This is the last of the three posts on Eric MacDonald’s pair of of posts touting “other ways of knowing,” attacking scientism, and enumerating the faults of New Atheism. (The main fault is that we haven’t suggested ways to replace the “essential human needs” that will be unfulfilled should religion vanish.)
My heart is no longer in this venture, as I’ve already discussed scientism in another recent post, and because I’m working on my book and am hellishly busy. (Be warned: posting is going to decrease.) I’ll simply take a few excerpts from Eric’s posts, “How several misunderstandings led Megan Hodder to faith” and “On not replacing one system of doctines [sic] with another”, and comment briefly. Eric’s quotes are indented.
But, perhaps more important than this is the failure of many new atheists to propose alternatives to religion as a way of understanding our humanity. I, for one, am not satisfied with the claim that only science can give us true insights into the nature of humanity, human relationships, morality, politics, law, justice, etc. I believe the claim that there is no such thing as “free will” is as much a faith position as the claim that there is a god, and the careless assumption that since we are made up of molecules in motion we are as subject to the determinism of physics as rocks being eroded by wind and rain is enough, I think, to make the new atheist project completely unattractive to those, like me, who find greater scope for human creativity than this view provides. While I think that Raymond Tallis is sometimes a bit of a cowboy in the way that he addresses what he calls “neuromania”, nevertheless it seems to me that he is right to find the unacceptably impoverished notion of the human being hatched in neuroscience departments, and those disciplines held hostage by functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, both lacking in depth and credibility.
Here I play sadz violin. This comes perilously close to wish-thinking: Eric simply doesn’t like the materialistic answers given by science because they lack “depth and credibility” and are “unacceptably improverished” As for there being no “free will,” well, if he’s talking about dualistic free will, there’s certainly plenty of evidence against that, including the progressive demonstrations by neuroscientists that the mind is what the brain does, that our “decisions” are often made before we’re conscious of them, and the lack of any credible alternative to materialism. And tell me, Uncle Eric, if human creativity does not derive from the motions of molecules, where does it come from? The truth is the truth, however unpalatable. I find the notion of my mortality unacceptable and dispiriting, but I’m going to die anyway.
But the more comprehensive ideal, that shaped much education until very recently, of providing the materials out of which individuals in community could shape worthwhile and meaningful lives, has fallen on hard times. New atheists take little interest in this because, at root, the solution is thought to be quite simple. The answer is simply more science. For if science is the only route to the truth, then science should be an educational panacea that needs no further insight or support. The cultural products with the most continuous traditions of value and understanding about the nature of being human, and the moral values which underlie the project of being human, are still the religions, but without scientific foundations these are one and all (with some justice, I might add) held to be surplus to requirements. One of the problems with the overwhelming success of science is that disciplines which might have extended and refined these traditions are themselves often held captive by the tendency to overvalue the use of scientific controls.
As is customary with such attacks on scientism, there’s a failure to name those who argue that “the answer to everything is science.” Clearly, solving human problems requires making value judgments that are subjective. To what should we aspire? How do we weigh our own well-being versus that of poor people? Should we give away most of our personal savings? Should we eat meat?
Now once those judgments are made, the solutions can in principle be addressed by science: after all, if you have a goal, one can determine empirically how that goal is best achieved. And the claim that other disciplines (presumably the humanities) are “held captive by the tendency to overvalue the use of scientific controls”, well, it’s not we scientists who are holding them captive. Rather, it’s the increasing realization of those in social sciences and humanities that claims must be backed up with evidence.
Finally, I reject Eric’s contention that “the most continuous traditions of value and understanding about the nature of being human, and the moral values which underlie the project of being human, are still the religions.” No, it is secular humanism, which, although interrupted by the Dark Ages, began addressing morality and the well-lived life before Christianity was in existence.
If science—and by that I mean science broadly construed: a combination of observation, testing, and repeatability—is not the only route to determining the truth (and by “truth” I mean “what exists in the universe”), I want to know what is. When pressed, Eric argues about disciplines whose truth really is, at bottom, based on science (e.g., history and archaeology), or makes the insupportable claim that there are objective moral truths or “truths” in art and music.
It is something that I have remarked on myself, and it should concern us. Continued emphasis on scientific method as the only source of knowledge will not solve the problems of the kinds of cultural rootlessness that this describes. At least the religions – or some of them – have continuous traditions within which people can locate themselves and their efforts to live a full and responsible life. I believe, for many reasons, that these traditions are not adequate to the problems of today, and are based on beliefs which cannot be grounded in reality. Nevertheless, civil society depends on such traditions, though they need not be, and in my judgement should no longer be based in the religions, but little effort has been put into creating alternative ways of placing ourselves within culture and history, and so long as science is thought to be the only source of knowledge, the void left by the decline of religious sensibility will remain.
As I said, nobody claims that solving all human problems requires only scientific knowledge. There must, of course, be value judgments. But once those are made, stand back and let science do its work! Are people lonely? If loneliness is deemed bad, figure out though observation and experimentation what will best alleviate that loneliness. Global warming? If we deem that a bad thing, the answers, if any, must come through science. Is the oppression of women a bad thing? Well, there are ways to figure out how to best empower them (small grants for women to start up businesses in third-world countries have proven remarkably effective).
And secular morality is far better than religion at making the value judgments needed to spur us to action. After all, left to its own devices, religion sees condom use as a more serious problem than AIDS, and the Taliban thinks that society works better when women can’t go to school. Maybe Eric’s old Anglican faith is not as pernicious as these, but do remember one of the reasons he quit the church: they were opposed to voluntary euthanasia.
We already have a good alternative way of placing ourselves within culture and history: it’s called humanism.
I’ve lost heart, and am sad for Eric. Having been smart enough to realize that religion is bunk, and that there are no gods, Eric now finds his godless universe unbearably bleak and depressing. While this hasn’t been enough to drive him back to God, it’s caused him to spend his time criticizing the heartlessness of science and the arrogance of scientists, as well as the failings of New Atheism. What I don’t understand, though, is why he doesn’t seem to find succor in humanism. Why does there have to be something beyond the material world? There’s no evidence that there is, and so we should make the best of what we’ve got. Better to do that than fall into a despairing nihilism, desperately craving things that can’t be had.
Are we nearing a second demotion from the title of website Uncle?
Has Eric read “The Swerve?” A little dose of De Rerum Natura would do him good. Once must never neglect molecular manifestations in all their transplendence.
I really enjoy it when you (Jerry) articulate my thoughts better than I can.
Just popping in to say I really love your posts like this. I had to laugh when I read “Here I play sadz violin” after hearing a lament about how a religious person isn’t happy with the image of humanity provided by science.
Eric MacDonald is NOT a religious person. He has recovered from that affliction and writes some of the best anti-religious commentary out there.
To some extent.
Have you read his blog posts?
(Note: I am completely aligned with Jerry on this subject and have often argued the point on Eric’s blog. But whatever disagreements there might be on the “scientism” charge, saying Eric is religious is very far off the mark.)
Yes, I’ve read some of his posts. On topics such as assisted dying he is moving and insightful. I’m less keen on some of his other writings.
I think the scientism issue is an example of his still retaining religious ways of thinking in some areas. I may be being too harsh on him.
I agree with Coel.
Eric’s remark about the “careless assumptions” physicists make about matter, including of course the matter that composes our bodies, is telling. Not only dies that remark dismiss the extensive body of work in physics, but it also belies an attitude of human exceptionalism. Very religious-type thinking.
Well, as I said elsewhere, I vigorously disagree with Eric about this particular matter (and his charge that folks like you and I are “dogmatic” scientismists). But this is quite different than saying he is religious. (Can one be religious without believing in supernatural beings?)
It is enough, for me, to see the problem as one of lingering sentimental attachment to feelings of camaraderie and “fellowship” he felt during decades of life in the church. If you live like that long enough and then leave the club, it can be, perhaps, disorienting. Perhaps people in that situation aren’t used to finding these human comforts elsewhere and this leads to confusion.
Agreed.
I agree that he may maintain some of the inclinations that led him to the priesthood in the first place.
His current anti-religion stance might merely be anger at how his wife’s condition was dealt with, rather than a change in the way he views the universe.
If you read his blog posts on religion I don’t think you can conclude this. Yes, he was pushed over the edge, perhaps, by his his experience with Elizabeth’s end-of-life trials. But that doesn’t diminish his contempt for religion. A great many atheists are created by their religious experiences.
Try this: http://choiceindying.com/2013/04/03/islam-is-a-bossy-domineering-sexually-warped-abusive-misogynist-sack-of-shit/
Or this: http://choiceindying.com/2013/03/15/am-i-anti-catholic-damn-right-i-am/
Being vehemently against particular religions and particular theologies (as your links show regarding Islam and Catholicism) is still consistent with having a lot of religious attitudes and assumptions in ones worldview.
If you look you will find more general blog postings that go after religion in a generalized (non-specific-religion) way.
The point is that I think it is misleading, and a tad disrespectful, to describe Eric’s position as “current anti-religion stance might merely be anger”, implying that he isn’t really a non-believer at all, that maybe “he’ll get over it”, or something of that sort.
We can disagree with his misunderstanding of the relationship of science to the humanities without pretending he is religious. The cardboard characterization isn’t necessary.
“implying that he isn’t really a non-believer at all,”
Didn’t really say that, but he may still be a believing sort of person. It’s not uncommon for people to give up one superstition in order to adopt another.
I think reactions such as Eric’s show a failure of imagination. Francis Crick called it the “The Astonishing Hypothesis” that “a person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them.”
To a religious person a world consisting solely of the interactions of low-level molecules must be severely improverished, since they simply fail to appreciate and imagine that iterations upon iterations of low-level processes really can produce everything about human intellect and value in all its glory.
A failure to appreciate that is a limitation of the human, not of the science.
IMO it is less a failure of imagination than a lack of understanding of how science works. Eric and others who make the “scientism” charge are convinced that the idea of “science broadly defined” is nothing more than an assault on the Humanities by an army of insensitive white-coated technicians holding test tubes. They insist that science (often spelled with a capital “S”) is experimental and fail to understand how historical sciences work.
At least that’s my take on the matter.
“A failure to appreciate that is a limitation of the human, not of the science.”
Superb.
Even only “movements of molecules”, when you factor in the numbers of molecules, their interaction, the external fields and forces, with the understanding of complex theory, you will get something that is not only much bigger than you can imagine, but also totally unpredictable.
The problem for Eric’s way of thinking is that they do not know what they do not know. Because of wisdoms (or knowledge) they believe they have gained they think that they must know all, or most of it.
While actually there are things that is totally unpredictable (theoretically impossible to predict, or the time to make an accurate prediction will be infinite) in all complex systems.
And most of natural systems (with many identical members and relatively independent forces) are complex systems. Weather, finance markets, societies, sands, magnetic poles, brains, minds.
The members (atoms) are deterministic (totally or partially does not matter), the laws are deterministic and rigid, but the resulting effects (the emergence) may or may not be totally unpredictable (depend on where they are in the complex sphere).
All of this, not just answering those who thirst for ‘transcedental’ things, also nullify the idea of deterministic complex system (like brain).
The latter I believe, is the real answer for the question of free-will in human mind. There is no dualistic free-will religious style, but there is no (totally) deterministic brain as well. Your decision cannot be caused deterministically by your past. Because your brain, while deterministic, is a complex system, the same as weather, economic market etc etc.
The problem of free-will as Jerry frame it (the same frame as the religions only with diametral answer) is moot. No ghost, and no certainty. The agglomeration that is “me” still “make decision” because the decision made is never totally deterministic, and in some cases totally unknowable in advance, there is ever-present uncertainties.
Noone and nothing would ever know all decisions made by an individual brain, even though all the atoms of the brain is deterministic and there is no ghost or gods. No dualistic free-will, but no “no free-will” as well.
OK, this is bit too long.
Just because predicting a brain’s decisions may be computationally intractable does not mean they are not determined.
Nice short sharp demolition of an overlong badly thought out post. 🙂
§
A terrific discussion with suggestions on going forward. Thanks, JAC.
All very well taken, thanks. We have to steer a middle way between scientistic claim that science has the answers to moral dilemmas (what Harris supposes in The Moral Landscape) and a moral objectivism that imagines there are objective moral truths sitting out there in spacetime, independent of motivated interests, which could adjudicate those dilemmas.
Sean Carroll does a nice job in his recent keynote address for the American Humanist Association conference in setting out in ordinary language what this middle way might be. Morality isn’t arbitrary, since it’s tied to a nearly universally shared suite of moral intuitions and emotions (as described for instance by Jonathan Haidt) but it isn’t anything that’s descriptively true about the world, what Eric seems to want to be the case. It’s rather a matter of reaching a rough reflective equilibrium of agreement about norms within a moral community, whether local, national, or international. Such equilibrium, which in an open society necessarily admits of disagreement about many moral particulars, is the naturalistic analog and substitute for supernaturally derived moral absolutes. And as Carroll points out, it really helps in reaching a humane and effective consensus on morality that our worldview be based in science, not superstition.
Matt Dillahunty also does a superb job at laying out this “middle way” in his talk “The Superiority of Secular Morality”. Check it out on the YouTube.
Excellent point. One can have reductionism without being greedy.
It seems to me that a common solution to most moral dilemmas becomes much more achievable if everyone agrees on the background facts, and the problem itself is framed in a way which achieves consensus. You still have situations where one value is pitted against another — or where preference battles preference — but the disagreements are usually not so drastic.
Science can help us agree about those background facts. After all, that is what science is: a search for consensus through methods which eliminate bias as much as possible.
Thanks.Very well said.
“little effort has been put into creating alternative ways of placing ourselves within culture and history”
So not only does he dismiss this obvious role of the sciences (construed as broadly or narrowly as you like), but also fine arts, crafts, literature, educational institutions, trades, trade unions, industries, sports, nations, governments, corporations, clubs, newspapers, TV and the internet (etc) collectively represent “little effort” towards placing us within culture and history.
Pardon the language, but this is just batshit.
I really have become disenchanted with Eric’s blog of late. He is oddly touched by the old religious characterizations that set up a straw “new atheism” for him to criticize. I cannot think of anyone who wants to do away with culture and history in the name of following evidence based inquiry to the exclusion of all else, gnu or otherwise. While crying out about the shortcomings of science, whenever pressed about what the mysterious alternatives are to evidenced based inquiry he vacillates about denigrating science just long enough to get back on to pointing out its inadequacies. Gnu atheist communities already exist, and they are very purposeful and generally fulfilled.
It is a lot like arguing with an athlete about the ability to win without lucky unwashed socks. Religion only latched on to the normal human institutions and endeavors, and generally only hinders them with imaginary baggage. It forms communities unless you are homosexual. It supports people in loss by proposing unsupported falsehoods. It gives purpose by excluding contrary viewpoints and rational criticism, locking that purpose in ancient immutable attitudes. We can pluck out the imaginary parts with no substantial losses at all, and it won’t take any special efforts. Let’s toss out the rotten socks and get on to better ways to play, not lament about how we might need a lucky rabbit’s foot to cope with the loss of our old socks, they never really did anything besides take credit for the true sources of victory that deserve attention.
+1
I admit that I don’t understand Uncle Eric’s distress, since I’ve never felt there was anything “missing” from the scientific perspective. For example, yesterday on this website we were treated to a beautiful video showing the generation of Chladni figures. The discussion in the comments wasn’t limited to physics, but branched out into chemistry, hydrology, materials science, art, and music. There was also curiosity, aesthetic appreciation, community, and humor. And yes, it did provide a brief but heartening “insight into the nature of humanity”.
Wunderbar! Exactly. Well said.
+1
..
Alas poor Eric. He seems to be in the uncomfortable place between realizing there is no God and no after life and accepting those consequences (which suck BTW and my own mortality really annoys me as I’ve expressed my desire for Highlander-esque immortality before).
If he needs comfort, he can take solace in the arts (which he seems to think are shafted by science anyway – the aren’t).Maybe some existentialism will help him out. It always gave me comfort to see others miserable – like Satre’s play No Exit. Then come out the other side and enjoy some Epicurus and top it off with some good ol’ hilarious Greek comedy like Menander’s Dyskolos (the grouch). 😉
“I’ve expressed my desire for Highlander-esque immortality before” — You’re not the only one… 😉
/@
But –
“There can only be One!”
Well, quite… (and you’ve corrected the film’s bad grammar…)
/@
Ha ha – a friend of mine informed me at lunch that in the TV series you could cut off each others limbs and they wouldn’t grow back so I need Highlander+ for mortality 😉
There are plenty like this. I think accommodationists often fall into this trap. Look at Alain de Botton for example. I do not feel a need to fill an empty ‘god shaped hole’ but then I never had that god belief in the first place.
Satre is a goooood choice! La Nausée…
I LIKE the bleak inhuman universe & do not find it depressing! I actually find it exciting that it IS indifferent to pathetic little humans.
But then my dad said I was born with a chip on my shoulder…
Not the only one….
http://www.strangenotions.com/cosmological-argument/#disqus_thread
Dr. Edward Feser:
“Most people who comment on the cosmological argument demonstrably do not know what they are talking about. This includes all the prominent New Atheist writers. It very definitely includes most of the people who hang out in Jerry Coyne’s comboxes.”
Well, it is actually difficult to understand nonsense. 🙂
I don’t get it – why DO people want some ‘ghost in the machine’, ‘the sum is greater than the parts’ answer? Isn’t that what this implies?
There does seem to be a philosophical or ideological divide in terms of people’s response to science. Most everyone who gets an explanation for some remarkable observation will think to themselves some version of: “holy crap, that’s not magic!” But some find that thought wonderful and while others find it horrible.
“…a despairing nihilism…”
I don’t know Jerry, I like my nihilism, if by that you mean acceptance of the fact that the universe has no meaning or purpose. I find that fact to be extraordinarily liberating. It even comes with a bonus. Though completely free to be however I may be, I’m still “nice.” cf Alex Rosenberg.
+1
What is a source of knowledge? According to Gottlob Frege, a source of knowledge (Erkenntnisquelle in German) is “that by virtue of which the acknowledgement of truth, the judgement, is justified.” Our natural sources of knowledge are the following ones:
1. sensory perception
2. introspection/self-observation
3. rational intuition/intellection
4. recollection/memory
5. testification/testimony: communication of (semantic) information (that isn’t mis- or disinformation)
(Traditionally, empiricists are sceptical about 3 as a genuine and reliable source of knowledge. And whether testimony is a basic, irreducible source of knowledge is contentious among the epistemologists.)
Supernaturalists assert that additional sources of knowledge are available to (some of) us:
6. extrasensory perception
7. mystical apprehension
8. divine revelation
Nice lists.
I’d note though that supernaturalists play a game here: they try to drag #2 (introspection/self-observation) and #3 (rational intuition/intellection) down into the end of the list and co-opt them as “spiritual” — as if atheists deny these sources of knowledge altogether or can’t “account” for them. Category error and equivocation. As usual.
As we all know, science has shown that empiricism (writ large) is our only method to get to knowledge.
This is what it does with your list:
1. sensory perception – not a “source” of knowledge.
It is a weak link in a chain of experimental methods who are “sources” (ways) to get to knowledge. Weak akin to analogous “common sense” ideas: most often wrong.
But as Coyne often points out our senses and reactions are sufficiently correct that their weaknesses can be accounted for.
2-5. Obviously not “sources” of knowledge.
You’re wrong, sources of justification and knowledge aren’t methods.
See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#SOU
And the epistemological problem with empiricism is that the universally quantified statement “All (synthetic) knowledge is based on experience” cannot itself be empirically proven.
If you read Matthew Cobb’s, The Egg and Sperm Race, you will find that this stuff; sensory perception, introspection/self-observation,
rational intuition/intellection, recollection/memory, testification/testimony, needs the discipline of rigorous scientific methodology in order to break through the misinformation and prejudice that lay within those supposed sources of knowledge.
To a lesser extent than is clear by reading The Egg and Sperm Race though, you could give your attention to the never ending parade of how inaccurate even trained observers can be when relying on the sources that you have listed. Do read The Egg and Sperm Race, it is enlightening.
“communication of (semantic) information (that isn’t mis- or disinformation)”, you could of course add something similar as a disclaimer for each item of your list. I have no idea why you picked just one item to single out. That’s why the disciplined application of the processes of inquiry modeled by science is necessary in order to proceed toward knowledge.
No need to get childish:
6. extrasensory perception
7. mystical apprehension
8. divine revelation
You’re right insofar as no source of belief justification/knowledge gives us (logically) infallible or indefeasible belief justification/knowledge. For example, apparent perceptions may be illusions or hallucinations, and testimonies may be cases of mis- or disinformation.
But with regard to introspection at least, error and mistake may not be logically impossible but they are practically impossible. For example, when I believe to be hungry or to be sad on the basis of my seeming to be hungry or my seeming to be sad, how could my belief turn out to be false? How could I seem to be hungry or sad without being hungry or sad? As far as the subjective contents of my consciousness are concerned, there is no possible distinction between seeming and being—or is there?
For more information about introspection, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/
Good comments, Myron. If I remember correctly back to my philosophy undergrad days, pain and hunger are called incorrigible experiences. But I’ve been wondering about the experience of personal agency. What do you think, is personal agency an incorrigible experience?
I’d also like to ask you how you’d define scientism. In some discussion below I had Billy Joe say, “The only truth is what we measure with a scientific measuring device.” That reeked to me of scientism but I’m not sure how I’d define it and Billy didn’t seem to consider himself guilty.
There’s no official definition accepted by everybody, so here’s a definition of mine which I find acceptable, even though it may highlight only one aspect of scientism:
Scientism is the view that science with its empirical and logical methods is the final arbiter of truth and rational belief. Scientific knowledge is master knowledge, so it is unreasonable and blameworthy to hold beliefs which are incompatible with our scientific knowledge or improbable or implausible in the light of it.
Myron, that is quite a generous definition. It makes scientism seem quite fine to me. I’m inclined to see scientism as a bad thing, so I’d look for a definition that singles it out for the fault I see. For example, the definition might include a misplaced emphasis on scientific measurement where, for example, the human judgement of colour is considered unreliable for all purposes and that only the reading of a colorimeter is admissible. My discussion below (#29) provides what I think is a good example, with some responses exhibiting what I’d would call scientism.
I’m also inclined to identify scientism as a kind of reductionism.
Oh, shiver! Oh, my! Not reductionism!
Have no fear, holism is near.
(Did you ever read Hofstadter and Dennet’s The Mind’s Eye?)
Eric simply doesn’t like the materialistic answers given by science because they lack “depth and credulity”…
FIFY.
I agree with John Scanlon @9: nonbelivers don’t have to propose alternatives because they exist, they’ve existed for thousands af years, and they’re a big part of our culture already. And, contra Dr. MacDonald’s focus on scientism, there’s pretty much no atheist out there suggesting that we replace art, music, sports, etc. with science because its the only way we can ‘understand our humanity.’
Its very much a strawman argument ad absurdem to take your opponent’s statement ‘more science is good’ and infer that they are arguing ‘only science, nothing else, forever and ever, amen.’
Now I think THAT is a bit of a straw-man, too! I think the actual argument Eric M. would be making is more of the “other ways of (non-religious) knowing” type.
Personally, I don’t find Eric M’s position convincing in the least, but it isn’t the same as “nothing else”, unless you append all sorts of specifiers. Eric thinks that (for example) History done well can be unscientific. I disagree because I accept Jerry’s notion of “science broadly defined”. Eric doesn’t allow for Jerry’s definition. And so we fail to come to agreement. But it isn’t a disagreement about religion in the sense that we aren’t arguing about whether or not gods or ghosts exist.
Twice in the first few lines of the first excerpt, he characterizes his opponents as thinking only science can give an understanding of humanity. The second time he even says “only science” explicitly.
And in the second excerpt he characterizes new atheists as people who think that the only “materials out of which individuals in community could shape worthwhile and meaningful lives” are “more science.” He characterizes gnus as seeing it as a panacea.
Now, if you say your opponent only values A, sees A as the only material for shaping a meaningful life, and sees A as a panacea, your are pretty strongly implying that your opponent doesn’t just discount religion (B), but everything else C-Z too.
Maybe that’s not what he meant. Maybe he really meant that atheists only (wrongly) discount B but are just peachy with C-Z. But that’s not the sense of his words.
Well, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, I think Eric M. is wrong on this subject. And I guess I agree that the reasons he gives mischaracterize his “opponents”. Ultimately, however, I think this is because of a refusal to recognize “science broadly defined” as opposed to disingenuous argument.
We are mostly in agreement, however I think EM has made a slightly different error here. The problem here isn’t that he’s not thinking about science broadly enough. The problem in this case is that he’s not thinking about all the nonscience things atheists think, do, and value in life.
Just look at Jerry’s posts. As a swag, I estimate they’re 30% science, 30% cats, 20% food/travel, and 10% other (with some inevitable overlap). EM is in the position of telling a guy who spends 50% of his web site time talking about cats and food that he’s in the camp that only sees life-value in science. What’s wrong with that picture?
Agreed.
I hope it is clear that this is not the view of the compatibilists (at least most of those who post comments here) who don’t agree with JAC’s characterization of “free will”. Indeed, if you don’t believe that “we are made up of molecules in motion we are as subject to the determinism of physics as rocks being eroded by wind and rain” then you, by definition, not a compatibilist.
My view is that knowing that were made of molecules and that huge numbers of chemical reactions occur when we are observing human behavior is not sufficient to say you understand human behavior in any meaningful sense. Labeling “free will” as an “illusion” and the sense of agency we possess as an “illusion” seems to me to be applied in an extremely selective manner. When Darwin laboriously and insightfully worked out the theory of evolution via natural selection, it was by the same standard, an “illusion”. The same is true of Schrödinger devising his wave equation, Feynman recasting quantum mechanics in terms of path integrals, Mozart composing symphonies, and so on. All “illusions” that were the product of chemical reactions going on in their brains. In my view, this ultrareductionism is an example that illustrates the old saying, “A thoery that explains everything explains nothing.”
Someone once said that if something is an “illusion” that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It simply means that it’s not what it appears to be on the surface.
The word “illusion” has a pretty clear connotation – that the thing being described is not only “not what it appears to be on the surface”, but less than it appears to be, whether on the surface or not. The question I have posed before and have posed here is this: why the selective application of that description only to “free will”? Why are all the other products of the mind, all other intellectual achievments, large and small, not described as “illusions” as well?
I suppose you could write something that I would disagree with more but that may be an illusion. Additionally, you might have an inflated view of “most of those that post comments here” to support your own illusion.
Note that I was referring to most of the compatibilists who post here, not most of the posts here. Your quote is misleading in that respect. I am perhaps mistaken about what the compatibilists who post here think, but I think your quote makes it unclear what “those” referred to in what I said.
“When pressed, Eric argues about disciplines whose truth really is, at bottom, based on science (areas like history and archaeology), or makes the insupportable claim that there are objective moral truths or ‘truths’ in art and music.” – J. Coyne
As for “truth in art”, there’s a distinction between
1. aesthetic objectivism/realism: There are objective aesthetic facts and, correspondingly, aesthetic (value-)judgements (e.g. “Mozart is the greatest classical composer”) have objective truth-values. [This is the aesthetic equivalent of ethical objectivism/realism.]
and
2. art-cognitivism: Art has not only emotive value but also cognitive, epistemic, and thus educative value, in the sense that through experiencing them we (can) learn from works of art, acquire new (non-aesthetic) knowledge, refine our thoughts and beliefs about us and the world, and thereby deepen and expand our understanding.
Art-cognitivists needn’t be aesthetic realists. The experience of art can be a source of education and knowledge even if aesthetic judgements are epistemically subjective, lacking an objective truth-value.
Thanks for that. I love a new distinction.
The iPad I am typing this on is far too awesome to be explained by physics?
Sure seems like that. But I know better.
The desire for other ways of knowing is only ignorance.
Nothing more.
We are easily fooled.
Sometimes, on bad days, is it hard to fight off the “creeping nihilism”. He sounds depressed to me; missing his dear wife, and not finding solace anywhere familiar. He is saying that something is missing. That doesn’t make him right at all, but that’s how I see it.
Magical thinking, whatever remains, rots ones brain:
That is a false juxtaposition. The examples do show that atheists do not fail in proposing alternatives.
But MacDonald choose to use the fallacy of argument from incredulity, the weakest tool in the magical arsenal.
Oy vey!
– As far as I can see, I note how secular morality has instituted democracy and human rights and freedoms.
– They did so, despite a millennium of magical thinking hegemony, that demolished earlier democracy et cetera (as per the greeks and romans).
– And the morals of magical thinking that are noteworthy, such as the golden rule, were all adopted from earlier secular society (laws of Hammurabi and what not).
Secular society – magical practice 3 – 0.
If people who were raised without religion (and who have remained nonreligious) don’t see the problem Uncle Eric sees at all, would he think that
1.) his concerns are an artifact left over from his own religious upbringing and past?
or
2.) the lives of these lifelong nonbelievers must be impoverished in an important way, regardless of what their lives are like?
Or perhaps another alternative (probably in the middle)?
It is a good question.
As someone brought up without religion, all I can say is that I don’t understand what Eric is talking about. I’m not sure what I’m missing or supposed to be missing in my life. I don’t have a college education but I love science and I get excited when I learn something new, which is nearly every day. I don’t have a problem with free-will or whatever you want to call consciousness being deterministic. If you can hook wires up to my brain and figure out what I’m going to do before I do it, that is frigg’n awesome and I want to know how that works. It’s not depressing, it’s cool.
On the other hand, I have two sisters who don’t share my enthusiasm for science. One majored in mathematics and is a computer professional. The other was a chef before starting a family, she now volunteers for charities, mostly at risk families, and disabled athletes.
This appears to be one of the less well-thought out posts I have read around here (although I’m usually a fan). Here is a comment that particularly stuck out to me:
“And the claim that other disciplines (presumably the humanities) are “held captive by the tendency to overvalue the use of scientific controls”, well, it’s not we scientists who are holding them captive, but he increasing REALIZATION OF THOSE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES THAT CLAIMS MUST BE BACKED UP WITH EVIDENCE.”
Do you really think that people in the social sciences and humanities don’t believe claims should be backed up with evidence? Really? It seems odd to me to think that people in the social sciences and humanities don’t know what it means to use “analytical” thinking and writing, and have little understanding of these notions. Here is a list of scores for students going to graduate school in the sciences and humanities (taken from the GRE exam). Does it matter that Philosophy majors have the highest score on two out of three sections of the exam? Or that the analytical writing section is topped by Philosophy, English, Art, and History (all humanities programs). I’m not sure why some scientists feel the need to belittle their colleagues in the humanities who may disagree with them. Can’t we all just get along?
http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended%20Graduate%20Major.htm
I’ve argued at length about this and I think it is people like Eric unfortunately that spread this myth and people like Mark O’Connell don’t help either. It is tantamount to listening to whacko scientists who back Intelligent design and thinking they speak for all scientists.
Maybe the phrase “belittle their colleagues” is too strong. I’m just wondering why some people feel the need to say the things they do since surely your colleages know what evidence is.
Have you been following the context? Have you read Eric’s original posts that Jerry was responding to?
It seems to me that his point is the opposite of how you construe it. His response was to the assertion that the trouble with Humanities and Social Science was that practitioners are being too scientific: “…are themselves often held captive by the tendency to overvalue the use of scientific controls.”
Jerry’s point is that practitioners of History/Archaeology/etc. KNOW the value of evidence. Eric M’s phrasing suggests that he (Eric) thinks this is a bad thing.
Yeah it’s Eric and O’Connell that are making everyone look bad, not Jerry.
Yes I’ve read the posts involved and I am aware of the context. The issue is what explains the tendency to overvalue the use of scientific controls. Jerry says the explanation is “the REALIZATION of those in social sciences and humanities that claims must be backed up with evidence.” So the implication here is that social scientists and humanities folk don’t already know this (because then there’d be nothing “to realize”). I don’t see how I’ve interpreted this language incorrectly. What worries me is that the issue is cast as a matter of ignorance by people in the humanities, instead of what it really is–a disagreement about the scope of certain kinds of evidence in explaining various phenomena–which is a perfectly legitimate point to raise complaints about.
There probably is little value to getting into a semantics argument, but I have a hard time understanding how realizing something isn’t pretty close to the same thing as knowing something. It does incorporate a sense of having come to this knowledge from a prior state of not having had it, but that seems a pretty weak peg to hang your grievance on.
You said “Can’t we all just get along?”. I’d ask “Can’t we stop being academically paranoid?”
No. You’ve missed something here but, maybe more importantly from a prior post that puts that phrasing in context. I think you can find it if you search in the last several days. If you can’t, I will try to find it for you.
I’ll just leave this issue off at this point. I sort of see the point about context that you are talking about, but trying to sort out the broader issue here would take me too far a field. I’ll just say that it seems to me Eric has the better view here and that claims about humanities faculty “realizing” or “not realizing” something about evidence are neither here nor there.
I think you’re talking about where Jerry wrote, just after the ‘sad violin’ cat picture: Really, is it the fault of scientists that increasing rigor, and an insistence on giving evidence for what you claim, is creeping into the humanities and social sciences—which, by the way, contain the word “science”?.
That link is broken.
Yes John thank you, that is the one.
I should add that Coyne was responding to O’Connell’s complaint that O’Connell didn’t like the fact that rigor was creeping into the humanities.
Jerry, what bugs me here is that you talk as if there is no such thing as scientism. I’m with you on a lot of what you have to say and find your talk of “science broadly defined” pretty alluring but I do think there is such a thing as scientism and that someone like Eric does have a legitimate concern, albeit one which is difficult to put one’s finger on.
To be honest, I’m not sure how I’d define it, and I’d like some suggestions, but I do think I know it when I see it and currently have two litmus tests. One is the Checker Shadow Illusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion). You’ve shown it off here and most of your readers bought it. If you are more inclined to believe your colorimeter or colour picker or the supposedly scientific method of taking it apart (as per the animation given) and conclude that A and B are indeed the same colour, then you are likely to be under the sway of scientism. If you’re more inclined to go with common sense and assert that A and B are clearly different colours, then you’re probably not infected.
Also, you’re immune if, like me, you’re an artist and can immediately see that while the squares are clearly different colours (blackish and whitish respectively) you’d nonetheless use the same colour off your palette to paint them. If you try and explain that to someone and they remain insistent that it is a simple matter of your having been fooled by the “illusion” and again insist on a scientific measurement and say stuff like there are “no actual cylinder and shadow, only areas of colour” and go on about “cognitive processes” then you’re definitely dealing with someone in the sway of scientism.
My other litmus test would probably involve asking some questions about oxytocin and empathy but I’d rather not get into that now.
That is one really stupid analysis, Andrew.
Well, Andrew, I’d recommend Richard Feynman’s comment to you.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Seems strange that you’d be stubbornly insistent that you aren’t subject to visual illusions.
I wouldn’t insist that I’m not subject to visual illusions but I do think that the checker shadow is one that doesn’t fool me. Like I said, I’m an artist, and I’m more visually astute than most. Also, I’ve come to reject these so called “optical illusions” as good examples of how our senses can be deceived and now see them as quite the contrary – evidence of how visually astute we can be. If we were not, we wouldn’t be calling them illusions, now would we?!
However, this is not about visual acuity but about common sense and about how we see and about the place we give instrumentation, measurement and science when assessing our experiences. In this case, to set aside common sense in favour of a colour picker reading (the HTML value read off both being #787878) is an indication of an ideological hangup of some sort and I think it’s a symptom of scientism, or at least reductionism.
The checker shadow tells how smart we can be at assessing the real colour of something despite an apparent similarity. A scientistic view would be simplistic: that we’re not so smart because a stupid colour picker tells us otherwise. I’m saying, duh, the colour the picker would pick up is obviously the same (I have an artist’s eye) but the squares are just as obviously not the same colour (common sense).
What would you say if I could give you a simple, slam-dunk proof that A and B are not in fact the same colour?
If you are going to suggest that your “artist’s eye” is slam-dunk proof of something, there’s going to be loud and raucous laughter in this room.
Too late, there already is.
Well, certainly, if you’re going to insist on looking at everything through the eye of your colour pecker, I’d feel pretty confident of asserting my artist’s eye, but that is not what I had in mind. Here you go:-
> A checker board is by definition made of alternating black and white squares
> This means that if you count an odd number of squares away from a black square you get a white and if you count an even number of squares you get another black.
> A is black and B is 3 squares away, therefore B is white.
And this is slam-dunk proof of what exactly?
:-/ You’re disappointing me. I asked you “What would you say if I could give you a simple, slam-dunk proof that A and B are not in fact the same colour?” and you replied with laughter. Now I suppose you’re going to duck and dive all over the place.
At least you’re in illustrious company. Steven Pinker uses the checker shadow “illusion” in his Blank Slate book and Kathryn Schulz uses it as a prime example in her Being Wrong book. Interesting how wrong we can be about being wrong.
And you are the perfect example of it. You confuse the Color and shade of objects with the color and shade seen on a print or video.
None of this actually is relevant to this post.
Perhaps I just don’t have “Artist’s Logic”?
I take your assertion to be that your special eye is better at distinguishing wavelengths of light than a spectrophotometer. And as evidence of this you demonstrate that you can count to three and flip a binary switch as you go along.
Unconvincing. And pretty shallow support for the charge of “ideological hangups”.
Bob, there is no confusion at all. I’m as clear as a bell on this. I realise only too well that I am looking at a representation. And like I already said, the whole reason the graphic doesn’t fool me is that, as an artist, I’d make a distinction between the colour of B and the colour I’d mix to paint it. Very few scientists would be able to do that. The whole reason this one gets them all excited is it teaches them something which old hat to an artist.
But perhaps, when you’re finished laughing, you can tell me what difference it makes whether it’s an object or a representation of one. I could easily set up a real life scene and make the same point with a light meter. Would an arrangement of black and white cats in the dappled light of a tree please you?
GB, logic is logic, I’m afraid. And ordinarily it’s convincing. It depends on the calibre of the person you’re dealing with. By now you should at least be a little unsettled about your assumptions and perhaps a little curious, not so “stubbornly insistent”.
To be serious, no I don’t take my eye to be better than a colorimeter. That would be silly, but not for the reason you might expect: the colorimeter is an extension of my eye, so to speak. It is as blind as my eye is without me and it cannot distinguish between the colour of the square and the shadow cast over it. It has extreme blinkers on. What it gives me is not false information, but incomplete information.
Let me put it this way:
Scientific methods and instruments are only accurate where a numerical measurement is required and is otherwise quite useless. For example, you could not easily tell me by eye exactly, in miles per hour, for legal purposes, how fast that car was coming down the street, and one might conclude from that that the senses were not accurate. However, you could tell its speed precisely enough to be able cross safely. At the same time, you could not cross safely based on a report of the car’s precise position and speed as presented by an odometer. Similarly, a good golfer makes no mathematical calculations but is able to strike with great precision, and I, when I make bread, do not need the use of a scale because I can tell if the water-to-flour ratio is right by the feel of the dough. The senses are enough.
To get back to the checker shadow, I can in fact tell that a colour picker would pick up the same colour off A and B. I really do have that skill. Most artists would. (And, well, what would that make you if you scoffed at that?) Of course, I’d never be able to give you a wavelength reading, although I think it is possible with enough practice. A printer or designer with enough experience could quote a Pantone number for a patch of colour.
My point is that it is even more obvious that squares A and B are not the same colour and we have common sense / logic to prove that. For you to insist, in the face of the logic, on the basis of a scientific reading that they are in fact the same colour, that our senses are fooled if we think different, is an ideological hangup – scientism, I’d say.
(PS: Don’t get me wrong, the patronising tone is just a little mischievous revenge and is not meant sincerely. If I felt no respect I’d not bother with a careful presentation of my thoughts.)
You say it’s common sense but it takes an artist to detect it. You like to have it both ways.
Yes, well, in this case I can because the common sense is the logic of it. Do you not expect the artist’s eye to be logical?
Most people, on seeing the checker shadow “illusion” say the common sense, logical thing that A and B are black and white, then the scientists come along with their colorimeters and “prove” them wrong. The artist’s eye comes in where an explanation of the apparent contradiction is called for. Scientism scoffs at the artist and bluntly insists on the colour reading.
Oh, and you’re equivocating. What takes common sense is seeing that A and B are different, what takes an artist’s eye is seeing that they are to be rendered with the same colour in order to effectively represent the shadow. That’s two different things so having it two ways should not be a problem.
I just love the way you redefine common sense and logic until they make no sense.
And bad logic is bad logic. And truisms are truisms.
Got me there! Odometers don’t measure position with any precision at all.
Yeah, sometimes they are. And often they are not. And one place they are less than useful is when our biologically evolved senses and interpreting brains fail to accurately describe reality. That’s the point of visual illusions. All illusions, actually. Our senses and brains play tricks on us from time to time and we need to use measuring tools to get a better understanding.
Unless, of course, we are blessed by Artist’s Eye which makes us impervious to illusion.
gbjames, I find it strange that you know truisms well enough to use them the usual way – as rhetorical devices for expressing sarcasm – but cannot appreciate them when on the receiving end.
Thank you so much for alerting me to my major omission in not mentioning a GPS along with the odometer. I should have known that might confuse you. Sorry.
“Yeah, sometimes they are. And often they are not.” Is that not what I said? In fact, was I not more specific than that? Did I not give some indication as to when they were and when they weren’t?
You’re wrong about the point of illusions like the checker shadow. They prove exzactly the opposite to what you think they do, otherwise you wouldn’t be wise enough to them to call them illusions. You’d be the fly against the window, but you’re not. Instead you’re the fly that goes around so he can buzz at it from the other side. That’s scientism for you.
“… Artist’s Eye which makes us impervious to illusion” – Actually what I pointed out with my little slam-dunk was that, in this case, it’s logic / common sense that would make you immune. My use of the “Artist’s Eye” was just bait. I knew you’d heap scorn on that.
But thanks, it’s been fun; not constructive, but fun. At least I got to sort stuff out in my own mind a bit better. Thanks for being there for me.
We agree on some things.
Yeah, you place your perception of the illusion as being real even though you know you use the same color from your palette to paint one black square and one white square. My friends car is dark blue, says so on the sticker, in his garage it looks black. By your analysis my friend’s car is a shape, er, a color shifter. If you are going to be consistent in your analysis across all different illusions that we encounter in life you will eventually find yourself in a pickle.
I don’t follow you. Or I’m not sure if you follow me. I thought I was saying exactly the opposite to what you say I’m saying. I’m saying the car stays the same colour regardless of what the colorimeter tells me in different situations.
To you, are A and B the same colour or not?
And what colour would they be if I switched the lights off?
Well, I think it’s you who doesn’t understand. Colour itself is an illusion. You’ve just proven that yourself. Whereas that car looks black in the garage, in brilliant sunlight it could look white. But it’s neither, and neither is it dark blue. It just looks dark blue in a certain intensity of light. In lighter conditions it would look pale blue. Given the right conditions it could look any colour you like – red, pink, mauve, yellow or green.
It’s all an illusion created by the brain.
The only truth is what we measure with a scientific measuring device. The only truth is the frequency of EMR reflected off
the surface of that object and into eyes and onto retinas to be converted into nerve impulses that are distributed into modules within the brain to produce a certain perception that even depends on whose eyes and brains we are talking about. Cataracts can cause a white wall to look yellow. Some retinas distinguish only black and white.
Scientism is nearly always a false accusation.
And when the car stands half in and half out of the garage is it both black and white?! How are you going to explain that to the oke at the factory who dunked the body in a vat of dark blue, Pantone 280C (by ICC standards)?
To call colour an illusion sounds like Cartesian Dualism to me. You’re sitting there like a ghost in a machine, interpreting your so-called sense data. All you have is sense data or instrument data. Nothing else is real to you.
I put it to you that colour is a relationship not an inherent property of a surface. The relationship is fixed by the inherent properties of light, the surface of the car and the eye, and there is nothing illusory about that. Light itself has no colour. That beam of light which you measure at 638 THz is not itself blue. It is the frequency which produces blue, and it does so in predictable ways in relationship with the car and the eye. That is why I can tell you what colour the car is despite the way it may vary in appearance under different lighting conditions. I am aware of the relationship, and I can judge it so well that I am capable of reproducing that colour on another object with fair accuracy so that it behaves in the same way as the car under all those different conditions you mention, and I can do so without the aid of an instrument. You can test me with your instrument. Obviously my developing cataracts will impair my skill but but it’s not going to have me conclude that what I had before was an illusion.
For you to say “The only truth is what we measure with a scientific measuring device” seems pure scientism to me.
Try crossing a busy road with the odometer and GPS data of the cars instead of using your eyes. Scientific instruments like photometers are correctly seen as extensions of the eye, not replacements.
Billy, obviously I disagree strongly with you, but I’m grateful for the proper, intelligent engagement. Bob and GB above were clearly just out to jerk my chain. I really am putting these thoughts out there in an effort to get a better handle on the issue. You say scientism is nearly always a false accusation, so how about telling me when it would in fact be a true accusation.
But you have just described the situation just as it would be described if it was an illusion.
The only bit that doesn’t fit is your description of the what happens when that car was painted in the car factory. The problem here is that exactly the same arguments that we both have made regarding the car’s colour can also be applied to the paint. The colour that paint appears to be will also depend on the frequencies and intensities of the ambient light, the reflective properties of the paint, the angle of inclination between light source, paint and eye, the state of the cornea, lens and retina, and the neural pathways and modules within the brain and the influences of recent and past remembered events.
There is actually no colour. That is part of the illusion. If you think there is colour, you will need to tell me where it is. You can’t say that colour exists in the paint, because we’ve just shown how the colour of the paint depends an many factors most of which area extrinsic to the paint. We can’t say it’s in the ambient light. We can’t say it’s in the brain. All we can really say is that the brain produces a perception of colour which depends on all those factors mentioned previously.
And so far I’ve not seen anything even remotely dualistic in that explanation.
Billy Joe, sorry, and thanks for staying with me on this despite my inability to make myself clear. Please allow me to flesh out my key points.
For you to restate the dependencies in the perception of colour shows that you missed my point about colour being a relationship not an inherent property of this or that object. I even said that a beam of light which you measure at 638 THz is not itself blue. That should have made it clear that I understand quite well what you are saying about dependencies.
If you look for colour in “the ambient light, the reflective properties of the paint, the angle of inclination between light source, paint and eye”, etc, then of course you will not find it. That would be like looking for the elephant in its tusks or legs or ears or trunk and denying knowledge of it for not having found it there or there or there. Colour is a relationship between all the things you mentioned and the beast as a whole is a perfectly objective, knowable thing. When I identify something as blue, it’s a bit like my calling an elephant a trunk on legs. I am merely pointing out key identifying features and using a name convention. It is silly to deny knowledge of blue and even worse to deny its existence (“There is actually no colour,” you said) simply because you cannot find it in the small place you look. (To get a good handle of holism and reductionism, read Hofstadter and Dennet’s The Mind’s Eye.)
Consider your personality: you probably relate differently to different people under different circumstances. Does that mean you have multiple personalities? Does it mean there is in fact no Billy Joe, that your personality is just an illusion?!
The other key point I made, was that I was capable of reproducing the car’s colour on another object so that the object behaved in the same way under different conditions. I had hoped that this would prove the objectivity of the colour but it seems to have only affirmed the opposite to you. I guess some fleshing out is needed. I’m sure you know that if I’d gotten the colour on my object wrong, it would not have behaved the same way as the car. If my mix was too much to the red side then my object would appear lighter under a tungsten light than the blue car. This proves that it is not the lighting or my eye or brain that makes the difference, but the paint. The paint can therefore be said to have an identifiable property and we are justified in giving it a name. We know that the property on it’s own does not produce colour, but but since it is the key property in the relationship, we identify that property as the colour.
The way it works in the colour industry is, a standard is agreed on for how something appears in 5000k lighting (sunlight, which is an almost perfect balance of the full spectrum). Your car could not be considered black under 5000k lighting unless it appeared the same in 5000k lighting as it does under zero light. Similarly, it could not be considered blue if appeared white under light exclusively from the red side of the spectrum. That would make the car red.
How very scientistic.
1. My anti-scientistic position does not preclude the use of instruments and measurement. But I already explained that to you.
2. It’s a convention, i.e. a human invention, not a scientific discovery. No-one “discovered” that sunlight was 5000k. The convention, not the science, gives 5000k it’s meaning. It is otherwise meaningless – pretty much the same way “blue” is meaningless to a colour denialist.
OT, but this is empiricism worth knowing:
Baylor report US (I assume) non-religious youth as 55 % vs religious youth as 45 % (when asked for spiritualism and religiousness).
Hopefully this 20 % non-religious majority will reflect into politics in a few generations.
Could you check please, is your link to the correct report? I see that the reported percentages could be added to produce the figures that you provide. Also, should 20 % be 10 %?
The link goes to a summarized article about self-reported crime among spiritual vs religious vs neither.
I would need to work hard to support but, it seems I have seen past reports that christians lack accuracy when self-reporting the crimes they have committed.
This is probably a dead post, by now, but I’m just catching up on this debate, and it’s of some interest to me (I study epistemic logic,) so I thought I’d post a (long) something.
“If science—and by that I mean science broadly construed: a combination of observation, testing, and repeatability—is not the only route to determining the truth (and by “truth” I mean “what exists in the universe”), I want to know what is.”
How about “I exist”?
That seems to be knowable if anything is, it’s definitely about what kind of entities exist in the universe (though that’s a very nonstandard definition of truth) and it fails the observation, testing, and repeatability criteria (though that’s a very nonstandard definition of science, even broadly construed.)
“…insupportable claim that there are objective moral truths.”
Here’s an argument for the existence of objective moral reasons:
1) it is possible that there are objective moral reasons
2) if there are objective moral reasons, there are some things which we ought to do that we know we ought to do
3) 1 and 2 provide a reason to do some things, and this is an objective moral reason
so
4) there are objective moral reasons.
Here’s an argument for the existence of objective moral facts:
1) for some x, either x is wrong or x is not wrong (bivalence)
2) in either case, there is a moral fact about x
so
3) there are moral facts
if you reject one, then you either reject bivalence or you claim that ethical claims are not truth-valued. In this case, I think the onus is on you to explain why our ordinary semantics doesn’t apply to the apparently semantically normal speech act “x is wrong,” and how a nonpropositional gloss of “x is wrong” can explain the (putative) truth of embeddings like “if x is wrong, then getting someone to do x is wrong.”
TL;DR: Logic and analytic ethics seem like they are probably knowledge-conducive nonscientific fields.