I won’t prolong my dispute with Eric MacDonald about whether we have free will, whether our behavior is truly deterministic, or whether there are “ways of knowing” other than empirical observation and reason (science construed broadly). I’ll just post and comment briefly on two statements that he made in his response to my critique of his views on Monday. These appear in yesterday’s piece on his site Choice in Dying, a piece called “Lurching sideways.”
#1. Responding to a famous characterization of “scientism” in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Eric says this:
“Nobody espouses scientism it is just detected in the writings of others.”
This, I am sad to say, is not true, as a number of recent remarks by Steven Pinker, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins have suggested, and all the discussion around this issue has not convinced me that Kitcher, Haack, Hughes, etc. are wrong in their belief that scientism is a growing problem. I happen to think that any doctrinaire belief system is a problem – even one that gives the palm of victory to science. Science is a marvellous human achievement. It also constitutes a problem, and may, indeed — the signs are ominous — spell the end of human life as we know it on this rapidly overcrowding, polluted planet. How long does it take to “kill” an ocean? Does anyone know? And what would be the effect of that on life on this planet? Yet it seems that we are well on the way to acidifying the ocean so ruinously as to make it uninhabitable by the creatures that make their home there, without knowing how quickly this essential ecosystem could collapse. You may say that these consequences are the result of the misuses of science, or the continued hegemony of religion, but that is not at all clear. However, I think the dehumanising possibilities of doctrinaire scientific atheism are just as real as the dehumanising possibilities of religious tyranny. Indeed, the sheer power of science makes the dangerous effects of scientific dogmatism even more likely.
So science is responsible for polluting the oceans? And enablers of science, like Pinker, Dawkins, and I, are implicated in this? Really, isn’t this the result of human greed (dumping crap into the oceans and overfishing)? How can we make science responsible for that? We might as well, as Steve Pinker said, indict architecture as responsible for the Nazi gas chambers. The problems here are technology in the hands of immoral or greedy people. Do we blame toolmakers because people have used shovels, chisels, and hammers to murder people, or chemists for gas attacks in World War I?
And as for the “danger of doctrinaire scientific atheism” and its supposed similarity to religious tyranny, all I can say is that no “scientific atheist” has ever threatened to kill somebody, bombed marathons, shot girls for going to schools, or flown planes into buildings. (Note, too, Eric’s subtle transformation of “doctrinaire scientific atheism” into “scientific dogmatism.” Where did the “atheism” go?) Are climate-change denialists “scientific dogmatists,” too? What about creationists?
Both of Eric’s claims above are so ludicrously wrong, and yet so similar to those made by theologians (“science does stuff as bad as religion does”, and “science is just as fundamentalist as the worst forms of Christianity”), that I am wondering if Eric really is undergoing a confluence with theology. He may still reject God, but he adopts the same arguments theologians use against science to protect their god.
#2: About determinism:
There is far more evidence, if you take philosophical reasoning to be a rational kind of critical enquiry that provides evidence in the form of reasons, for “compatibilist” free will, than there is for outright determinism, if it even makes sense to “speak” in terms of determinism. I assume, therefore, that determinism is merely a doctrinaire or dogmatic claim, and should be, for that reason, rejected, until there is some evidence one way or the other for affirming one or the other stance as true.
Really, we should reject determinism until more evidence is in? Has Eric ever flown in a plane, dropped a rock, played pool, or cut himself? The consequences of such actions are pretty much predictable, and much of our technology—technology Eric must use—depends on physical processes whose results are absolutely predictable.
The statement that there is far more evidence for “compatibilist” free will—a concept that varies among philosophers and cannot necessarily be confirmed empirically—than for physical determinism is simply silly. In fact, it’s not even wrong.
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“… indict architecture as responsible for the Nazi gas chambers.” Effen hilarious. You know what I mean.
Great, wonderful and, most of all, intelligent.
Thank Hitchens that you are on our team.
I’m saddened by the process I’ve been watching over the past few months over at “Choice in Dying”. I’ve been a regular commenter at the site, drawn in by Eric’s position on the right to assisted suicide and his usually-clear criticism of Christianity and Islam. But something has triggered a deep seated fear in his thinking. I’m frustrated by his strange defenses for ambiguous “other ways of knowing” and appeals to hold on to some unclear jewels in religion. I don’t get it.
When anyone uses “other ways of knowing” once it abuses reason and, at least temporarily, makes a philosophically trained mind seem less rigid and permeable to mistakes.
If the phrase is overused by an individual then I think of him or her as not a careful thinker and possible misguided. I do not think Eric is, but maybe he is just trying to piece together why consciousness is so marvelous but is at a loss for how to quantify ways of knowing.
I may be wrong, but it seems that E. MacDonald had regressed after his brief hiatus of ending his blogging half a year ago. A damn shame.
There is something rather odd going on here. When people agreed with Eric’s criticisms of religion he was claimed to be “insightful” and a good “critical thinker.” But now that he holds some views people disagree with he is described as having “fear” in his thinking and “having regressed.” This strikes me as a little too convenient for those who disagree with him. I don’t think Eric’s critical faculties have regressed one bit. He merely thinks that the evidence tilts in a different direction.
Perhaps it is reminiscent of what happened with Anthony Flew.
Well that’s a bit harsh!
I did say perhaps, but if it were attributable to the aging process, it would seem to leave him less to blame than other possibilities.
I prefer to think of it as a temporary bout of cognitive indigestion. Eric is a pretty bright fellow, except on those subjects where we disagree. 😉
That’s funny gbjames. I was suggesting above that people were being unfair to Eric with their comments. But your comment here suggests something different was going on.
Whatever the relationship between Jerry and Eric turns out to be, I’ll always consider him to be my cousin.
Science is not a ‘way of knowing’. It’s a way of checking what you think you know.
If divine revelation existed, we’d be able to conduct scientific experiments to figure out who did have divine revelation, and who didn’t. Same for psychic powers, and eastern mystical experiences. Those are ways of knowing besides our senses, but they are all equally amenable to the way of checking this is called science.
Science is not just looking through microscopes. It’s what you do once you already done that. It’s a way of making sure you aren’t making mistakes, avoiding personal bias, and only ever reporting that which you can actually back up, complete with an admission of exactly how likely it is that you are wrong.
I’ve had enough of these ‘other ways of knowing’. Give me another way to check that you aren’t wrong, then we’ll talk.
In other words… “a way of knowing” if what you think is true.
About this:
Firstly, “compatibilism” entails determinism; that’s what it asserts compatibility (of free will) with. Second, all of you talking about determinism, how it is clearly this or clearly that and how it is fatal for “free will” or maybe not—please, please, PLEASE read Dan Dennetts’s chapter on that question in Freedom Evolves (again) and engage his actual arguments why determinism is irrelevant for the free will question!
Can you summarize it?
I am abroad for a couple of days, I haven’t got it with me, and I don’t think I could do it justice without the text in front of me.
Oh well, worth a shot. 🙂
I remember it being not convincing. I found the whole book disappointing, though.
I find Eric tends to vacillate between strict deterministic compatabilism when pressed on his conception of free will and shades of contra-causal free will when attempting to draw wider conclusions. He does deny dualism, but he does want to retain an immunity from determinism for human choices, and only provides arguments from ignorance or consequences as evidence that a non deterministic process could exist for human decisions. I guess the latest piece can also add ad hominem accusations to the list.
It is all very goal oriented reasoning, in my opinion.
“Firstly, “compatibilism” entails determinism; that’s what it asserts compatibility (of free will) with.”
I’m taking a cue from scientism against theology:
How do you know this?
E.g. how do we test “entailment” to see if it has any meaning?
I forgot to say that I accept determinism naturally. But Eric just made me give up on the usefulness of compatibilism (see below).
So I’m trying to get a feeling for the new ground.
I’m not quite there yet, but I suspect that is because of the myriad of free will definitions.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but it seems like you are asking “how do you know what the definition of compatibilism is?”
This ends up as an unintentional equivocation, I think: you are mixing up determinism as it is used in physics with determinism as it is used in the free will debate. Yes, compatibilism accepts determinism in the physical sense, that everything is determined, but it does not accept the determinist position with respect to free will, which is essentially that the world is deterministic in the physical sense — which, again, compatibilism accepts — but that there is no meaningful notion of free will (or choice) that is compatible with physical determinism, and so we don’t have meaningful free will.
So in this case, there’s a question of if you can in any way describe human behviour from a strict, free will determinist position in a way that makes any sense at all.
Not if you define the problem away, obviously. But that is explicitly begging the question.
Sure, you can go on and on about a self-contradictory concept (spooky free will) and tell people how we don’t have that. If only then you’d tell them that we don’t have that free will because it is self-contradictory. But what usually happens is that opponents of compatibilism (unfortunately, Jerry does this too) say that we don’t have any free will—as if the self-contradictory definition were the only one that could be meaningfully talked about.
As I have said before:
What you (and Jerry) are doing is to insist that ‘freedom’ may only ever mean one thing, in this case: being suspended from a skyhook. But that’s impossible, which is exactly why Dennett explains at length that freedom (in a meaningful sense) must evolve. To insist that this evolved thing cannot be freedom is like saying that ‘species’ can only mean something separately created, because that’s what “the whole world has meant for thousands of years” when they used the word. In the case of ‘free will’, they didn’t even do that (cf. the robot example). But as the ‘species’ example shows, how many people have used a word in a certain way is irrelevant anyway, as long as we can educate them about how to understand it properly and about what its limitations are.
I’m really not sure how this is relevant. Your first paragraph seems to be advocating against “defining the problem away”, but one of the main counters to compatiblism is that they, indeed, do just that: try to define out the contradictions and maintain the word/concept and its normal implications despite using an entirely different meaning. Hard determinists and libertarians, for example, would argue against compatiblists like Dennett by pointing out that he can use “freedom” in that other sense, but that it won’t maintain the properties that we’d need for it to matter in the free will debate. So, sure, the compatiblist claim is indeed that we should clarify the concept to get rid off the erroneous and extraneous add-ons, which is indeed what I was saying … but those who are considered “determinists” in the free will debate will REJECT that project. Thus, compatiblism does not in any way entail THAT sort of determinism, and so your paragraph is at best misleading and at worst confuses the two positions.
» verbosestoic:
one of the main counters to compatiblism is that they, indeed, do just that
That would be a fair charge if, as opponents of compatibilism often claim, pretty much everybody actually believed in spooky (i.e. contra-causal) free will. Which, as I have said, is demonstrably untrue. There may be a few religious fanatics who think that they can just wish this or that away or into being, but they are hardly representative. They’re not negligible either, mind you, which is why I’d appreciate Jerry’ and others’ pointing out that there is no (and can be no) such thing as contra-causal free will. Normal people, though, are aware that their actions depend on preceding causes. I can’t will myself to fly nor to play the piano like Horowitz nor to think as well as Einstein. We know that we are limited. And again, I’d appreciate anybody’s poiting out that we are more limited than we often think. Fair enough. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t interesting differences in the degrees of freedom between a bacterium, a dog, and a human. Using the term ‘free will’ for that which we enjoy over and above our cousins seems to me to be eminently sensible, provided we also point out the (sometimes severe) limitations of that freedom.
As to the question of definitions, I think Russell Blackford got it right when he said:
As for determinism, see this comment for an idea what Dennett is getting at, with some help from David Deutsch thrown in.
I enjoyed reading Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves” but I can’t say I was totally convinced. Sure, if there is this thing, free will, it certainly must be an evolved thing. But that doesn’t make it exist in the first place. I still find myself inclined toward the “there ain’t no such thing” position.
Still, at the end of the day I don’t think this matters a whole lot. We all act as if it exists. It seems that we don’t really need to not believe in free will to come to a more ethical position on crime and punishment, which seems to be a prime motivator for the “no free will” position.
Or better, it is that *moral responsibility* (traditionally supported by contracausal free will) is compatible with determinism. Very few philosophers will claim not to care about the MR question and just about the metaphysics one. (Even me, and I wasn’t trained as an ethicist!)
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Well, let’s ask scientist to try to find that out, shall we?
I haven’t yet read Eric’s essay, but this passage you quote is clearly confusing the cautious, rigorous methods and process of science with technology run amok. If there is no inherent contradiction in an environmental scientist choosing to use his knowledge to live and advocate for a cleaner planet, then the charge of “scientism” needs to be reframed as “technophilia.”
Is there such a thing as “scientism” — people using science as if it were a religion?
There sure is. It’s called “pseudoscience.” Pseudoscience is
Look at it. Those are the methods, mindset, and motivations of RELIGION. They’re taking the superficial forms of the scientific process and mixing it up with the prescientific emphasis on unfalsifiable compartmentalized personal revelations. Cargo cult science.
In my opinion Eric MacDonald needs to stop attacking the New Atheists and go after the New Agers.
This.
There is no tool more effective at accomplishing your goals than the scientific method. What we’re doing to the oceans is no different from somebody deciding to clear a field by burning it, and not caring about the consequences. The fault lies not in the fire or even the knowledge of how to start the fire; the fault lies in not caring about the consequences.
b&
” . . . the fault lies in not caring about the consequences.”
I’ve yet to hear a hard-core religioso capitalist admit that the Earth has a finite carrying capacity. The CEO of Exxon-Mobil persists in claiming that global warming is simply “an engineering problem.”
It’s even worse than that.
I don’t think there’s an economist who doesn’t take it as a given that growth is natural and essential, with something in the range of 2% – 3% being the bare minimum for an healthy economy.
Yet 2% growth means a doubling every 35 years. We’ve already used up roughly half of the fossil fuel deposits that were in the ground at the start of the Industrial Revolution, and we’re using them at far and away the fastest rate we ever had. None of those numbers are controversial; at most, some might claim we’ve “only” used a third of total petrocarbon deposits. But you put them together, and we don’t even have enough left to get today’s children to retirement age at today’s rate.
And the universal assumption is that we must grow our way out of the crisis. How, exactly, we’re supposed to do that, nobody can explain…when it’s not totally ignored, there’s usually some sort of handwaving about thorium reactors, none of which are actually in commercial operation.
Even if we were to power the future with solar, which actually is abundant and cheap enough for the job, we’d still run out of room to put panels in just a couple centuries or so.
And let’s go ahead and wave a magic wand and assume we can expand into space, entirely unlimited by anything but our imaginations, continuing our steady 2%-ish growth. In significantly less time than it’s been since we first made beer — less time, even, than since the Christians would have us believe YHWH sneezed on some dirt — we’d overrun the entire galaxy.
Insanity. Sheer, pure, unadulterated insanity.
If humanity is to survive, we will have no choice but to adopt a steady-state economy, ideally after no small bit of contraction. We might still be able to achieve that through planning and foresight…but nobody is even acknowledging the necessity! Which means, if we do survive at all, it will be despite resource exhaustion and population crashes and all the strife and conflict and misery that will accompany it all.
b&
The big issue with all of these things is that there’s no really clear definition of “scientific method” that I can use to evaluate that claim. So what, to you, entails the scientific method? How can I tell if a tool is scientific or not? What are the essential properties/considerations when making that determination?
Your statement is meaningless unless you can do that, and do that clearly, because I can’t agree or disagree with that statement until I know what’s included.
At its most basic, science is the apportionment of belief in proportion with a rational analysis of empirical observation. Different fields have their own favored methods for making and analyzing the observations, with the gold standard being repeatability. Drop various objects from various heights and plot the time it takes them to reach the ground. Plot the results, and they’ll fit Newton’s predictions to within the limits of the precision and accuracy of your measurements. Do this for yourself, and you’ve just confirmed, to within those limits, Newtonian gravitational theory. (If you wish to confirm Relativistic gravitational theory, you’re going to need a significantly more sophisticated experiment, of course.)
Cheers,
b&
I worry that it may come across as nitpicking, but I have to disagree with that definition of science:
1) I don’t think that science, itself, is about apportioning beliefs at all. You can apportion beliefs scientifically, but in and of itself science is not about forming or apportioning beliefs. That’s the nitpicking part, but it’s important because …
2) Science, in and of itself, doesn’t seem to actually have room for “beliefs”. In science, it seems to me that you either have a fact or you have something that is not yet properly confirmed. So, either you know it scientifically — which does not require certainty — or it’s just one hypothesis that may be more or less probable based on the evidence, but that unless the probability at least rises over a certain percentage — and a fairly high one — that’s still an unconfirmed hypothesis, and not to be accepted in any way as being “true” or even “likely true”.
Thus, to me, if I was going to apportion my beliefs scientifically I would never be able to believe that I didn’t know to be true, but in everyday life that isn’t going to work unless we set the standards for knowledge so low that under some conditions even theism becomes knowledge. Thus, to get around in my everyday life we need another tool. And fortunately, we have them. For everyday reasoning, I reject the “skeptical” part of science; I don’t have to apportion beliefs on the basis of the empirical evidence or even evidence for them, as long as I treat it as a belief and not as knowledge. That allows me to act as if certain propositions are true without having to test them to a very high standard initially, and let reality correct me if I’m wrong. It also allows me to have faith in people, where the evidence for a specific proposition — ie A is a murderer — may be high but based on my judgement of them and their character I conclude that, even so, I cannot believe that of them.
Additionally, we have philosophy, which allows me to examine concepts and conceptual issues rationally without having to dwell on or rely on empirical data. So, say, if I want to know what set of traits is required to call something a vampire, I don’t have to rely on what people THINK a vampire is, nor on actual observations OF vampires — a good thing, since they DON’T exist — but on an empirically informed but not empirically determined or justified conceptual analysis. Which, since people may have ideas of vampires that don’t make sense and so need not be included, is ALSO a good thing.
Thus, two additional tools that, in certain contexts, are MORE useful than even your definition of science. Science is a useful tool, but sometimes it just isn’t going to get us where we need to go. That’s not a flaw in science, but just a reflection of what it’s designed for. For other purposes, we need other tools.
I’m referring to the error bars, there.
With theories for which the evidence is so overwhelming that the human mind can’t really appreciate the number of zeroes on the chances of it being in error — say, Evolution or the various forms of Mechanics in their respective domains — we might as well simply refer to it as absolute knowledge.
But the scientific method also encompasses, for example, drug trials. And, there, you should, for example conditionally believe that a certain drug is likely to provide a certain benefit and might be accompanied by a certain set of side effects. But, obviously, such beliefs can’t at all be absolute.
That’s what I mean by apportioning belief in proportion with the rational analysis of empirical observation. Make empirical observations; analyze the results rationally; and align your beliefs with the error bars.
I’ll toss a brief nod out there to “intuition.” Our brains are capable of some remarkable heuristic analyses, and often do a very reasonable job at teasing probabilities from cursory analyses of incomplete sets of data. Lacking anything better, intuition should not be neglected. But, the instant you have something better, you should trust that which is better over your intuition.
Faith, of course, is mostly an exercise in believing things because you like the way that belief makes you feel. It’s astonishingly short-sighted, and is something that people really should grow out of about the same time they learn to make the trip to the toilet in the middle of the night rather than soil the bed.
Cheers,
b&
Well, here’s the issue I see. Imagine that we have a scientific study that shows that feeding Cheetos to lab rats resulted in a statistically relevant number of them developing cancer more than those that didn’t. So, you might get a chain of reasoning that says that it cound increase the risk of cancer in rats, and so might increase the risk of cancer in humans. And so someone might come to believe that Cheetos cause cancer in humans. This would be a not unreasonable belief — though it isn’t knowledge — but it wouldn’t be a scientific belief, because science itself, if science can be said to believe anything, doesn’t actually believe that. It’s a long way from trials with rats to trials with humans, and even the initial study would require more replication and varied trials to demonstrate anything, and it certainly wouldn’t be part of any kind of scientific theory or anything. So, that belief would not be scientific, but it would be scientifically informed. Would that belief be reasonable, or one that should be rejected until we hit a level of evidence that science would accept? If it is reasonable, then we can have reasonable non-scientific beliefs, which would require non-scientific tools for their formation.
As for faith, I’m referring to faith in people, which has no necessary bearing on how it makes you feel. For example, you might have some evidence that your spouse is cheating on you, like them meeting with an old flame secretly in, say, a motel room, and so on. Not enough to KNOW that they are cheating on you, but enough to at least make thinking that they are or might be reasonable. But you might believe that they aren’t because you think you know them and have faith in their good qualities and in them that they wouldn’t do such a thing. Is that an unreasonable belief, as long as you accept that you don’t know? It may not even make you feel better, but may simply be what your worldview pushes you to accept about them. Is that wrong? Must you believe that they ARE cheating on you? Or must you believe nothing?
If you are unwilling to have faith in others at all, that seems to be something that would cause you major issues living in society, because faith in others and trust in others go hand-in-hand.
To use your Cheetos example, yes, one should provisionally suspect that eating them might increase the risk of cancer in humans. But one should also be sure to keep one’s mental error bars for the extrapolation to humans wider than whatever the study found in rats. You would be just as foolish for dismissing out of hand the possibility that Cheetos might increase the risk of cancer in humans merely because the study was performed in rats.
Ultimately, there is no certainty, not even that the Sun will rise or that mass / energy is conserved. You could well be a brain in a vat in a radically different universe, and there’s no way to rule out such a possibility. From a practical perspective, though, it is quite reasonable to simply assume absolute certainty about celestial mechanics and conservation and other sorts of things.
The findings of medical research are generally nowhere near as overwhelmingly conclusive; as such, you should, shall we say, lean in the indicated direction but not commit yourself to it.
And, as always, there’s the cost / benefit analysis. Even if the study is repeated in humans with identical results, if it turns out that eating Cheetos increases your chances of getting, say, melanoma by 10%…and you’re a dark-skinned woman who rarely ventures outside and loves Cheetos, you may well not care about going from a 1:100,000 risk of getting a relatively benign and treatable disease to a 1:10,000 risk. But if you’re a redheaded middle-aged man who works outdoors and already has a history of melanoma, you might decide to avoid them like the plague even if a follow-up study in humans can’t replicate the results in rats.
Cheers,
b&
The didactic merits of Bunge’s “rule based on law” discussion (see, e.g., _Social Science Under Debate_) here really helps:
Consider a law statement of the form “if A then B”. This is the simplified form of any finding in science (internal structure matters in most cases, but not here). Consequently it allows for *two* rules, depending on whether or not one evaluates B as desirable. If B is such, then provoking A will be a means (potentially) for getting it. If B is not, then A is to be avoided. (Note that does not entail of course that B will not happen, just that it won’t by that route.)
Bunge limits this to ethical values since he regards esthetic ones too subjective to worry about. In my view, both are relevant what one is doing when one decides to do A or not. Namely, technology. (If one’s statement B if A is not scientifically grounded and comes from ordinary experience, etc. one might be doing craft instead.)
Consequently –
Law statement: If one burns hydrocarbons, the ocean acidifies.
Policy (technology) 1: Acidification of the ocean is a good thing. Hence burn more hydrocarbons.
Policy (technology) 2: Acidification of the ocean is a bad thing. Hence refrain from burning hydrocarbons.
Science does not answer which of these one should do, etc. But now that it is explicit, we can debate matters.
Egg sac lily.
b&
It seems Eric has gone off the rails with regards to science and atheism. Hopefully he still is on the right track regarding the right to die. This is all disappointing and sad.
Does anyone know Eric’s age? And how much emotional support he receives from peers in person? How is is his health? It’s been 7 years since his wife chose to end her life. Perhaps that’s taking it’s toll. In fact, it’s inevitable that it would. It certainly would for me. I don’t mean to minimize his thoughts on scientism, etc. which have changed so radically over the past few years, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis, especially when he seems to be moving more towards a religion-like state of mind.
“moving towards a religion-like state of mind”??
What is that supposed to mean? The fact that Eric thinks there are problems with something called “scientism” has no connection with any views he holds about religion. There are well known individuals who have suggested that scientism is a problem and regardless of whether they are right (that’s not the issue I’m trying to argue) those complaints having nothing to do with religion. Philip Kitcher, PZ Meyers, Massimo Pigliuici, and Eric are all atheist and have raised concerns about scientism. I don’t think the reference to religion is helpful here if I may be permitted to say this. It seems to me that Eric has just come to believe that certain views about scientific materialism are not convincing.
I’m sure you meant all that kindly. You should know, though, that what you said could be interpreted as a massive ad hominem attack cloaked in bogus sympathetic consideration. Better to stick to the arguements rather than speculate on a person’s mental health.
#2. What? The only evidence we have is for determinism, not against.
Maybe there is a confusion about what determinism constrains. For example, determinism does not change the fact that everyone acts as if they have free will. Even if someone thinks they have no free will, they still act like they do. Eric, I think, might be trying to understand why it is that everyone acts as if they have free will.
It always bothers me when someone blames science for problems that we wouldn’t even recognize as problems, without science
And, as if humans weren’t trashing ecosystems long before the rise of science.
Good point.
Yes, and it bothers me too when they don’t follow through to were the real problem originates.
It’s them damned god veg e table farmers what is providing nourishment to them scientificators, that’s the problem right there. Why them scientificators don’t even have any other ways a knowing. Eric has all them fancy dancy other ways a knowing, he oughta have some way a knowing that them damned god veg e table farmers is what’s a feed’n them scientificators.
Blaming science, Eric you should be ashamed of yourself, you’ve been listening to that christian Rush Lintspa again haven’t you?
Science is neither doctrinaire nor a belief system. Do some people treat the conclusions science comes to dogmatically? Ok, sure. But that’s a problem with human behavior. Science is a method.
What does Eric want? For us to stop investigating the world around us with as much objectivity as we can achieve? For us to stop trying to remove bias, prejudice, and illusion from our observations? For us to try to improve quality of life by reading William Blake?
Oops. You beat me to it.
Science is about finding out how reality works. How its knowledge is applied, though it can and should be informed by science, is not science.
Eric’s argument reduces down to “too much knowledge is dangerous.”
Last round indeed.
At this point I do not even know what Eric means by sceintism or who these nefarious people are that want to end all the endeavors of the humanities and poison all the oceans of the world.
Was there ever anyone who refused to read poetry because it had no equation? Has anyone ever refused to listen to music because they could assign no measurement to their enjoyment of it? Where are the people Eric is defending us from? I notice he had nothing at all so say about Dr. Coyne’s enjoyment of literature, which turned his whole initial argument on it’s head.
As best I can tell he wants some magic “truth” value to be assignable to his armchair pondering that is forever beyond the ken of those who want to actually verify their results with actual experimentation. Apparently he is now willing to directly attack science in order to pursue this desire.
No doubt fire has caused immense damage over the course of human history, but were we really better off without it? If Eric has been backed so far into a corner as to start charging the enterprise of science with responsibility for global pollution I can’t take anything else he has to say on sceintism, materialism, determinism, or free will at all seriously any more.
I think that what Eric seems to forget is that the people who are most passionate about a particular subject, be it science, poetry, art, music, film, etc. tend to be very knowledgeable about said subject. I love cinema and did a Film Studies course at college, I know the how films are made and far from diminishing my enjoyment I find it enhances it, adds another layer to it you could say.
Maybe he slept next to a pod…
While I think you make a credible case that Eric errs in laying too many “sins” at the doorstep of science and attributing those to scientism, I also think that your implication – that there is more evidence for determinism than there is for “compatibilist free will” – doesn’t hold all that much water. Not quite cricket to point to clear cases of deterministic events – “dropped a rock”, “flown in a plane” – and suggest that all cases must necessarily exhibit the same attributes – “the problem of induction”.
But, for instance, as I argued on Eric’s post “A bit more on Jerry Coyne”, it seems that the quite credible engineering and scientific concept of “degrees of freedom” suggests that humans – and other animals for that matter – likewise have such degrees: we are apparently not “free” to not eat, but we apparently have choices on where and what and when to do so. I don’t think it helps or is particularly credible to be insisting on either “libertarian free-will” or “lock-step determinism” – which I think qualifies as a decidedly “false dichotomy”.
In addition, as at least suggestive evidence, there is the phenomenon of emergence – if I’m not mistaken, you took part in a conference not long ago initiated by Massimo Pigliucci on the question, and on which I don’t recollect you commenting. But in any case, there seems to be massive amounts of evidence – phonons, for example – that suggests that, under certain conditions, collections of parts can possess significant degrees of autonomy and causal efficacy. Buttressing that argument, and possibly part of the process of emergence although I’ve not seen any suggestion to that effect, there is the well-regarded mathematical technique of “Cantor diagonalization” – Turing got good mileage out of it – that again suggests a process whereby we are – to some degree – caused, but in the nonlinear combinations, possess some degree of primary causation of our own – i.e., possessing some degree of choice and thereby free will.
Seems that we are all, each of us, substantially more than the sum of our parts – and in that credible, and apparently well-evidenced, hypothesis, I think there is more than enough “wiggle-room” for some degree of free-will.
Also, in passing though of some relevance, I think that both you and Eric are making heavy weather out of the concept “different ways of knowing”. Seems to me that what you are both referring to are cases of induction and deduction – you might wish read P. B. Medawar’s “The Art of the Soluble” which develops and discusses what he suggests is the essence of all human cognition, “the hypothetico-deductive method”:
The religious, the theologians, make heavy use of the induction part, but they seriously drop the ball, maybe by intent, in failing to use deduction to determine whether their intuitions, their inductions and leaps-of-faith, hold any water. Which they generally don’t – garbage in, garbage out, and all that. But as Medawar, and many others argue, that induction, that use of intuition, to obtain the hypotheses which are the starting points for the scientific method, is also an integral part of science – even if it seems to be deprecated somewhat.
By default or by the work of a life led?
Different degrees, I think: 10,000 (for example) by default on birth; 10,000,0000 or more at later stages, maybe dependent on how well we have examined our lives and our assumptions and beliefs.
I wonder who has ever scored the most free will points.
Last question; Is your free will lesser if you’re disabled or have a disease?
Maybe the one least influenced by the illusions and delusions of the tribe.
Possibly – at least generally speaking: if you’re on crutches then your choices of locomotion are further circumscribed; do take look at the Wikipedia articles on “degrees of freedom”. Also, one might argue that those of us under various compulsions – drug, alcohol or sex addictions, for examples – have fewer choices and less free will, that our actions are a consequence of programming rather than choice – something which seems integral to jurisprudence. You might wish to search for Carruther’s description of the behaviour of the sphex wasp for examples of lock-step programming.
I’m wondering how you pick a point/number and make that the defining value of free will in any particular situation.
What empirical observations/data lies behind the math of free will and is it on an infinite scale of measurement?
So if you’re born with a handicap or a disease, then you have some catching up to do compared to a healthy specimen?
What is your prime specimen and what did it score on your free will test?
Who said anything about necessity? You can liken the situation to a horse race. One horse (naturalism) has won the last several thousand races. In fact, its won every ‘race for an explanation’ we’ve ever run. The other horse (supernaturalism) has never won any race for explanation, and its competed in those thousands of races. Now, its possible that supernaturalism will win the the next race. But if you ask the question “which is the favorite for the next race,” there is only one, very clear, answer. Past deterministic events very much do support the notion that determinism is the favored horse in the race for an explanation for consciousness.
Phonons do not show “autonomy” in the sense of nondeterminism. In fact this example completely undermines your point, as their behavior is geterally calculable and predictable. I think you are mixing up different concepts here. Phonons are autonomous in the sense of an effect which can be seen in a wide variety of substrates. So they don’t necessarily depend on the type of atoms in the substrate. But they are not autonomous in the sense of being free to choose their path. A good analogy might be the period of a pendulum. Is the period a real thing? We can attach a number to it. We can use it to predict behavior. Well, no; its just a description of the motion of real things. That’s what a phonon is.
Likewise, you seem to be misunderstanding the concept of emergence. It does not imply freedom of action and – once understood – tends to be very predictable and calculable. Pressure, temperature, and viscosity are emergent propertes. Does their existence mean that gasses and liquids have a form of free will?
If I’m not mistaken, Jerry certainly seemed to imply it: “If falling rocks and flying planes are clear cases of deterministic action then all cases must perforce be likewise.” Why else would he have offered those cases except to lead his interlocutors or readers to that conclusion or inference? As suggested, the problem of induction – asserting that if one sees that 4 swans are white then all swans are white – which seems to qualify as a non-trivial issue in philosophy: “Generalizing about the properties of a class of objects based on some number of observations of particular instances of that class ….”
Who said anything about supernaturalism? “More in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy, Horatio.” Even within the realm of “naturalism”.
Seems that “generally calculable” covers a “multitude of sins” since my readings of emergence suggests that the concept is useful simply because “calculable” frequently no longer holds. You may wish to review P. W. Anderson’s seminal work in the field. You might also want to search Rationally Speaking for those discussions I referred to earlier.
Certainly seems to be a rather complex and active topic on which many more versed and knowledgeable individuals than I have waxed poetic, perplexed, and profound. But neither I, nor seemingly they, are insisting that supposedly, apparently, emergent properties such as free will and consciousness are the same as emergent properties like phonons and liquids, only that they are analogous, that they are the consequences of similar processes.
I wonder would that apply to the superstition of Lesvs Christ?
Your fist comment sparked a bit of interest in me but subsequently your comments have devolved into avoidance of the questions. Why is that the case?
The cases DO and SHOULD read people to expect determinism in unexplained phenomena, because determinism has been the most successful expanation in the past – as I said, it’s the favorite in the race.
But you said “all cases must necessarily exhibit the same attributes…,” and philosophical necessity is not what scientists argue. We’re well aware of the problem of induction. All our conclusions are tentative and subject to revision should new evidence arise. Nevertheless, JAC is right in that the best conclusion about consciousness based on a consideration of the comparable success of deterministic vs. nondeterministic in the past, leads to the inductive, tentative, subject-to-revision, yadda yadda yadda conclusion that the explanation for consciousness is going to be deterministic.
This may just be a case of quibbling over language. Jerry used very forceful language, and you took that to mean all the standard caveats about scientific knowledge didn’t apply. Withotu putting words in Jerry’s mouth, I’m pretty sure he’s making a scientific claim, not a claim of absolute philosophical necessity.
No known emergent processes yield freedom of action. So if consciouness is analogous to them, then its not free to act. Yours is a point of disanalogy, and none of the phenomena you cite as analogous to consciousness have the property you claim consciouness has. Thus, they are more rightly counterexamples. If its like a phonon, then we have no justifiable reason to expect it is free to act. If its like an emergent property then we have no justifiable reason to expect it is free to act.
I’m the first to note that folk psychology of “will” is story telling.
But I used to maintain it was useful, as a shorthand device. The correlation to philosophical story telling, which I maintain is harmful and especially for science, convinces me that I should give up toy models when they conflict with basal ones.
Thanks Eric! You have made me deconvert from yet another unsupported notion.
My bold. Why would anyone mistake reasoning for evidence? One is the raw material, the other is the processer.
If you’re counting philosophical reasoning as evidence, that very likely means you are treating the premises of those arguments as true and the argument as sound – rather than saying the conclusions are conditionally true if the premises turn out to be true. Seems to me there is real danger here in accidentally (or intentionally) treating some philosopher’s premise or hypothesis as if it was observed fact, before it is confirmed.
If you want to include philosophy, you should unpack the premises on which philosophical arguments for free will are based. Then you ask whether those premises are observationally supported or not. You don’t treat the entire, conditional, argument as a bit of evidence. That’s just silly.
Eric, that’s not what the paragraph you quote from is suggesting. The point is not that there are arguments people have offered and those arguments themselves count as evidence or something. I agree that wouldn’t make sense. The point is that there is evidence in the form of “reasons” for believing something. An example of a compatibilist reason or piece of evidence would be the fact that many people commonly understand the term “freedom” to mean “not constrained.” In other words, there is evidence that people agree with compatibilists about the meaning of the term freedom in the discussion. Surely that counts as a piece of evidence in this discussion worth considering.
But we are constrained. That is pretty much the entire point – we first observe that every other process going on inside humans (and the universe) is constrained by the laws of physics. This observation leads to the natural and obvious inductive conclusion that our consciounesses processes are likewise constrained. Being inductive, that conclusion might be wrong. But I would argue that calling it the current best conclusion based on the evidence is really not contestable. All past investigation is consistent with that future finding. All past investigation is inconsistent with any other finding. Its the favored horse. Possibly wrong? Yes. Unwarranted conclusion? No, unless you’re willing to throw out induction altogether.
Surely it doesn’t! Surely you are not suggesting that if people agree on the meaning of the term ‘unicorn,’ that (agreement) is evidence worth considering in the question of whether unicorns are real.
Eric, you are misunderstanding the point I was making since most of what you say here I don’t see as speaking to the issue. Nobody is talking about defining something into existence like your unicorn example, which is clearly absurd. The debate between the hard determinist (Coyne) and the compatibilist (Dennett, MacDonlad) concerns in part the “meaning” of the term “freedom”. The hard determinist thinks the only legitimate meaning of this term construes it as a special metaphysical ability to transcend the laws of nature and direct behavior. But the compatibilist says this definition is wrong since that’s not the correct way to think about the notion of freedom. So the debate here is about who is defining terms correctly. In THAT context, the fact that people often agree with the compatibilist about the meaning of the term is evidence worth considering. I don’t see what’s controversial about saying that.
It seems to me that the hard determinists in your example have at least given a reasonably well characterized definition. Insisting that definition is wrong is not productive. A much more progressive response would be to (1) first agree or disagree with whether humans have that capability, and discuss your reasons why. Then (2) offer an equally reasonably well characterized alternate definition, and ask Jerry et al. whether the humans have the capability you suggest.
We can even start that here! Do you, Couchloc, agree that humans do not have a special metaphysical ability to transcend the laws of nature and direct behavior? If you agree but that’s not how you define free will, you can now ask me if I think humans have a different reasonably well-defined capability of your choosing.
This sort of exchange might be a bit wordy, but it has the advantage of not bogging down a substantive discussion in semantic disagreements over the word ‘freedom.’
…It has the side effect of helping to reveal those individuals who are hiding within that semantic disagreement – i.e., attempting to imply a special metaphysical ability without having to defend it.
I’m not arguing in this discussion whether hard determinism or compatibilism is correct. I’m merely trying to explain to you what I think Eric’s original comment was about. His reference to “evidence” in his paragraph was not some confused way of saying that philosophical arguments count as their own evidence—which indeed makes no sense. Nobody I know is defending that position. Cheers.
I would not attempt to speak for Jerry, but my interpretation of his writings on the subject of “ways of knowing” makes me confident that he would agree 100% with what you say here. This is not the issue between his views on ways of knowing vs Eric’s and similar. The issue is partly different ideas about what is meant by the term “knowledge”, and partly by different ideas about whether or not something can be considered “knowledge” without being verified empirically.
Of course those two issues are related. When Jerry uses “knowledge” in this context he means something like “accurate information about the nature of reality.” He does not include the type of “knowledge” that some others claim is derived from experiencing a fine piece of literature or other art media. Those others very often think that therefore Jerry, and others with similar views on this issue, like me, do not value those types of human endeavours or their fruits. That is not true at all, of course.
Certainly a complex issue with many nuances (sorry about that Jerry), and one that I’ve generally only followed peripherally through various e-mail notifications of posts so I could well be mistaken in my conclusions or inferences.
However, as suggested, it seems that the bone of contention there was Eric’s suggestion that at least many of the “prognostications” of theologians, and the arguments of many in the humanities department were somewhat “birds of a feather” in being predicated on a separate “way of knowing”. And that, therefore, since the latter were given some credence, at least some of the former should be likewise.
Now while I can sympathize with Jerry’s apparent apprehension that that was “a bridge too far”, I can also sympathize with Eric’s suggestion that at least some of that “knowledge” in both spheres is not less credible or valuable for not being the result of the deductive processes of the scientific method per se. Although I’ll concede that, as you suggest, the definition of “knowledge” is somewhat problematic. However, I will argue that there have been a great many cases where science has been predicated on, or developed, as a result of intuitions that were borne out, that were proven to be accurate, by later developments. For instance, this passage from The Human Use of Human Beings by Norbert Wiener, one of the progenitors of the science of cybernetics:
Intuitions, not certain or “accurate information about the nature of reality”. Rather analogous, I think, to that “other way of knowing” that Eric seems to be promoting.
Which highlights my objective to define or elucidate what appears to be the common ground, i.e., varying degrees of reliance on both inductive and deductive modes of thinking. More specifically, it seems that many theologians, and many writers, poets, historians, and artists rely on significant levels of the former, i.e., the inductive or intuitive faculty. However, as I suggested with the GIGO reference, there is a very broad spectrum in the accuracy of that faculty, predicated on how many facts each user starts out with: very high with scientists formulating hypotheses, as with Gibbs and many others; moderate with writers basing their oeuvres on their knowledge of human nature, and whose success frequently depends on the degree with which people share or agree with that knowledge; and close to zilch with theologians prognosticating about the supposed nature, attributes and existence of various gods.
Seems that we’re not likely to get off the horns of that particular dilemma – the different “ways of knowing” – unless we try to find some common ground or method by analyzing each of them. And while induction and deduction might in themselves be somewhat of a false dichotomy, it certainly seems like they’re the best candidates so far for doing so.
Shouldn’t we distinguish “knowing” from “suspecting”? Intuitive stabs at explanation don’t really constitute knowledge from where I sit.
Which is exactly why Popper came up with a concept of Objective Knowledge. Traditional epistemology had used the term “knowledge” for states of mind, which are the stuff of what Popper later called “World 2”. The stuff of “World 3” is that which constitutes objective knowledge: problems, theories, their logical content and their logical relationships, critical arguments, etc.
(This is of course only a superficial sketch of the concept of “objective knowledge”. I highly recommend the book, though.)
Except that Popper takes it a bit too far in the sense the world 2 and 3 are reified. This is a mistake, as Bunge told him and bears repeating here. It makes it impossible to understand how we we’d be in touch with them (Plato’s problem again).
Would you care to share a quote of an actual argument with us?
Maybe. But how then to quantify the “suspecting”? Seems there is a bit of a spectrum there. And one which still seems to have a significant degree of subjectivity to it, depending on the cases in question. For instance, Norbert Wiener again:
In addition, you might peruse this Wikipedia article on something else from Lewis Carroll, apparently a well regarded mathematician so presumably no slouch on questions of underlying assumptions, that being his What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. The article notes:
Now parsing all of that is largely outside my salary range, but it, and Wiener’s assertions, seem to suggest virtually all knowledge has an element of “suspecting”, of taking stuff on some degree of faith. I think Eric errs in thinking that the degree of faith in science is just as great and just as problematic – with maybe some justification, at least in some cases: for want of a nail, the shoe was lost …. However, I think he has a point in noting some common ground there.
Which us where I’ll leave it; simpleminded fellow that I am, it seems to me that knowledge and suspicion are significantly different.
I suspect you know more than you’re letting on….
b&
I just know you’re right!
Significantly different the way the probability of me winning the lottery tomorrow is different from the probability that the sun will “rise” tomorrow: probably half-a-dozen orders of magnitude difference. But essentially the same in being probabilities, in not being certainties. Rather important, I think, to differentiate between those aspects.
I absolutely agree with this 100%. But I differ with your idea that this is an example of another way of knowing. I assert that the concepts / ideas / models, etc. that where inspired or arrived at by intuition can not reasonably be categorized as knowledge until such time as they are borne out, proven to be accurate. Until such time as that happens there is no reason to suppose the concept / idea / model is accurate or useful in any way. And that is science, broadly construed. Of course this gets back to just what do we mean by “knowledge” in this context.
Granted, it gets complicated fast. For example methods with a previous track record of returning useful, accurate information when previously applied to various phenomena may warrant some degree of confidence when applied to another similar phenomenon not yet well studied. We apportion confidence as best we can by using various tools that have proven track records, and then test some more.
I think it comes down to reason and logic are not enough by themselves. There are no limits if those are sufficient metrics. To determine what is useful and what is not you have to constrain things by testing against reality.
Darrelle wrote:
Seems that your definition of knowledge, at least one of them, is “that which is deductively proven”, empirical testing possibly being a case of that. But which is maybe a reasonable starting point.
However, even assuming that the rules of inference are logically coherent and consistent, the nature of the beast seems to be that those conclusions are very much dependent on a set of axioms, a set of assumptions. Which are, in themselves, somewhat akin to articles of faith, a manifestation or a result of some inductive processes that have happened “underneath the hood” – a classic example being Euclidean geometry which turned out not to be an accurate reflection of “reality”.
Which is why I object to your suggestion that that deductive process alone “is science, broadly construed”. And why I tried to emphasize the view of P. B. Medawar on science as “the hypothetico-deductive method”.
However, while it is maybe a case of splitting hairs, I think there is some significant difference between knowledge itself, and “ways of knowing” which was my original point – maybe the difference between a goal, and the methods of getting there. Although I’ll concede that the issues and degrees of proof and probability are of more than passing relevance. But, as a case in point, consider this story about the astronomer Fred Hoyle from Paul Davies’ The Mind of God:
That is, induction can be a “way of knowing” facts that are in fact “true”. “Proving” them seems to be an entirely different kettle of fish. The difference between induction, and deduction.
And the evidence suggests that “reason and logic” have their limitations. And which apparently need supplementing or complementing by “faith” or some judicious degree of “guessing”, of relying on intuition and inductive logic or reasoning.
Science is marvelous but could spell the end of life? Given human nature I would agree. Untrammeled exploitation of science purely for economic gain is a serious threat to human longevity. All political (power) systems are frighteningly open to doing massive harm to humans. All.
To paint Pinker, Dawkins and our host Jerry as three horsemen of evil is kind of funny. And kind of a complement. What, no fourth? No Dennett? Good Compatibilist he? But compatibilism is a truism. It’s facile to say that there is evidence for compatibilism but not for determinism per se. Reasoning by definition is rational but it is not evidence. Science knows the difference. Determinism is compatible with free will if “free” and “will” are not defined in metaphysical terms. Does Eric see that as a door to metaphysical freedom? Oh dear. Whatever would that mean? Dualism?
It must be demonstrated that it is meaningful to talk about these terms in terms of metaphysics. It is not doctrinaire to say that the will is not metaphysically free when all the neurological evidence says that every last atom of human consciousness is arranged in neural networks connecting different regions of demonstrable functionality.
+1
” if you take philosophical reasoning to be a rational kind of critical enquiry that provides evidence in the form of reasons”
This is at least as silly. Since Euclides we know that every conclusion reached only by means of deduction are only as valid as the assumptions (axioms, presuppositions, whatever). Reject them and you can shrug off the conclusions.
“Evidence in the form of reasons” indeed is not even wrong. It’s meaningless.
“a concept that …. cannot necessarily be confirmed empirically”
Defining a concept out of existence (us being materialists) is quite silly as well.
Blaming science for those very real problems is at least as bad as not blaming the real causes of those problems.
Overcrowding is I think more descriptively stated as human overpopulation. A good start at correcting that problem would be to get the christian and its “leaders” to stop advocating having more than one child per family and stopping governments from giving incentives to people that have children.
Pollution is the result of a combination of problems including greed, belief that the Earth is a temporary testing ground for an eternal life, economic systems that only value resources that can lead to financial gain, and disregard for future generations.
Eric may as well be supporting the problems when he directs the blame at an imagined cause instead of the actual causes of the human overpopulation and pollution of the planet.
Scientism is nothing to be ashamed of. Alex Rosenberg embraces it I think in
The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions
Wikipedia says
“In 2011 Rosenberg published a defense of what he called “Scientism”—the claim that “the persistent questions” people ask about the nature of reality, the purpose of things, the foundations of value and morality, the way the mind works, the basis of personal identity, and the course of human history, could all be answered by the resources of science. This book was attacked on the front cover of The New Republic by Leon Wieseltier as “The worst book of the year”.[14] Leon Wiseltier’s claim, in turn, was critiqued as exaggeration by Philip Kitcher in the New York Times Book Review.”
If Leon Wieseltier does not like it…!
He has also written
Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction
which looks interesting.
Well here is an article by the well known biologist PZ Myers who thinks scientism IS a problem. This should be read before forming any opinions in my view. The title of his article is “Repudiating scientism, rather than surrendering to it.”
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/08/repudiating-scientism-rather-than-surrendering-to-it/
» PZ:
Scientism is the idea that only science is the proper mode of human thought
Which exactly nobody is saying.
Here is a quote from Rosenberg’s book, which doesn’t agree with what you say:
“Science provides all the significant truths about reality, and knowing such truths is what real understanding is all about. … Being scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality, to nature—both our own nature and everything else’s.” (pp. 7-8)
But nobody — not even Rosenberg — is claiming that embracing reality means eschewing the pleasures of imagination and fantasy and wild creativity in all its myriad forms.
All we’re claiming is that, when it comes time to engage with the real world, science is the only reliable guide we have.
Cheers,
b&
Ben,
Nobody is talking about the pleasures of imagination and fantasy and all that in this context. We are talking about means for coming to understand the world. As PZ Myers says:
“Science is a fantastic tool…for probing material realities. Respect it for what it is. But please, also recognize that there’s more to the human experience than measurement and the acquisition of knowledge about physical processes, and that science is a relatively recent and revolutionary way of thinking, but not the only one….”
Erm, I think that’s another example of violent agreement.
If your goal is to understand reality, your best tool is science. But understanding reality isn’t the only activity humans pursue, and it’s not necessarily the best tool for those activities which don’t involve understanding reality. Right tool for the job and all that.
Or are you suggesting that there are other tools that can compete with science when it comes to understanding reality? Or that there are people who insist that the scientific method is best applied to situations where an understanding of reality is not desired?
Cheers,
b&
I’m not sure what you mean by “violent agreement.” Nor do I want to get into a large discussion of this whole issue at this moment. So let me just say this. There is some sense in which Meyers takes himself to be disagreeing with Pinker’s account in his first article. And Meyers puts this by saying that science is one way of thinking but not the only one. That seems relatively clear to me and worth saying. Cheers.
» couchloc:
scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality, to nature
That is not all there is to “human thought”. And not even Rosenberg claims it is.
“We might as well, as Steve Pinker said, indict architecture as responsible for the Nazi gas chambers. The problems here are technology in the hands of immoral or greedy people. Do we blame toolmakers because people have used shovels, chisels, and hammers to murder people, or chemists for gas attacks in World War I?”
This should also be applied to blaming gun makers for murder. Guns are tools and neutral, they can be used for positive or negative things. Blame the people that misuse them, not the tool.
Exactly. Guns can just as well be used to plant flowers and build houses as to kill people. And stop blaming the bomb makers already: they just sell tools that can be used for positive or negative things.
See you get it. Guns can be used for hunting, target shooting, home defense, personal defense, National defense. Lots of positive things. Blame the person, not the tool.
Bats and hammers like more people than rifles do. Should we blame Louisville Slugger or Estwing?
“Kill more people than rifles.”
Thanks, Nathan.
Pinker nailed it: “Scientism is a ‘boo’ word.”
It is a conversation killer, a rhetorical red herring on par with “Islamophobia”