The thematic content of this little book does not make up for its price. I have never before overpaid so much for a book as I have done here. The prestige of the author, however, Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of science at Boston University, and the prestige of the MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) Press, and a review of the book in a catalog sent out by MIT Press, induced me to make the purchase.
According to the blurb in the catalog, McIntyre finds us in a new Dark Age, insisting that we do not know any more about the courses of human behavior, what causes war, crime, and poverty, than our ancestors. Today's academics, economists, psychologists, philosophers, and others in the social sciencs, stand in the way of a science of human behavior. In order to establish a science of human behavior we need the scientific attitude, and the resolve to apply our findings to the creation of a better society. We need to hear what the evidence tells us even if it clashes with religious or political pieties, or cherished religious or political beliefs about human autonomy, race, class, and gender.
Whenever I hear an Academic talk about a better society, or better world, my guard goes up. The Academics mostly feed at the Public Trough, and they want an increasingly wide, deep Trough to feed at. They define a better society in terms of that trough. The ongoing ruinous explosion of education costs testifies to their skills in accomplishing that goal.
McIntryre's introduction marvels at our accomplishments in physical science and technology, while deploring our ignorance of cause and effect relations behind our own behaior. Our understanding of behavior has not progressed beyond what those who lived in the eighth or ninth centuries knew. Terrorism, crime, war, and poverty continue unchecked in the world because we lack the understanding to stop them.
McIntyre ignores the prosperity which characterizes the Western nations. The social organizing schema called Capitalism, in those places where it prevails, bestows benefits onto the lowest and least of its members, especially medical benefits, which even the Roman Emperor could not have imagined. Adam Smith, history's first Marxist, identified the dynamic responsible for these benefits, but at the same time his identification masked it. He spoke of an invisible hand which he made responsible for the fact that a person's self serving behavior also serves the interests of others, contributing to their ease and welfare.
Smith could not understand that Capitalism enables a person to serve self by serving others. This person offers goods and services, one or both, to a market which spends mony to buy them. This person then spends the money so earned for goods and services which he or she considers worth the money thus spent. To ascribe the resulting consumer benefits to an invisible hand masks this money dynamic. Jesus says, however, that "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21)". If your treasure lies in serving others, then your heart will also lie there. We can define a term, kardiothesaurôsis, literally heartreasuring, which clearly identifes the dynamic which Adam Smith successfully masked from analytical view.
We have in hand societies whose ecnomies implement the organizing principle which we here call kardiothesaurôsis. We also observe an energetic advocacy which strives to extend that mode of organization to societies which presently lack it. McIntyre ignores all this.
While we readily concede that pragmatic Capitlism, what actually happens in a Capitalistic society, needs some tweaking, its defects arise in its failures to implement kardiothesaurôsis. To produce good outcomes in the real world, this tweaking shall strengthen Capitalism, not weaken or destroy it.
The quip has it that a stitch in time saves nine. Applying this obviously correct principle to terrorism, crime, and war mandates their prevention, stopping them before they start. We look closely and realistically at the roots of this behavior. The values which terrorists, criminals, and warmongers implement in their behavior violate kardiothesaurôsis. Terrorists do not think in kardiothesaurotic terms about their victims. nor do criminals, nor do warmongers think in kardiothesaurotic terms about the soldiers and others who die in their wars, sacrificed to the futility of those wars.
To stop terrorism before it starts, we look at what motivates the terrorists, what they expect to accomplish. Present U. S. policy, for example, greatly offends the religious sensitivities of a globally significant number of Islamics. To stop the terrorists we require to cease to give them easy access to Western societies, in other words to stop their immigration into those societies, and to make such concessions as we can to their hatred of Israel. We clash here with political and religious pieties, agreeably to McIntyre's demand for that clash. As we proceed thru McIntyre's book, we keep an eye out for explicit or implicit approval, or disapproval, of this particular intstance of his clash.
McIntyre says that the Renaissance challenged the hegeony of Christianity. In one sense we require to agree, in another sense not. When Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, he did not Christianize Roman political and social culture, but rather he Romanized Christianity. The Greco-Roman Empire then collapsed, in slow motion, under the internal and external pressures which challenged it. With the Renaissance, Romanized Christianity gave way to the Christianity of The New Testament. The teachings of the Classical philosophers, which in late antiquity the Roman sociopolitical culture suppressed as rigorously as it could, and which saturate The New Testament, now emerged in full flower. The Renaissance resulted from the triumph of the philosophical teachings of The New Testament, not their defeat.
On his pages xv-xvi McIntyre writes,
The philosophy of humanism was born, and with it came a focus on the role that human reason might play in directing the course of our lives, challenging the hegemony of Christianity.
A life directed by reason came down by direct transmission from the Stoics, a philosophical religion popular among the Empire's upper classes, and continues to come down from them. We hear nothing about it in The New Testament. Agreeably to McIntyre's doctrine of clash with pieties of religion and philosophy, we ask, can we go with the Scriptures on this point, and reject reason as an organizing principle for life? Will a science of human behavior reject reason as an organizing principle, in spite of the enormous successes of mathematical physics in the material realm?
On his page xviii McIntyre writes,
Political ideology is today doing to social science what religious ideology did to natural science in the first Dark Ages.
In condemning today's political ideology McIntyre condemns an vigorously successful establishment. It would shock Washington's Welfare and Entitlements establishment, and the Civil Rights movement, to learn that they suppress the emergence ofa science of human behavior. I would certainly not have expected to hear this from an Academic, since Political Correctness began on the campus and continues to dominate university administrational policy. Most universities would expel a student who became McIntyre's mathety and acolyte.
At the same time, on his page xix he writes,
By contrast, I hope to show that there is something that we cn do about the current situation in the social sciences—that just as the human race once saw its way clear from the ignorance and superstition that had dominated its thining about nature, culminating in the scientific revolution, we may now take the first steps toward a social scientific revolution in which we come to understand the true forces behind our social ills, and so may build an improved human society on this basis.
Different people have different ideas about social ills. We can hope that McIntyre goes into more detail about these ills, since his proposed science of behavior might lead to a worse society, not a better one. When he talks about building an improved human society, he proposes social engineering. Some people will have already heard enough from him. Skeptics can keep an eye out for an advocacy of compel behavior which the social scientists consider scientific, and to forbid behavior which they consider unscientific. We face the prospect of a totalitarian orthodoxy which forbids what it does not compel.
Furthermore, his condemnation of present social science as unscientific lets him ignore the lessons of history, especially recent history. He can ignore the megadeath of the Twentieth Century, if considering it would interfere with his proposed new science.
On his page xx he writes,
The issues at hand affect us all and should not be locked up in the hands of only a few professors.
This blatant challenge to the Academic community opens up the possibility of a science of behavior that the professors, for the most part, won't like. McIntyre has indeed cleared the decks for action.
On his page 2 he gives a list of social ills which demand correction. These all involve coercion, mostly violent coerction, and the megadeath which the coercers have perpetrated onto various populations, especially in Africa. By implication, these ills mandate corrective intervention. McIntyre does not think much of live and let live, or at least live and let die, as an organizing principle. For all we know, his scientific theory of behavior could dictate that the U.S. not intervene in Africa's problems, but that it nevertheless have the military strength to insure that those ills not impact our own domestic interests.
McIntyre's incessant focus on the ills of society, and their cure, or at least amelioration, depends on the unexamined presumption that these ills admit to universal cure or amelioration. An alternative, isolationist view insists that some populations can live in agreeable societies, but not every population can. Those who live agreeable lifes, again, best isolate and insulate themselves from troubles which prevail elsewhere, devoting devoting such of their resources as they must to that goal. World War II, in this view, resulted from the failure of France and Britain to have the military capability to defeat Hitler, which some authorities say they had anyway, and a firm determination, which even Hitler could understand, to use it. When Hitler began to rearm, these nations would have invaded Germany and imposed a drastic regime change there.
An open minded approach to a science of human behavior could support this conclusion, and even make it mandatory. Nations which posit no threat, for example Saddam's Iraq, would have no fear of the U.S., as long as we had good reason to suppose that they posited no threat to us.
McIntyre continues his focus on bad behavior and outcomes, especially crime, but he also discusses hyperinflation and its consequences, and ethnic cleansing by the Bosnian Serbs against the Muslims in the 1990s. If a philosopher wants to correct these evils, he requires to more than complain about them. We impatiently wait for our hero to sketch a society in which these bad outcomes do not materialize, or least seldom materialize. What organizing principles would define the skeletal structure of such a society, giving it a skeleton which the behavior of daily life would flesh out into a vibrantly dynamic body? In contrast to this positive thrust, McIntyre wants to stud the most pressing social problems of our day, so that we may understand the forces causational forces behind them, and so control them.
McIntyre fervently believes that his social science will enable those who understand it to exert social control. History, however, and especially European history during and since the Renaissance, shows conclusively, blatantly obviously, that any social system based on social control fails, and especially fails to create the conditions for a good life for all but a few people, the controllers, who live in the system.
Finally, on his page 11, he calls for a social order not subject to sudden economic upheaval because an understanding of the relationship between inflation, unemployment, and the supply of money precludes economic upheaval. He fails to ask, however, if we already have this understanding, but lack the political competence to translate that understanding into pragmatic policy. We readily extend that question to behavior generally. Perhaps we already understand behavior well enough to accomplish some or even all of the goals Mcintyre wants to accomplish. If so, then the science of behavior which he demands will fail, since if implemented, it will reject the behavior which we actually should perform.
McIntyre insists that a substantial part of the reason for the lack of a scientific theory of human behavior lies in the failure of understanding of the methods of science by our present social scientists. Genuine scoence rigorously and systematically compares a theory against emperical evidence, nd abandons or modifies the theory where necessary. The New Testament says, by their fruits you shall know them. This quip defines knowledge as the matching of outcomes to expectations.
In the social sciences, the theorist can easily select outcomes which a theory appears to predict, and ignore outcomes which the theory predicts but which do not materialize. Any failure of a theory, however, suffices to falisfy it, and the scientist immediately abandons it. If the tree produces evil fruit, any evil fruit whatsoever, we cut it down. The New Testament elsewhere reinforces its teaching of the scientific method, and we need not wonder that modern science began among Christian pietists.
McIntyre uses immigration as an example of the problems with contemporary social science. Some studies show that immigrants clearly pay their own way, other studies show that they clearly do not. He confines his analysis to a narrow selection of economic issues. He ignores the costs to people who must move out of their homes as the immigrants take over a neighborhood, the costs of accomodating an increasingly bilingual society, and the ethnic resentments which the immigrants generate. Political correctness successfully mandates that the ethnic resentments not only get no consideration, merely to voice them puts a person at risk for prosecution for hate speech.
It takes only a little imagination to recognize that if the millions of immigrants now pouring into the U.S. came from Europe, especially from Northern or Eastern Europe, we would hear few objections to their presence. It seems easy to predict that if a charismatic leader arises among us who can give these ethnic resentments an articulation which makes them respectable, then the economic debate over the immigrants will lose its relevance. It seems obvious that resistance to illegal immigration euphemistically identifies immigration from Third World countries, and that if the majority of White voters could express their preferences in the voting booth, the influx of Third World peoples would as good as cease. This majority of voters would accept the economic consequences of implementing their preferences, for example a rise in the price of food because farmers would have to raise the wages dramatically that they pay the harvesters.
Suppose, we ask, that the scientific social science which McIntyre demands gave ethnic prejudice a firm philosophical base. McIntyre himself allows us to consider this prospect, since ongoing social and political pieties or beliefs shall not arbitrarily exclude any possibility, not even this one, from serious, scientific consideration. The fact that anti immigrant sentimens motivate activism mostly on the lunatic fringe, such as the Christian Identity Movement, the Skinheads, and various White Power organizations, does not necessarily discredit the idea of ethnic preferences. Many political movements have started on the lunatic fringe, but have moved to the center and become dominant organzing principles. McIntyre's scientific social science requires to accomodate this recurring phenomenon, even if that accomodation could works to the advantage of the lunatics.
McIntyre repeats his sentiments about the pursuit of a scientific understanding of human action, and then says, on his page 26,
When we begin to treat our own behavior as a proper subject for scientific investigation— instead of blithely assuming that we already know all there is to know about it—who can foretell what we may learn about the causes of our behavior?
He focuses our attention on what we already know about the causes of our behavior. We differentiate here between what the Academics think they know about the causes of behavior, and what the man in the street, and in particular the Christian, knows, or should know about it. The Christian theory teaches that behavior originates in the mind. Behavioral fantasies come into the mind loaded with emotional enhancements which goad the person into performing what the fantasies depict.
This dynamic of mind, brain, and behavior takes explicit formulation in the commandments in Matthew 10:19-20, Mark 13:11 and Luke 21:12-19, where Jesus commands that the believer, when about to stand before hostile authorities, should not rehearse beforehand what to say, but to say what God, Jesus, or the Holy Pneuma gives him or her to say. We read,
When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the pneuma of your Father speaking through you.
And when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Pneuma.
But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Put it therefore in your hearts, not to prerehearse how to answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict, You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.
The pneuma of the Father, or the Holy Pneuma, or Jesus himself, will give the prospectively anxious Christian what he or she should say. The required words come spontaneously into his or her mind. God, the Holy Pneuma, and Jesus, here symbolize the source of these words and their thematic content.
The idea of a divine source for speech, what a person says, occurs outside of The New Testament. For example Dio Chrysostom (40 AD to 120 AD) says (Thirty-Second Discourse, Loeb Volume II, page 183),
For my own part, I consider that I have not chosen this myself, but thru the mind of some divinity. Of whom indeed the gods think beforehand, they provide not only good spontaneous counselors, but also logos which is suitable and sympheronal to speak.
Here, logos means word, in the sense of what a speaker says. Sympheronal means attuned to and promoting self interest. Our quotes from The New Testament emphatically promise that kind of speech to the faithful. In the context of the Scriptures, however, the idea of a divine origin of a person's speech expands out into a general theory of the origin of behavior.
The New Testament everywhere exploits a strategy of proclaiming comprehensive theories in terms of dramatic examples. Here, the dramatic example of divinely supplied speech expands out into the comprehensive theory that the person does what comes to mind to do. What we shall say, in these quotes, symbolizes what, in general, we do, what behavior we perform. Here, as always with New Testament theories, we extract the philosophical content of the quotes out of their theological setting. The three divine sources then translate into the real, physical source of thoughts, in other words the organic brain.
Plato makes Socrates speculate on the possibility of thoughts originating in the egkefalos, literally the inhead, but dismisses the idea by going on to mention alternatives such as the blood., and then abandoning the whole idea of such a source, again by moving on to other topics. Plato's modern matheties, the Academics, continue to follow him in that rejection of the brain. McIntyre does not mention it. Philosophers in New Testament times, yielding to Plato's prestige, likewise do not mention the brain, but unlike Plato they did teach a doctrine of the source of thoughts. Epiktetos called it the hegemonikon, that which governs.
In Marcus Aurelius, however, we find antiquity's closest approach to the modern idea of the brain as a black box which, altho the acknowledged source of thoughts, nevertheless defies efforts to relate its dynamics to the thoughts which come into the mind, and to the behavior which people perform. He writes (Memoirs, Loeb Library edition, page 291),
Remember that what neurospasts is that Hidden Thing within us, that (makes) oratory, that (makes) life, that, if one may say, (makes) man.
To neurospast means to pull the strings which activate a marionette. A simple shift in meaning makes it mean the agency which pulls the strings or, as Marcus clearly says, generates the person's behavior. We avoid falling into Plato's trap, and make the neurospast another name for the organic brain. The organic brain generates, or causes behavior. Its physical dynamics lie hidden from us. A realistic science of behavior nevertheless requires to become a science of mind, brain, and behavior.
We cannot deduce the physical dynamics of the brain from introspection, the examination of the thoughts which come into the mind. The neurologists, however, have learned a lot about how the brain works, and continue to improve the gadgets which enable them to learn more. What they say about the brain readily translates into introspective insights into the thought process. A science of mind, brain and behavior demands this translation.
McIntyre lists five prospective objections to the idea of a scientific theory of behavior. Social relations confront the theorist with intractable complexity, and a system with an apparently infinite number of variables. The theorist can not create an objective theory of his or her own behavior. We can not perform controlled experiments in social science. Finally, humans have free will.
To answer the challenge about complexity, he says, on his page30,
It is not that science studies simple systems. It is that science simplifies the subject matter under investigation by revealing the basic causal connections that are at work.
The idea of revealing the basic causal connections at work in a complex system comes close to the fundamental principle of science. In the years preceding and following 500 BC, the Ionians, living across the Agean Sea from Greece on the West coast of today's Turkey, discovered that principle. They discovered that organizing principles could reduce complex phenomena to easily understanding, in the sense that the details of the phenomena in question fit into the structure which the organizing principles define.
These organizing principles may or may not include causal relations. Pythagoras, for example, born in Samos but teaching in Southern Italy, having fled there as a political refugee, said that physical circumstances and phenomena conform to numerically determinate laws. His original statement did not have the precision that I have given it here. He appears to have said simply that all things are numbers. What I have said here follows as an immediate and obvious conclusion from what he said.
Mathematical physics now follows as the next obvious conclusion. The Pythagorean numerial cosmos explains why computers work, and why governments will spend large sums of money for supercomputers which can do billions of calculations per second. This Pythagorean numerical cosmos comes into Christianity in the quip, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. The Pythagoreans wandered off into numerology, and so missed the significance of their master's incredibly profound insight. We take it for granted today, but someone had to think of it, and an Ionian philosopher did first think of it. We likewise take the idea of organizing principles for granted, today, but someone had to think of it, and the Ionians did think of it.
Recourse to organizing principles answers the contention that an infinitude of variables makes a science of behavior impossible. Our principles of mind, brain and behavior shall organize this infinitude of variables so that they conform to the structure which the organizing principles impose upon them.
McIntyre's third point, that the theorist can not think objectively about his or her own behavior, falls before the requirement that any theory of mind, brain and behavior must apply without exception to what he or she observes in and within self. Furthermore, any theory which I cook up must apply as well to what others see in themselfs. If you shall declare my theory valid, it must organize the facts of your own thoughts and behavior in a way that you can accept. You ask, what about the person who denies the correctness of my theory simply because he or she did not invent it. The theory must accomodate that person's behavior as effectively as it does any other.
Ionian organizing principles readily accomodate limits on controlled experiments. In point of fact, however, the emperon, the man or woman of business, must predict the buying behavior of prospective customers. In other words, the man or woman of business must correctly anticipate the demands of the marfketplace, and perform behavior, now, which results in supply which the market accepts, later, when the stuff hits the shelf or showroom. Politicians likewise require to predict voter preferences, how they will vote, and cater to those preferences and thaot voting behavior.
Social engineers from Perikles in Classical Athens to Stalin and Hitler in modern Europe, and Chairman Mao in China, have conducted controlled experiments on the largest possible scale. These experiments produce disastrous outcomes. The pragmatic Christian philosopher wants no part of controlled social experiments, but rather offers his theory and agenda to a market which may reject it, and which will never unanimously accept it. This philosopher conforms to the adage which makes the kingdom of heaven like an emporon, a person of business, not like a cleric or political authority figure.
Organization imposes structure, and therefore constraints, onto whatever it organizes. Any science of mind, brain, and behavior posits structural constraints onto the behavior which a person may and does perform. Since the egkephalos, the inhead, the brain, generates behavior, what a person does depends on the dynamics of that originating source. While a person makes and implements choices, he or she must furthermore live within the constraints of an option space, this consisting of all the things which the person can do at each and every point in time. The term, free will, in the sense of a lack of constraints, has no meaning in the real world.
In his Chapter 3 McIntyre explores resistance to a scienced of behavior to hostility against the idea of such a science. Those hostile to the idea fear that the prospective science, shouldit materialize, will make them uncomfortable. History shows clearly that they will continue in their hostility, should the prospective science materialize. We can therefore ask, do we already have the required science in hand, or at least important elements of it?
Our discussion has in fact identified certain of exactly those elements. To deny that the brain originates fantasiex of behavior, depictions of it, and directs the body to perform it takes the denier completely outside the real world. All the findings of the neurologists pertain to the science of behavior. The teachings of the new science can not contradict their verifiable findings about brain structure and the flow of signals in that structure.
A really dramatic, fundamental consequenced emerges. Signals flowing in the brain flow along dendrons to symapses. At a synapse, the signals take the form of chemical droplets which migrate from the emitting surface to the receptor surface. While the signals thus transmitted retain some of the info they brought to the emitting surface, coded into their intensity, duration, and time of arrival, they do lose that part of their history which would explain their intensities and durations. The receptor can respond to the intensity and duration of the signal, but not to the circumstances which produced that intensity and duration. The forces which produced that signal can no longer influence it. The effects which a signal subsequently exerts as it travels out from the receptor surface into neurons depend in part on other signals flowing along other axons into those neurons which may or may not then fire, depending on their firing potential at the time. This firing potential depends on the intrinsice properties of the neuron at the moment, and on the effects of signals, which have also lost part of their history, which have flowed into it.
As a major consequence of this loss of history, the dynamics of the brain do not conform to logical constraints. Logical organization depends on rigorously unique consequences flowing from in response to inputs into a step in the logical sequence, but the receptor side of a synapse can respond only to the duration and intensity of a signal, absolutely independently of the signal's histyory. Organizing principles obviously govern the brain's dynamics, since, for example, they enable the brain to generate logical outputs, these including mathematical physics. The search for the organizing principles of a science of behavior, however, must step outside the box of logical constrants. Failure to recognize the fundamental inadequacy of logic to explain brain function keeps all those who presently call themselfs scientists, from ever arriving at a science of behavior.
This fundamental error necessarily heads the list of reasons why so many people resist the idea of a science of behavior, and why they fall for New Age theories such as Psychology. When McIntyre once again complains that people won't accept a theory, or even the idea of a theory, which refutes one or more of their present convictions, we concede his point.
On his page 45, to choose one from a number of similar affirmations, he writes,
Resistance to knowledge is not unique to the social sciences. Inded, it is prevalent in many areas of inquiry, especially those in which scientific scrutiny wold seem to threaten our cherished political and religious ideologies.
We have all heard this proclaimed before, more than once. The question always comes to mind, does the proclaimer have his ideologies in mind, or ours? Until McIntyre identifies theideologies he has in mind, I will keep my guard up, as I said before, and even let my suspicions rage untrammeled.
On his page 46 he asks,
Are we willing to face the hostile conclusions that a truly rigorous social science might reveal to us?
That the brain, which generates our behavior, does not function logically, makes impossible a truly rigorous social science, if by rigor we mean conformance to logical constraints. A science of mind, brain, and behavior which accomodates all the things that people do obviously can not exhibit the kind of rigor that we expect from theories about the physical cosmos. Given a set of initial conditions, a rigorous physical theory predicts what will happen in the system which the conditions define. Some system, like the weather system, do not admit to rigorous prediction, but as computers acquire more power, weather prediction improves. We can look at the weather system as itself a computer which calculates its onngoing condition. A computer which could predict that ongoing condition would have to have computing capability as great as the weather system itself has. Problems of design and construction make the required computer physically impossible, so that weather predictions will always deviate to a greater or lesser extent from weather observations. Other physical predictions, however, can produce results which conform within the limits of measurement errors to actual outcomes. Because, to say it yet one more time, the brain does not function conformably to logical constraints, we can not expect exact predictions from social science, and can not therefore ask for the kind of rigor in social science that we expect in physical science.
McIntyre now discusses religion, on his pages 52 thru 56. He begins by saying,
Insofar as our religious beliefs are based on faith, religion is antithetical to the scientific attitude, which is based on doubt and emperical evidence.
The brain has a great capability for incorporating faith into its formulations of behavior. McIntyre implies that a person should reject faith in his or her coping with the real world, which coping requires the scientific attitude to yield good outcomes. Most action, however, involves the actor in a viron (short for environment) characterized by incomplete info. The actor makes guesses which serve to complete the info, and must have faith in those guesses in order to proceed with the behavior.
Faith, or belief, therefore serves a vital purpose in the formulation of behavior. This example expands out into the principle that all brain capabilities serve vital purposes. At the same time, religious faith can impose upon the believer the requirement that he or she accept something blatantly wrong, and replace some part of reality with that wrong thematic content. In other words, the brain has the capability of deliberately misusing its adaptive capabilities. Social science can teach that the person ought not to misuse the capabilities of his or her brain, but can not prevent this misuse. Social science thus involves the dynamics identified by the word ought. Moral systems, or value systems, answer this challenge. For that reason, The New Testament, because of its unceasing emphasis on morals and values, teaches pragmatic social science, in contrast to attempts to construct an objective social science which scrupulously avoids moral teachings. When McIntyre talks about a better world, he introduces morals and values into any kind of social science which might come out of his generalizations.
While McIntyre wants his new social science to serve moral goals, the idea that it should incorporate morality and values into its thematic structure will encounter absolute rejection from today's scientists. We yield here to that sentiment, with the proviso that morality and values may yet demand and get a place in that structure. An idea which modern scientists unequivocally reject, however, fundamentally organizes our new science, the concept of teleology, the idea that behavior shall produce an outcome, and that the pursuit of that outcome organizes the behavior which shall produce it.
We readily concede the obvious principle that in the physical world, events follow as consequences of initial conditions and physical laws. The initial conditions, and the laws of physics, determine the sequence of events which follow from some point of departure. While the laws of physics look ahead, in the sense of determining what will now happen, the outcome of a sequence of events does not determine those events. Rather, the events determine the outcome. In behavior, however, the the entity performing it strives for an outcome. The most fierce Academic opponent of teleology, for example, goes to his office in the morning because of the antiteleogical behavior he intends to perform there.
Alcmaeon of Croton, who learned from Pythagoras, said that while certainty belongs to the gods, men must make inferences from evidence. Such inferences occur everywhere in daily life, but some of them become the fundamental organizing principles of Ionian philosophy. The teleogical imperative of behavior, that it strives to produce an outcome, emerges from the most cursory observation, especially of the behavior that each person performs in his or her daily life. While determinists can continue to insist that each event of a behavioral sequence emerges deterministically from what has preceded it, they depart from reality in the same way that religious fanatics depart from reality in their various doctrines. You can't argue with people like this. You have to dismiss their nonsense by choosing to dismiss it.
In behavior, events follow as consequences of the pursuit of intended outcomes. This pursuit occurs in the real world, and exploits and exploits the physical laws which govern the events. The exploitation strategies depend on the ability of the living entity to formulate them. These strategies very often astound us, and they provide thematic content for very interesting TV documentaries.
If we define natural law as physical law, and this alone, then behavior, since it depends on intention rather than initial conditions, would transcend natural law. Since social science must provide organizing principles for behavior, it must include intention, or teleology, in its formulations. Physical scientists may scoff at this inclusion, but social scientists require to accept it.
While McIntyre demands a new theory of social science, in fact over and over again, he has not offered any positive suggestions about the structure of this theory. The present analysis has made some important suggestions. Agreeably to McIntyre's suspicions, these suggestions confront tradition. Tradition has already refuted the fundamental organizing principles of our new science. A science which rejects formal logic and its spinoffs such as mathematical physics, and which affirms teleology, that prospective outcomes determine ongoing events, can not expect universal assent, at least not immediate universal assent.
Will anybody, especially any philosophers, accept it? People, including philosophers, who consider themselfs pragmatists, will accept it. Pragmateia, a word which occurs once in The New Testament, means reality there, as it does also in modern Greek. For the most part, New Testament hapax legomena, words which occur one time and only one time in its text, have important philosophical significance. To the philosophical Christian, reality becomes a principle which fundamentally organizes his or her philosophical world view. Others have preached what they call pragmatism, for example William James. I expect a philosophy of pragmatism to offer me a system of behaviorial principles, which, if implemented, enable me to perform competent behavior in the real world. Even tho I agree with a lot of what James says, I do not find any such principles explicitly proclaimed in his books.
We can impose this demand upon any social science. If accepting and internalizing it does not upgrade my competence, or at least maintain it, then as a pragmatist I reject it as fast as I can. It pleases Phoebans to suppose that the philosophy their derive from The New Testament, after they dump theology, conforms aggressively to the pragmateia criterion. The promises made in the letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, for example, to those who win, mandate the successful pursuit of outcomes. Pragmatically, a person whose behavior does not implementthis mandate can expect few satisfactions in his or her personal life.
The quip, by their fruits you shall know them, brings a pragmatic version of the scientific method into Christian philosophy. It defines knowledge as the agreement of outcomes and expectations. Implementing this mandate requires that the person have the expectations, that he or she make the required predictions, and then realistically compare them to the outcomes which his or her behavior has produced.
The comparison creates an emotional response in the mind. If an outcome matches the corresponding prediction, pleasant emotions come into the mind, perhaps as a flood. If an outcome does not match the corresponding prediction, molopic emotions come into the mind, perhaps again as a flood. The word molopic derives from the Greek môlôpse, which means a stripe which a whip has inflicted upon the body. The quip, in First Peter 2:24, of whom the stripes you were healed, means that the brain naturally learns from experience, both good and bad.
Its emotional responses enable it to implement the scientific method. The scientific method, in fact, migrated into the physical sciences from its origin in the brain. Our new social science thus explains the fact of molopic emotions, and teaches that the person should not try to mitigate effects by the internal manipulation of thoughts. It pleases the pragmatist immensely to see the scientific method emerge not only from the illogical brain, but also from the new scienc e of behavior presented in these pages.
I have not heretofore seen these organizing principles collected together in one place and offered without theological or other embellishment. The self help industry, however, has long since proclaimed them, and this in thousands of books. Observers have long since reported that we usually learn more from mistakes and failures than from successes. Success, in fact, can give a person unwarranted confidence in the thinking that led up to it. When that happens, the heretofore successful person inexplicably fails, because of having a world view that has become wrong because of changing circumstances.
Resisting the temptation to continue along this line, we return to McIntyre.
On his pages 58-59 he takes a swing at political correctness. We could wish that he, like others who turn a hostile face toward it, would identify its obvious roots. The Academics call themselfs by that name because they preach Plato's philosophical religion. Plato can not sufficiently emphasize ortho doxa, correct opinion. He makes Socrates willing to kill the incurable of psyche who can not or will not opine correctly. As an Academic himself, McIntyre will not condemn the brotherhood to which he belongs.
Ortho doxa increasingly enjoys the support of governmental power in the proliferating laws against hate speech. In the Dark Ages, ortho doxa consisted of correct religious opinion. Following Plato, the theologians gladly killed heretics, literally choosers, who tried to choose an opinion other than the correct opinion. McIntyre and others who blame Christianity for the Dark Ages wrongly place their blame. Rather than Christianity, pragmatists correctly place the blame on Platonists, and point out that the Academics, as self confessed Platonists, will make incorrect opinion an actionable offense. While they can not kill us, at present, they can and do punish the heretic with ruinous fines and increasingly with imprisonment.
As we expect from an Academic, McIntyre challenges The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Their claim that intelligence varies over ethnic groups most thoroly confutes political correctness. Some reviewers, however, have found methodoligcal shortcomings in The Bell Curve, to the great relief of the correctness Establishment. McIntyre then argues that, contrary to widespread belief, the death penalty does not deter crime.
He concludes, on his page 62, Political ideology is today doing to social science what religious dogma did to natural science in the first Dark Ages. Since both religious dogma and political correctness implement Plato's doctrine of ortho doxa, we need not wonder at the similarities of their consequences. Only a true science of human behavior (his page 68) can rescue us.
McIntyre devotes his Chapter 4 to Galileo. Here, he whips a well whipped horse, and adds nothing new to the analysis of that ancient confrontation of ortho doxa, correct opinion, and observation. Agreeably to Academic policy, as mouthed by Socrates in Plato's Republic, the authorities killed the incurable of psyche, heretics who chose some incorrect opinion, with Giordano Bruno the poster child of that dominance strategy.
The Galileo story, while lamentably true, puts us no farther ahead in our quest for a true science of human behavior. McIntyre, in fact, draws on Galileo to take a step backwards. On his page 81 he writes, about competing theories, But how do we choose among them? Largely on the basis of how well they match with our intuitions or the fruit of reason alone. In point of fact, we have no basis for making this choice other than our intuitions, choosing what we like. This choice imperative applies to all theories whatsoever. Believers choose religious theories, with they explicit negation of some part of reality, because of the emotional appeal of those often preposterous theories. Scientists choose their theories emotionally, even when they point to agreement of prediction with outcome, and have unkind things to say about heretics who choose otherwise.
On his pages 83-84 McIntyre repeats himself yet one more time,
In social science we need someone who is willing to stand up for the separateness of social scientific inquiry from religious or political ideology. We need to reaffirm that the proper focus of social science is imperical evidence. Political or religious convictions about gender, race, class, freedom, the exisence of God, or human autonomy have no basis whatsoever in deciding social scientific disputs, any more than the Ctholic church or Aristotle had a legitimate role in deciding natural scientific ones.
The Family Voter Bloc says that a science of human action shall produce a Way of Life which maximizes the personal satisfactions of those who live it. Each person chooses or rejects this Way of Life, and some people will reject it, so that none of the theories of our science ever achieve absolute status. We can, however, look at the lifes which the different Ways of Life lead people into, and each person can use those observed outcomes in making his or her own choice.
Those observations answer an absolutely fatal element of McIntyre's schema. On his page 84 he says,
What we need first is to found social science on an experimental basis, so that we may decide between theories on the basis of their accordance with empirical evidence. We need to be able to weed out all of the bad theories that, in the absence of adequate testing procedures, will continue to find their adherents.
The Family Voter Bloc (FVB, Phoebe) absolutely, vehemently, militantly rejects the idea of an experimental social science. By experimental social science I mean a science which mandates social experiments conducted on people who require to conform to rigorous the conditions imposed upon them during the duration of the experiment. The politicians who govern any society incessantly experiment with different policies and implementing strategies, and hopefully observe the outcomes of those experiments. However inadvertently, the governors of companies and social institutions of every kind conduct social experiments in the policies they formulate and the strategies they puruse in implementing them. Phoebans closely observe these experiments, by whomever conducted, and their outcomes. We nevertheless vigorously fight any governmental attempt to conduct rigorously controlled experiment for the purpose of observing its outcome.
McIntyre now draws parallels between Galileo and Darwin. The theory of inteligent design, as advocaed by the Creation Scientists, shall prevailover Darwin's evolution, or at least getequal time with Darwin in the Public Schools.
Accepting the physical geological evidence for the Earth's age, five or so billion years, makes a theory of evolution inevitable. When first formed, Earth had no life of any kind. A sequence of forms, the first such forming in a primeval soup or slurry, occurred, and resulted in the species which presently inhabit Earth. Anaximander (611-546 BC) taught that man descended from a fish, probably a shark since these care for their young (see Early Greek Philosophy, John Burnet, A. & C. Black, LTD, 1892, 1908, 1920). The sequence theory requires that new forms arise from existing forms, and replace them. Darwin ascribed new forms to an accumulation of variations in existing forms. He furthermore ascribed these variations to random mutations, some of which gave the mutant a reproductive advantage over its competitors.
Herein lies the fatal error of his theory. No random mutation ever improved any aspect of the organism in which it occurred. Variation of the kind which evolution requires occurs because of copying variations in DNA reproduction. These copying variations do not occur randomly, but obey laws. These laws can acton favorable DNA configurations to produce a proliferation of related forms, for example reptiles, especially the dinosaurs, and even more especially the innumerable species of insects.
The Creationists correctly insist that evolution as a sequence of more or less gradual changes ought to have produced a plethora of intermediate forms, we in fact have none. If frogs shall become monkeys, the quip asks, why do we lack fronkeys? While I suppose that the answer lies in the dynamics of DNA, I readily concede to the Creationists the privilege of asking the question in Public School.
At the risk of political repercussion I ask, if an intelligent designer created everything, why does he, or it, depend on the most untelligent people on Earth, the Fundamentalist Preachers, to speak for him, or it? I furthermore see no evidence of intelligent design in the stellar cosmos. An intelligent designer would have contrived to make some of the enormously vast outpouring of energy, we see in our telescopes, available to Earthlings. Within current lifetimes, Earthlings will face an enormous energy crisis, as well as a crisis due to the depletion of other natural resources. I see no evidence of intelligent design in this prospect.
McIntyre continues to warn against ortho doxa, or political correctness as we call it today. On his page 90 he writes, warning againt the guises which resistance to knowledgecan take,
May it not take the form of the soft-soundinhg admonitions of political correctness that behavioral geneticists ought not to investigate anything other than environmental causes of group differences forf important human traits, for fear of what we may turn up? May it not arrive in the human desire for connectedness with one another and with our environment promised by toda's new age movements of crystal healing, ecofeminism, aromatherapy, and alternative medicines, which are behind the current movement of "antiscience"?
Let me interject here that what we call New Age religion, and New Age philosophy, date in unbroken transmission back to Pythagoras and him immediate matheties. The hard evidence shows that no other existing World Religion goes back as far, in its orgin, as the New Age.
Political correctness means that politicians shall dictate what we dare accept as truth. While the Academics have not yet taken over the U. S. poltical system, they continue to gain power over public policy, and in diverting subsidies into their Establishment, and nothing we can observe in them suggests any bounds to their political ambitions. McIntyre fails to understand, or at least to say, that we face a struggle for political dominance here, not a struggle forf cultural dominance.
The Scientific Method
McIntyre attacks a version of the scientific method, which he sets up for purposes of that attack. He defines the classic "five-step method" as follows, (1) observe, (2), frame a hypothesis, (3) derive a prediction from it, (test the prediction), and then (5) revise the originalhypothesis on the basis of the evidence. This is the classic "five-step method. On his page 93 he writes, Indeed it has long been recognized even in the natural sciences that the so-called scientific method is a fiction. For how does one start with observations witout having some sort of preliminary hypothesis?
McIntyre's five steps may define only a fiction, as he says. This list of steps, however, does not describe the scientific method which the mindbrain and body use in formulating and performing behavior, and learning from it. By way of review, the brain fantasizes an outcome, generates a fantasy of the action which will achieve that outcome, directs the body to perform that action, compares the observed outcome with the fantasized outcome, and loads the observation with emotional responses of joy, or grief, or both. These emotions feed back into the brain and may rewire it, more extensively if the effort has failed than if it has succeeded.
For most people, this sequence begins at the moment of birth. The crying baby wants nurturing attention. The plaintive crying asks, how can you scumbags let me cry like this? Baby generally gets the attention it wants, and stops crying. As the person grows and matures, the behavior fantasized and performed, and the outcomes it produces, become much more complex, but at the same time much of the behavior settles down into a routine. Most people go to work, for example, do their jobs, and return home, without significant surprises.
Whatever else a true social science does, it will accept the brain's natural, spontaneous use of its scientific method, and will strongly recommend that each person exploit this method to the maximum possible extent. The method requires that the person accept and internalize the molopic emotions, without trying to mitigate their effects thru the internal manipulation of thoughts, as, for example thru internal dialog.
In point of fact, the new social science, as a science of mind, brain, and behavior, will mandate that ideally the person not circulate internal dialog thru his or her mind at all. According to the Academics, the thought process itself consists of internal dialog. A pragmatic theory of mind, brain, and behavior, in contrast, recognizes that internal dialog overrides the brain's natural dynamics, severely crippling its ability to generate fantasies of euthetic behavior.
A Hidden Agenda
In the course of a final summary review of what he has said in his previous chapters, McIntyre now asks why natural science has gained such tremendous acceptance. He answers, on his pages 96-97,
A fair reading of the history of natural science leads one to the conclusion that an indispensable factor in the success of natural science was the intellectual courage of its practitioners.
He misses the point completely here. Natural science has succeeded so well because of what it has contributed to the daily lifes of people. Its pragmatic applications account for its success and universal acceptance. A true social science, when it materializes, will likewise pass that same test, the test of agreeable pragmatic successes. People will accept it and its policy consequences because they want to, selecting it and its consequences over its competitors in the marketplace of ideas.
On his page 97 McIntyre insists,
Science is not a magic process. It is not even self-correcting. It works because of the diligence of scientists in following the dictates of the scientific attitude, in ferreting out weak hypotheses by comparing them to the evidence. It works because of a willingness to hear what the evidence tgells you, even when it clashes with the reigning ideology. It works because scientists know that their work will be held up to the highest standards of scrutiny by their peers, whose competitive spirit motivates them to publicize any errors.
These remarks mostly repeat what he has already said, more than once. He does introduce one new idea, however, I mean new to his book, in his insistence on scrutiny by peers whose competitive spirit motivates them to publicize any errors. This idea defines an elatton, to use Plato's term, a small group of policy makers and power wielders whose policies and implementing strategies please each other. This elatton, these few, we already understand, gladly clash with the reigning ideology, meaning that they clash with popular opinion. It goes without saying that this elatton consists of Academics.
McIntyre begins to come down hard on the side of Platonic government. We need not wonder that Marxists can still find jobs in the universities. They know the rules of the game which McIntyre wants to play, and can condition students for that game, whether they belong to the elatton or, as bureaucratic enforcers, apparatchiks, merely implement its edicts.
As I said at the beginning of this newsletter, whenever I hear an Academic talk about a better society and world, my guard goes up. Up to this point in his book, McIntyre has given me no reason to let it down, and this mention of scrutiny by peers as an adequate criterion for error detection gives me every reason to keep it up.
On his page 98 McIntyre compromises his insistence on the courage of scientists as the reason for the success of physical science. He writes,
Natural science has the usefulness and availability of technology in its favor. It is a practical success. This practical success compensates for the loss of our favored ideologies. The practical benefits of social science have been slower to develop and are more difficult to appreciate.
Phoebans hasten to agree, both with the success of natural science as a practical success, and with the difficulty of appreciating the practical benefits of social science. For my part, I would like to hear more about this aspect of the social science which McIntyre demands.
On his pages 100-101 he finally mentions the brain, saying,
If we are so special, surely what is special about us is our brains. Let us therefore use them to their utmost in elevating the way that we live and treat one another.
Since behavior originates in the brain, to elevate our behavior means to make better use of that originating source. This upgraded use of the brain requires to apply especially to people who presently don't use their brains very effectively. Such people fill our jails and prisons, and place large and increasing entitlement burdens onto the nation. Pragmatic social science contrives greatly to reduce the numbers of such people.
McIntyre titles his final chapter, What is to be done? This question brings to mind a pivotal novel by that title which supplied figured even importantly than Marx's Capital in the emotional dynamics leading up to the Russian Revolution. He prefaces each of his chapters with one or two supposedly edifying quotes. He prefaces his concluding chapter with a quote from Marx,
Philosophers have only sought to interpret the world. The point, however, is to change it.
This quote from Marx puts McIntyre's reader on guard for a hidden agenda. The better world which he wants everyone to live will appeal to Marxists. Reinforcing this commitment he writes, on his page 103-104 he says,
As did our primitive ancestors who lived before the age of science, we fight wars, we lock up resources in the hands of the few while others go hungry, we kill for spite, we ignore the suffering of children, and we hatge one another based on superficial differences in our physiognomy. Except for a few shining examples of human invenion of beneficial social arrangements (like democracy or civil rights), aren't most of our social arrangements—our animosities, our response to danger, our forms of courtship—pretty much the same as they have been for hundrds of thousands of years?
Why can't we attempt to find better solutions to the problems of war, crime, racial strife, and child exploitation?
McIntyre's agenda conforms rigorously to the Liberal agenda of the Academics. When he demands a social science, he in fact demands more effective strategy than now exists for implementing that agenda. He equates resistance to that agenda to resistance to knowledge, and to resistance to the use of a scientific method which he does not define. He rejects what he calls the five step scientific method. I see no reason why he would not also reject the brain's version, the aborginal version, of that enormously successful method.
When he speaks of child exploitation, he refers to other nations than our own. The U.S. shall remain in its role of global enforcer of the rights of people everywhere. In this detail, as in the others of his agenda, he insists that a true social science will provide a firm foundation for the implementing of Liberal values.
He goes on to say, on his page 105,
In doing so, we must be prepared to be honest about what casual factors are behind our behavior, before we can hope to do anything about it. That is, just as we needed to understand the laws of nature before we could harness their power and develop technology, we must now resolve to understand human nature without the veil of ego and lies that we use to comfort ourselves, so that we can build a better society, with less misery, suffering, and cruelty toward one another. This goal can be acchieved, I submit, only if we are willing to have a science of human actrion—only if we are willing to shed the egotistical belief that we already know the basis for our behavior.
McIntyre here affirms a fundamental principle of Academic behavior theory. If I find its explanations of my behavior wrong, or disagreeable for some other reason, then I require to discard the veil of ego and lies which I use to comfort myself. I need to shed the egotistical belief that I already know the basis for my behavior.
I have already made the point, however, that if my theory of mind, brain, and behavior offends you because your brain, as you honestly perceive it, doesn't work the way I say it works, then you will reject my theory. If, on the other hand, my theory does describe your perceived thought processes at least reasonably well, you will accept it. In particular, what others, including my peers, think of my theory, will have only secondary significance to you, if even that.
This mandate takes from the Academics a vital element of their strategy for social control. The fact that I find their theories of mind, brain, and behavior not only wrong, but preposterously wrong, shows, they insist, that they know more about me than I do. If you find their theories wrong, well, again, they know more about you than you do. And so you and I had better submit to their control. In fact, they do us a vital favor, they say, by coercing the internalizatin of their theories and adherence to them in formulating and performing behavior.
McIntyre correctly insists that a correct theory of mind, brain, and behavior can make a decisive contribution to plicy formulation, and on his page 109 he insists that such a theory can exist. He writes,
There are real causal forces behind both the laws of nature and our own actions, which govern us whether we are willing to admit them or not.
While laws govern our own actions, they differ fundamentally from the laws of physical nature. The average person, the man in the street, knows this, and so does not like the behavioral sysems which the Academics produce. The Academics will likewise not like a correct theory of mind, brain, and behavior, because it does not provide scope for them to impose the control over society that they envision themselves wielding. While he admits that the Academics may have something to learn, his warnings nominally directed to them apply in fact to the lumpensociety outside of Academia.
He asks, for example, on his page 111,
Aren't the egotistical beliefs that we hold about human uniqueness or some of the political beliefs that we hold about race, gender, and class preventing us from pursuing the scientific study of human society?
It takes little imagination to understand that by "we" McIntyre means society outisde of the Academic community, since the Academics believe that they have no beliefs that would prevent them from pursuing the scientific study of human society.
Continuing to promote his hidden agenda, he writes, on his page 112,
Fourth, as a consequence of the above, we should not expect the truth about human behavior to be congenial.
As a consequence of what I have written in this treatise, I expect the truth about human behavior to please most people. Those whom it will not please include aspirant and actual political authorities who expect to use the theory to impose their control onto a mostly relutant population. Since most people enjoy their lifes, for the most part, the conclusion follows that a theory which accommodates that fact of the human condition will prove as congenial as the behavior which it reduces to its organizing principles. McIntyre here promotes his hidden agenda nearly to the point of putting it on display.
On his page 113 he iterates his ultimate goal, to discover the causal factors behind human action so that we can improve the social world. Again, I reply that improving the world depends on what you fnd bad about it, at present, and on what you propose to replace it, and how you intend to implement your proposal. I insist one more time that McIntyre will make a worse world for me, and in fact for most people, in the interests of eradicating crime, poverty, and other ills. I have no reason to suppose that I would want to live in a world of his design.
On his page113-114 he insists,
Thus, my prescription for the social sciences is largely conceptual, for thre is no scientific method than can be followed, or any other recipe by which one might reliably "grow" a new science.
I read somewhere that Cicero complained that he could think of nothing so preposterous that he could not find it among the philosophers. For a philosopher to reject the scientific method puts him in this category. In particular, this rejection negates the idea that the brain shojld use its own , internal, spontaneous use of the scientific method in formulatng the new sicence of mind, brain, and behavior. With this rejection in hand, McIntyre can put anything he wants into his new science, and we can rest assured that it will splendidly serve his political goals. He tells us as much on his page 115, where he says,
Indeed, who among us feels confident that without radical intervention, we will ever be able to build such a society at all?
The elements of his hidden agenda come together into a coherent, well focused package here. He and his ilk, as they say, will intervene radically, by which he means as violently as necessary, to build the society he envisions.
He concludes with,
A science of human behavior an lead the way out of the current mess of unreason and tragedy that hangs over human affairs. The application of our highest form of reason, science, to the study of our social problems is our best hope for salvation. Even in a dark age, our reason can see us through. Our future may well be brighter than we have imagined it, for scientific inquiry is well equipped to answer the questions that have been put by human misery. The world awaits our response.
Since the brain depends on emotional responses for its intuitive use of the scientific method, to depend on reason, which explicitly excludes the emotions, except at the end when we accept or reject its outputs, reason can not invoke the scientific method in its applications. To respond to McIntyre, a world based on reason would, as it has in the past, make everyone but the bureaucrats, the apparatchiks, much more miserable than at present.
The February 7, 2008 Newsletter, The Origin of The New Testament, devotes its 89, 8.5x11 pages to the thematics, or to use the term which the Academics have appropriated, the philosophy, taught in the actual text of The New Testament. This treatise shows that the Way of Life, the morality, the value system, when extracted out of the theological frame in which The New Testament, maximizes life's satisfactions. It shows furthermore that the Dio Chrysostom's Discourses teach exactly that same thematic content. To answer McIntyre, that thematic content provides the fundamentals of a pragmatic science of human behavior.
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