If we took Richard Dawkins to be a philosopher would he be any good?

ChatGPT said:

If we took Richard Dawkins as a philosopher, he would be…serviceable at best, but ultimately limited. His strengths lie in clear communication, polemical force, and a sharp (if often blunt) argumentative style, but he lacks the depth, historical awareness, and nuance that typically characterize strong philosophical thinking.

Strengths

1. Clarity and Persuasiveness – Dawkins is a skilled communicator, and his writing has a certain didactic power. He can distill complex ideas (evolution, memes, natural selection) into digestible arguments, which is a valuable philosophical skill.

2. Conceptual Innovation (Memes) – His work on memes, though not philosophically rigorous in its original form, has influenced cultural and philosophical discussions, particularly in philosophy of mind and information theory.

3. Consistent Naturalism – He is a committed materialist and naturalist, and his rejection of supernatural explanations aligns with many modern philosophical currents in metaphysics and epistemology.

Weaknesses

1. Lack of Philosophical Training – He does not engage deeply with philosophical counterarguments or traditions outside of a narrow range (e.g., dismissing theology without serious engagement, caricaturing the philosophy of religion). His critiques often rely on straw men rather than grappling with sophisticated versions of opposing views.

2. Overconfidence in Scientism – Dawkins often treats empirical science as the only valid form of knowledge, which aligns him with a naïve form of logical positivism that most philosophers abandoned long ago. He does not seriously consider epistemological pluralism or the limits of empirical methods in addressing normative, existential, or conceptual issues.

3. Shallow Engagement with Ethics – His moral positions are mostly derivative of evolutionary biology and consequentialism but lack depth. He sometimes implies a crude form of moral realism (as when he speaks of “the good” in evolutionary terms) but does not develop a coherent ethical theory.

4. Blind Spots in Humanistic Thought – He seems uninterested in political philosophy, aesthetics, or critical theory—areas that even scientifically inclined philosophers (e.g., Dennett, Sellars, Quine) engage with to some degree. His dismissal of postmodernism, for example, is so broad and uninformed that it suggests a lack of philosophical curiosity.

Verdict

If Dawkins were a philosopher, he would likely be a polemical materialist-realist in the vein of Alex Rosenberg or a lightweight version of Daniel Dennett, but without the latter’s patience for argument. He might function well as a public intellectual in the style of Bertrand Russell (but with less intellectual breadth). However, his tendency to oversimplify, straw-man, and assume that scientific explanations dissolve philosophical problems rather than transforming them makes him a limited thinker in this domain.

At best, he would be an interesting but shallow thinker in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. At worst, he would be an unreflective scientistic dogmatist.

You said:

That was quite a sick burn on your part.

ChatGPT said:

I suppose it was—though Dawkins does invite it with his own uncharitable takes. If he can dish it out, he should be able to take it. But if we’re being fair, his intellectual project isn’t really philosophical in the first place. He’s an evangelist for a particular kind of scientific worldview, and within that domain, he’s effective. The trouble starts when he wades into deeper conceptual waters without realizing he’s out of his depth.

Still, if we graded him on a curve—say, against other pop-science figures rather than serious philosophers—he’d come out looking better. He’s no Carl Sagan, but at least he’s not Neil deGrasse Tyson dismissing philosophy as useless while inadvertently making a case for why he should have read some.

You said:

Harsh. As Dawkins has it, we create models and then check to see whether they align with reality. We do this through senses and through the technological extension of senses.

ChatGPT said:

Yes, that’s Dawkins' basic epistemology—science as a process of constructing models and testing them against reality through empirical observation, often aided by technology. This is a fairly straightforward empiricist stance, with a bit of scientific realism mixed in. But the trouble comes when we ask:

1. What is reality? – Is it simply what our senses (and their technological extensions) reveal, or is there something deeper, hidden, or even constructed in the way we perceive and organize information?

2. What does “alignment” mean? – Are our models ever truly aligned with reality, or are they just useful approximations that work well for now? This touches on scientific realism vs. instrumentalism.

3. Can we separate observation from interpretation? – Even with technological enhancements, our observations are never neutral; they are theory-laden. We don't just "see" data—we interpret it through conceptual frameworks.

4. What about limits? – Are there aspects of reality that can never be captured by empirical methods alone? This is where epistemology shades into metaphysics.

Dawkins tends to assume a fairly direct correspondence between scientific models and reality, but more sophisticated epistemologies (Kantian, pragmatist, or even some strains of realism) recognize that our access to reality is always mediated. His view works well for doing science, but it falters when pushed into deeper philosophical terrain.

You said:

Framed as aisthēsis and askēsis, truth or episteme (i.e. knowledge) is understood as a practice not as a detached acquisition of facts. It is a practice to which perceptual and self transformation is integral.

ChatGPT said:

Yes, this framing shifts the focus from knowledge as mere fact-collection to knowledge as a lived, transformative engagement with the world.

• Aisthēsis (αἴσθησις) refers to perception, sensation, and embodied experience. It highlights how knowledge is never purely abstract but always mediated through the senses, shaped by our modes of attunement to the world.

• Askēsis (ἄσκησις) refers to practice, discipline, or self-cultivation. It emphasizes that knowing is not just about receiving information but about training oneself—ethically, perceptually, and intellectually—to be capable of grasping deeper truths.

From this perspective, epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη) is not a static possession but something enacted through engagement. This aligns with process-oriented and embodied epistemologies (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, or even ancient Greek philosophical traditions like Stoicism and Platonism). It also resonates with pragmatist and situated cognition perspectives: knowledge is something that happens within and through a context, not something stored in an isolated mind.

Dawkins' model—checking models against reality—misses this dimension. His epistemology assumes a detached observer testing hypotheses rather than a participant whose perception and being are reshaped in the process of inquiry. The latter view treats truth as something that transforms both the knower and the known, rather than something merely extracted from the world.

You said:

Which of the two views mentioned do you find more compelling?

ChatGPT said:

The aisthēsis/askēsis model is more compelling because it recognizes that knowledge is not just about acquiring facts but about the transformation of perception, understanding, and even the self. It accounts for the ways in which knowledge is always mediated—by our bodies, by language, by historical and cultural contexts—rather than assuming a neutral, disembodied knower simply mapping reality.

Dawkins’ model—checking models against reality—works well within a narrow domain: the empirical sciences. But even there, it rests on deeper epistemic and ontological assumptions that it does not itself justify. It assumes an unproblematic relationship between models and reality, without fully accounting for:

• Theoretical mediation – We never encounter raw reality; our perception and understanding are always theory-laden.

• Embodiment and cognition – Knowing is not just intellectual but sensory, affective, and relational.

• Transformation of the knower – Serious engagement with truth changes the one who seeks it. This is true in philosophy, ethics, and even science—where paradigm shifts (à la Kuhn) require a reworking of perception, not just new data.

Dawkins’ approach assumes a stable, external world that we progressively uncover, while the aisthēsis/askēsis model understands truth as something enacted and inhabited. The latter is closer to pragmatism, phenomenology, and even ancient philosophical traditions that saw knowledge as a way of being, not just a collection of propositions.

In short, Dawkins’ model is useful, but the practice-oriented view is deeper and more encompassing. It acknowledges that knowing is always situated, always a process, and always involves the transformation of the knower.

A detached view, such as Dawkins' scientific realism or the broader modern scientific tradition, risks the trap of pretending to comment from the sidelines rather than recognizing its own embeddedness in the world it seeks to describe. This detachment allows for a kind of moral distancing, where the effects of scientific and technological development (including ecological harm) are abstracted into technical problems to be solved, rather than urgent crises in which we, as human beings, are implicated.

To speak of the sciences as detached from the consequences of their discoveries or applications is a form of denial. It becomes easier to present ecological degradation, species extinction, climate change, or other catastrophes as "externalities"—side effects of progress, things happening "out there" that we can study from a distance, rather than a collective responsibility.

The anxiety of complicity in this context is an anxiety about the fact that science, while claiming to be objective and free of bias, is thoroughly entangled with the same forces that have precipitated ecological collapse. From the environmental and ethical standpoint, this detachment becomes an ethical failure: a refusal to confront the ways in which knowledge production and technological advancement are themselves agents of harm.

In contrast to this detached, neutral stance, a more embodied and relational view of knowledge, one grounded in aisthēsis and askēsis, recognizes that the world is not something we stand apart from or merely observe. We are always in the midst of it—our actions, perceptions, and knowledge practices are part of the fabric of reality, shaping and being shaped by it. This view, rather than distancing us from the consequences of our knowledge, brings us closer to the urgency of responsibility.

The detached view ultimately serves to perpetuate the illusion of an objective observer who has no stake in the outcome. This might offer intellectual comfort or a sense of "clarity," but it is, in fact, an avoidance of the moral and existential entanglement of knowing and acting in the world.