Philosophy In Defence of Nature

Breaking the Intellectual Silence on Eugenics

In 2021, several scientific organizations boldly declared the GMO debate over, citing the apparent fading of anti-GMO activism. But is silence truly acceptance? Or does it mask a deeper, more complex issue?

The American Council on Science and Health, Alliance for Science, and Genetic Literacy Project, among others, proclaimed:

The GMO debate is over

While the GMO debate has been percolating for nearly three decades, our scientific data indicate it's now over. The anti-GMO movement used to be a cultural juggernaut. But as time goes on, the activist groups that once held so much sway seem increasingly irrelevant.

Though we still hear some moaning and groaning it primarily comes from a small group. Most people simply aren't concerned about GMOs.

• (2021) The Anti-GMO Movement Is On Its Way Out The anti-GMO movement used to be a cultural juggernaut. But as time goes on, the activist groups that once held so much sway seem increasingly irrelevant. Source: American Council on Science and Health
• (2021) The GMO debate is over Though we still hear some moaning and groaning it primarily comes from a small group. Most people simply aren't concerned about GMOs. Source: Alliance for Science
• (2021) 5 reasons why the GMO debate is over While the GMO debate has been percolating for nearly three decades, data indicate it's now over. Source: Genetic Literacy Project

🦋 GMODebate.org was founded in 2022 to facilitate an intellectual defense of nature through philosophy.

Upon noticing the claims by science organizations in 2021 that the GMO debate was over, the author discovered that many nature and animal protectors were in fact silent on GMO and animal eugenics.

A philosophical investigation revealed that their silence likely does not stem from indifference but from a fundamental intellectual impossibility that we explore in our article The Silence of 🥗 Vegans.

Investigation of Scientism

The 🦋 GMODebate.org project is part of a broader philosophical investigation of scientism, the philosophical root of 🧬 eugenics.

The founder, Mr Jan Jaap Hakvoort from Netherlands, is a long time defender of free will since 2006 through the Dutch critical blog Zielenknijper.com that investigated eugenics within a human context.

The 🦋 GMODebate.org project delves into the philosophical underpinnings of scientism, the emancipation-of-science from philosophy movement, the anti-science narrative and modern forms of scientific inquisition.

Charles Darwin or Daniel Dennett?

GMODebate.org contains an eBook of a popular online philosophy discussion titled On the Absurd Hegemony of Science in which renowned philosophy professor Daniel C. Dennett (known for his best seller Darwin's Dangerous Idea) participated in defense of scientism.

For those interested in the views of Daniel C. Dennett. Chapter ^{^} Dennett's Defense of His Rejection of Qualia contains over 400 posts debating Dennett's rejection of 🧠⃤ Qualia.

Facilitating The GMO Debate

Philosophical Inquiry: A Global Survey

On June 27, 2024, the founder of 🦋 GMODebate.org, Mr Jan Jaap Hakvoort from Netherlands, started a global philosophical inquiry into the vision on eugenics and GMO among those working in nature conservation and animal protection organizations worldwide.

For the purpose, an advanced AI communication system was developed that transformed the philosophical inquiry process much as the keyboard revolutionized writing. The system translated intent into conversational coherent language that impressed even a writer in Paris, 🇫🇷 France.

Au fait, votre français est excellent. Vous vivez en France ? (Your French is excellent. Are you from France?)

The project yielded profound conversations with people at tens of thousands of nature protection organizations globally and it was discovered that many organizations were in fact silent on GMO and animal eugenics, while in the same time expressing profound enthusiasm and interest in the philosophical inquiry.

Most organizations admitted to never have given thought to the subject GMO and a common argument given was lack of time. Their willingness to admit this and to engage in a short email conversation on the subject however, revealed a paradox.

For example, in the case of Stop Ecocide International it was discovered that the organization had even cooperated with genetic enginering students from Wageningen University in the Netherlands but had never addressed the topic GMO, which some employees openly communicated to find strange.

Jojo Mehta, the co-founder and CEO of Stop Ecocide International, later officially attributed it to lack of time while in the same time expressing enthusiasm for the inquiry.

While the inquiry you are carrying out promises to be of great interest, I'm afraid I may have to disappoint you as far as our involvement is concerned.

... there are two reasons why SEI cannot engage directly with the GMO debate: firstly, it would be a distraction from, and could place at risk, our core diplomatic goal; secondly even if we wanted to, we do not have the person-hours available to dedicate to a specific issue like this.

The conversation with Stop Ecocide International resulted in an article about the GMO based eradication of the 🦟 mosquito species, in an attempt to provide an example case for why it is important to address the subject.

Silent on GMO

The philosophical inquiry revealed that most organizations were in fact silent on GMO and animal eugenics, while in the same time expressing profound enthusiasm for the philosophical inquiry and a willingness to contribute.

A conversation with DJ White, co-founder of Greenpeace USA.

[Show Example Conversation]

🦋 GMODebate.org: Your focus on large existential threats to conscious life on earth is deeply compelling. How do you see the role of philosophy in addressing these threats? Could a renewed emphasis on philosophical inquiry in marine conservation help to refocus efforts away from techno-futures which will never exist and towards the profound realities of consciousness and abstract communication?

DJ White: I think philosophy will mainly be important in causing a relatively small number of humans to become hyper-effective and selfless, and to a large degree ego-free, to do what may be possible to make bad situations less bad. This is the core rationale for effectivism. To a small degree, one might get several percent of humans excited about such ideas, but only a very few would be able to act as aware agents of change. This is a departure from the activist notion of starting movements… which can work, but only for some classes of problem, and often will be counterproductive.

🦋 GMODebate.org: Your experience with marine philosopher John C. Lilly and your own pioneering work in dolphin intelligence research is fascinating. It's remarkable to think that your lab was the first to show self-awareness in a nonhuman by human testing standards. This kind of groundbreaking work, combining philosophy and empirical research, is exactly what we believe is needed to address the complex challenges facing our oceans today.

Philosopher John C. Lilly

DJ White: There may not be much time left for such stuff now. In particular, and this may be jarring to you, I don’t think that philosophical and research breakthroughs will be sufficient to halt the destruction, nor will any sort of enlightenment of humanity in general. Rather, individuals may be able to try steering events by any methods they can conceive. The notion that high-Karma intellectuals will construct a paradigm which the world then spontaneously follows is one more class of delusion at this point, in terms of being relevant to the current ecological predicament. This view is dissonant to most.

🦋 GMODebate.org: Your mention of effectivism as distinct from activism is particularly intriguing. It seems to align with our belief at 🦋 GMODebate.org that we need to combine advanced leadership theory with state-of-the-art philosophy on morality to forge new paths for protecting nature and animals. I'm especially interested in how your effectivism course pushes away from anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism as dogma. This approach resonates deeply with our mission.

DJ White: It'll be beyond the scope of this quick reply to put meat on the bones of the effectivism concept. Briefly, it is built around an ethic of life which is composed of basic statements along the lines of life is better than the lack of life, a complex ecosystem with large life is better than a simple one with single-celled life and so on, and letting this frame good and bad in ecological terms. It is explicitly deep-time and treats the future as real but undetermined except probabilistically. It is framed entirely without reference to humans in particular, except to the extent that humans are one species. The exceptionalism part is demonstrated in the earlier R101 course in which it's demonstrated that humans are delusional, that human intelligence is not really a superpower, that technology will likely not be sustained in the present sense because it isn’t sustainable, and so on. Basically the first course is an unlearning of tropes and nonsense narratives the human world is organized around.

More insights from DJ White's philosophy on ocean conservation are available in the following podcast:

🎙️ DJ White: Ocean Effectivism Source: The Great Simplification

A Fundamental Intellectual Inability

Our article The Silence of 🥗 Vegans reveals that the real reason for the silence on GMO is a fundamental intellectual inability rather than a lack of time.

French philosopher Henri Bergson illustrated the problem by imagining Nature saying the following when asked about its fundamental raison d'etre (reason for being):

If a man were to inquire of Nature the reason of her creative activity, and if she were willing to give ear and answer, she would say—Ask me not, but understand in silence, even as I am silent and am not wont to speak.

Conclusion

The science organizations were right in 2021 that anti-GMO activism is fading away and that most people, even 🐿️ animal protectors and 🥗 vegans, are silent on GMO.

This implies that Nature needs an intellectual defense.

The 🦋 GMODebate.org project investigates the philosophical roots of scientism, and through that, questions anthropocentrism (the validity scope of GMO) more generally.