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Richard Dawkins’ Facebook account has been deleted Professor Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL sent this tweet at 8:01 AM · Aug 10, 2024:
My entire @facebook account has been deleted, seemingly (no reason given) because I tweeted that genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics. Of course my opinion is open to civilised argument. But outright censorship?
For the second time in two posts, I find myself saying, “Thank God for Elon Musk”. Professor Dawkins very much would not say this. That’s fine. Those interested can debate on Musk’s platform whether God exists or whether boxers with one X- and one Y-chromosome should fight boxers with two X-chromosomes. For now, until Commissioner Mark Rowley of the Metropolitan Police has Musk extradited.
Update: Dawkins’ Facebook page is back. Facebook says it was a technical problem.
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By the way, my opinion of both Professor Dawkins and Mr Musk is that they have done great good in the world – Dawkins by his work as a populariser of evolutionary science, Musk by buying Twitter and firing the censors – and have also shown a propensity to act like jerks.
Neither their good or bad deeds make any difference to their right to speak. But the fact that Dawkins has been censored despite his eminence and generally “progressive” views shows that no one should delude themselves that they will be immune.
Demanding that US authorities extradite Elon Musk will be very entertaining.
Well, look at JK Rowling. Life-long Labour supporter…
But the Dawkster… Why should the opinion of a former biology professor matter on a matter of biology when it contradicts wishful thinking?
I may comment here (and elsewhere) as NickM but knoweth thee the truth. I may masquerade as a mild-mannered web-designer who lives near Manchester but that is a front. I am actually The Pan-Dimensional Emperor of the Seventh Manifold. Got that? Right, because if you doubt it I shalt smite Samizdata and all it’s minions shall hallow My Name!
God help us all! I do play games and I have been a pirate, flown interstellar missions, fought orcs in Middle Earth and built mighty Empires (via Sid Meier) but I do know when to hit “save” and go to bed. And then wake-up as NickM and proj on with a logo design for a bike shop.
Depending on how the election in November goes, it’s possible that they will be delighted to do that.
Musk is going to have a real problem if the Progs take the White House and Congress.
Ferox: I meant Elon Musk will be the one who makes it entertaining, come what may.
Natalie: I’ve read Dawkins, but personally I prefer Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea to his treatments, and Michael T. Ghiselin’s The Triumph of the Darwinian Method to either. I recommend them if you have time to read about biology.
I think it is one of the challenges for the left. In their utter zeal to demonstrate how much more politically correct they are than thee they end up in a cycle of intolerance, a race to the bottom where you can’t say anything. And in the process they very much eat their own. The JK Rowling thing is perhaps the most prominent example. Given some of her political positions who’d have ever thought I’d be standing on the side lines applauding that lady for her unflinching bravery in the face of implacable hostility?
I’m a fan of Dawkins’ work in promoting science through some of his excellent books, though as a speaker I think some of his colleagues are better. But he is very liberal in his politics and so in a sense he brought this on himself. In fairness, he has always been an advocate of free speech, even if he advocates for big government and centralized control that are antithetical to freedom of speech.
As to Musk, as I’ve said before I’m a fan boy. I think he is the most important human alive today. He does say weird shit sometimes, but when you love somebody you let that slide. I do wonder how he does it. His companies are so dependent on the government either through government contracts in SpaceX or tax benefits at Tesla. But as he has said many times, he won’t let that hold him back from speaking his mind. He has more balls than me, that is for damn sure.
William: WRT Dennett i was very much impressed by his concept of the Tower of Generate & Test. I had a similar half-baked idea when i heard him describe the concept, and now i might frame it somewhat differently, but credit where it is due.
And now i must have a look at Michael Ghiselin.
If you are looking for a better speaker on atheism than Dawkins I’d recommend Sean Carroll. He is a physicist and a lot of his work is around this, but he is also a great speaker on the subject of atheism. Check out his “God is not a great theory” on YT. His way of talking about these things resonates with me, anyway.
Fraser,
I think it is not unexpected that folks like you and me think that about JKR. That’s because we have the critical ability and nuance to see the good AND bad in individuals. Much of the left is almost literally in a witch-burning mode. One transgression and they’ll tear you apart. I have read “impassioned” cri de cœur from folks wondering with great angst if it is “correct” to enjoy Harry Potter books despite JKR’s “evil” on the trans-front. It is utterly juvenile. A truly liberal society is one which requires dissent, disagreement and a plurality of opinion or to put it in a single word – individualism. This is something the “liberal” left has either forgotten or never knew.
Fraser: Personally, I like Anthony Flew’s God and Philosophy and Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Antichrist. Though the latter isn’t so much a criticism of theism as a criticism of Christianity.
According to France 24 television (the only English language television station I can get in my hotel in Germany) the history of women competing in the Olympic Games proves that “female bodies are equal to men” – that is just NOT true, otherwise men and women would all compete in the same events. There are things that woman can do that men can not do at-all – such as give birth to children and naturally feed babies, and there are things that men, generally (on average – not clumsy oafs like me) are much better at than women. Egalitarianism, the doctrine that everyone is the same – that we are all clones of each other and should be the same in every way, is nonsense – utter nonsense.
As for men being women if they “identify as” woman – that is anti science (anti biology) nonsense. Facebook is in the hands of “Woke” fanatics – who describe ruthlessly persecuting sane human beings as “making the community inclusive – safe for everyone” especially the majority of people – whom they wish to EXCLUDE under the banner of “diversity and inclusion” i.e. uniformity and exclusion.
The people who control the British police – and the international authorities generally…..
Yes the objective is not just to get rid of Freedom of Speech in one country (say the United Kingdom – or some other country) the objective is to wipe out Freedom of Speech everywhere – in all countries. Hence “we are coming for you” from Sir Mark Rowley – if you “incite hatred”, not violence “hatred”, and not spread untrue information, but information that may be totally true which “incites hatred” – i.e. disagrees with the narrative of the international establishment.
Here is the Nobel Institute’s list of winners of their prize for Medicine and Physiology.
There has not been any Prize awarded (to date) for the discovery of more than two genders. This is perhaps surprising given how fundamental a principle of biology it is that most higher organisms are sexually dimorphic.
Or perhaps people are talking about different things, and those who maintain the orthodoxy are making the mistake of debating on their opponents terms without asking for some fundamental clarification from their opponents?
“Richard Dawkins’ Facebook account has been deleted”
Thus proving the ToE/NS. He wasn’t sufficiently fit, and thus couldn’t survive in the new social media environment. Good riddance.
Or, he had done all the damage to the old establishment by helping destroy organised Christianity and the underpinnings of Western civilisation, and was coming out in opposition to the next stage of the program (trans-genderism, the precursor to trans-humanism – a filthy ideology spawned by that little runt Yuri Harari and promoted by the WEF ) and thus had to go.
Anyway, what a muppet! He’s spent all his life rubbishing Christianity, then when the extent of the destruction he helped bring about, becomes apparent, had the chutzpah to “declare his fondness for Christianity”. Just f*** off Dawk.
For a supposed intellectual he doesn’t have much of a grasp of cause and effect.
Gender isn’t biology, it’s sociology, it’s what’s in your head and your social interactions with other people. It’s a language construct, not biology.
Mr Ed: I think that talking about “gender” was a fundamental mistake.
Back in the 1970s, Robert Stoller made the distinction between biological sex, as determined by chromosomes or by reproductive anatomy, and perceived sex, as identified culturally (for example, in tribes where some men assume the social role of “women”) or subjectively, borrowing the linguistic term “gender” for the second. Linguistically gender is indeed culturally assigned, at least in languages that have it (not all do), and this invites the supposition that if we change the usage we can change gender in Stoller’s sense. But sex is not so plastic.
Over the intervening decades, it became common and then standard for people to talk about gender, and for official documents to ask for it. That originally seemed like an annoyingly prudish but unimportant euphemism for people who were too prissy to say “sex.” (One edition of the American Psychological Association’s publication manual, for example, said that “sex” should be used only for copulatory acts, and that “gender” should be used for biological differences—clashing both with biology, which does not talk about “gender chromosomes,” and with linguistics, where “gender” is a grammatical trait of words.) But it’s become evident that it led to the idea that only language and linguistic categories matter, and that subjective self-identification should control language, and then to the repression of any concern with biological sex, even in cases where it matters a great deal. Note that even personal subjective preferences are invalidated if they actually relate to biological sex, as when women who want other women as sexual partners are vilified as TERFs.
To Orwell’s famous slogans it seems we can now add “gender is sex.”
I too like Musk, but I’d like him better if he brought out a V8 Tesla. It’s the future.
Nah: a v12!
Tweet under discussion seems to have disappeared.
“Something went wrong. Try reloading.”
at least, that’s what I get here in the States.
@APL
Or, he had done all the damage to the old establishment by helping destroy organised Christianity and the underpinnings of Western civilisation
The destruction of much of the doctrine of Christianity was necessary for the creation of western civilization. Western civilization is based on the notion of science, empirical enquiry, and unfettered questioning of orthodoxy — the enlightenment. Christianity is based on exactly the opposite notion, faith. The Bible itself defines faith as “the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen.” Such a notion is entirely antithetical to the foundations on which our modern society is built. Furthermore the notion that western morality is build on the Christian Bible doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Just as a for example, out of the ten commandments only two of them are actually illegal in the west, and a few of them we have a positive right protected under law to break if we wish. Which isn’t to say it didn’t have an influence: it did, both for good and for bad.
Dawkins is equally vehement in his condemnation of other religions too. What he objects to is not Christianity specifically but the ideas underlying religion which are so destructive to the science and enlightenment ideas that actually do form the basis of western civilization. I think he kind of likes some of the trappings of that most gutless form of Christianity — the Church of England — with the beautiful buildings, fancy vestments, the lovely music and the sole doctrine of “be nice to each other”. I kind of like all that stuff too.
And FWIW, in my opinion, wokeism is a religion, one he should object to also. It has many trappings of religiosity including the ugly notion of faith where the doctrine — whatever it may be — is taken as true without any regards to examining the facts or data. When the high priest declares the doctrine we accept it and vehemently and sometimes violently assert it with little regards to self examination of the facts.
So Dawkins should hate it just as much as he does Christianity. Perhaps that is why he objected to the notion of the blurring of male and female that apparently (if briefly) got him bounced from FB.
jdh – “gender” is nonsense, sex is biological, genetic, and that includes things that are, wrongly, called “gender”.
This is a parody right?
The RSS feed for this blog does not work for me?
Is it working for everyone else? It stopped working for me a few months ago and I can’t get it working again.
Historically illiterate BS.
West Civ is based on values, and these values cannot be justified rationally. (See Hume’s is/ought dichotomy; although Aristotle and Agrippa the Skeptic also had something relevant to say.)
One of such values is rationality, but rationality cannot be justified rationally: that would be Munchausen-like.
Other values include defending one’s own freedom from arbitrary power (Romano-Germanic) and respecting other people’s freedom from coercion (Judeo-Christian). It follows that the foundations of libertarianism, as commonly understood in the US, are entirely Judeo-Christian.
Quite how important Christianity is to Western Civilizations (note the plural) is very moot. The best I can say is it played an imprtant role in the past (for good and ill) and at least it wasn’t Islam. Otherwise we’d still be truly fucked.
It’s kinda simple. Christianity’s got some good stories and moral precepts (along with a lot of woo-woo stuff like The Trinity) but how many people really, really, believe it as some sort of objective truth? Many more I’ll wager see it as a sort of convenient fiction to maintain some sort of “social cohesion”. I don’t think you need mysticism for that. In fact I think it hurts because it is increasingly obviously just some sort of Platonic Noble Lie.
Snorri: I don’t remotely agree with that. Respecting people’s freedom from coercion has very little claim to be a Christian value. When Christianity was politically dominant, not only in the Middle Ages but during the Wars of Religion, someone who announced their disbelief in God, as I did at nine, would have faced torture and murder, with full official approval. That looks like coercion to me. What saved me from that in the twentieth century was the historical legacy of the Enlightenment—and in this case not only the English and Scottish Enlightenment, but the efforts of Voltaire—which gained supremacy to which Christians acceded.
I would also note that I think Hume was wrong, but that’s too complex an issue to discuss in a comment of any reasonable length.
No, but it might be parody if, someone were to criticise another for holding a set of beliefs handed to him or her by some dead tribal elder. Beliefs that are broadly speaking a set of tales and un-provable assertions, while holding to a set of tales and unproven assertions, handed to him or her by some dead tribal elder.
ToE/NS is just that, a theory. An doctrine handed down by some tribal elder, it is not provable, and is un-testable. It will always remain just one theory of how things came into being from dust.
Frankly, the religious account, that ‘God did it’, which God there is no need to discuss here, has more credibility than the ToE account that after billions of years two dust particles liked each other and decided to make another baby dust particle.
If we’re talking about ludicrous nonsense, I’m happy with my choice.
‘Western civilisation’ is the heritages and histories of European peoples. I don’t see it as a collection of abstract values or something that simply begins with the ‘Enlightenment’. Sure the ‘enlightenment’ is part of it, but so is the counter-enlightenment (and personally I prefer the likes of Burke, De Maistre, and Vico over philosophes like Voltaire and Rousseau). And Christianity is a much bigger part in it because Christianity had played a major role in European societies for 1500 years before the Enlightenment.
Martin,
“And Christianity is a much bigger part in it because Christianity had played a major role in European societies for 1500 years before the Enlightenment.”
Yeah, and we were knapping flints for a lot longer than doping silicon.
William: Let’s begin with the foundations:
Computers can use logic, and apply it to facts, if programmed appropriately.
Therefore, the burden of the proof is on anyone who claims that Hume was wrong, to devise a computer program that can deduce values from logic alone, or from logic applied to facts.
The hand-waving of Rand and Rothbard is irrelevant to this issue.
The above, i trust, is a comment of reasonable length.
— Just a couple of questions wrt the issue of the Judeo-Christian heritage:
And what evidence do you have for this claim?
Also, have you read Locke’s 2nd Treatise?
(William of Ockham’s treatise on property rights might also be relevant, but since i know of it only at 2nd hand, i only mention it parenthetically.)
@Snorri Godhi
West Civ is based on values, and these values cannot be justified rationally. (See Hume’s is/ought dichotomy; although Aristotle and Agrippa the Skeptic also had something relevant to say.)
Whether something ought to be true is something that we, as a society evolve over time. It is where morality actually comes from, rather than some dusty book. Morality changes over time as we, as a society decide it should. It comes from many different places including some basic realities of biology — for example, our propensity for empathy and our basic herding instinct; some of it is incorporated bullshit from religions — for example, the twisted attitude to sex in much of the west; and some of it is deliberate manipulation by the powerful such as patriotism or any sentence containing the word “duty”; and some of it comes out of necessity. But the belief that something “ought to be” as some absolute, handed down from above, fiat just simply doesn’t align with the historical reality of human civilizations. Societies evolve moralities that work for them.
Perhaps a practical example would best illuminate. The idea of keeping women tied down in the home is what has been the norm in human society. And in many respects it had to be that way because the business of running a home, children, feeding, managing food and so forth was a full time job. However, it was in the 20th century that women started demanding that they have a life outside of the home, and for the first time they could because of changes in society allowing them to stow their children in public school, buy their groceries at the market, cook with convenient in home appliances — heck even something as basic as the availability of cheap, easy to use menstrual supplies liberated women from being tied down. And, as the reality of society made it possible for women to leave the home the morality of them doing so changed commensurately.
One of such values is rationality, but rationality cannot be justified rationally: that would be Munchausen-like.
The value of rationality is also an evolved value. Rationality didn’t pop out of the womb whole and complete. Rather throughout human history societies have reasoned in particular ways that, over time, they have found productive and utilitarian. And so they kept using them. In a lot of society that process is mushy which is why human morality is so mushy. But in places where it mattered, in science and technology for example, that utility meant the difference between trains crashing and bridges falling down, and physics experiments not working. So its importance, in terms of “it works as expected” is greatly more important in these realms.
The formalization of these things was a consequence of their utility, not vice versa.
There are a million pages to be written about this, but that is enough for a Sunday night.
Civilisation is based on principles (“values” is a bit of a debased word these days) and these principles are (not are not) rational – the Hayek idea (which he claimed to take from Adam Ferguson) that society just evolves without rational thought and deliberate choice, “is the product of human action, but not of human design” is mistaken – indeed when people forget, or do not learn, the principles and the justifications (reasons) for those principles, society starts to decline – and eventually collapses.
A normal human being says to themselves “this is wrong – so I ought not to do it”, this is what Mr Hume called “getting an ought from an is” and mocked (perhaps as a game – perhaps he was serious, I do not know), and a normal human being uses their moral reason to restrain their passions – this Mr Hume mocked (again perhaps he was mocking it as a game – or perhaps he was serious) by saying “reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions”, i.e. denying moral reason and holding that reason should just be an instrumental thing – “how can I get away with doing X”, theft, rape, murder – the things the passions lead to if not resisted by a choice (free will) of moral reason. Choice being NEITHER predetermined (if it is predetermined it is not choice) or random. Choice (personhood – moral agency – free will) is itself, it can not be reduced (reductionism) to something else. The human “I” (personhood – moral agency – free will) is itself – it is not something else, it is NEITHER determinism or random.
As for a society where people forget the basic principles, or never learned them, or make a choice to reject them, such a society (as already stated above) declines and eventually collapses.
Civilisation depends on people knowing the basic principles (not every detail – but the basics) and knowing the reasons for these principles, and making a moral choice (using their free will) to uphold these principles – without this, civilisation declines and eventually collapses.
This we see in the society around us – where people have, mostly, either never learned the basic principles and the reasons for these moral principles, or have forgotten them – or have been taught to ridicule and mock the basic principles (by “clever” “progressive intellectuals” – “intellectuals” who deny that human intellect, personhood, free will, even exists).
Such a society will (unless people do learn the basic principles. and the reasons for them) decline and, eventually, collapse.
What Kipling called “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” – the basic principles that civilisation depends upon.
When the left come (and, eventually, the left always arrive – if not from outside, then from within ourselves, for all humans have evil, as well as good, within them) saying “we do not do things like that round here” or “that is not our tradition” is no argument against evil – no argument against cultural, societal, destruction. Such a civilisation, which has forgotten the reasons for the basic principles – will fall.
Unless people understand the basic principles, and the reasons for those basic principles, and then make a choice (a moral choice) to uphold those principles – then society decays and, eventually, collapses.
That is why, as Ronald Reagan often said, liberty is never more than a generation away from being destroyed.
Each generation must learn the basic principles that uphold civilisation, understand the reasons for these moral principles, and make a free will choice to support those principles.
Or society decays and then, eventually, collapses.
@Paul Marks
The human “I” (personhood – moral agency – free will) is itself – it is not something else, it is NEITHER determinism or random.
You have made this claim a lot of times but why do you believe that? Science can see decisions being made in the human brain with FMRIs, as a series of chemical reactions. We know about how memories and thoughts are formed through transmissions between axons, synapses and neurons. All the scientific data seems to suggest that thought and consciousness are just a normal chemical process without some extra corporeal cause. Call it “soul” “free will” “I” or whatever you like, what data do you have to demonstrate that it exists? It isn’t good enough to say “if it didn’t exist I wouldn’t like the consequences”. That is not at all a useful argument.
As for a society where people forget the basic principles, or never learned them, or make a choice to reject them, such a society (as already stated above) declines and eventually collapses.
But don’t you think that it is vitally important that societies do just that? That they do evolve and change and modify their moral ideas? Were I a homosexual or a woman or a poor person I’d sure be glad of the advancements in the moral zeitgeist that have dramatically improved the lot of those groups over the past 100 years.
What Kipling called “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” – the basic principles that civilisation depends upon.
Perhaps, but thank god that we don’t live by the moral principles that Kipling lived under and advocated in the British Raj. We have, most thankfully, evolved very positively away from the nonsense of “the white man’s burden”.
Frasor Orr.
Why do “I” believe I exist? Because I do exist.
Human beings, by definition, are capable of moral choice (of choosing to do other than we do) – although it may require great effort and much mental anguish.
Nor do the “Gods of the Copybook Headings” have anything to do with “the British Raj” or “the white man’s burden”.
Basic principles of reason, including moral reason, are not different in one time period or another, or among different peoples – there is, for example, no “Jewish logic” – there is only logic.
Moral right and wrong are not one thing among “elves and dwarves” and another thing among men – it is a man’s duty to try and work out (discern) moral right and wrong “as much in the golden wood as in his own house” – see Tolkien, but first see Aristotle.
As for the soul (human personhood) being mortal and dying with the body – that changes nothing Frasor Orr.
This idea was explored by Alexander of Aphrodisias rather a long tome ago. Neither the fact (fact) of free will (moral agency) or universal moral and wrong is changed in any way if we are mortal – if the soul (personhood) is entiely a “physical chemical process”.
As for “if I did not exist I would not like the consequences” – if I did not exist I would not dislike the consequences, because I would not exist.
“Philosophers” (that means lover of wisdom – and these people certainly do not love wisdom) who deny their own existence are trapped in a contradiction – I do not have to respect them as human beings as, by their own arguments, they are not human beings (they claim the “I” is some form of illusion – although they do not say who is having the illusion if they do not exist), any more than I respect their politics – their indifference to the “Euthanasia of the Constitution” (into absolutism) as Mr Hume put it (at least Mr Hume is more consistent on this point than F.A. Hayek was – Hayek wanted to get rid of the philosophical foundations of the Old Whigs, free will – moral personhood, but keep their POLITICS – Mr Hume mocked the philosophical foundations and was, logically enough, indifferent about the extermination of political liberty – and if he was correct that human beings do not exist, he was correct to be indifferent about the “Euthanasia of the Constitution”).
But it is not “just” that one can not get to the political philosophy of the Bill of Rights from the general “philosophy” of game players such as Mr Hume – it is also (and more fundamentally) that one is not dealing with human beings at all – indeed the central point of such “philosophy” is that human BEINGS do not exist.
A denial of what used to be called “the nature of man” is a bad place to start any philosophy from – indeed it is a dead end. A self contradiction – a contradiction in that a self (a person – an “I”) is denying that persons (including himself) exist.
@Paul Marks
Human beings, by definition, are capable of moral choice (of choosing to do other than we do) – although it may require great effort and much mental anguish.
You are assuming your conclusion. “Human being” means a specific kind of animal, in what sense does that make you a moral agent any more than a dog or a lion or a bee? What is your evidence that there is something beyond your molecules and the normal chemical processes in your body that is making these sorts of decisions?
Just because you don’t like the consequences of this doesn’t have any impact on its veracity.
Basic principles of reason, including moral reason, are not different in one time period or another, or among different peoples – there is, for example, no “Jewish logic” – there is only logic.
If we can focus on moral calculus, I don’t think history bears you out at all. All throughout history different human societies have had very different ideas of what is right and wrong. These data suggest to me very strongly that morality is contextually dependent.
Rather as far as I can see, morality is a set of rules a society comes up with to enable them to live together effectively. And we have also developed this clever mechanism by inculcating our society’s moral code into our children and added on the idea that it is divine or absolute on tablets of stone to make that moral code largely self enforcing. That seems to me to be what the lessons of history are.
A denial of what used to be called “the nature of man” is a bad place to start any philosophy from – indeed it is a dead end. A self contradiction – a contradiction in that a self (a person – an “I”) is denying that persons (including himself) exist.
No it isn’t. I’m confident I exist. However, I don’t see much reason to believe I am any more than beautiful, intricate, amazing machine that is my body and brain. So I’m afraid you are mixing up two entirely different issues here. When I say “I” I mean this human animal doing the typing. When you say “I” you are meaning something more than your biology, an identity outside and apart from the chemical processes that carry you. I see no evidence to support that position.
You can assume your conclusion all you want but it doesn’t advance your argument one iota.
If “I” do not exist then I will not dislike the consequences of anything – because I do not exist, and so will not be around to dislike any consequences. I will not be making any decisions – because I do not exist.
And if humans are not beings (are not free will beings) then it does not actually matter, from a moral point of view, if they are controlled by a tyranny, so Mr Hume’s indifference to the possible “euthanasia of the constitution” is quite logical, who cares what is done to these flesh robots who have no moral agency (free will).
As for “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” – what Victorians actually had as writing practice for children had nothing to do with “white supremacy” “the British Raj in India” and so on.
The statements that were actually used for practice in copybooks were statements of basic good sense, including moral good sense, which thinkers from thousands of years before could have recognised easily.
I would like to ask Paul Marks to what extent the BS that he keeps writing about Hume is his own BS, as distinct from James Beattie’s BS.
I don’t think that it is Thomas Reid’s BS, because, although Reid did not strike me as worth reading, he was no bullshitter.
Exactly the same story for me Rob
Snorri you accuse me of writing “BS” about David Hume – in fact I have been fair and accurate.
You clearly do not like the truth – but that is not my problem Sir.
The problem for the wider society is that although David Hume may, perhaps, have not intended for what he said to be taken as a system (he may have intended to just gently mock overly serious people – question their basic assumptions in order to “shake them up” a bit), his mockery has been taken (whether he intended it to be or not) as a system – it has been taken as deadly serious. The consequences of taking what he wrote as a system (rather than as mockery – as deflating overly serious or pompous people) have been terrible – and will likely get much worse.
The case with Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham is simpler – they clearly both were serious, both in their attacks on the human person (their denial of personhood) and their attacks on traditional liberties (both their political philosophy – and their more foundational philosophy on what used go be called “the nature of man” – what a human is, whether we are persons or not).
They were not just intending to prick the inflated egos of pompous people (which may, perhaps, have been David Hume’s intention), Hobbes and Bentham attacked basic truths (in both politics and philosophy – including the very existence of the human person) on purpose, it was deliberate (intentional).
And it must be stressed that it is not “just” the consequences of following the ideas of these philosophers that have been bad – the philosophy itself is wrong, flat wrong.
People who believe that fundamental matters of moral good and evil are different in different “historical stages” or societies also tend to believe that economics is different – they tend to believe there are no universal laws of economics as well as no universal laws of natural justice, ethics (morality).
But this is NOT always true – for example David Hume does not seem to have held that different principles of economics (or no principles of economics) apply in different “ages” or “historical periods”.
He did NOT, for example, praise the policies of the Emperor Diocletian – as mainstream academics now do. “Solved the crises of the third century” and the other drivel.
David Hume may not have made the great contributions to philosophy his admirers claim he did – indeed his influence on philosophy may have been bad. But he was a man of basic good sense when it came to economic questions.
No praise for ancient despots seeking to control every aspect of life (such as Diocletian), no praise for the Credit Bubble bankers and the politically powerful Corporations – in spite of their influence (and their ability to line the pockets of their supporters).
Praise for fiat money, Credit Bubble banking, and politically connected Corporations are NOT marks of David Hume.
Mr Hume would not have welcomed these features of modern society (which have grown like cancers to be vastly bigger than they were in his time – what, in his day, were abuses on the fringes of a basically sound economy – have become the system itself in our day) – he would have been, quite rightly, disgusted by these features of our world.
Mr Hume had a good nose for fraud – and the present economic system is a gigantic, legalised, fraud.
Paul: if you tell me that Hume wrote something that is blatantly nonsensical to me, and my high-school philosophy textbook told me that Hume wrote something that is not only sensible, but also re-affirmed by what Popper wrote in his major works*, do you think that i am going to believe you or my high-school textbook?
* Logic of Scientific Discovery, chapter 1; and Open Society, chapter 5, section on the autonomy of ethics.
It is plainly insane to say that Hume had a pernicious influence because people interpreted him in a nonsensical way, when all historians of philosophy interpreted him in a sensible way.
Anyway, i did not ask you whether what you write is BS.
I asked you where this BS comes from.
Snorri – you seem to believe that personal abuse and wild language is an argument, it is not.
Grow up.
As for where my knowledge of David Hume comes from – it comes from reading his works. I seem to remember that you were even unaware of his use of the line “euthanasia of the constitution” (his indifference to the possibility that the British constitution would, possibly, lapse into absolutism) – it would be better Sir if you actually read the works of Mr Hume before writing about him.