SCT: Freethinking Cannot Be Darwinized

Argument supporting free thought
from Darwinian evolution collapses
into its own defeater

Reprinted from Science & Culture Today

Freethinking Cannot Be Darwinized
by David Coppedge
Science & Culture Today, January 16, 2024

Simon McCarthy-Jones is an associate professor of clinical psychology and neuropsychology at Trinity College in Dublin. He wrote an essay at The Conversation on the human right to freedom of thought. While otherwise good, however, the piece falls into a Darwinian trap of illogical causation. More on that in a bit; first, let’s cheer his advocacy for humans beings to be free to think. Arguing that freedom of thought includes our mind’s extension into the words we write and speak, he says,

Speaking aloud can also be regarded as a form of thinking — we sometimes speak to find out what we think. As novelist E.M. Forster asked: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”

But we also speak aloud in order to think with other people — and we may think better with others than we do alone. Thought can be at its most powerful when it is social, rather than the solitary act depicted by Auguste Rodin. So, for thought to be truly free, we require public as well as private thinking spaces.

To facilitate this, we may need a new legal concept of “thoughtspeech”. This would represent the thinking aloud we do with others in the name of “good faith truth-seeking”. Thoughtspeech could be protected as absolutely as the thoughts inside our head: while one could (and should) still disagree with others, attempts to silence or punish thoughtspeech would be a human rights violation. [Emphasis added.]

Those of us who have been canceled for wrongthink about intelligent design can say amen to that. McCarthy-Jones reminds readers of the ultimate thought-crimes in Orwell’s novel 1984. In the article’s embedded trailer of the movie version of 1984, Winston is shown being condemned for not believing in his heart that he loved Big Brother, even though he pleaded “I love Big Brother” to his torturer. Thought crimes like that are daily norms for theists in North Korea, who dare not indicate in any way that they believe in God because the punishment for such thought crimes is often deadly.

Freethought in a Technological Age

McCarthy-Jones has been active in clarifying the nature of freethought in the current age when corporations use AI to peer into our minds, collecting clues to what we are thinking to push ads at us. In the hands of law enforcement, data even about Internet search history can be used as evidence against a person accused. Who does not fear Thought Police punishing citizens for thought crimes, as in Orwell’s dystopic vision of a regime whose ruling party aimed to “extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought”? …

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