Category: philosophy of science

Must we assume naturalism to do science?

April 1, 2013 • 6:45 am

Yonatan Fishman sent me a paper  (free online) that he’s just published with Maarten Boudry (they’re both philosophers, and we’ve discussed Boudry’s work before; see here and here).  The topic is of interest to both secularists and scientists: the claim that science can study only “natural” phenomena, and is powerless before supernatural ones.

If you’ve followed the science-vs.-creationism debates, you’ll know that they often involve disputes about the importance of “naturalism” in science. There are two brands of naturalism under discussion:

Methodological naturalism (MN): this is, as Fishman and Boudry (F&B) define it, “the view that science, by virtue of its methods, is limited to studying ‘natural’ phenomena and cannot consider or evaluate hypotheses that refer to supernatural entities.”

Ontological naturalism (ON; sometimes called “philosophical naturalism”): this is, as F&B note, “the metaphysical thesis that supernatural entities and phenomena do not exist.”

As you know if you’ve read this site before, I don’t adhere to the view that science should be wedded a priori to either of these views.  Although we do use the methods of reason, experimentation, replication, and so on to study phenomena in nature, we aren’t limited to studying purely natural phenomena—that is, unless, you define “natural phenomena” as those amenable to scientific investigation, in which case the claim becomes a tautology.

And indeed, scientists have studied “supernatural” or “paranormal” phenomena before, including ESP, intercessory prayer, and so on.

F&B agree, and argue in the paper that science can indeed study supernatural phenomena if one adheres to their definition of the supernatural:

Thus, for the sake of argument, we will adopt a working ‘umbrella’ definition of ‘supernatural’ as referring to entities or phenomena that possess one or more of the following characteristics: (1) They operate in ways that fundamentally violate our current understanding of how the world works, (2) they exist outside the spatiotemporal realm of our universe (though they may still causally interact with our universe), and (3) they suggest that reality is at bottom purposeful and mind-like, particularly in a sense that implies a central role for humanity and human affairs in the cosmic scheme. We neither expect that this definition will encompass all uses of the term, nor do we expect complete agreement on the characteristics we have included under it.

Their paper is a critique of an earlier paper in the journal by Martin Mahner (reference below), which argues that the supernatural is immune to scientific study.

Now some of you will argue, perhaps, that once a phenomenon is studied and confirmed by the methods of science, it must be natural rather than supernatural.  But, as I noted, that’s tautological, and untrue if one defines the “supernatural” as do F&B. Their definition of course includes religious assertions, so that stuff can indeed be studied by science. And it’s undeniably the case that science can and has studied things like PSI phenomena and intercessory prayer.  Science could study other supernatural phenomena, like miracles, rain dances, witchcraft, and so on, so that religious claims are not off limits. According F&B, science studies not what is natural, but what is real, and they prefer the term “ontological realism” to “ontological naturalism”. I agree:

However, we maintain that ontological realism, while it may partly explain the success of science, is a defeasible conclusion of science—one that is arrived at by consideration of the evidence. What makes something ‘real’, and not just a figment of our imagination or a social construction, is that it exhibits a consistent pattern irrespective of (or indeed in spite of) our subjective beliefs, thoughts, biases, or desires. Whether or not there are phenomena that fulfill this criterion is empirically discoverable through science. Ontological realism about the entities described by science is the conclusion of an inference to the best explanation on the basis of the available evidence, not a presupposition of science.

There are two important points here.

First, phenomena traditionally seen as “supernatural” and “religious” clearly fall within the ambit of science. Why is that important? For two reasons. First, it makes religious claims about what is “real” directly amenable to scientific study.  Granted, testing things like the Resurrection is difficult since they’re one-off claims (indeed, that’s why Christianity ultimately rests on that claim rather than other scriptural claims that can be easily refuted), but science has already tested and refuted other religious claims, like the instantaneous creation of life, the Great Flood of Noah, the Exodus from Egypt, the young age of the Earth, the existence of Adam and Eve, and so on. What are those besides supernatural claims?

This makes hash, then, of an important accommodationist argument: science and religion study different things, and science has nothing to say about religion. That’s the trope employed by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), the National Academy of Science (NAS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). But—pardon my French—that claim is garbage.  Many theologians (including Haught, Polkinghorne, and Swinburne) argue that religion does indeed make truth claims about reality, and thus these epistemic claims can be addressed by ontological realism.

Accommodationist organizations like the NCSE and NAS argue that science can’t address the supernatural for one reason alone: they want to show that religion and science can coexist harmoniously. If religious claims can be defined as outside the ambit of science, that makes it easier to accommodate them.

This is all very NOMA-esque, but it’s wrong.  Science has, can, and will continue to address the supernatural.  What else was the Templeton-funded study of intercessory prayer (a study, by the way, that showed no effect of prayer)?

I once discussed this issue with Eugenie Scott, head of the NCSE, and she had no response. She kept insisting that science can’t address the supernatural, despite my demonstration to her that it can and does. In fact, her claim is based on politics rather than on science or philosophy: the assertion that science assumes MN is meant to immunize religion from scientific study, and thus keep the faithful happy. And when the faithful are happy, perhaps they’ll join us in opposing creationism.

Second, science has never assumed methodological naturalism as an a priori dictate of how to operate.  Science is simply a method of studying what’s real, and finding the best explanation using observation, prediction, replication, experimentation, and so on. There’s nothing in that method that dictates “study only natural phenomena.”  The fact that we’ve provided natural explanations for what is real is simply a result of using the method, and suggests that there are not in fact any supernatural phenomena. But science could have detected such phenomena had they existed. F&B provide a list:

1. Intercessory prayer can heal the sick or re-grow amputated limbs
2. Only Catholic intercessory prayers are effective.
3. Anyone who speaks the Prophet Mohammed’s name in vain is immediately struck
down by lightning, and those who pray to Allah five times a day are free from disease
and misfortune.
4. Gross inconsistencies are found in the fossil record and independent dating techniques
suggest that the earth is less than 10,000 years old—thereby confirming the biblical
account and casting doubt upon Darwinian evolution and contemporary scientific
accounts of geology and cosmology.
5. Specific information or prophecies claimed to be acquired during near death
experiences or via divine revelation are later confirmed – assuming that conventional
means of obtaining this information have been effectively ruled out.
6. Scientific demonstration of extra-sensory perception or other paranormal phenomena
(e.g., psychics routinely win the lottery).
7. Mental faculties persist despite destruction of the physical brain, thus supporting the
existence of a soul that can survive bodily death.
8. Stars align in the heavens to spell the phrase, ‘‘I Exist—God’’.

Some of you will say that these phenomena could be caused by space aliens and the like, and thus could be “natural” phenomena. But I, for one, would regard some of these as support for religious truth claims (e.g., #2 or #3), and provisional evidence for a divine being.

Because of the repeated success of science in explaining reality as a result of natural and not supernatural phenomena, we have eventually come around to ON as an empirically-based philosophical position: since there’s been no evidence for anything supernatural (as F&B define it), we can provisionally assume that supernatural entities and phenomena do not exist. As philosopher Barbara Forrest has pointed out (much to the chagrin of the NCSE, I suspect), ON—she calls it “philosophical naturalism”—is a worldview that’s grown out of the repeated application of science, and not from a priori rumination. ON is thus a coherent worldview that can be justified from experience, not from philosophical premises.

Finally, F&B note (and again I agree) that claiming that the supernatural is off-limits to science, while seemingly useful for accommodationism, is actually inimical to science in an important way. That’s because the program of intelligent design creationism (ID) includes criticizing scientists for being “close minded” by ruling the supernatural out of court.  We scientists, they say, are biased by our adherence to MN, and thus sworn to ignore the supposed evidence for intelligent design. (This argument is also made by advocates of paranormal phenomena like ESP.)

F&B’s claim, and mine, is that we shouldn’t rule the supernatural out on first principles. Creationism and its gussied-up cousin ID shouldn’t be dismissed because they invoke the supernatural, but simply because there is no evidence for them. After all, it’s theoretically possible that all life appeared in one instant six thousand years ago and has remained unchanged ever since. That’s a religious view, but also a scientific one. And it’s wrong.

I’ll give F&B the last word:

Our examination of the scientific testability of supernatural hypotheses and, more generally, of the issue of whether or not science presupposes ON has direct implications for science education policies. If, as we have argued, the scientific enterprise does not require an a priori commitment to methodological or metaphysical presuppositions, in particular Mahner’s ‘nosupernature’ principle, then scientists and science educators should not reject supernatural explanations out of hand. Rather, they should be rejected on the grounds that they fail to satisfy general criteria of good explanations in science. For instance, Evan Fales writes:

The reason that ID is not good science is not because it invokes a supernatural creator. ID is not good science because the empirical arguments it provides fail on their merits—e.g., because the criteria for irreducible (or ‘‘specified’’) complexity are defective, question-begging, or not demonstrably applicable to any known organism. (Fales 2009)

Thus, ID should not be taught in science classes as an alternative to Darwinian evolution not because it may make reference to a supernatural designer, but rather because its claims do not meet the standards of good explanations (see also Clark 2009; Laudan 1982). In agreement with previous authors (Martin 1994), we believe that teaching science students how to think critically and how to evaluate hypotheses according to the criteria of good scientific explanations (perhaps using the Bayesian and information-theoretic frameworks outlined above) is as important as teaching them what to think. Accordingly, except for the purpose of teaching critical thinking skills and the history of scientific thought, science educators need not waste their (and their students’) time considering discredited theories such as old earth creationism, phlogiston, disease as due to demonic possession, dowsing, psychic surgery, spiritualism, psi, flat earth theory, homeopathy, astrology, phrenology, or Ptolemaic astronomy. Again, rejection of these theories is not based on a priori methodological or metaphysical presuppositions of science, but on the grounds that they make predictions that conflict with the available evidence or they are unparsimonious.

________

Fishman, Y. I. and M. Boudry. 2013. Does science presuppose naturalism (or anything at all)? Science & Education, published online, DOI 10.1007/s11191-012-9574-1.

Mahner M. 2012. The role of metaphysical naturalism in science.  Science & Education 21:1437-1459.

Guardian column praises CERN for accommodationist meeting

October 28, 2012 • 4:18 am

Once again we hear that science tells us how the world is, but religion answers the Really Big Questions. Sadly, this time it’s from a scientist, one at Matthew Cobb’s school.

Jeff Forshaw is a professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy and University of Manchester, and has collaborated with Brian Cox in explaining physics on YouTube (see here and here, for instance).

In a new column at the Guardian, “Science and religion are united in a sense of wonder,” Forshaw buys the NOMA line whole hog.  He’s writing about the CERN conference I described on October 15, a conference that was supposed to bring scientists, philosophers, and theologians together in productive dialogue. My take was that it was useless: philosophers but especially theologians had nothing to add to the conference—see my post for the haughty comments theologians made about how physicists weren’t doing science correctly. I still maintain that the progress of science is totally independent of (and uninfluenced by) what happens in either theology or the formal discipline of the philosophy of science. (That’s not to say that I think the philosophy of science is useless. It isn’t; it’s value just is not in helping science progress in understanding nature.)

Forshaw apparently disagrees:

Some might say that Cern should stick to science but I don’t agree. A major reason for the popularity of fundamental physics is that it is seen to tackle some pretty “deep” questions – the kinds of questions that really “mean” something – and the quest for meaning is not something best left to scientists. With the latest ideas in physics seeming to suggest the possibility of “a universe from nothing” (the title of cosmologist Lawrence Krauss’s latest book), the stakes do seem rather high. I think it makes sense to ensure that the theologians are up to speed with the science, but I also think that scientists benefit from contemplating the wider implications of their discoveries.

Well, I don’t particularly care if physicists want to tell theologians the latest finds in physics (though it will only lead to a flurry of new theology showing how cosmology or bosons prove God), but Forshaw is dead wrong in thinking that theologians will help science progress by enabling physicists to think about the Big Questions. Can he give one example of when that has happened?

Forshaw sees a Big Danger in this lack of dialogue.

By overstating science’s power and not acknowledging its limitations, we risk fostering the growth of a religion-substitute, with the scientists as high priests. Such hubris not only irritates people, but more significantly it risks promoting the misconception that science deals with certainty – and that is the very antithesis of good science. Science, which advances through the weight of evidence, is inherently uncertain.

Yeah, Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, and other popular physics writers claim that we deal with certainty. That’s a base canard: the hallmark of popular physics writing—indeed, of nearly all good science writing—is its constant emphasis on what we don’t know (read The Trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin, for example).

Even worse, it is certainly religion and not science that is “uncertain”—and far more inherently so. There are some things in science that  we know with near certainty, like the atomic composition of water, but there is nothing about God that we know with any certainty at all. Yet it is the scientists, not the faithful, who are described as having annoying hubris! Why did Forshaw do that?

Forshaw continues with his tired old NOMA trope:

But the questions that science can tackle are nonetheless limited in scope. For most people, the deep questions of science do not shape their lives. For example, science does not touch on whether the universe has any point to it and it cannot even hope to answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing.

Perhaps (although Larry Krauss has an answer to why there is something if you accept his definition of “nothing”), but religion has never answered those questions either, and has no hope of doing so. Or, rather, different religions give different answers and there’s no way of knowing which is right. Which Big Questions, for example, has religion answered? Here’s a common one: is God good?  That’s an easy question, and we have no answer. Here’s another: is it a sin to masturbate?  No answer there, either.

Forshaw’s last paragraph is predictable:

In some people’s minds, science and religion stand in stark opposition, but is this really the case? Certainly, years of being a scientist have led me to doubt pretty much everything I thought I knew. Secure and certain knowledge is a rare thing and I am not surprised that scientists often find religious faith hard to swallow. That said, scientists do often act with what seems to me to be something like faith: a faith in scientific truths perhaps or in the humbling significance of nature’s beauty. Perhaps “faith” is too strong – enthusiastic optimism might be better. Whatever the case, the importance of science lies not only in fighting ignorance and the building of better theories – it is important too because of the way it inspires glory and wonder. In that regard, at least, science and religion are united.

Well, at least at least he thinks twice before sticking science with the accusation of “faith”. “Enthusiastic optimism” is better, because it expresses our confidence that empirical study will help uncover the secrets of the universe, but that’s a long way from faith. It’s not faith but confidence, based on experience, that science really does have the tools to answer any of the Big Questions that are capable of being answered. The use of the weasel word “faith” when it comes to science is simply to give credence to religion.

As for science and religion being “united”  in inspiring glory and wonder, well, yes, they both do, but in one case the glory and wonder are based on what is true, while in the other they’re based on lies.

I’m wondering why Forshaw descided to write such a misguided article, unless he realized the genuine public-relations advantages of osculating the rump of faith. Perhaps Matthew Cobb, who is at the same University as Forshaw, and also a friend of Brian Cox, can get Forshaw to explain.

h/t: James

Scientists debate philosophers and theologians at CERN—but why?

October 15, 2012 • 9:55 pm

Unlike some of my readers, I don’t dismiss all academic philosophy as worthless. The discipline imparts the tools of logic and throught that can clarify questions and bring contradictions to light. I think it’s of most value in illuminating (but not necessarily solving) ethical problems and dilemmas, but of less value for working scientists.

But in an ongoing meeting in Geneva described by the BBC, its value would seem to be nil (the CERN-sponsored conference, which ends tomorrow, is called “The Big Bang and the interfaces of knowledge: towards a common language?“)*

Worse: at this conference philosophy is rendered even more ineffectual by diluting it with theology—a form of intellectual homeopathy. As the BBC reports:

Some of Europe’s most prominent scientists have opened a debate with philosophers and theologians over the origins of everything.

The event, in Geneva, Switzerland, is described as a search for “common ground” between religion and science over how the Universe began.

It will focus on the Big Bang theory.

The conference was called by Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in the wake of its Higgs boson discovery.

And, at the outset, the the theologian-philosophers parade their hauteur, trying to tell physicists that they’re doing it rong (Pinsent, mentioned below, has degrees in physics and philosophy and is on the theology faculty at Oxford):

The first speaker at the conference was Andrew Pinsent, research director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University.

He said that science risked “trying to turn society into a machine” if it did not engage with religion and philosophy.

“Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas,” he told the BBC.

“Einstein began by asking the kinds of questions that a child would ask, like what would it be like to ride on a beam of light.”

That, Dr Pinsent said, was what science should return to.

Not so good for producing ideas? That claim is what comes out of the south end of a horse facing north.  First of all, many scientists do engage with religion and philosophy, but I suspect the kind of engagement Pinsent wants is not debate (as occurs on this site), but mutual back-patting.

And in the case of this conference, that engagement is useless. What do theologians, or philosophers for that matter, have to say about the origin of the universe that’s of any value to scientists? Any “philosophizing” about things like multiverses can be done perfectly well by scientists on their own.

The stuff about “turning society into a machine” is alarmist hype; nothing like that would happen without the vaunted “dialogue”, even if all scientists buried themselves in their labs like hermit.

Finally, who the hell does Pinsent think he is telling scientists that we’re not coming up with new ideas in the right way? Isn’t string theory a remarkable imaginative achievement, even if we can’t yet test it?  So is the idea of multiverses; and Lee Smolin‘s theory of “cosmological natural selection” is highly original, even if it proves to be wrong.

Sadly, the BBC article doesn’t report any dissent, or pushback, by scientists. It reports only annoying statements by philosopher and theologians, and one rump-osculating statement by the director of CERN:

Prof Rolf Heuer, director of Cern, explained that the Higgs results provided a “deeper insight and understanding of the moments after the Big Bang”.

He added that he hoped, by the end of the conference, that delegates from very different backgrounds would be able to “start to discuss the origin of our Universe”.

Yeah, but only scientists will be able to make progress in understanding the origin of our universe.  The rest of the attendees will stare at their navels and aver that scientists can’t answer the Really Big Questions, like why there was a Big Bang:

Co-organiser Canon Dr Gary Wilton, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Brussels, said that the Higgs particle “raised lots of questions [about the origins of the Universe] that scientists alone can’t answer”.

“They need to explore them with theologians and philosophers,” he added.

No they don’t. That’s a waste of time, and gives theologians and philosophers unwarranted credibility in what is a purely scientific problem. That looks good on their c.v.s, but not so good on the physicists’. As scientists’ efforts continue to shrink the bailiwicks of both philosophy and, especially, theology, practitioners of these disciplines are desperate to retain a seat at the Big Table and anxious to show that they, too, have something to contribute to the progress of science.

The thing is, they don’t. Philosophy of science is a meta-discipline, which can analyze the sociology of our field, often in enlightening ways, but hasn’t, as far as I can see, contributed to science’s progress. Yes, insofar as scientists themselves ruminate about the meaning of their achievements (philosophers love to count this as philosophy), that leads to progress. But with few exceptions (for me, Dennett and Kitcher, because they know a lot about evolution), formal academic philosophy of science has not advanced science itself. Most honest philosophers of science will admit this. And of course theology is useless for advancing knowledge—it only impedes science by confusing the public and raising “science stoppers” like the fine-tuning argument and the claim that morality implies a God.

This is what you get when a conference is co-organized by a physicist and a representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury: a few shreds of meat floating around in a bowl of porridge:

The organisers are expecting some disagreements during the three-day event.

For example, one of the speakers, Prof John Lennox from Oxford University, has been an outspoken critic of atheist scientists in the past.

Most recently, he took issue with Prof Stephen Hawking’s assertion that God did not create the Universe.

In an article in the Daily Mail, he said that he was certain that Prof Hawking was wrong.

Prof Lennox wrote: “When Hawking argues, in support of his theory of spontaneous creation, that it was only necessary for ‘the blue touch paper’ to be lit to ‘set the universe going’, the question must be: where did this blue touch paper come from? And who lit it, if not God?”

Well, maybe it lit itself, Dr. Lennox? Have you ruled out that possibility?

But the theologian-philosphers press on, like kids who beg to sit at the adults’ table at Thanksgiving:

Dr Wilton, though, said he was hopeful that “scientists, theologians and philosophers alike might gain fresh insights from each other’s disciplines”

“This is such an exciting conference,” he told the BBC.

For him, maybe. He gets the cachet of getting to debate real scientists and pretending that he has something meaningful to say to them. But the conference isn’t so exciting for physicists.

And since when did the estimable scientific organization CERN start acting like the Templeton Foundation?

h/t: John, Matthew Cobb

________

*The answer is “no.” You can download a pdf of the conference program here; warning—it’s infuriating.

Quote of the week: does “methodological naturalism” prevent science from investigating the supernatural?

June 29, 2012 • 4:09 am

I wrote a bit about this paper by Boudy et al. when it was only a manuscript, but now it’s been published in Science and Education (reference below, free online).  It deals with the constant accommodationst refrain that science is absolutely wedded to the notion of “intrinsic methodological naturalism (“IMN”; the view that it is an a priori rule when doing science to rule out the supernatural).  As I wrote yesterday, since the supernatural is off limits under IMN, all supernatural claims, including those about God, ESP, precognition, and so on, become immune from empirical investigation.

That is palpable nonsense. Science can, and has, constantly tested supernatural claims.  Refuting creationism is the premier example.  So why do accommodationists constantly make the erroneous claim that science can’t test the supernatural?  Boudry et al. explain it in their paper. (“IDC” below refers to “intelligent design creationism”).

Perhaps some will object, saying that the supernatural encompasses things that are by definition immune to empirical investigation. And you can define “supernatural” that way, but that is not only tautological, but doesn’t comport with how most people see the idea.

All theistic religions make claims about how a deity interacts with the world in certain ways, and those claims can be investigated, at least in principle, with the tools of science.  We can’t, of course, disprove the existence of God.  But we can make that existence less (or, unlikely, more) probable by examining the ways that His adherents claim that he acts, or the things they say about His nature.  But on to the quote of the week:

In a way reminiscent of Hume’s Dialogues, theist and non-theist defenders of science have advocated IMN as a way of dissociating science from atheism and consolidating a truce between (evolutionary) science and religion. The received idea seems to be that, as  [Robert] Pennock writes, confronting supernatural claims with science ‘‘inadvertently help[s] the ID cause’’ (Pennock 2003, p. 156), because it links evolution with atheism. By contrast, relegating the supernatural to a different domain provides reassurance to religious believers and allows science educators to retain the support of theistic evolutionists and religious liberals in the battle against anti-evolutionist forces. Understandable as this may be in the context of the ongoing efforts of IDC advocates to sneak their pseudoscience in to the classroom, it is seriously misguided. First, excluding the supernatural by fiat fuels the old accusations of metaphysical bias, and allows IDC proponents to cast themselves in the role of open-minded truth-lovers. Second, the letter of IMN conflicts with actual scientific arguments against supernatural design, a discrepancy which IDC proponents have been quick to point out. Third, IMN does a disservice to the epistemic status of science, inviting the view that it is just one way of knowing among other, presumably deeper ones. Fourth, it fails to appreciate the threat that the naturalization of science poses to religion. Pennock’s concern about the perceived conflict between science and religion is a legitimate one, but muddled philosophical reasoning will do little to avert that conflict. Science educators should not equate evolution with atheism, but neither should they pretend that the conflict between science and religion is wholly imaginary. Most religious believers would find out for themselves in any case.

For these reasons, and for the philosophical shortcomings we have reviewed elsewhere, scientists and science educators would be well-advised to reconsider their standard strategy in dealing with supernaturalist pseudoscience. Reconciling science and religion on the basis of IMN happens at the expense of philosophical and scientific integrity, and it is therefore misguided. It leaves the public with the impression that evolution by natural selection appears to win the scientific debate only because supernatural designers were already carefully excluded from the outset. This is the philosophical crack into which IDC theorists are currently trying to drive their ideological wedge.

The next time you hear an accommodationist say that science can’t tackle the supernatural, just respond by giving a dozen or so examples where it has.

______________

Boudry, M., S. Blancke, and J. Braeckman. 2012. Grist to the mill of anti-evolutionism: The failed strategy of ruling the supernatural out of science by philosophical fiat. Science and Education Online DOI 10.1007/s111910=-012-9446-8