Is "evolutionary humanism" a contradiction in terms ?
There is supposed to be a philosophy called "evolutionary humanism". The German philosopher Michael Schmidt-Salomon even wrote a book entitled "Manifesto of Evolutionary Humanism".
Isn't this term a contradiction in terms ?
My answer is Yes, and here are my thoughts about it.
On the one hand we have the theory of evolution, which tells us that Homo sapiens too is nothing else than an animal, an evolved living being like millions of others. If Sapiens also has specific characteristics that distinguish us from apes, for example, this is nothing unusual, since many species have such characteristics or abilities that are not found in other species, without this entailing a special position.
But this is exactly the basic idea of humanism: that man has a special position within nature. Classical humanism saw this special position in the fact that man alone connects the material world with the spiritual and divine worlds ; man therefore has a mediating role between the "above" and the "below".
Modern humanism is no longer based on the idea of the spiritual or even the divine. Nevertheless, it grants man a special position by ascribing to him a unique DIGNITY (from which then special "human rights" can be derived). This dignity distinguishes Sapiens - and only him ! - It marks the qualitative difference, the gap which separates the human being from the animal kingdom.
Here's a question for those who would deny that such a qualitative gap exists: imagine a herd a migrating wildebeests somewhere in Africa. They cross a river and 50 of them drown. Now image a group a migrating humans, and 50 of them drown while trying to cross the Mediterranean or the Rio Grande. Is there a difference in value between the two accidents? The first incident is just something that happens every day in nature; animals are born, they survive, they die. But the death of 50 human migrants is not something in the category "things happen": is a tragedy. Because of special human dignity.
To sum it up: The evolution theory says: no special role / special position for the H.sapiens. Humanism says: yes, because only the human being, regardless of his abilities, has a special dignity.
Therefore the "evolutionary humanism" is a philosophical impossibility, the attempt of a squaring of the circle.
Isn't this term a contradiction in terms ?
My answer is Yes, and here are my thoughts about it.
On the one hand we have the theory of evolution, which tells us that Homo sapiens too is nothing else than an animal, an evolved living being like millions of others. If Sapiens also has specific characteristics that distinguish us from apes, for example, this is nothing unusual, since many species have such characteristics or abilities that are not found in other species, without this entailing a special position.
But this is exactly the basic idea of humanism: that man has a special position within nature. Classical humanism saw this special position in the fact that man alone connects the material world with the spiritual and divine worlds ; man therefore has a mediating role between the "above" and the "below".
Modern humanism is no longer based on the idea of the spiritual or even the divine. Nevertheless, it grants man a special position by ascribing to him a unique DIGNITY (from which then special "human rights" can be derived). This dignity distinguishes Sapiens - and only him ! - It marks the qualitative difference, the gap which separates the human being from the animal kingdom.
Here's a question for those who would deny that such a qualitative gap exists: imagine a herd a migrating wildebeests somewhere in Africa. They cross a river and 50 of them drown. Now image a group a migrating humans, and 50 of them drown while trying to cross the Mediterranean or the Rio Grande. Is there a difference in value between the two accidents? The first incident is just something that happens every day in nature; animals are born, they survive, they die. But the death of 50 human migrants is not something in the category "things happen": is a tragedy. Because of special human dignity.
To sum it up: The evolution theory says: no special role / special position for the H.sapiens. Humanism says: yes, because only the human being, regardless of his abilities, has a special dignity.
Therefore the "evolutionary humanism" is a philosophical impossibility, the attempt of a squaring of the circle.
Comments (28)
This doesn't seem to be the sort of humanism of which MSS is speaking. I read the wiki page and it seems to focus very much on natural everything, and that humans, given their abilities, play some sort of special role, but not a supernatural one.
A wiki quote about the thesis:
"The manifesto outlines, that humanity will be able to create more life-friendly, free, and just conditions than can be found today."
The life-friendly thing is quite a strange assertion for a species responsible for the Holocene extinction event. I'm pretty sure the other animals would rather we had not appeared on the scene at all.
A philosophy that can be summed up by "We are all together on this boat; so let's be nice to each other" does not need a pretentious name like "humanism", especially if there is a gap between the postmodern and the classical variety.
Quoting Matias
I have always thought of humanism as a perspective that sees the world from the viewpoint of human values. If that's a valid definition of humanism, and I think it is, then there is no contradiction.
Quoting Matias
I do agree with this.
Quoting Pantagruel
We have learned differently. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive the human being from the spirit or the deity; we have placed him back among the animals. We consider him the strongest animal because he is the most cunning: his spirituality is a consequence of this. On the other hand, we oppose the vanity that would raise its head again here tooas if the human being had been the great hidden purpose of the evolution of animals. The human being is by no means the crown of creation: every living being stands beside him on the same level of perfection. And even this is saying too much: relatively speaking, the human being is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. But for all that, he is of course the most interesting.(Nietzsche,GM 111:25)
I agree.
There is of course a view from some folk, who believe in transcendent realities, that it is impossible to elevate or enshrine 'the human' because any such valuation is religious in nature, evoking a sense of the sacred, which in a godless world, where values are arbitrary, can have no justification. It's an old argument.
The evolutionary argument against naturalism seems to be a nice companion this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism#:~:text=The%20evolutionary%20argument%20against%20naturalism,evolution%20and%20philosophical%20naturalism%20simultaneously.
My glib response is there are lots of things people will argue can't be done and yet they are done.
The argument, to the extent I can understand from the article you linked, seems to be that without outside guidance, evolution could never develop reliable rational intelligence and without reliable rational intelligence no human belief, including in evolution, can be trusted. Seems a lot like the fine tuning argument.
Charles Darwin in a letter to William Graham, July 3, 1881, put it thus:
With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of mans mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkeys mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
The argument (and there are philosophers like Donald Hoffman who holds something like this view too) is that the process of evolution does not require truth, only survivability. The probability of our cognitive faculties reliably producing true beliefs is low if ontological naturalism is true, and therefore all other beliefs produced by these faculties, including naturalism itself, are self-defeating.
Alvin Plantinga puts it like this:
...the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low. (To put it a bit inaccurately but suggestively, if naturalism and evolution were both true, our cognitive faculties would very likely not be reliable.) But then according to the second premise of my argument, if I believe both naturalism and evolution, I have a defeater for my intuitive assumption that my cognitive faculties are reliable. If I have a defeater for that belief, however, then I have a defeater for any belief I take to be produced by my cognitive faculties. That means that I have a defeater for my belief that naturalism and evolution are true. So my belief that naturalism and evolution are true gives me a defeater for that very belief; that belief shoots itself in the foot and is self-referentially incoherent; therefore I cannot rationally accept it.
- Alvin Plantinga Where the Conflict Really Lies
I have no doubt that a clever argument like this has equally clever philosophical escape routes.
Another way of saying that survivability is what matters is to say the truth is what works. That's the battle cry of the pragmatist. As far as we can tell, the theory of evolution by natural selection works. It helps us predict the future. Predicting the future makes it easier for us to survive.
A question - if the argument is true, what is the alternative? God?
For Plantinga, who is a theologian and philosopher, yes. For Donald Hoffman, we live in a simulation.
I think the takeaway message is that for many people certainty or truth, even the possibility of intelligibility itself must rest upon a transcendental foundation (idealism/will/theism/deism/Tao).
Yes. There are of course philosophers who would argue (Rorty) that humans indeed do not have access to truth, so this is correct. We simply use language to manage our environment and while we can justify our ideas, there is no truth 'out there' to find - this notion being a remnant of Greek philosophy (Plato, et al). A lot of where one lands on this seems to depend upon the scale you are working within.
Well, it's clear to me that truth, certainty, intelligibility, belief, and all the rest are concepts and reflect values created by our imperfect human minds. That makes it a circular argument.
On what do you base this assertion?
Why is there such a large gulf between the underlying concepts of what you wrote and the underlying concepts of the following?:
Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.
American Humanist Association
From
To say that human beings have dignity is to say that human beings also have an obligation or duty to respect the rights of all people. These rights include the right to life, liberty, and security of person; the right to be freed from slavery; equal protection before the law; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; and so on.
From
If by "survivability" what is meant is adaptivity, then, as far as I can tell, this deflation of "truth" is spot on. :up:
No doubt god-of-the-gaps ...
Hey!!! You changed my text.
Anyway - I'm ok with adaptivity for survivability. I'm not sure of the difference in this context.
Sy?d, true! Allow/permit evolution, sensu latissimo, to do its thing.
Can you give a quotation or reference where humanists say "we ascribe dignity to humans and not to other species"?
Is it your own interpretation and explanation what separates humanists from others who also want a symbiotic, and harmonious existence among living creatures?
I need to know this before we proceed. I am sure others would like to know too, whether the insistence on dignity to be an exclusively human trait is an official humanist idea or it is your own conclusion that humanists MUST think that.
Please give an answer to this, Matias.
So, where does this "self-evident" dignity comes from? Where is it derived from? Is is just asserted, a mere self-attribution, just like white racists attribute a special value to the white race, humanists attribute a special value to the human race ? It seems so.
Yes. You make this sound like a bad thing. :wink: Humans practice speciesism which seems to be an aspect of our fairly robust and self-explanatory propensity for self-interest. Consider it a presupposition.
Are you concerned about this as a religious believer or idealist who holds that only gods or universal will guarantees foundational value to the human/soul? Or are you merely despondent that there appears to be no foundation other than one settled on by communities of shared agreement?
So it's not a humanist thing, it's a human thing. So stop saying that it's humanists who ascribe dignity to humans. You are cherry-picking worse than the worst bible-thumper.
Here you say as if only humanists rode on human dignity as a special characteristic. Then you say it's even in the Mein Kampf. "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar (und so weiter)".