Richard Dawkins & 'Gut Methodology'

LAST week, Professor Richard Dawkins, formerly the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science, argued on Radio Four's Today program that humans should apply rational thought when trying to solve the world's problems to which the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby responded on Monday that acting out of love and through emotion is an important part of what makes us humans.

Speaking on the on the TODAY program last week, Dawkins had said people should avoid voting with their gut and adopt a more scientific approach.  'Of course, we all think with our gut a lot of the time.  But when we’re making important decisions, like when we’re voting [or] when we’re taking important business decisions, don’t think with your gut, think rationally.  Look for the evidence one way or the other; weigh it up.'

Dawkins said the scientific method should be applied beyond the lab, adding that 'evidence is the only reason to believe anything about the real world'.

However, responding to the good Professor Dawkins, the Archbishop of Canterbury, JustinWelby has said that the scientific method alone could not answer all of the big questions:
'The world is not entirely materialism.  It’s not entirely made up of what you can experiment with. There are things we deal with every day – emotions around love, around the value of people, around how we treat those who are weaker and stronger – where mere rationality, even evidence-based rationality, which I hold to as a really important thing, does not answer the whole question adequately.'

The archbishop of Canterbury has spoken of his deep sympathy for the family of Charlie Gard, the 11-month-old boy who died last week after a long legal battle, as well as the medics who treated him and the judges who presided over his case.

Justin Welby evoked the memory of his own daughter, Johanna, who died when she was less than a year old as he said the world could not be explained by rationality alone.

Welby was commenting on Prof Richard Dawkins' insistence last week on the primacy of evidence and reason, not emotion, when making big decisions.

'It’s quite well known that one of our own children died and we had to stand by the bed and they died when the life support was withdrawn. And I think that, in a case like that, I’m not going to say anything except that my heart breaks for the parents,' Welby told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday.

While he said evidence-based decision-making was important to him, he cited the Gard case as an example of where it could only be a part of the right approach.

Speaking on the same programme last week, Dawkins said people should avoid voting with their gut and adopt a more scientific approach.  'Of course, we all think with our gut a lot of the time. But when we’re making important decisions, like when we’re voting [or] when we’re taking important business decisions, don’t think with your gut, think rationally.  Look for the evidence one way or the other; weigh it up.'

Dawkins said the scientific method should be applied beyond the lab, adding that 'evidence is the only reason to believe anything about the real world'.

However, Welby has said it alone could not answer all of the big questions.
'The world is not entirely materialism. It’s not entirely made up of what you can experiment with. There are things we deal with every day – emotions around love, around the value of people, around how we treat those who are weaker and stronger – where mere rationality, even evidence-based rationality, which I hold to as a really important thing, does not answer the whole question adequately.'

Referring to the Gard case, which was at the centre of a long-running legal battle over the child’s care, Welby said any parent would 'fight for the life of their child as long as they could', adding: 'We know what that’s like.'

The judges and doctors who were treating Charlie at Great Ormond Street hospital came in for abuse as the case progressed through the courts, but the archbishop said that each person involved was worthy of sympathy because they wanted the best for Charlie.
'I’m sure they cared to the depth of their being about doing the right thing and it’s a very good example of where sometimes rational, evidence-based thinking is not the whole story.  The medics weren’t operating on that. They grieve when they lose a patient and particularly a child.
'I just feel deeply sorrowed by the whole thing and feel deeply, deeply, deeply for Charlie Gard’s parents and for all the rest of the people involved in the most tragic case. Sometimes, we want to come to clean, quick conclusions and it’s right just to pause and grieve.'

It must be extremely irritating for a passionate rationalist Professor like Professor Dawkins to cope with current political developments and the nature of human behaviour as it is being played out in the real world.  The scientific method of decision making is clearly not uppermost in most people's minds. 

In a study published today on the 2017 General election by Prof Ed Fieldhouse & Dr Chris Prosser of the University of Manchester, found:
'Despite Mrs May's claim that her reason for calling an early election was to get a mandate for the Brexit negotiations, the issue of Brexit itself had a relatively low profile during campaigning.
For much of the campaign, both the Conservatives and Labour focused on other issues.
But in the minds of the voters at least, the 2017 election was - as it promised to be ever since the referendum of June 2016 - the Brexit election'

The report says 'in the minds of the voters' but in the answer to the question:  'As far as you're concerned, what is the single most important issue facing the country at the present time?'
This research shows that more than one in three people chose Brexit or the EU, compared with fewer than one in 10 who mentioned the NHS or one in 20 who suggested the economy.

 It would seem that the driving force here as so often elsewhere in political decision-making is gut reactions rather than the ponderings of the scientific method as recommended by Prof. Dawkins.

Not shooting a man pulling his pants up: an example of morality?

In her post below on 'Morality & the Herd Instinct' Rachel writes: 'I don’t think that the issue of morals can help but be troubling to anarchists, being at once matter of individual freedom to choose and respecting the rights of others.'
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Before proceeding to answer Rachel, it is interesting to cast an eye over the rich moral contents in the forthcoming physically printed issue of Northern Voices 13: The lead story is an interview with Sylvia Lancaster, the mother of Sophie murdered while defending her lover in a park up Bacup in 2007; then there is the Link4Life attack on the arts in Rochdale; a tribute by Tameside MBC and the local Trade Union Council to James Keogh who sacrificed his life in the Spanish Civil War; a column on bribery & corruption; a piece by the Rev. Father Petty on Philip Morrell, the Burnley MP & campaigner against the First World War; an interview by Barry Woodling with Azeldin-El-Sharif on the Manchester connection to Libya; a piece by Chris Draper on how the trade union bosses in Victorian Sheffield were morally dodgy entitled 'Letters from Ned Ludd's Missus' and another on the twisted historical approach of the British left to less 'morally respectable' events like the Luddites' rebellion.
NORTHERN VOICES 13
Postal subscription: £5 for two issues (post included)
Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at
c/o 52, Todmorden Road,
Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com

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OVER a decade ago a visiting moral philosopher giving a lecture at the Manchester Metropolitan University offered us an example of human morality by referring us to George Orwell's decision, which he took sitting in a trench in Aragon in the Spanish Civil War, not to shoot at a man pulling his pants up after clearly having a crap. Orwell's reasoning, as he described it in his book 'Homage to Catalonia', was that the man couldn't be a Fascist because in his view a true Fascist wouldn't have got himself caught in such a predicament. I recall that Professor Wesley Sharrock, from Manchester University, challenged this arguing this he had 'never understood' that passage in Orwell, and he asked: 'Are we to believe that Fascists don't have a shit?'

The answer to Prof. Sharrock is to be found in Chapter4 of 'Homage to Catalonia', where Orwell writes about the nature of that war in which 'very likely a Socialist or Anarchist trade union member ... has been conscripted against his will [to fight for the Fascists]'. On the Aragon front Orwell describes how the rival troops made moral appeals to each other, and the militia men would shout the slogan: 'Don't fight against your own class!' Orwell writes: 'There is little doubt that it had some effect; everyone agreed that the trickle of Fascist deserters was partly caused by it.' Was that just an example of a moral confidence trick in the view of Rachel and Nietzsche?

In the 1970s, Kenneth Clarke, the art historian, commenting on capitalism which he described as 'Heroic Materialism', dismissed Marxism as an alternative to capitalism by saying then that it was 'Intellectually and morally bankrupt'. No doubt Nietzsche, and perhaps Rachel, would consider any appeal to morality as a weakness, but I think we know given the history of the 20th century what Lord Clarke meant by saying that by the 1970s Marxism as a political force was 'intellectually and morally bankrupt'.

The notion of moral constraints ought not to be snubbed by anarchists, and human beings, it seems to me, have to make decisions according to some standards and do have moral duties to each other. We can't avoid that by holding up a cookbook according to Marx or anyone else. The extreme question then arises: 'Had Robinson Crusoe any duties on his island?' Mary Midgley in her book 'Evolution as Religion' claims that there is a serious disagreement here, but one that can't 'be sneezed away just by saying "it depends what you mean by duty".'

Did the group organising the Manchester Anarchist Book Fair last December have a moral duty to invite the Northern Anarchist Network [NAN]? It could be argued that the 'Gang of 5' who organised it were an independent group who had the right to invite whoever they wanted and even to declare the NAN not to be 'anarchist' if they so choose to. The question then strikes us 'Is that fair?' or 'Is there any natural justice being applied here?' and when we do that, I suggest we are in the realms of morality, fair play and justice.

Mary Midgley, like Kant, even concludes that Robinson Crusoe 'did have duties concerning his island' and that Nietzsche was wrong in taking over 'from the old Thomistic theology which he plundered the assumption that all the rest of creation mattered only as a frame for man.' Barry Woodling and Martin Gilbert in speaking up at the last NAN in Newcastle, were talking of a duty of care that anarchists ought to have for others such as the Libyans in Benghazi a year ago; in opposition to them Dave Douglass admitted that all he had to offer was a cookbook theory of politics. I would humbly suggest that that cookbook is now outdated.

Morality - The Herd Instinct of the Individual?

The issue of morals seems to have been on a lot of agendas lately. David Cameron virtually used the word as punctuation in his rhetoric on last year’s riots whilst more recently, those professional moralisers at the Church Of England trotted out Arch-Bishop Sentamu of York to challenge the government’s ‘moral authority’ as regards gay marriage. Meanwhile, Radio 4’s Moral Maze returned for a new series with its veritable orgy of moral dilemmas. I’ve already used the word five times in the first two sentences and that’s before we’ve even considered Bammy’s allegations of ‘moral bankruptcy’ against the British left on this very blog.

The Daily Telegraph’s Deputy Political Editor, James Kirkup, suggested that Cameron’s focus on morality in the wake of the riots, together with his promises to fix a ‘broken society’, would define his premiership, further asserting that in putting morality at the heart of his rhetoric, Cameron was swimming against the tide of perceived wisdom in contemporary politics, where ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are out of favour and institutional failure is deemed responsible for the actions of individuals, not the individuals themselves.

But good, bad and especially morality itself are such imprecise, subjective and potentially dangerous concepts that it is impossible to define any one of the three without some form of dissent. Why then do the likes of Archbishop Sentamu deem themselves fit to question the moral authority of others without even considering that their own authority, moral or otherwise, is essentially based on the curious notion that citing ‘the word’ of an invisible being allows them to dictate how others should live?

I don’t think that the issue of morals can help but be troubling to anarchists, being at once matter of individual freedom to choose and respecting the rights of others. But Bammy doesn’t seem to have given this a second thought, branding the ‘British left’ (whatever that is) ‘morally bankrupt’, largely, it seems, in light of a recent disagreement with Dave Douglass over Libya. If such a thing exists, aren’t all of us part of the British left to some degree - or has El Editorismo finally ascended to a higher plain?

So Barry has done his homework on this one, whereas the dog seems to have eaten Dave’s - I agree with his anti-NATO stance but wonder why the hell he used the Morning Star to back it up. There’s plenty of other ‘empirical’ evidence to suggest that ‘liberal humanitarians’ (as some interventionists have rather laughably rebranded themselves) are as blinkered when it comes to acknowledging ‘moral’ grey areas as their staunchly anti-intervention adversaries. I also wonder exactly how blanket allegations of moral bankruptcy directed at those who are against intervention in Libya differ from Tony Blair’s view of interventionism in the Balkans (another impossibly complex situation) as 'a new moral crusade’. Most troubling for me, however, is the notion that an anarchist can or should put themselves in a position of moral superiority over others, morality being, as it is, the favoured justification for all manner of authoritarian, oppressive and elitist behaviour

In fact, when it comes to the moral nitty-gritty, there is another argument here, one that is addressed by the American Indian activist Ward Churchill via the concept of ’metaphysical guilt’. Here, it is argued that ANY non-combative support for a cause, however passionately argued, vigorously undertaken or empirically researched is pretty much useless unless you actually embrace the cause as your own and uncompromisingly fight for it. So far, I don’t see the pro-intervention NAN boys setting off for Homs to take up arms alongside their favoured faction in the conflict or have the Bammy Column already left?

Churchill’s ideas are often deliberately polemical and challenging but if you’re going to open the mother of all cans of worms, that of morality, then you can’t be surprised when someone else’s view forces you to ask questions about your own. Unless you’re so sure that you’re right that you don’t need to consider any other views - surely the most dangerous position of all to find yourself in.

Nietzsche described morality as the herd instinct in the individual and Cameron’s sound bites on the riots certainly proved lush grazing for the bovine, convinced that the wolves of immorality were hot on their heels and all wearing new trainers. Meanwhile, Sentamu’s flock can be reassured that love is not , in fact, universal - it’s subject to the approval of a self-appointed moral elite and their imaginary friend (whether or not love requires marriage is, of course, also a matter of debate).

But in fact, Nietzsche is rather wide of the mark too, as a herd instinct implies a more natural compulsion, whereas morality is an entirely artificial construct. Indeed, the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy suggests that:

“Morality” is an unusual word. It is not used very much, at least not without some qualification. People do sometimes talk about Christian morality, Nazi morality, or about the morality of the Greeks, but they seldom talk simply about morality all by itself.

But the Christians, the Nazis and the Greeks can’t all be morally ‘right’ because, after all, they seem to have absolutely nothing in common in terms of their individual moral codes. What they do all share, however, is a savvy patriarchal elite, all too aware of the power of so-called ‘morals’ in keeping the lower orders in their place. Surely then, anarchist morality, or perhaps more accurately, anarchist moralising, is not only oxymoronic in theory but, in practice, a waste of time and energy.

Strong Stomachs & Narrow Minds

Intellectually & Morally Bankrupt: British Left

IN the January issue of Freedom, the anarchist paper, Dave Douglass a former miner wrote: 'Sunday 6th November 2011 I am confronted out of the blue, by a political development in anarchism which has knocked me off my feet. Surrounded by comrades in a fairly well attended meeting of the Northern Anarchist Network (NAN), and the North East Anarchists last Sunday at The Bridge Hotel Newcastle I listened with my jaw dropping to the item on the agenda marked Libyan Solidarity Campaign.' He added: 'The Support NATO bombing tendency is how I would roughly designate it ...' and he went on to claim that Ian Bone’s blog was the origin 'of this absurd and reactionary viewpoint'.

As I write this the shells of the security forces of the Syrian army fall on Homs for the 19th consecutive day of a bombardment that activists say has claimed the lives of hundreds of trapped civilians. Meanwhile, at CND and Stop the War meetings white skinned and left-wing militants on these islands of ours, urge that there be no intervention despite the bloodshed. One supporter of the NAN even told me that we must always oppose our own British forces no matter what the cause.

If anything could illustrate the utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the British left these conflicts in Syria and Libia bring it into focus. Dave Douglass admitted that Gaddafi's agents may have marched with Stop the War supporters in London last year but claimed that he understood why they were there.

To support his argument Dave Douglass quoted from the Morning Star: 'The Morning Star Thurs Nov 10th (p13) reported on the Al-Qaida flag flying over the main Benghazi Courthouse, not that having the flag flying next to the new ‘official’ Libyan flag of the former kind, demonstrates the level of political support, but the fact no-one dared take it down might.' Dave trusts the Morning Star as his authority, but Barry Woodling who spoke at the Northern Anarchist Network conference last November has taken the trouble over the last few years to contact Libian exiles and address this matter empirically. He may still get it wrong, he may still develop a faulty analysis, it may be that Libya could turn out to be another tragedy but at least he is doing some homework which is more than I can say for Dave Douglass and those cookbook politicians in the Stop the War movement.
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NORTHERN VOICES 13
Postal subscription: £5 for two issues (post included)
Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at
c/o 52, Todmorden Road,
Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com

The next issue of Northern Voices, NV13 out in February, will include an interview between Barry Woodling and a member of the Libyan community in Manchester: this Libyan lad has now returned to Benghazi to participate in the unfolding events there.

Also in the Northern Voices 13 will be an article by the Jim Petty on the militant pacifist Philip Morrell, MP for Burnley 1910-1918, who almost alone in the House of Commons opposed the First World War forcing a debate.