Alex Rosenberg and Samir Okasha
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Atheism and Reality 
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We can’t avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life – and the nature of reality. Philosopher Alex Rosenberg maintains that science is the only thing that can really answer them – all of them. His new book, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, takes physics seriously as the complete description of reality and accepts all its consequences. He shows how physics makes Darwinian natural selection the only way life can emerge, and how that deprives nature of purpose, and human action of meaning, while it exposes conscious illusions such as free will and the self. The science that makes us nonbelievers provides the insight into the real difference between right and wrong, the nature of the mind, even the direction of human history. He is in discussion with Professor Samir Okasha, University of Bristol, author of Evolution and Levels of Selection and Philosophy of Science: a Very Short Introduction, and Julian Baggini, author of The Ego Trick: What Does it Mean to be Human.
This Festival of Ideas event is part of a regular series of live discussions with Julian Baggini recorded at Foyles for the microphilosophy podcast series.
Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Duke University and the codirector of the Duke Center for Philosophy of Biology. He lives in Durham, North Carolina. His books include: The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions.
Samir Okasha is Professor of Philosophy of Science. He joined Bristol University in September 2003; prior to that he worked at the University of York, the National University of Mexico, and the London School of Economics. He received his doctorate in 1998 from the University of Oxford. His books include Evolution and Levels of Selection and Philosophy of Science: a Very Short Introduction.
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February 10th, 2012 at 6:46 pm
An ‘accessible’ interview with Alex Rosenberg – a ‘taster’ of his book – can be found here:
http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4209
February 24th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
As the late, great Richard Feynman once told us, “Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.” I am confident that Alex Rosenberg would endorse this sentiment – and then some.
For Rosenberg wasn’t in town to make polite conversation – he was here to play hardball.
Chair Julian Baggini pushed us straight into the deep end by summarising Rosenberg’s views on religion as “There is no God – let’s move on”. Rosenberg didn’t flinch, and stated confidently that if one takes science seriously, the arguments against the existence of God are conclusive.
That was just the start. Samir Okasha informed us that Rosenberg claimed that there is no meaning to life, that free will is an illusion, and that there is no objective difference between right and wrong.
Rosenberg did not disagree, and in what I saw as a development of the latter position, he explained his theory of “nice nihilism”. Natural selection has, in the interests of survival and reproduction, endowed us with traits such as altruism and co-operation – but there is no moral reality behind such behaviour. Thankfully, you may be relieved to hear, perpetual bloodshed is averted by the fact that most of us can’t free ourselves from these evolutionary constraints even though we are capable of seeing through them.
Rosenberg threw further cats among the pigeons. For example, he told us that when logic shows the incompatibility of physics and common sense, not only should we abandon common sense , but that any attempt to reconcile the two positions is “wrong-headed”.
Rosenberg even met the big “R” head on. No, not religion, but reductionism – which has become a dirty word in some quarters, and a stick with which to beat “soulless”, bean-counting scientists over the head with.
Rosenberg is clearly unintimidated by the name calling. Not only did he dismiss the theory of emergence (in crude terms, the notion that some phenomena are more than the sum of their parts) as bluff and dogma from scientists trying to keep physicists off their patch, he went to claim that ALL other sciences must ultimately be reduced to physics.
To be honest, I’ve come across (and am in broad agreement with) many of the arguments aired here tonight before – but rarely have I heard them presented in such a take-no-prisoners fashion. The concept of the sugar-coated pill is clearly an alien one to Mr Rosenberg.
But this isn’t a criticism. The legacy of the Enlightenment, and even rational thought itself, are under attack from every quarter. Snake oil salesmen of every stripe are lining up to peddle their simplistic, self-serving and know-nothing nostrums in the hope that they can convince us to stop worrying our pretty little heads about vexing stuff like science and logic.
I suspect that Rosenberg is destined to go on frightening the horses for some time to come, and admittedly at times he seemed more like a howling sub-zero gale than a breath of fresh air. But I for one am willing to get out there in my thermal underwear and lean into the wind with an open mind.