, and just, Vallier suggests, grace would have to limit or overpower pluralism, but there is no reason to believe that could ever happen. In the New Testament, "grace" is the translation for the Greek word <i>charis</i>, which denotes a divine influence upon the heart or what Vallier calls "God's unmerited aid" or "divine favor"--God's gift of faith through which Christians are guided by the Holy Spirit to see the truth of divine revelation, which could never be understood by natural human reason without the divine inspiration of faith (Vallier 2023: 49, 174). If all, or at least most, people in a society were divinely infused with a faith that would enlighten their minds to embrace the same set of Catholic doctrines about what is necessary for salvation, this would be an integralist social order that would be feasible, stable, and just. </p><p>This is not attainable, Vallier argues, because grace cannot limit pluralism. On the contrary, grace promotes pluralism, because "heresy first arises from highly observant Christians who receive God's grace" (Vallier 2023: 188-98). For example, in 1415, Jan Hus, a Catholic priest who sought to reform the Church, was condemned by the Council of Constance to be burned at the stake for heresy. He sang hymns as he was burned to death. Hus was a charismatic priest who inspired his followers in Bohemia to defeat five consecutive papal crusades against them from 1420 to 1431--the Hussite Wars. Hus and the Hussites were intensely pious Christians. Similarly, Martin Luther and the other Protestant Reformers were all intensely pious. Thus does the mystical experience of grace--of being divinely inspired with an experience of the transcendent--often move Christians to dissent from Catholic orthodoxy.</p><p><br /></p><p>DUNBAR'S EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM</p><p>Vallier points to Robin Dunbar--in his <i>How Religion Evolved</i>--as possibly providing the best explanation for religious pluralism as arising from the evolution of religious experience (Vallier 2023: 1, 176). Dunbar distinguishes between two broad kinds of religion. The oldest religions that arose in the human evolutionary prehistoric state of nature of our hunter-gatherer ancestors are what Dunbar calls "shamanic" or "immersive" religions based on mystical experiences of the transcendent and charismatic shamans. The newer religions that arose over the past 3,000 years are "doctrinal" religions based on formal ritual practices and theological belief systems. Dunbar argues that in the doctrinal religions, "beneath the surface veneer of doctrinal rectitude lurks an ancient foundation of pagan mystical religion." And consequently, the doctrinal religions are always threatened by a constant welling up of cults and sects fired by individual mystical experiences and the religious entrepreneurship of charismatic leaders (1-11, 26, 48, 243-44, 261-62).</p><p>I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/search?q=Darwin+Evolution+Animism">written</a> about the evolution of religion from the earliest animist mysticism to the later doctrinal theistic religions. Dunbar distinguishes four or five phases in this evolutionary history that correspond to the expanding population of religious groups (256-61). I have <a href="https://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-mps-in-galapagos-4-social-brain.html">commented</a> on Dunbar's "social brain hypothesis" as he presented it at the Mont Pelerin Society conference on evolution and liberty in the Galapagos in 2013. In his evolutionary history of religion, Dunbar applies that idea to explain the natural propensity to religious pluralism. </p><p>In the earliest period of human evolution, humans in very small hunter-gatherer bands of 100-200 individuals living in dispersed camps of 35-50 developed informal animistic religions. They did not have any gods as such, but they did imagine the natural world to be animated by spirits; and they believed that this world of spirits could be experienced through trance. This animistic religion did not enforce any morality, but it did bind people together in their small bands through their shared religious experience of a transcendent spirit world. These first human beings had larger brains with more neurons in the cerebral cortex than their primate ancestors. This gave them a uniquely human mental capacity for symbolic imagination that allowed them to imagine spirit beings with minds similar to theirs.</p><p>In the second phase of religion, there arose religious specialists who practiced healing and divination through their special access to the spirit world. Some of these charismatic shamans would attract followers who wanted to benefit from their special ability to intervene with the spirit world.</p><p>In the third phase of this evolution of religion, about 10,000 years ago, as human beings settled into permanent agrarian settlements, the size of their communities exceeded 300-400 individuals. At this point, they had more formal religions with local gods, and formalized rituals with priests and temples, which provided some top-down collective control over communities that had become too large for social coordination through face-to-face relationships of reciprocal exchange.</p><p>In the fourth phase, about 4,000 years ago, societies became much larger with the establishment of the first city-states and empires. Religion became even more formal and professional in the enforcement of formal ritual practices and theological doctrines. Religious believers had some sense of belonging to the same religious community, but this membership was not based on any personal knowledge of the other members.</p><p>Finally, about 2,500 years ago, in what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, there arose the first monotheistic religions with "Moralizing High Gods" that enforce a doctrinal moral cosmology; and in some cases, with eternal rewards and punishments in the afterlife.</p><p>These modern doctrinal religions--including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism--have become global in scale with many millions of members around the world. This creates a fundamental problem for the doctrinal religions, Dunbar observes, because if human beings have an evolved psychic disposition to live in small, intimate groups rather than large, impersonal groups, the large doctrinal religions will always have to fight against the religious fragmentation into cults and sects led by charismatic entrepreneurs and animated by personal mystical experience of the transcendent. All forms of religious integralism have had to try--without much success--to coercively suppress this natural religious pluralism (243-64).</p><p><br /></p><p>LOCKE'S LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY VERSUS PROTESTANT INTEGRALISM</p><p>John Locke saw the futility and cruelty of the attempts by both Catholic and Protestant integralists to suppress Christian religious pluralism. His solution to this problem was to propose a reform of Christian theology that would support religious liberty and toleration of religious pluralism. To do this, he had to reject the traditional understanding of orthodoxy as a particular set of doctrines that was absolutely necessary for salvation. Instead of this, Locke argued, "everyone was orthodox to themselves," in that everyone must believe in whatever they decided was necessary for them to believe to be saved, but with the understanding that they might be wrong, and that others must be free to believe other doctrines that seemed orthodox to them. Recently, John Colman has explained this in his new book--<i>Everyone Orthodox to Themselves: John Locke and His American Students on Religion and Liberal Society</i>.</p><p>In <i>The Reasonableness of Christianity</i>, Locke claimed that the preaching of Jesus and His apostles in the New Testament made it clear that salvation required believing in only one doctrine--that Jesus is the Messiah. This one doctrine was simple and clear enough to be understood by everyone, even the great multitude of uneducated and illiterate people to whom the gospel was directed. </p><p>There are many other doctrines in the Bible that are so hard to understand, perhaps even beyond ordinary human understanding, that there have been endless controversies over their meaning, which has produced conflict among Christians about what set of doctrines should count as orthodoxy. But once one sees that these disputed doctrines are not absolutely necessary for salvation, then one can say that as long as they believe that Jesus was the Messiah, we can allow Christians to decide for themselves whether they need to believe those other doctrines that have been debated.</p><p>This will allow us to say, as Locke did in the opening of his <i>Letter Concerning Toleration</i>, that "toleration is the chief characteristic mark of the true church," and that all Christians should be free to decide what is orthodox for themselves.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE MARKETPLACE OF CHRISTIANITY</p><p>This Lockean liberal regime of toleration and religious liberty creates a marketplace of Christianity in which churches compete for members. Even before the full opening up of that marketplace in the modern liberal regimes, there has always been a somewhat restricted marketplace of religion. For example, the Protestant Reformation can be seen as a successful penetration of a religious market dominated by a monopoly firm--the Catholic Church. The Catholic reaction in the Counter-Reformation continued the competitive process with doctrinal and organizational innovations to make the Catholic Church more competitive (Ekelund, Hebert, and Tollison 2006).</p><p>Roger Finke and Rodney Stark (2014) have shown how the history of religion in the United States can be understood as a free market economy of religion based on the Lockean principle of religious voluntarism. Churches in America have competed for adherents by evolving to satisfy the changing demands of religious consumers.</p><p>In all of this, we see the cultural evolution of the Christian churches to serve the natural desire for religious understanding in the pluralistic pursuit of religious happiness.</p><p><br /></p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Colman, John. 2023. <i>Everyone Orthodox to Themselves: John Locke and His American Students on Religion and Liberal Society</i>. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.</p><p>Dunbar, Robin. 2022. <i>How Religion Evolved, and How It Endures</i>. New York: Oxford University Press.</p><p>Ekelund, Robert B., Jr., Robert F. Hebert, and Robert D. Tollison. 2006. <i>The Marketplace of Christianity</i>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.</p><p>Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark. 2014. <i>The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy.</i></p><p>Vallier, Kevin. 2023. <i>All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism</i>. New York: Oxford University Press.</p>Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.com3