Sam Harris is creating a bright shiny new Objective Morality

Daniel Davis buybuydandavis at yahoo.com
Mon May 10 13:27:20 CEST 2010


Svein Olav : For my own sake, I'd rather believe in ghosts than believe in
Ideology, if such a choice was forced upon me. After all, which
superstition makes the most damage? The descriptive or the normative
superstition?

I like the distinction: descriptive or normative superstition. 

I've always preferred the descriptive superstition, but for a different reason. For all the nonsense involved in believing in the Man in the Sky, I've always found that kind of belief more intellectually healthy than the intellectual degeneracy often involved in Ideologies. Believing in the Sky God can just be done as an intellectual mistake that in other ways leaves reason intact. Acting based on perceived punishment or reward seems healthy, acting "because it is good" seems a nonsensical compulsion that involves a lot of gibberish which subverts the reasoning faculties themselves.


In 1984, Orwell identified Doublethink as one of the required diseases of the Party member. The news is worse than that - I think the Party can do even better. Instead of people who can hold contradictory facts in their minds, how about people who can no longer conceive of contradiction as a problem? Intellectual degeneracy is more revolting to me than a straightforward mistake or lack of sophistication.


Svein Olav: As you've noticed, I changed the name of the magazine and web
site from "non serviam" to "i-studies". Why? Well,
in part it was actually a convincing argument from you, Dan Davis,
that the "I will not serve" that "non serviam"
means is not really primary. In its very insistent form, it just
becomes an ideology of its own -an ideology of reaction- a form of
delayed and prolonged teenage rebellion. Heathy enough as a starting
point, perhaps, but not a place to stay, to be stuck.

Damn that Internet - it never forgets! Let's see if I can wriggle out of this. 

"I will not serve" is not the negation of the will to servitude, it is the other side of the pancake. The pancake is a sense of a hole that one alternatively refuses to fill, or begs the universe to fill. I refuse to serve anyone, or somebody please find me something to serve. In both cases, you judge your actions in relation to how the other guy would value them. Like you say, I will not serve may be an improvement over Please let me be a slave, but its not a great place to stay. Much like how I used to harp on the idea that self esteem is certainly an improvement over self loathing, but valuing yourself is something of a conceptual confusion for a valuer.


Svein Olav: And there are indeed cases where "Stirnerian egoism"
point towards doing others a service, period. Stirner himself gives an
example of how a child has power over him with its smile. Being a
parent now, I know that power very well, and it is a power neither I
nor Stirner sought or seek release from.

It is a power I grant from my inside, from my egoism, and not an
ideological monster or a feeling that has to be explained away as some
kind of hidden advantage calculation the way the Randians do it. 

For Stirner, I think it's whether you're steering by the compass of your valuations or the other guy's valuations. For Rand, your soft heart for your progeny just goes to show you're a whim worshipping subjectivist! 


Svein Olav: As for appeals to "evolutionary biology", that seems to
work to no other end than propping up already existing prejudices. The
sociobiologists explain what they like by appeals to how they imagine
evolution has worked, and the things they do *not* find, but would
have liked to find, they justify by some weird kind of
"deduction" from how they think evolution should have done
it, had evolution done its job properly.
I see the same things in evolutionary biologists, but I don't think I was engaging in it. I identified a couple of evolutionary forces in the direction of credulity and obedience in children, but I don't claim that I know the *net* force was in that direction. A claim to know the net force is tantamount to post facto central planning.


Svein Olav: There might not be a specific "unbeliever gene", but
there might very well be a gene coding for degree of conformity.

I think the genetic wedge isn't in conformity as much as credulity, trust, or impressionability. Part of it is just a projection of how I perceive myself as different from other people. Both beliefs and values seem to flow between other people much more 
readily than through me, for good and bad. Others are so willing to trust or distrust based on the emotional presentation of the speaker, and so easily swayed to value, while I feel fairly unaffected by someone's confidence, bluster, or emotional intensity. Just the facts, ma'am, and hold the emphatic emotionalism. I see you're excited about this, but it really isn't going to have an affect on my opinion.

- Dan


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