Ridley Scott's Alien Abortion -- On Prometheus

Note: Spoilers are contained herein.

Ridley Scott's return to sci-fi after a 30 year hiatus, specifically a return to his Alien universe; facehuggers and abdomen-bursting; the mystery of the 'space jockey' revealed; themes of intelligent design and faith; Michael Fassbender as an android. Prometheus seemed as if it was specially geared to appeal to my particular aesthetic sensibility. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Though Scott bizarrely eschewed the use of the term 'prequel' in the promotional events leading up to the release, Prometheus is a prequel in virtually every sense except that none of the characters are the same. Not only does the action in Prometheus take place in "the same universe" (Scott's preferred descriptive idiom), but it takes place on the same planet as the original Alien and sets the stage for the events of that film, while sporting many of the Alien calling cards: the aforementioned facehuggers and chest-bursters; a decapitated android; insidious Weyland corp machinations; a strong female protagonist who outlasts her crew mates while aliens kill them all off etc. If Prometheus truly did share nothing but "a universe", the result wouldn't be quite so frustrating and disappointing.

This time around, though, the scope has shifted. The juxtaposition couldn't be more stark: Alien was an intimate, claustrophobic space horror with a narrow scope, while Prometheus seeks more epic pastures, expanding its concerns from the crew of a single ship to the concerns of all mankind. Though the film purports to address The Big Questions of humanity -- Guy Pearce's character helpfully explains that it does -- there really is only one 'Big Question' it addresses: the question of human (and/or biological) origins and 'creation'. While the origin of life is not a 'solved' problem, most approach the question either by positing Darwinian (or otherwise 'naturalistic') mechanisms which gave rise to primordial, single-cellular life which then evolved, or with God (or with some combination thereof). Scott ineptly fumbles the issue coming from both directions.

On the one hand, 'God' is vaguely present in the narrative in the form of the main character's -- Elizabeth Shaw's -- Christian faith (which we'll return to). The notion of God as creator is also addressed via proxy by suggesting that humanity is created by Engineers (one might say Intelligent Designers), who are 8-foot tall, pale aliens with dark eyes. One of the members of this race is the mysterious 'space jockey' from the original Alien. Of course, an intermediate, finite designer of life doesn't actually address the Big Question of life's origins because it only pushes the question back a step: who designed this designer? The film recognizes this at one point, but in so doing renders itself rather moot and impotent in the exploration of the Big Question.

On the other hand, the only appearance evolution makes is when one crew member scientist of Prometheus responds to Shaw's claim that the Engineers created human life with "Well, if you want to just throw out 3 centuries of Darwinism", which is also confused. In the opening scene of Prometheus we see one of the Engineers depositing the building blocks of life on early Earth. We can assume, from there, life then evolved. If this were the case, not a stitch of Darwinian evolution would need to be dispensed with, yet this objection comes from a scientist -- the biologist even, if memory serves. I suppose, within the world of the film, Darwinian evolution really might be bunk and the mechanisms which appeared unguided and natural were actually encoded by the Engineers, but even if this were so Darwinian theory wouldn't necessarily be wrong. The Engineers may just harness their knowledge of natural, Darwinian mechanisms to bring about a desired result. In any case, at that juncture there's no reason any intelligent scientist would think that Shaw's theory debunks Darwinism whole cloth, even if it's true.

Speaking of Shaw's theory, it provides the most cringe-inducing moment of the film. Shaw and her research partner (and husband? boyfriend? I don't recall), discover a pictogram that appears on cave drawings, inside temples, on rocks from every ancient human civilization, many of which share no common lineage or have any dealings with each other. The drawings all show the same image: humans crowded around a taller human-like figure who is pointing to a constellation of cosmic bodies. The configuration of the bodies is identical, and it happens to match some solar system which has a sun similar to ours. All of which is plenty reason to suspect the presence of an extraterrestrial intelligence, one that it appears may have communicated with our race in some mysterious way, which makes investigating the matter an obviously logical step. No problem so far. However, does this evidence suggest that we were created by the the extraterrestrial intelligence, even if it exists? No, it doesn't, yet Shaw believes that we were created by them. Can she prove this? No, but again, at this point it may not be a matter of empiricism. Fair enough. But surely she must have indicators, some line of reasoning, some sign-posts which point toward her conclusion. When one of the scientists asks her for evidence in this vein she replies "I choose to believe it is so." Oy vey.

It wouldn't even be that bad if she postulated some shaky, inconclusive argument with tenuous rational and evidential support, and then when pushed to defend it she finally resorted to her "I choose to believe it is so" line, but she couldn't even manage that, and so it comes off as if she pulled the theory directly from her hindquarters. In her position there's nothing epistemically unjustified in holding such a belief, but since she offers literally no support -- not even of the speculative, theoretical variety -- why bring it up to a team of scientists? It's a functionally irrelevant belief for the mission.

This brings us back to the theme of 'faith' in the film. Shaw wears a cross around her neck; there is one scene where a memory of hers as a child is scanned where her dad uses the "it's what I choose to believe" line; Shaw has faith in the existence of the Engineers (presumably in the same manner that she merely "chooses to believe" in God, without any real reason). Unsurprisingly, Christian 'faith' is given pretty short shrift and depicted as the impoverished, unspecific, insignificant, unreliable 'mechanism' many (falsely) assume that it is. Ironically, the film portrays faith this way, but it doesn't seem to think it's doing so derisively. After all, Shaw saves the day, is the last survivor of the crew, and her hypothesis turned out to be correct . It would appear her 'faith' -- her belief in belief -- was vindicated. And yet her faith, to the extent it is on display, is a pretty anemic, lifeless thing that isn't really worthy of praise.

And all of this, as annoying as it is, still might be overlooked if the rest of the film were good; if the characters and dialogue were compelling; if the narrative, even despite its metaphysical and scientific blunders and absurdities, was interesting; if the terror from the original Alien struck again in a new chord; if the mysteries were revealed in ways that enriched the franchise. But the film woefully misses all marks.

The worst of all of these sins is the pathetic character work. The character actions and interactions are often unbelievably absurd and nonsensical. Contrasted with the spirited, believable, and dynamic crew of the Nostromo, the crew of the Prometheus is colorful only because all of its members are exaggerated and false cliches. And the ones who aren't are indistinguishable in their dullness.

While I normally wouldn't delve into such detail, I feel a responsibility to catalog at least some of the worst offenses in this area. Some of the ones involving Shaw's character have already been covered, but what about the rest of the crew?

One of the earlier character notes is one of the more subtle offenses, but when the half-bald, half mohawk scientist decides he wants to go back to the ship rather than investigate a scene further, Shaw asks him why, and he responds by bizarrely getting in her face and screaming at her. I get that the character is supposed to be a douchebag, but this isn't what a douchebag would do in this situation. A true douchebag would ignore the question, or perhaps dismiss it with some quip. And perhaps if she pressed the issue further, accosting him, then he might explode, but this guy skipped straight to explode and it really made no psychological sense whatsoever. This is one of the more subtle character missteps in the film, but it set the tone early on for what would become a comedy of errors.

Perhaps the most significant of these is when Shaw's research partner / lover (played by the obnoxious Logan Marshall-Green), after arriving at LV223 (the planet they're investigating, and perhaps a reference to Leviticus 22:3) and discovering only Engineer corpses, resorts immediately to despondent, heavy boozing. He wanted to converse with them, you see. And since he didn't get to, time to drink. Sure, his partner is out there still in the process of collecting evidence and perhaps solving the riddle of the true origins of the human race, but yawn, yada, yada, I wanted to talk to them, damn it! Not to mention it isn't even clear that they are all dead, he's just assuming they are. In fact, as the planet is explored more thoroughly one of them is later found alive and cryogenically frozen.

Not much should need to be said about the buffoon scientist who, when coming upon an hissing alien snake-like creature, decides that it should be playfully approached as if it were a cuddly kitten.
 

Late in the film, Shaw returns to the Prometheus as the Engineer's spacecraft is preparing for take-off and informs the crew that the ship is headed to Earth to destroy humanity. It's not entirely clear how she arrived at that conclusion -- the Engineer was certainly hostile to them, but it's not obvious that he wishes to destroy the human race -- but she relays this information to the Prometheus. The Prometheus isn't a war vessel, and so the captain and two of the crew members almost immediately realize that, based on Shaw's breathless pronouncement, a kamikaze mission is in order and they happily march to their deaths. The captain had hitherto not been an exceedingly selfless or caring character, so this again rings completely false in myriad ways.

Sure, characters can be emotional, irrational and inconsistent just like people, but these characters were so in profoundly inhuman (and cliche) ways. And when you take into consideration that these are all scientists, it's even more suspect.

Michael Fassbender gives the only sympathetic performance as David, this mission's android. Which should tell you something, since he's diabolically wreaking chaos and havoc and seems to have a distinct distaste for these humans aboard the ship -- as we all do, by the end of the film.

The one thing the film does somewhat have going for it is in its mysteries, symbolism, and unanswered questions it leaves much up for debate and discussion, and so the film can serve as a good conversation piece -- if you can get past everything else. But when this thin veneer of false intrigue is draped on the skeletal frame of a film that is fundamentally, offensively unsound, it doesn't -- it can't -- enrich the film but rather serves only to distract from the lack of coherence and substance.

I could go on. And I didn't even touch on the absurd abortion sequence.

The quality of Prometheus being what it was (abysmal) and with Bladerunner 2 now in the works, one has to wonder if Scott is cashing in on his legacy. Or, perhaps, using his legacy as leverage to make more interesting films; The Counselor -- Scott's next project -- boasts a magnificent cast and a script by Cormac McCarthy. Whatever the case, as a matter of artistic integrity, Scott had no business sullying the Alien franchise with this endeavor. Go ahead and make a non-Alien sci-fi film about human origins, and maybe with the expectations, burdens, and restraints of the franchise lifted, your creative genius might just shine through. After all, much of Scott's genius was always in the creation of new worlds, and since the world of Alien already exists, his creative matrix may have just never been engaged. It's a plausible explanation anyway, and he might want to latch onto it. Otherwise one is forced to conclude he's a has-been hack in the late-George-Lucas phase of his career. One may conclude that anyway.

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CORRECTION:  I said the film takes place on the same planet as the first Alien, but it's a  different planet in the same system of planets.

Argument by Fiat -- Yet More on Faith and Peter Boghossian

In his aggressive public campaign against "faith", Peter Boghossian is back with another lecture on the topic titled Faith: Pretending to Know Things You Don't Know. For most people, I suggest reading the title of the lecture and allowing your feelings about it to determine whether it could be valuable for you to engage. If that is what you believe faith to be, then you may want to watch the lecture and explore some of the out-workings of this belief, while having your ego gently stroked. If you don't believe that is what faith is -- along with the vast majority of people who have ever used the term -- then there's no sense in watching the lecture because Peter offers no argument for this controversial conclusion, rather he assumes it to be true and declares it to be so by fiat.

Unless, like me, you have a somewhat masochistic streak or other reasons for which you wish to engage communities of un-faith, rest assured that the title tells the whole story and go along with your day. At the risk of losing some readers here, you probably need not even read this post any further, but if you want a more in depth explication of the reasons the presentation is entirely impotent, or if you have an inclination to defend it, then proceed.

I've already hinted at the problem with Peter's thesis, but let me expound more fully: A) That isn't what faith is. B) Peter never demonstrates that people of faith actually don't know what they "pretend to know"; it's a bald assertion. C) To the extent that it is most likely true of some or even many faith claims (due to, for example, the mutual exclusivity of the claims), this does not mean it is necessarily true of faith itself or for specific faiths. This, as in his previous lecture on the topic, commits the fallacy of division. 

In addition to his central definitional thesis, Boghossian also wants to attempt to divorce faith from its assumed alliance to morality. He thinks being a 'person of faith' tends to automatically bring up the association in many people's minds of strong moral character, while Peter thinks being a 'person of faith' is essentially neutral, in terms of morality. This seems to me mostly uncontroversial; most honest people of faith don't claim to be inherently morally superior simply because they have "faith". Christians, for instance, readily admit that sin infects the entire human race, including all Christians, and that they do nothing to merit their salvation from the consequences, reality, and dominion of sin but recieve salvation as an unmerited gift. But if Peter wants to divorce non-specific 'faith' (that is, faith-as-process, rather than faith-in-X) from the cultural linkage to morality, no thinking person of faith would be troubled by the agenda (since we have faith-in-X, not faith-in-faith-as-process).

Peter goes on in his lecture to address 5 common assertions people of faith make, such as "My faith is true for me", and substitutes his definition for "faith", for the word "faith", to yield "My pretending to know what I don't know is true for me". He seems to think this a potent move, but why? "My faith is true for me" is already silly in itself. Substituting the words of your silly definition compounds the silliness, to be sure, but it tells us nothing about the nature of faith. It only tells us that A) people of faith sometimes say dumb things and B) that you are baking your conclusion into your premises, producing a circular argument (if any).

Peter goes on to address people who, when attempting to defend the use of "faith", use the term when they really mean "hope". The difficulty here is what seems to be a prescriptivist naivety that believes words to be ontological entities with hard, fast, immobile meanings and vivid, necessary demarcations. But there's no hard distinction between "faith" and "hope"; faith isn't synonymous with hope, but hope is (usually) an element of what constitutes faith, at least for the Christian (and I assume many faiths). Faith makes knowledge claims, but that's not all it does. And you can't change this fact by fiat; if you think faith and hope should have some hard, impenetrable boundary between them, you must make the argument, and he doesn't attempt to. With that said, I'm sure people he engages with sometimes improperly invoke "faith" when they should invoke "hope", or vice versa, but so what? This also tells us nothing about the nature of faith. 

But perhaps, since he is presenting to a crowd of presumably like-minded individuals (the gathering is hosted by some sort of 'humanist' group), he wouldn't object to my characterization of him offering no arguments here. After all, in no uncertain terms, he makes it clear that the primary objective for the talk is, essentially, wholly propagandistic. That is, operating on the presumption that faith is necessarily void of content or value, what are productive rhetorical ways to create cultural and linguistic shifts that would serve to best spread this idea. If this is the case, there's nothing inherently wrong with holding meetings for PR purposes, but the lack of any underlying foundation for the ideas you're looking to propagate remains a glaring problem. 

Since these presentations couldn't possibly do anything to persuade a genuine, intelligent person of faith to abandon their faith, you might wonder why I bother responding to them. It's a good question and, frankly, there probably are much better uses of my time. But there are also those people who are not yet believers, as well as people (whether Christian already or not) who may not be diligent enough in their thinking to parse this stuff out, who may come in contact with the arguments and find the superficial rhetorical force of them to be persuasive. Of course, I'm under no delusion that my blog has enough readership to act as any hugely significant counterweight to this effect, but there still is some value in making sure such things don't go unresponded to.  

Peter recently accused me of never having anything nice to say about him, and he was completely right in his charge (I since attempted to rectify it by offering him a sincere compliment). To offer some further redress:  one good recommendation Peter had in his lecture is that we attempt to separate beliefs we find noxious from the people who hold them, and to, accordingly, respect people even as we attack their ideas. And that we ought to treat them how we want them to treat us. I do try to separate ideas from people, (or sin from sinner) and I harbor no personal ill will against Peter, I only take issue with his ideas. Per his recommendation, but more importantly per my Maker's command. 

More on Peter Boghossian and Faith

My previous post on Peter Boghossian's talk titled Jesus, The Easter Bunny and Other Delusions was written on the basis of an interview he did, and on a description of the talk that he gave. His talk has since been made available online, and I've watched the whole thing. After watching it, I think my criticism from the initial post holds up just fine, and represents the most central problem with his thesis. But the details of his presentation brought up a few other issues.

To briefly reiterate my chief problem with the thesis of the talk that "Faith is an unreliable process". The point that I made is that the thesis is irrelevantly true. A person of faith can easily concede the point that "faith" in general, as a process, is not reliable. After all, a Christian does not believe that faith in Buddha, or Allah, or Krishna will do anything for you; indeed a Christian would hold that faith in such things is guaranteed to lead you astray, and so would concede that "faith" in general is not reliable.  People of faith don't have faith-in-faith, they have faith in specific gods. Boghossian's argument proceeds in such a way that assumes if he can demonstrate the unreliability of faith in general, as a process, that this should cause a person of faith to abandon their faith, but this expectation commits the fallacy of division; it can be true that faith in general is an unreliable process and that a faith properly-oriented, faith in the One True God, is entirely reliable. This lone objection is pretty much fatal for Professor Boghossian's entire project.

Boghossian's main examples to demonstrate the unreliability of faith, such as faith healing and transubstantiation, are really extra-biblical tenets that are not -- and never were -- central elements of the Christian faith. And so nothing at all hinges upon their standing or falling, and if and when they do 'fall', that fact mitigates against the reliability of faith in the Christian God not at all.

 Another problem with his thesis is that, in a somewhat subtle manner, it assumes a priori that various faiths are wrong. That is to say, if it were true that there is no supernatural reality, or that faith is unreliable at apprehending supernatural reality, then the conclusion that faith (or specific faiths) are dispensable is obvious enough, but no argument has been made. If, however, some faith is substantially correct in all of its claims about transcendent reality, then not only would that particular faith be reliable, but it would be reliable at determining the most important facts about reality, facts which are much more substantial than the truths that modern science reveals about immanent, empirical reality. The fact that this can't be demonstrated to be the case is, of course, unproblematic for people of faith. That's entailed by the definition of faith and the nature of the things it aims to apprehend.

Speaking of the definition of faith, Boghossian largely defines himself a victory by using this definition of faith: "Belief without evidence". If this is how you're defining the term then, again, it's not difficult to get to a place where faith is unreliable. The problem is that you've produced a tautological argument that doesn't say anything. When faith is defined as unreliable, it is in fact unreliable. Of course, Christian faith (for one example) explicitly invokes evidence in its definition of "faith" (Hebrews 11:1), and would reject this concept of "faith", which is only another reason that speaking about "faith" in general terms produces such vacuous results.

And, even outside of the Christian concept of faith, on secular grounds, faith is most often invoked, not as something that goes contrary to evidence, or completely without reference to it, but in line with it. For example, if you have faith that your brother will make it to an appointment with you on time, you base this faith on the fact that your brother has been consistently reliable in the past. You can't be certain that he will prove reliable again, as that remains to be seen, and so you ground your faith in him in the evidence that is available and pertinent. With this much more sensible, realistic understanding of faith in view -- rather than Boghossian's silly definition -- again, his project crumbles.

Also, pointing out that faith is not well-suited to answering narrow questions about immanent, material reality is of about as much consequence as pointing out that biology is ill-suited to answering questions on astronomy. Using Boghossian's methodology of argument, one could argue quite forcefully that biology fails horribly at answering 9 out of 10 different types of questions, it just happens to excel at answering biological questions. Biology is, therefore, an unreliable process. Q.E.D.

At one point in the presentation Boghossian makes the claim that all conversations on the topic of someone's faith inevitably results in the person moving the goal posts, and shifting their claim from "my faith is true" to "my faith is beneficial". Perhaps he was being hyperbolic but he claims that "This is the inevitable trajectory of every single conversation, period." Every single conversation, period? I've had dozens of such conversations, and I can't recall a single one even drifting slightly in this direction, and I could produce the testimony of my interlocutors to confirm that the conversations never go in this direction. And I doubt that I'm the lone exception to this rule.

In closing, let me draw attention to one piece of the presentation that I found somewhat helpful. At one juncture, professor Boghossian encourages his audience to criticize ideas and not people. As a pragmatic concern, if you're trying to convince people of something, attacking them will never be very fruitful. This struck me as a secular version of "hate the sin, love the sinner", which made me chuckle a bit to realize.

Peter Boghossian, Faith and True Belief

There is something irresistibly beguiling about the spectacle of an educated person making what they believe to be grand pronouncements, that they seem to think ought to shake the core of some people's very being, when in fact they are saying very close to nothing at all. I was recently introduced to Peter Boghossian, professor of philosophy at Portland State University, via Sam Harris' posting a link to an interview with him in which he speaks about how faith claims have no place in a public, secular classroom. Something he seemed to think was a very controversial position, at least when presented to believers. Of course, in reality, such a claim is not enough to even arouse mild dissent from religious persons in America, the great majority of which have no interest in 'faith claims' being taught, or utilized in public classroom settings. Perhaps he's worried about the desire of some religious people to have Intelligent Design taught in science classrooms, but even if you're worried about such a thing, you aren't worried about 'faith' being taught in science class, you're worried about what you deem to be bad science being taught in science class. So even here, 'faith in the classroom' is a non-issue for any party involved; virtually no one anywhere desires such a thing.

But maybe this straw-man, this preposterous fear of believers desiring 'faith in the classroom' was a one-off thing, and I should be charitable and cut Professor Boghossian some slack. At that point in time, I did, but Philosophy News recently posted an article that reviews a recent lecture of his titled Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions: Just Say No!, where he essentially reiterates the argument from the earlier interview, only with the slight twist that faith claims not only aren't appropriate in a public classroom, but that they are actually delusional. "Alright", I said to myself "that's quite enough with the charitableness."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but from the interview and the summary of the lecture, it isn't at all clear that  Professor Boghossian has any understanding at all of how faith functions for a believer i.e. do even believers themselves hold that "Faith" is the best way to investigate immanent material reality and draw the most reliable conclusions about it? No, so the fact that it isn't fails to disabuse a person of faith from anything whatsoever.

The articles of faith most believers hold are almost all about transcendent reality which is not directly accessible to empirical investigation, or are about empirical events (say, the resurrection), which are mostly only subject to historical investigation, and so the fecundity of empirical, scientific investigation of material reality tells us nothing about whether Faith-as-such is successful at apprehending these realities it actually purports to apprehend, or whether non-Faith -- which is Faith's actual competitor here, not science -- is preferable.

Boghossian's example of transubstantiation -- conceived of as the physical elements transforming physically into flesh and blood, which is a somewhat dubious interpretation -- is uninteresting because it merely demonstrates an article of faith that is subject to empirical, scientific investigation and which we can dismiss as bad faith, or an example of faith in something that isn't true. The history of science is just as chock full of ideas about reality which have proven to be false. If someone persists in holding them, in the face of facts to the contrary, by all means call out that person as ignorant or obstinate, whether it's a scientific belief that is called into question or a matter of faith. None of this has any bearing on the question of whether faith-as-such is reliable, though, anymore than the existence of bad scientific theses throughout history is evidence that science is unreliable.

In addition to all of this, most systems of 'faith' are not completely insulated from the influence of facts or reason; indeed, many systems -- certainly most Christian systems -- are responsive to these things, where applicable, in much the same way that science is.

The more intractable problem for Boghossian's position is that people of faith don't have faith in faith-as-process, they have faith in a particular God, particular tenets, particular traditions, particular institutions etc. And Boghossian's particular critique proceeds as if believers do have faith in faith-as-a-process-for-producing-true-beliefs, which believers do not. Believers in the Christian God, for example, will readily admit that many religions, and non-religious systems of belief, invoke faith at various points (secular systems might not call it 'faith', but at some point they must appeal to some unverifiable 'first principles', which is substantially no different). Christians would merely contend that this is always a misguided -- or at least, in the case of philosophical first principles, incomplete -- faith that will not produce true beliefs. Hence it isn't faith itself that believers elevate, worship, obey, but rather the object of their faith which they believe is the source of their true beliefs, simultaneously remaining completely aware that faith-as-process is very often unreliable and un-illuminating. What is important -- from the believer's perspective -- is having a faith properly oriented, and there is no dispassionate, objective standard by which we can say that a faith properly oriented does not produce true belief, because we have no dispassionate, objective, empirical criteria for demonstrating the truth or falsity of (mostly) claims about transcendent reality.

So, as a believer, I can readily concede that faith-in-faith-as-the-process-most-well-suited-to-reliably-determining-truths-about-immanent-material-reality is misguided, and still hold that Faith in the Christian God of the Bible (a person, not a process) is perfectly warranted and uniquely accurate at apprehending the true nature of reality (that is, the most crucial, spiritual, transcendent level of reality, not scientific facts about immanent reality).

In the same way, a believer can completely affirm various critiques of "religion" in general and still advocate for a particular religion, without contradiction. Thus said critiques of "religion" in general are very often vacuously true, in a way that could never bother actually religious people, who don't subscribe to "religion" but rather subscribe to a particular religion. In the same way, this critique of "faith" could never trouble a person of faith, even if they were to concede that the critique was entirely valid.

If it were just a simple category error of this sort which undermines his entire point, and it wasn't accompanied by such condescending, self-righteous bombast, or if it were a one-time thing, I probably wouldn't even bother addressing it. But this combination is particularly worthy of derision and sharp correction.

The End of an Era

For the last year or two Fridays have been my most anticipated day of the week, not because they signify the beginning of another weekend but because David Bentley Hart's web column always arrives on Friday (though it usually only does so bi-weekly). It was just announced that his most recent piece -- an excellent précis on the limits of Method as such, especially with regard to modern scientific method and those who refuse to acknowledge its limits -- will also be his final web column at First Things. 

This terrible news was immediately softened by the happy news that he will now be a regular contributor to the print edition of the magazine, with an article on the last page of every edition, where he used to only be published in the magazine occasionally (seemingly about half the time). Presumably, and hopefully, the print column will be of greater length than his web column, given the greater infrequency of publishing.

In any case, the final piece really is quite fine work. Hart reminds us that the hard won precision and clarity of certain methods come at a price:

[M]ethod always remains only a perspective, however powerful it may be: a willful blindness to many things for the sake of seeing a few things with a special clarity.

He goes on to take the naïvely confident materialist -- who imagines that the triumph of modern science can discount, or even comment on, the existence of formal and final causes -- to task:

Even so, it would be worse than naïve to imagine that the sciences have thereby proved the nonexistence of final and formal causes. In fact, by bracketing such causes out of consideration, scientific method also rendered itself incapable of pronouncing upon any reality such causes might or might not explain. Now, of course, the typical reply to this observation (from the aforementioned Daniel Dennett, for instance) is to say, with some indignation, that modern science has in fact demonstrated the utter superfluity of final and formal causal explanations, because the sciences have shown that they do not need finality or formality to understand the processes they investigate.

That, however, is an empty tautology: Of course modern scientific method discovers the kind of reality it is specifically designed to discover; and even in cases where it finds its explanatory reserves overly taxed, it must presume that in future some sort of “mechanical” cause will be found to restore the balance, and so issue itself a promissory note to that effect. But, again, this may mean that it must also overlook realities that actually lie very near at hand, either quite open to investigation if another method could be found, or so obviously beyond investigation as to mark out the limits of scientific method with particular clarity.

After a long string of satirical or otherwise half-serious columns, Hart's final web column is a return to material that he is best known for, which I think is appropriate. I do hope, however, that the end of the web column is not the end of the satirical, whimsical, mercurial Hart, which his web column gave us access to. Much of that work is utterly brilliant in its own right and deserves the widest platform possible. 

Can Science Determine Moral Values?

This is a pretty interesting exchange between Russell Blackford and Sam Harris on the topic of Harris' new book 'The Moral Landscape'--in which Harris argues that science can determine human values. Harris recognizes that he is in an extreme minority on this issue. Almost all religious people would disagree, and the vast majority of secular scientific-minded types would also disagree, he acknowledges. But he claims that morality is essentially the 'science of human flourishing' or well-being, and since science can determine certain activities are worse for human flourishing than others (via sociology, economics, neurobiology etc.), it can therefore determine human values. That is the central argument of the book.

Harris wrote a piece responding to critics in general, but focused on Blackford since he felt he was the most thorough and insightful. Harris' response is thorough in that he doesn't really evade Blackford's points, but his responses either completely miss the point, or dismiss a point as insignificant, when it isn't.

For example, in response to the central critique of the argument of the book--that Harris presupposes, rather than demonstrates, that 'human flourishing' or 'well-being' is an ultimate good while human misery is evil--Harris essentially says "well, yeah, I did that, but I'm allowed to do that, and must do that. There's nothing wrong with that presupposition." Yes you're allowed to, but the point of Blackford, and all the critics of the argument, is that it's the philosophical presupposition that is determining the value NOT science. Science can only (in theory, anyway) let us know the best way to achieve our ends, once we have determined our values. Harris seems to completely miss the point, or not understand it. He even says "The fatal flaw that Blackford claims to have found in my view of morality could just as well be located in science as a whole -- or reason generally." -- Which is of course true, and science and reason are subject to the same critique. But science and reason, as abstract entities, didn't falsely claim that they could determine moral values, Sam Harris did. Harris seems oblivious to what his own argument even is, namely that science can determine human values, and the fact that his critic just demonstrated this to be false and Harris just conceded that it was false!

Also, his analogy to health does nothing to advance his case because, similarly, the objective knowledge about how best to be healthy is not the same as saying we must value health primarily, ultimately, or at all. The knowledge of how to be healthy doesn't demand ascent as to the value of our health. Some think it's very important, some think it's pretty important, some think it's mildly important, some don't think it's important. Science can not evaluate these opinions, it can only say "health is important if you want to live a long time" for example, but that isn't 'determining a value', it's evaluating a value that is already given. If I value 5 cheeseburgers a day, video games and a short lifespan over a healthy diet, exercise and a long lifespan, science can say nothing about this health value system of mine.

Anyways, Harris' response is ultimately pretty terrible and Blackford's review is overly positive, if anything, but good. One other interesting aspect of Harris' response to critics is his complaining that many hadn't read the book (either admittedly, or seemingly). Which is kind of silly when you're out giving hour long lectures at TED about the argument of the book, and doing a huge publicity tour where you lay out your argument thoroughly. People can, in good faith, engage your argument without reading the book. Though they shouldn't label their engagement a 'review' of the book as Deepak Chopra did. But when the foundation of your argument can be gleaned from reading the book jacket, or even just the subtitle, and it's blatantly fallacious, critics shouldn't really be expected to delve much further.