And an even briefer sketch of now a neoreactionary might answer that last challenge.
The problem in former times of virtue, the neoreactionary might say, is that people did not know enough to be able to demonstrate what is virtue and what is vice. People have always known right from wrong, but they have not known how they know, any more than they knew how they see. Having God as the explanation, even though it be a false one, had the beneficial effect of protecting their knowledge from their ignorance. When people generally began to see that there was no God (including those who believed they believed, but whose God had dwindled to the shadowy ghost in the background), virtue decayed, for we are all like Chesterton’s fence-lifters, discarding a thing, however useful, when we notice that we do not see the reason for it.
But now, the neoreactionary might continue, in the last century, or perhaps just the last few decades, we have discovered the material origin of virtue. This knowledge comes primarily from evolutionary biology and neuroscience, and history reinterpreted in its light. We know how societies flourish and how they decay. We know how we know right from wrong. With this new knowledge, we shall restore virtue to the world.
To which the progressive might even more briefly respond:
Yeah, our people tried some of that in the early 20th century. The project was supposed to make society better by making better people. It applied scientific knowledge of Darwinian evolution, Mendelian genetics, and the science of psychology that gave us the ability to measure feeblemindedness and mental degeneracy.
It was called eugenics. It didn’t work.
Its failure was not that it was pseudoscience. Quite a lot of it wasn’t. Its failure was that it involved giving a political and technical elite a kind of power over other people that couldn’t not be abused — abused to control others; abused to enact ancient prejudices like antisemitism, and new ones like middle-class fear of the poor and rural; abused to allay some people’s fears of a collapsing, degenerating society at the expense of other people’s bodies and lives.
I think you overrate the influence on science on German nationalism. The idea that blood relationships matter doesn’t come out of science. It’s a much older idea.
Or are you speaking about something that doesn’t have something to do with Germany?
and new ones like middle-class fear of the poor and rural
What are you talking about? Late 20st century US thought?
I think you overrate the influence on science on German nationalism. The idea that blood relationships matter doesn’t come out of science. It’s a much older idea.
The specific ideas behind Nazi eugenics and “racial hygiene” derive — in part — from earlier eugenics and racial-hygiene movements in the US. See, for instance, the Indiana eugenics act of 1907 and, more pointedly, the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which combined legislation against mixed-race marriages with compulsory sterilization of the “feebleminded”.
and new ones like middle-class fear of the poor and rural
What are you talking about? Late 20st century US thought?
No, early-20th-century US thought,. I should have been more clear: by “new” I meant “new at the time”, not “recent as of today”. The idea that poor rural families were inbred hives of criminality, madness, and race-mixing was one of the motivations behind American eugenics of the early 20th century.
Thing is, it’s true that many mental disorders are heritable. In that regard, the early eugenicists were not operating entirely on pseudoscience. But they went wrong in believing that if nations refused to use law and violence to control people’s reproduction (and, ultimately, to kill the “unfit”), that society (or “the race”) would degenerate.
After WWI Germans did try to copy American culture and might have copied scientifically motivated racism. On the other hand that stopped a bit with the Nazis. They didn’t care about copying the US. “Blut und Boden” (“blood and soil”) was a quite old idea.
“Racial hygiene” isn’t really the same as “scientific racism”. The latter seems to be used more to refer to the anthropological theories of racial superiority, now euphemistically called “human biodiversity” by their advocates.
But “racial hygiene” policies included the elimination of “undesirable” gene lines within the advocates’ favored race — first through forced sterilization, and later through killing.
In 1933 in some sense yes. Hermann Muckermann who was co-author of the law did study in the US.
By 1936 the Nazi however forbid him from speaking publically.
Yes, that’s the main failure mode of ethical naturalism. “You must die, because SCIENCE!”
What would the progressive atheist’s answer be to the challenge of producing virtue from matter? I’d try writing that one as well, but I think I’d end up caricaturing it.
Yes, that’s the main failure mode of ethical naturalism. “You must die, because SCIENCE!”
My libertarian shard says it’s the main failure mode of politics: “You must die, because POWER!”
What would the progressive atheist’s answer be to the challenge of producing virtue from matter?
No idea, but mine is game theory coupled with compassion — a System 2 mathematical insight and a System 1 intuitive and trained response. Ethics comes down to symmetry among agents: my good is no more or less The Good than your good. Humans can recognize this both as a matter of explicit mathematical-philosophical reasoning, and using intuitive-emotional responses (which can be trained). Virtuous humans both recognize and feel that symmetry, and vicious humans do not recognize or feel it.
The basic ethical failing that leads to atrocities is not usually the lack of System 2 ethical reasoning, but the sentiment (or System 1 trained reaction) that those people are not really people; they are some sort of mockery of people who do not deserve compassion. See Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality”.
What we see in the history of eugenics politics is the notion that society can progress by freeing itself from having to care about certain kinds of people — so that they can be subjected to medical violation, mutilation, or extermination. But this is the same thing that we see in religious antisemitism or any number of other sources of the dehumanization meme. Dehumanization works the same evil whether it’s couched in the language of progressive science, the Lutheran language of Nazi antisemitism, or in the order to the Albigensian crusaders: “Kill them all; God will know his own.”
Rorty’s critique of ethics since Plato has a weird echo when we’re talking about eugenics, though:
It would have been better if Plato had decided, as Aristotle was to decide, that there was nothing much to be done with people like Thrasymachus and Callicles and that the problem was how to avoid having children who would be like Thrasymachus and Callicles.
But speaking of science and ethics, I think it’s really kinda weird that humanity had the Golden Rule from traditional sources since antiquity, but didn’t invent the math to describe it until the mid-20th century — the same time frame in which engineering gave to politics the ability to destroy the world.
And an even briefer sketch of now a neoreactionary might answer that last challenge.
The problem in former times of virtue, the neoreactionary might say, is that people did not know enough to be able to demonstrate what is virtue and what is vice. People have always known right from wrong, but they have not known how they know, any more than they knew how they see. Having God as the explanation, even though it be a false one, had the beneficial effect of protecting their knowledge from their ignorance. When people generally began to see that there was no God (including those who believed they believed, but whose God had dwindled to the shadowy ghost in the background), virtue decayed, for we are all like Chesterton’s fence-lifters, discarding a thing, however useful, when we notice that we do not see the reason for it.
But now, the neoreactionary might continue, in the last century, or perhaps just the last few decades, we have discovered the material origin of virtue. This knowledge comes primarily from evolutionary biology and neuroscience, and history reinterpreted in its light. We know how societies flourish and how they decay. We know how we know right from wrong. With this new knowledge, we shall restore virtue to the world.
To which the progressive might even more briefly respond:
Yeah, our people tried some of that in the early 20th century. The project was supposed to make society better by making better people. It applied scientific knowledge of Darwinian evolution, Mendelian genetics, and the science of psychology that gave us the ability to measure feeblemindedness and mental degeneracy.
It was called eugenics. It didn’t work.
Its failure was not that it was pseudoscience. Quite a lot of it wasn’t. Its failure was that it involved giving a political and technical elite a kind of power over other people that couldn’t not be abused — abused to control others; abused to enact ancient prejudices like antisemitism, and new ones like middle-class fear of the poor and rural; abused to allay some people’s fears of a collapsing, degenerating society at the expense of other people’s bodies and lives.
I think you overrate the influence on science on German nationalism. The idea that blood relationships matter doesn’t come out of science. It’s a much older idea.
Or are you speaking about something that doesn’t have something to do with Germany?
What are you talking about? Late 20st century US thought?
The specific ideas behind Nazi eugenics and “racial hygiene” derive — in part — from earlier eugenics and racial-hygiene movements in the US. See, for instance, the Indiana eugenics act of 1907 and, more pointedly, the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which combined legislation against mixed-race marriages with compulsory sterilization of the “feebleminded”.
No, early-20th-century US thought,. I should have been more clear: by “new” I meant “new at the time”, not “recent as of today”. The idea that poor rural families were inbred hives of criminality, madness, and race-mixing was one of the motivations behind American eugenics of the early 20th century.
Thing is, it’s true that many mental disorders are heritable. In that regard, the early eugenicists were not operating entirely on pseudoscience. But they went wrong in believing that if nations refused to use law and violence to control people’s reproduction (and, ultimately, to kill the “unfit”), that society (or “the race”) would degenerate.
After WWI Germans did try to copy American culture and might have copied scientifically motivated racism. On the other hand that stopped a bit with the Nazis. They didn’t care about copying the US. “Blut und Boden” (“blood and soil”) was a quite old idea.
“Racial hygiene” isn’t really the same as “scientific racism”. The latter seems to be used more to refer to the anthropological theories of racial superiority, now euphemistically called “human biodiversity” by their advocates.
But “racial hygiene” policies included the elimination of “undesirable” gene lines within the advocates’ favored race — first through forced sterilization, and later through killing.
The German 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring reads like an echo of Harry Laughlin’s 1922 Model Eugenical Sterilization Law, which was the model for the sterilization provisions in Virginia’s 1924 law.
In 1933 in some sense yes. Hermann Muckermann who was co-author of the law did study in the US. By 1936 the Nazi however forbid him from speaking publically.
Yes, that’s the main failure mode of ethical naturalism. “You must die, because SCIENCE!”
What would the progressive atheist’s answer be to the challenge of producing virtue from matter? I’d try writing that one as well, but I think I’d end up caricaturing it.
My libertarian shard says it’s the main failure mode of politics: “You must die, because POWER!”
No idea, but mine is game theory coupled with compassion — a System 2 mathematical insight and a System 1 intuitive and trained response. Ethics comes down to symmetry among agents: my good is no more or less The Good than your good. Humans can recognize this both as a matter of explicit mathematical-philosophical reasoning, and using intuitive-emotional responses (which can be trained). Virtuous humans both recognize and feel that symmetry, and vicious humans do not recognize or feel it.
The basic ethical failing that leads to atrocities is not usually the lack of System 2 ethical reasoning, but the sentiment (or System 1 trained reaction) that those people are not really people; they are some sort of mockery of people who do not deserve compassion. See Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality”.
What we see in the history of eugenics politics is the notion that society can progress by freeing itself from having to care about certain kinds of people — so that they can be subjected to medical violation, mutilation, or extermination. But this is the same thing that we see in religious antisemitism or any number of other sources of the dehumanization meme. Dehumanization works the same evil whether it’s couched in the language of progressive science, the Lutheran language of Nazi antisemitism, or in the order to the Albigensian crusaders: “Kill them all; God will know his own.”
Rorty’s critique of ethics since Plato has a weird echo when we’re talking about eugenics, though:
But speaking of science and ethics, I think it’s really kinda weird that humanity had the Golden Rule from traditional sources since antiquity, but didn’t invent the math to describe it until the mid-20th century — the same time frame in which engineering gave to politics the ability to destroy the world.