Why even bother to ask
Of course. I posted a link to that interview with David Sloan Wilson and wondered if he gets Templeton money, so googled his name and Templeton. Well of course he does. Silly question. Barrels of it, apparently – Google turns up a whole raft of items.
DSW is making at least two obvious errors on matters about which he ought to know better – and I am certain he ought to know better, because I’ve read enough of his books and papers to draw these conclusions from his own theories and arguments.
1: Wilson is not being sufficiently cautious about letting value judgments project onto or otherwise leak into what are supposedly value-neutral scientific conclusions, even though he frequently cautions against exactly this mistake in Unto Others and Darwin’s Cathedral. For example, the only ‘utilities’ or ‘benefits’ of religion that he can intelligibly discuss in terms of group selection are FITNESS benefits. Ultimately, that comes down to leaving more offspring in future generations, which has nothing to do with good/bad, right/wrong, or any other sort of value judgment. But Dawkins & Hitchens do make value judgments about religious belief, so if Wilson has objections to their arguments he cannot possibly be basing his objections exclusively on the science he cites as his only basis for objection. Dawkins is very clear about which of his arguments are scientific and which are moral, and he’s very clear on how and why evolution is not a source of values. Wilson seems to be much, much less clear on that very crucial matter, often eliding the difference between (or outright equivocating) fitness benefits and the ‘beneficial’ consequences of participation in religious communities in some broader, value-laden sense. Bad scientist. No cookie.
2: Wilson is not acknowledging trade-offs and down sides that are not present in spite of the (fitness) benefits of religion, but must be present because of them. In group selection theory, fitness benefits are always and necessarily calculated in comparison to other groups: That is, they are comparative fitness benefits with respect to other groups, always involving an in-group and out-groups in competition for scarce resources. Such competition is always an element in natural selection, at any level from genes to individual organisms to kin groups to social groups: Any sort of cooperative or mutualistic behavior or relationship evolves between organisms only when it gives the cooperating organisms a fitness advantage over organisms in the population who lack the cooperative/mutualistic trait. So, on the basis of his own theory, Wilson cannot talk about Durkheim’s “secular utility” of religion without acknowledging the disutility, i.e. the competition between religious groups. Benefits for some always involve detriments for others in natural selection, and Wilson knows that as clearly as anyone does: Thus, it should be especially obvious to Wilson that much of what Dawkins and Hitchens and other critics of religion are arguing is that the detrimental effects of religion for those outside of a given religious group are SO detrimental that we should not be willing to tolerate them (a value-based argument again), in spite of any benefits those in the group might enjoy. This, of course, combines with and compounds Wilson’s first error, so again I say: Bad scientist! No cookie!
I’ll have to add ‘Bad scientist. No cookie.’ to tags.
Wilson has gotten really into applying evolutionary theory to all aspects of human experience. Some of his writing on economics is quite interesting. But the idea of an evolutionary biologist consulting religion is quite comic.
If he were being honest, he would go the the church in Binghamton and say, “Force the women here to be more submissive, and you will increase the group’s reproductive success.” After all, that no doubt accounts as much as anything for universal human religiosity.
What bullshit.
Actually, Kenneth, Wilson’s arguments for the group selection fitness benefits of religion – including the ones you quoted – are pretty persuasive. The problem is that he treats those reproductive fitness benefits as “beneficial” in some unspecified, overly broad sense tinged with moral approval – which is not only an externally imposed, non-scientific value judgment, it’s simply bullshit on the face of it and he deserves to be called on it. In Darwin’s Cathedral, one of the examples Wilson gives of a group that coordinates action and controls cheating and all that is John Calvin’s brutally repressive theocratic regime in Geneva, so it’s not as if Wilson has any excuse for glossing over the moral down sides that come with those fitness benefits. The role of religion in exerting control over women – especially with regard to sexuality and reproduction – is another morally blameworthy feature of religion that, in objective scientific terms, comprises a reproductive fitness benefit. That’s another one DSW is perfectly well aware of and wrote about in Darwin’s Cathedral, again leaving him no excuse.
Darwin’s Cathedral is hardly without flaws, but it’s definitely worth a read: And, interestingly, Wilson never makes these mistakes I’ve been complaining about in that book. I don’t fully understand why he’s gone off the rails about religion in the way he has, but I’m pretty sure that the unwarranted positive spin he gives religion is the reason for the Templeton people liking him (rather than the Templeton money pushing him in that direction). My current theory is that Wilson takes exception to atheism (you can go look up his appalling “Atheism as a Stealth Religion” dreck yourself if you want to be irritated; I can’t be bothered go look it up just to be annoyed by it all over again) because his tendency towards empathy and geniality distorts his view of religion based on the sort of thoughtful, nice, liberal religious people he is likely to become personally acquainted with as a career academic. Wilson is almost pathologically nice in person, and like many such people he seems to overreact to what he perceives as anyone being mean or harsh or critical – accepting any harshness directed towards himself with aplomb, but reacting in a defensive, overprotective way about any harshness directed at others (especially people he empathizes with or personally likes). He needs to get the fuck over that.
That’s funny. His reprehensible tendency towards empathy and geniality causes him to be strawmanny and nasty to a particular subset of people. Hall of mirrors.
It makes sense though. I’ve often commented on the fact that many of the backlashers set themselves up as The Party of Nice while being steadily mendacious and vicious toward people they dislike. I never set myself up as a member of The Party of Nice, so I at least don’t get stuck having to explain why I’m such a shit when I’m always telling people to Be Nice.
It is a paradox. Ophelia does not set out to be a member of The Party of Nice but one cannot help conclude she is a thoroughly decent human being. When I think of certain people who could be considered signed-up members of The Party of Nice I am not left thinking that.
OB, like Mistress Weatherwax, is both Good and Right. But as the latter is wont to observe, that doesn’t make you Nice. And nor should it.
Nobody would ever call me Nice!
Had to look up Mistress Weatherwax. I guess I should stop messing around and read Pratchett.
I would not want to belong to any Party of Nice that would have me as a member…