Talk:Mary Midgley

So what exactly is midgely about? in lamest terms...anyone?

Religion

I think the intro gave a false impression - Midgley isn't particularly religious (in fact, I can't remember whether she's a believer at all), her concern is with science inappropriately attempting to supplant the humanities in general (The Myths We Live By is very clear on this, as is Evolution as a Religion - her beef in the second book is with scientists adopting a religious tone). She's also quite strongly pro-science in the appropriate areas - Beast and Man is certainly not anti-science, and in many ways is strongly opposed to prevailing thought in the humanities, often coming down quite firmly on the nature side of the nature/nurture debate, and against the idea (often found in some forms of humanism) that humans are entirely qualitatively different from other animals. She's very subtle, and this article is going to need quite a bit of expansion to capture what she's about. --  ajn (talk) 17:54, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Dawkins

The article also needs expanding upon re: her dealings with Dawkins. Her original review of The Selfish Gene, for instance, is a brilliantly rubbish assault. It's rare to come across such venom in a published academic journal (usually people are far more polite when attempting to destroy work). It's even rarer when the assault is so outrageously misguided and ill-informed. Midgley seems at times to wilfully misread the book - actually, she seems more to have just read its title and skipped on its contents. The impression one might draw from the article at present is that her arguments were merely badly articulated in the review, rather than a blistering academic faux pas that I'm surprised she survived. However, as a biologist, I'm a bit non-NPOV on this one. --Plumbago 16:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't substantially disagree with that assessment. However, much of the current criticism of the 25-year-old article is based on the second edition of The Selfish Gene, where I believe Dawkins toned down some of the simplistic "genes control us and make us selfish" stuff. Midgley was working from the first edition. I'm going to see if my library has copies of the original and the second edition (I have the second but can't find it). For example, it's hard to reconcile this, from Dawkins's article in Philosophy[1]: When biologists talk about ‘selfishness or ‘altruism’ we are emphatically not talking about emotional nature, whether of human beings, other animals, or genes. with this, which Midgley quotes as being from the introduction to the 1979 edition of TSG: If you wish... to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biologial nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. The argument's not just about Midgley getting it wrong, Dawkins isn't talking about genes in that second quote (the words Midgley elided, by the way, are "as I do", which is itself significant). --  ajn (talk) 17:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

As I recall (someone's "borrowed" my copy so I can't check), the 2nd Edition of The Selfish Gene contains the unaltered chapters from the 1st Edition plus two extra chapters (one of which is a useful condensation of The Extended Phenotype). I think Dawkins makes the point that was asked to update the text for the next edition but chose to add footnotes to it instead (these appear at the back of the book). I used to own a copy of the original edition (that too was "borrowed"), and as far as I recall, the 2nd Edition followed its text exactly.

As regards "genes control us and make us selfish", that's only ever been the parody of Dawkins (the closing line of The Selfish Gene states an aspirational opposite to this parody). He makes a broad outline of the "selfish gene" theory in remarks in both the opening and closing chapters, and one would struggle to interpret these in the way which Midgley does. In The Selfish Gene he does use altruism in both the common sense and in that used by biologists, but it's not difficult at any point to distinguish which he's using. Admittedly, I say this as a biologist, so perhaps it isn't as obvious as I think.

Anyway, should my copy of The Selfish Gene materialise, I'll try to back up the above. And if I've the time, I'll have a go at editing the article itself. At the very least, the article should include a link to Dawkins' reply to Midgley for completeness (surprisingly, for an academic journal, I found both Midgley's review and Dawkins' reply freely available on the web). --Plumbago 08:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I've made a start, which at least includes links to all the articles in Philosophy and can be expanded. I think it's worth examining this controversy from a philosophical viewpoint as well as a biological one, though (I'm a former scientist who works in engineering, I'm certainly not anti-Dawkins or anti-Darwin). The last sentence of TSG, which you mention above, is in one of the parts of the book which step outside biology and into the realm of philosophy (free will, consciousness, etc), with Dawkins making bold statements which don't really stand up to careful examination. This is exactly the sort of thing Midgley objects to, and her objections (as opposed to her misunderstanding of Dawkins's biological theory) are largely valid. Midgley is a philosopher who misunderstood an aspect of biology, but a lot of the scientists who criticise her have an equal misunderstanding of her philosophical objections. --  ajn (talk) 09:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I like what you've done. It's definitely the sort of thing I had in mind. As for the philosophical side of it, I'd be interested to read that. Because of the confusion over the use of language in her paper, I can't work out what Midgley's philosophical objections are. I don't know though that Dawkins had much to say about consciousness and free will beyond his statements that we have them (and can thus over-rule the influence of genes and/or memes). I would say though that consciousness and free will aren't forever the property of philosophy - much of the former is gradually being brought into science (if it can be considered separately from philosophy). The latter will hopefully follow. Again, I say this as a scientist - no intellectual territory is beyond its reach!  ;) Anyway, looking forwards to seeing your future edits. Will try to make some myself. --Plumbago 17:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand why a major philosopher is being reduced to her exchange with Dawkins, which, by the way, has been seriously misrepresented. I sincerely doubt if any of the authors here has actually read the Mackie-Midgley-Dawkins exchange in its entirety. I posit that sexism may be at work here. Midgley is a major, important philosopher who has contribued enormous to the philosophy of science and human-animal relationships. If any of you had read "Evolution as a Religion" you would've included the fact that the bulk of the book is entirely valid criticisms of scientists' extrapolations of evolutionary biology into the realm of faith and morals. Quote-mining how stupidly she interpreted Dawkins is a ploy -- reread the exchange and you will see that the quotes you have pulled seriously misreprested Midgley's position. For example, she KNOWS that Dawkins was trying to use "selfish" as a metaphor!!! Even simply reading the first paragraph carefully yields that Midgley is not as clueless as people say. Come on, let's give Mary more respect here.

The article is hardly reduced to an exchange with Mackie and Dawkins. If it seems to underplay what she's done, by all means expand the article to include her other achievements. If the article's missing these, it's only because no-one's felt confident enough to add them. The text I've added reflects what I know of her from my (limited) reading of the subject.

As for quote-mining, her attack on Mackie and Dawkins is a pretty rich seam to mine. Describing it as "intemperate" (as the article currently does) is really rather tame. And I disgree entirely about misrepresenting her - she really does bend over backwards to misinterpret their views. If she does, as you say, know that Dawkins was trying to use "selfish" as a metaphor, she does a pretty good job of hiding it. And it's not as if Dawkins was obscure in his use of this language - right in the first chapter of his book (pages 2-4 in the 2nd edition) there's a section on what he means by it, and what his book is not about. He also explicitly separates describing nature and drawing moral lessons from it.

Anyway, that said, I really would appreciate additions to the article to expand on Midgley's work. I do agree that it's unfortunate if someone's life work is summed up on the basis of an exchange they had with someone else. But WP needs people to add text to fill in the gaps and round off articles on notable people. I can't really commment on her other work, but it sounds like you can. Cheers, --Plumbago 09:51, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Not a christian?

Why state explicity that she's not a Christian? She's also not a muslim, Jew, buddhist or Cthulhu cultist. --Uberisaac 14:55, 27 June 2006 (UTC)