Category: “ways of knowing”

My article in Quillette: “Can art convey truth?”

December 26, 2025 • 10:05 am

Last June I went to the Heterodox Academy’s annual meeting, this time in Brooklyn, New York. I had been asked to be on a panel, “The Duties & Responsibilities of Scholars”, which included, besides me, Jennifer Frey, Louis Menand, and John McWhorter.  The introductions were by Alice Dreger and Coleeen Eren.

I knew of two of the panelists—Menand (a Harvard professor of English, distinguished author, and writer for the New Yorker), and McWhorter, (a Columbia University linguist, writer, and columnist for the NYT who’s been featured regularly on this site).  That was enough to intimidate me, so I spent several months reading about the topic beforehand, concentrating on academic freedom and freedom of expression.  Some of my thinking on these topics was worked out in posts on this site that you might have read. Along the way, I realized that the “clash of ideas” that is touted as essential (indeed, perhaps sufficient) to guarantee the appearance of truth, does not produce any kind of “truth”. (This clash, discussed by John Stuart Mill and Oliver Wendell Holmes, is often said to be the reason why we need freedom of speech.) But the clash doesn’t home in on truth unless you put into the mix some empirical evidence, essential for finding the “propositional truths” defined in my article below.

That led to my realization that the purpose of universities stated by many people is incomplete. As I say in my new Quillette piece (click on the screenshot below, or find it archived here):

Likewise, the common claim that the most important purpose of colleges and universities is to expand, preserve, and promulgate new knowledge—to find consensus truths—is also wrong. Finding truth is not the purpose of the literary arts like literature and poetry, the visual and graphic arts like film, painting, animation, photography, and the performing arts like theatre, dance, and music. These fields cannot find truth because that is not why they exist nor why they are taught. (Other areas like economics and sociology, often considered part of “the humanities,” can find truth insofar as they engage in empirical study of reality.)

It’s not just art that can’t find truth without evidence, but also philosophy. (I won’t deal with math here, as I’m still thinking that one over). I don’t deal with philosophy in the article, but I haven’t yet found an example of philosophy coming up with a testable propositional truth without dragging in empirical evidence.  But this doesn’t mean I think that philosophy (or the humanities in general) shouldn’t be taught in college. As I say in my piece:

First I should address the anti-art bigot charge. Just because I see art as a source of something other than the kind of truth uncovered by science does not for a moment mean I’m dismissive of art. My undergraduate education included courses in Greek tragedy, Old English (I can still read Beowulf in the original), modern literature, ethical philosophy, and fine arts, creating in me a desire to keep learning, to keep being inspired, to keep discovering art. I have derived and continue to derive extraordinary pleasure and betterment from art and other branches of the humanities. Science gave me a career, but the arts have given me at least as much in life as science has. But what I’ve gained from art has not been truth.

The rest of the piece, which I won’t expend on as you can read it at the link below (you might have to give Quillette your email address, but you can accces it for free) explains, at least implicitly, why I still think that the humanities (which includes all forms of art) should be taught in schools, for the purpose of such instruction, while not finding truth, is to give us a hunger to expand our experience.  One more sentence:

Finding truth is not the purpose of the literary arts like literature and poetry, the visual and graphic arts like film, painting, animation, photography, and the performing arts like theatre, dance, and music. These fields cannot find truth because that is not why they exist nor why they are taught. (Other areas like economics and sociology, often considered part of “the humanities,” can find truth insofar as they engage in empirical study of reality.)

. . . The real value of art, then, is not that it conveys knowledge that can’t be acquired in other ways, but that it produces emotional and cognitive effects on the receiver, usually conferring an experience of beauty. Art can enrich how we think about ourselves and other people, and, crucially, allow us to view the world through eyes other than our own. Through reflection, this expansion of experience can enhance our knowledge of ourselves. But that is subjective rather than propositional knowledge.

I showed this piece to a friend this morning, who asked me this: “Your argument is basically ‘the humanities have other uses so we need to keep them in universities.’ So it begs the question — why should they be housed in universities? You seem to suggest the answer is because it makes people feel and think in other ways. Is that kind of personal development something university resources should be dedicated to? A lot of administrators and politicians these days answer no.”

But my answer is “yes“. As I wrote her:

Yes, you ask a good question and I should have answered it. It’s sort of implicit in the piece when I relate how much I’ve benefited from learning about the arts personally, and that is from the arts (literature, etc.) having awakened my desire to learn more. The arts are one of the great areas of human endeavor, and for that alone should be taught in universities.  As I said, it sparks the desire to think about oneself, or learn other perspectives, and while that’s not truth in the scientific sense, it should be taught for that alone.  Ditto philosophy. Ethical philosophy was an important course I took in college, and without that I wouldn’t know about the history of people’s ideas on morality, even though morality turns out to be subjective.
In the end, I think that colleges should stay the way they are, save for the elimination of teaching religious dicta, as in some divinity schools, and that the purpose of a college education is more than just the expansion, production, preservation, and promulgation of (propositional) knowledge.  Why AREN’T universities the place for absorbing the artistic endeavors of humanities? Where else would you learn about it?

And I added that philosophy, which I still don’t think can find truth on its own, is one of the most valuable tools we have for sorting out dreck in arguments, and helping us home in on the truths by thinking logically. Ethical philosophy, in particular, was important to me as it made me think about exactly why I thought things were moral or immoral, and why—a quest I’m still on. So of course philosophy should stay in the college curriculum. The only thing that should be eliminated is the teaching of religious dogma (as opposed to the history and content of religion), dogma that is often promulgated in divinity schools.

The video discussion above is long: 75 minutes, but if you want to listen to the bit on truth in humanities, and see McWhorter and Menand try to tar and feather me, start about 22 minutes in and listen for about six minutes.  It’s in that section that I think McWhorter made an admission that undercut both his and Menand’s argument—an admission I note in the last paragraph of my Quillette piece:

Curiously, I think that perhaps my art-isn’t-truth stance is not as extreme and unreasonable as my eye-rolling, shoulder-shrugging friends in the humanities imply. As I mentioned, at the Heterodox Academy panel Menand and McWhorter were the eye-rollers and shoulder-shruggers, but I see that they too have run up against the objective/subjective issue in their own thinking.   For example, in an exchange about whether Leonard Bernstein’s symphonies are greater than his musicals, McWhorter wound up admitting, “There is no truth: it’s a matter of informed opinion and opinion on what you have decided you value in art.” Agreed!

McWhorter makes his claim starting at 27:55.  You don’t have to watch the video, but do read the piece, which at about 2000 words is short.

Kathleen Stock on female genital mutilation, cultural relativism, and a recent (odious) paper in The Journal of Medical Ethics

December 20, 2025 • 11:00 am

Over at UnHerd, philosopher Kathleen Stock, formerly of the University of Sussex, critiques a paper in The Journal of Medical Ethics that I discussed recently, a paper you can read by clicking below. (You may remember that Stock, an OBE, was forced to resign from Sussex after she was demonized for her views on gender identity. These involved claims that there are but two biological sexes, and her cancellation was largely the result of a campaign by students.)

As I said in my earlier post, this paper seems to whitewash female genital mutilation (FGM), and does so in several ways. The authors think that the term “mutilation” is pejorative, and is more accurate and less inflammatory than saying “female genital modification”, which covers a variety of methods of FGM, some much more dangerous than others, as well as cosmetic genital surgery on biological women or surgery on trans-identifying males to give them a simulacrum of female genitalia. (There is also circumcision, which some lump in with the more dire forms of FGM.)

The Ahmadu et al. paper also notes that anti-FGM campaigns in Africa, where the mutilation is practiced most often, have their own harms. As Stock comments in the article below,

And so our co-authors — the majority of whom work in Europe, Australasia, and North America — tell us that anti-FGM initiatives in Africa cause material harms. Supposedly, they siphon off money and attention that could be better spent in other health campaigns, and they undermine trust in doctors.
They also cause young women to consider genital cutting as “traumatising” in retrospect, we are told, where they would not otherwise have done so. Even though some who have been subject to it can experience “unwanted upsetting memories, heightened vigilance, sleep disturbance, recurrent memories or flashbacks during medical consultations”, there is allegedly no actual trauma there, until some foreign aid agency tells them so.

And if you don’t believe Stock, here’s a small part of the section of the Ahmadu et al. paper trying to push the word “trauma” out of descriptionos of FGM:

Most affected women themselves rarely use the word ‘trauma’ to describe their experiences of the practices. If they describe the experiences in negative terms, they may use words such as ‘difficult’ or ‘painful’, but some of them may simultaneously describe the experience as celebratory, empowering, important and significant. This may even accompany experiences of pain, but this pain, when made sense of in its cultural context, does not equate to trauma.

Researchers and clinicians often use the mostly biomedically based DSM-5 (the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to assess trauma, with a focus on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While narratives of women who have experienced a cultural or religious-based procedure may contain descriptions of symptoms that fall into the PTSD nosological category (such as ‘unwanted upsetting memories’, ‘negative affect’, ‘nightmares’ or heightened sensations, vigilance or sleep disturbance), the cross-cultural validity of PTSD as a construct and its use in migrant populations has been widely contested, because it applies Western cultural understandings to people who do not necessarily equate the experience of pain as directly causing trauma.

That is first-class progressive whitewashing! As Stock describes :

[Anti-FGM campaigns] also cause young women to consider genital cutting as “traumatising” in retrospect, we are told, where they would not otherwise have done so. Even though some who have been subject to it can experience “unwanted upsetting memories, heightened vigilance, sleep disturbance, recurrent memories or flashbacks during medical consultations”, there is allegedly no actual trauma there, until some foreign aid agency tells them so.

Finally, Ahmadu et al. note that anti-FGM campaigns, and the term “mutilation”, have led to unfair stigmatization of some groups in the West that practiced FGM in their ancestral countries (and still practice it in the West, though to a much lesser extent). You could argue, for example, that it leads to bigotry in the West against those of Somalian ancestry, as FGM is rather common there. And I agree that it’s unfair to stigmatize an entire group because some of them practice FGM. Only the perpetrators should be punished and the promoters rebuked. But the practice should be loudly decried, and aimed at communities who employ it.

In her article, Stock rebukes the article as a prime example of “cultural relativism,” the view that while people within a given culture can judge some acts more moral than others, considering different cultures one cannot judge some as having behaviors more moral than do others.  One might, if one were stupid, criticize this as forms of ethical appropriation. So, say the relativists, we shouldn’t be too quick to judge those in Somalia who practice infibulation of young women.

You can read Stock’s article by clicking below, but if you’re paywalled you can find the article archived here.

Stock is not a moral relativist, at least when it comes to genital “modification,” a term she opposes.  I’ll put up a few quotes, but you should read the whole piece, either online or in the archived version:

Progressives are notoriously fond of renaming negatively-coded social practices to make them sound more palatable: “assisted dying” for euthanasia, or “sex work” for prostitution, for instance. The usual strategy is to take the most benign example of the practice possible, then make that the central paradigm. And so we get images of affluent middle-class people floating off to consensual oblivion at the hands of a doctor, rather than hungry, homeless depressives. We are told to think of students harmlessly supplementing their degrees with a bit of escort work, not drug-addicted mothers standing on street corners. Perpetually gloomy about human behaviour in other areas, when it comes to sex and death the mood becomes positively Pollyanna-ish.

Similarly, the authors of the new FGM article are apparently looking for the silver lining. Some genital modifications enhance group identity, they say, and a sense of community belonging. And as with euthanasia and prostitution, they want us to ignore the inconvenient downsides. But at the same time, there is a philosophical component here mostly absent from parallel campaigns. It’s cultural relativism — which says that strictly speaking, there are no downsides, or indeed upsides, at all.

That is: from the inside of a particular culture, certain practices count as exemplary and others as evil. Yet zoom out to an omniscient, deculturated perspective upon human behaviour generally, and there is no objective moral value — or so the story goes. All value is constructed at the local level. Worse: when you zoom back into your own homegrown ethical concerns after taking such a trip, they seem strangely hollow. Like an astronaut returning to Earth after having seen the whole of it from space, everything looks a bit parochial.

Stock lumps the authors into three groups, which she calls “the Conservatives” (no genital surgeries of any type), the “Centrists” (okay with circumcision for males but no surgery on females), and “Permissives” (people who think that “it is up to the parents to decide what is best for their children, and that the state should refrain from interfering with any culturally significant practices unless they can be shown to involve serious harm.” [that quote is from the Ahmadu et al. paper]. These conflicting views lead to the tension that Stock and others can perceive in this paper. What are the sweating authors trying to say?

Cultural relativism, while in style among progressives, is a non-starter. You can see that by simply imagining John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” and ask imaginary people who have not been acculturated to look at various cultures from behind that veil and then say which culture they’d rather live in. If you are a young girl, would you rather be in Somalia or Denmark? If you’re gay, would you rather be in Iran or Israel? And so on.  Here’s Stock’s ending where she asserts that not all forms of “genital modification” should be lumped together or considered equally bad:

Meanwhile in the Anglosphere, anti-FGM laws allegedly cause “oversurveillance of ethnic and racialised families and girls” and undermine “social trust, community life and human rights”. All these things, it is implied, are flat wrong. This sounds like old-fashioned morality talk to me. But then again, if old-fashioned morality talk is permissible, may not we also talk explicitly about the wrongs of holding small girls down to tables and slicing off bits of them, or sewing them up so tight that they are in searing agony? These things sound like they might undermine “social trust, community life, and human rights” too.

Rather than be a relativist about morality, it makes more sense to be a pluralist. There are different virtues for humans to aspire to, and they can’t be ranked. Sometimes there are clashes between them, resulting in inevitable trade-offs (honesty vs kindness; loyalty to family vs to one’s community; and so on). There are very few cost-free moral choices in this life. Equally, some virtues will vary according to cultural backdrop. The local environment may partly influence which virtues are paramount. For instance, family obedience and respect for elders will be stronger in places where close kinship ties help people to survive.

But still, there is always a limit on what behaviours might conceivably count as good; and that limit is whether they actively inhibit a person’s flourishing, in the Aristotelian sense. The most drastic and bloody forms of FGM obviously do so. They lead a little girl to feel distrust and fear of female carers; predispose her to infections and limit her sexual function for life; cause her pain, nightmares, and panicky flashbacks for decades.

With minimally invasive genital surgeries involving peripheral body parts, matters are not so clear. But whatever the case about those, you can’t just assume in advance that all genital modifications are equal, so that discriminating between them by different legal and social approaches is somehow “unfair”. If cultural relativism were really true, there would be no such thing as unfairness either. It would just be empty meaninglessness, all the way down. Academics with heroic designs on the English language should be careful not to fall into ethical abysses, even as they tell themselves the landscape around them is objectively flat.

Here Stock comes close to equating “more moral” with “creating more well being,” a position that Sam Harris takes in The Moral Landscape, and a position I’ve criticized. But here the niceties of ethics are irrelevant. There is simply no way that forcing FGM upon girls can be considered better than banning it.

Can mathematics and philosophy produce (propositional) truth?

December 19, 2025 • 9:45 am

I have written a piece that will be published shortly on another site; it’s largely about whether academic disciplines, including the arts, can produce “propositional truths”, that is, declarative statements about the world that are deemed “true” because they give an accurate description of something in the world or universe.  Examples are “Jerry has five fingers on each hand”, “Sheila plays the violin in an orchestra,” or “humans and other apes shared a common ancestor.” The reason I was concerned with propositional truths is that it’s often said that the search, production, preservation, and promulgation of such truths is the primary purpose of universities.  Is it? Read my piece, which will be out next week, to see. I’ll post a link when it’s up.

I won’t give my thesis here about truth and the various academic disciplines, as that’s in the other article, but in my piece I omitted two areas: mathematics and philosophy. That’s because there’s a big controversy about whether these disciplines do produce propositional truths or, alternatively (and in my view), give only the logical consequences of assumptions that are assumed to be true.

For example, a “truth” of mathematics is that 16 divided by 2 equals eight.  More complex is the Pythagorean theorem: in a right triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse is the sum of the squares of the other two sides. This is “true”, but only in Euclidean geometry. It is not true if you’re looking at triangles on a curved surface.  The “truth” is seen only within a system of certain assumptions: geometry that follows Euclid’s axioms, including being planar.  All mathematical “truths” are of this type.

What about philosophy? Truths in that field are things that follow logically. Here is a famous one:

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man;
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Well, yes, that’s true, but it’s true not just because of logic, but because empirical observations for the first two statements show they are propositional truths! If they weren’t true, the third “truth” (which was tested and verified via hemlock) would be meaningless.

Here’s another of a similar nature that came from a friend:

“All As are B; x is an A; therefore x is B—doesn’t depend on the content of A and B: it’s a *logical truth*.”

Again, the statement is indeed a logical truth, but not a propositional truth because it cannot be tested to see if it’s true or false. Nor, without specifying exactly what A and B is, can the empirical truth of this statement be judged. I claim that all philosophical “truths”—logical truths without empirical input—are of this type.

When I told my friend this, I got the reply, “This is analytic philosophy. The people who do it work in philosophy departments and call themselves philosophers: and most philosophy BA and PhD programs require a lot of it. I’m sure any of our competent philosophers would be happy to supply hundreds of propositional truths that are philosophical.”  The friend clearly disagreed with my claim that philosophy can’t by itself produce propositional truths. Insofar as philosophy is an important area of academia, then, I am not sure that it’s discipline engaged in producing or preserving truth.

Two caveats are in order. First, this is not meant to demean philosophy or argue that it doesn’t belong in a liberal education. It certainly does! Philosophy, like mathematics, are tools for finding truths, and indispensable tools. Philosophical training helps you think more clearly  Unlike many scientists, I see philosophy as a crucial component of science, one that is used every day. Hypotheses that follow logically from observations, as in making predictions from observations (e.g., Chargaff’s observation, before the structure of DNA was elucidated, that in organisms that amount of A equals the amount of T, and the amount of G equals the amount of C), are somewhat philosophical, and certainly logical. Dan Dennett is a good example of how one can learn (and teach others) to think more clearly about science with a background in philosophy.

Second, I do not feel strongly about what I said above. I am willing to be convinced that mathematics (but not necessarily philosophy) gives us propositional truths. There is, for example, a school of philosophers who accept “mathematical realism,” defined this way in Routledge’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Mathematical realism is the view that the truths of mathematics are objective, which is to say that they are true independently of any human activities, beliefs or capacities. As the realist sees it, mathematics is the study of a body of necessary and unchanging facts, which it is the mathematician’s task to discover, not to create. These form the subject matter of mathematical discourse: a mathematical statement is true just in case it accurately describes the mathematical facts.

An important form of mathematical realism is mathematical Platonism, the view that mathematics is about a collection of independently existing mathematical objects. Platonism is to be distinguished from the more general thesis of realism, since the objectivity of mathematical truth does not, at least not obviously, require the existence of distinctively mathematical objects.

A corollary of this is my own claim (which is mine) that although the objects and “truths” of mathematics and philosophy are inapplicable to all species outside of our own, as only Homo sapiens can grasp, discover, and use them. The earth spins for all creatures and plants upon it, but the integers and prime numbers are “real” only for us. (Do not lecture me that crows can count!).

I have read some of this controversy about mathematics, but it rapidly becomes abstruse and tedious, and so I’m proffering the view of a biologist, not a professional philosopher.  I am more open to the idea of mathematics producing truths than philosophy, simply because, as one reader once commented, “You can’t find out what’s true by sitting in an armchair and thinking.”

So it’s clear I’m soliciting readers’ views here to help clarify my own thinking. Comment away!

Three Royal Societies abandon their mission to promote global and universalist science

December 1, 2025 • 10:15 am

A Kiwi who wishes to remain anonymous (of course) sent me this link to an announcement of a meeting of three Royal (Scientific) Societies: those of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. The screenshot below also links to two other short documents, a communiqué and a statement by the Presidents of all three Societies.

The object is severalfold: to eliminate “structural racism” and inequities in science, to tout “indigenous knowledge systems” as not only different and distinct from normal science, but as having contributed valuable knowledge to science in unique indigenous ways, and to assert that indigenous people have a right to “maintain, protect, and develop indigenous knowledge systems, intellectual property, and data.”

Click below (or above) to access the three statements.

The things I agree with are these:

a.) Members of ethnic minorities have surely been discriminated against in the past, and have had difficulty entering into modern (sometimes called “Western”) science

b.) There should be outreach, expanding opportunities for anyone who wants to do science to have a chance to participate

c.) “Indigenous knowledge”, insofar as it tells us something true about the universe, is indeed a part of modern science and should be considered thus

d.)  Any research done using the resources of indigenous people should be done with their permission, collaboration, and full participation

The things I question are these:

a.) Whether structural racism—meaning formalized practices or policies—are still in place preventing minorities in all three countries from doing science. Other words are “bias” or “bigotry”. In the U.S., universities are bending over backwards to recruit minorities, and I can’t think of an example of formalized bias, though of course some non-minority scientists will be bigoted (I’ve also not seen many of them).

b.)  The extent to which indigenous knowledge has contributed to modern science.  It’s telling that, as in nearly all such documents, these three tout this knowledge as invaluable, but don’t provide a single example of the kind of advances that indigenous knowledge have promoted.

And the things I take issue with are these:

a.) Indigenous knowledge is a form of “knowledge” separate and distinct from that produced by modern science. As I’ve argued repeatedly, many forms of indigenous knowledge involve things that are nonscientific in the modern sense.  For example, Mātauranga Māori (“MM”)from New Zeland is described by Wikipedia this way:

Mātauranga (literally Māori knowledge) is a modern term for the traditional knowledge of the Māori people of New Zealand Māori traditional knowledge is multi-disciplinary and holistic, and there is considerable overlap between concepts. It includes environmental stewardship and economic development, with the purpose of preserving Māori culture and improving the quality of life of the Māori people over time.

MM includes not only practical knowledge, like how to catch eels or harvest mussels, but also superstition, word of mouth, tradition, religion, and codes of behavior. Some of it is knowledge in the “justified true belief” sense, but a lot of it is not.  Those who know more about Australian and Canadian indigenous “ways of knowing” can weigh in here.  And none of this comports with modern science in terms of using pervasive doubt, hypothesis testing, experiments, statistics, and the whole armamentarium that is the toolkit of modern science, which stopped being “Western” a long time ago. Modern science is practiced pretty much the same way the world over.

b). While indigenous people can surely design experiments and publish their data, they do not have control over it in the sense of not allowing other people to use it, or refusing to give the primary data behind anything that’s published. While the present document doesn’t say this explicitly, it implies it, and other indigenous people in New Zealand have more explicitly that data are proprietary.

Here are a few quotes from the three documents linked above (direct quotes are indented; my own comments are flush left):

A description of the meeting:

Over 3 days of keynote speeches, wānanga, cultural activities, and panel discussions, top Māori and Pasifika thought-leaders engaged with First Nations experts from Canada and Australia, including Fellows from five of Australia’s learned academies.

Key themes included the need to dismantle academic barriers and inequities for Indigenous students and researchers, share decision-making about research practices and priorities, and shape research agendas to focus on Indigenous knowledges and address challenges that are important to Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders talked about their experiences in academia, and presented research ranging from the study of Indigenous histories, cultures, knowledges, and languages to environmental management and traditional legal systems.

Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders have championed and led education and research by, with, and for Indigenous communities, and have revitalised interest and awareness in traditional knowledges through language, cultural activities, and creative arts. Their work has explored and built on Indigenous knowledge systems to generate new insights and innovations – such as research methodologies and ethical frameworks based on traditional worldviews and values.

The advances touted for indigenous knowledge (note the absence of examples and yet the assertion that indigenous knowledge systems are separate and distinct “ways of knowing”). Bolding is mine:

 The Taikura Summit has continued and built on those exchanges, and we have now learned of the achievements and experiences of hundreds of Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders. 

We have heard more about their journeys and achievements, and some of the myriad ways in which they are advancing understanding, particularly in the study of Indigenous histories, cultures, knowledges, and languages. These scholars and knowledge-holders have shown intellectual leadership by practising and advocating for research and education by, with, and for Indigenous communities. They have revitalised interest and awareness in Indigenous knowledge systems by connecting people through cultural activities, creative arts, and languages. 

Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders have pioneered research practices, methodologies, and ethical frameworks, grounded in traditional worldviews and values, that uplift different ways of looking at challenges and have reshaped research practices across disciplines. Their work has shown that Indigenous knowledge systems are not simply historical artefacts, but living bodies of understanding that continue to evolve and to generate new insights. 

From the Communiqué (bolding mine):

 The Summit recognises that Indigenous Peoples are the rightful leaders, authorities, and stewards of research concerning their communities, territories, and knowledges. Indigenous research is grounded in distinct systems of knowledge, practice, and ethics that have sustained societies and ecosystems for millennia. These knowledge systems, sciences and artistic forms constitute rigorous and essential ways of knowing and understanding the world. They are not supplementary to other science methodologies. They have their own integrity and value. 

Note the clear statement that indigenous knowledge systems are “rigorous and essential ways of knowing and understanding the world” and “are not supplementary to other science methodologies.” This says that indigenous ways of knowing cannot simply fuse with science into a general understanding of the universe.  But indigenous ways of knowing, insofar as they incorporate anecdotal or observational evidence, are already fuse-able with modern science. It’s all part of understanding our universe.

Finally, also from the Commuiqué:

We acknowledge the enduring impacts of research practices that have marginalised, misrepresented, or appropriated Indigenous knowledge. Correcting these legacies requires fundamental transformation within institutes of higher learning and learned academies. This includes:

• addressing structural racism and inequities, including for Indigenous people with diverse sexual orientations or gender identities,

• affirming the sovereign right of Indigenous Peoples to determine their own research priorities, methodologies, and outcomes, and

• enabling Indigenous Peoples to maintain, protect, and develop Indigenous knowledge systems, intellectual property, and data.

This part involves questionable assertions, such as that about structural racism, as well as an implication—and I may be wrong here—that the products of indigenous science belong to the indigenous people.  But one thing is for sure, nobody can control the outcome of their “research methodologies”, for you don’t do research if you already have determined its outcome.

So Canada and Australia have bought into the “other ways of knowing” mentality that’s long pervaded New Zealand.

I’ll give a few quotes from my anonymous Kiwi correspondent:

I think these statements have thrown science under the bus in all three countries. If our RSTA [Royal Society of New Zealand] still retained any credibility it’s lost it now. How can you make a blanket statement about indigenous knowledge being as rigorous as other “ways of understanding” when it spans everything from empirically verifiable knowledge to superstition? This legitimises any form of quackery or snake oil provided it’s sold under a banner of cultural authority – there are no standards of universal evidence.
I’m hoping that this will lead to change in RSTA, but Canada and Australia now have the same problem! All three scientific associations have abandoned their statutory claim to leadership and  responsibility for global and universalist science.
. . . It is appalling. Probably the worst thing for me is that it says to indigenous people that they have to choose between their culture and science. That we’ve got here is because relativist ideology has been used as a Trojan Horse to smuggle non-science into science. I see no difference between this and the separation between religion and science. Religion is also culture, and biblical creationism can equally be portrayed as a “way of understanding”. What’s lost is the epistemological distinctiveness of science.
The point is not that indigenous knowledge is all myth and superstition. It’s not. But if the products of different “ways of understanding” are only legitimately viewed through their own “cultural” lens then everything devolves into a political battle – a Foucauldian universe. I think at its heart this is activist politics, and so-called science leaders have fallen for it.
Well, read above and judge for yourself. What science and scientists should ensure is that indigenous knowledge, if it’s to be considered a real “way of knowing,” has to comport with the knowledge produced by modern science. We cannot water down science by mixing it with legend, myth, unsupported assertions, or religion. When it comes to science, we cannot indulge in “the authority of the sacred victim.“

Māori council gets right of approval for releasing genetically modified native organisms in New Zealand

October 27, 2025 • 11:30 am

For the last thirty years, New Zealand has had strict regulations about the release of genetically modified organisms, including humans.  This means that gene therapy is strictly regulated (more so than in the U.S.) and release of genetically modified organisms, which has occurred in other places (mosquitoes, crops, etc.), or has great potential (e.g., golden rice) is not on in New Zealand. And gene therapy for diseases like Parkinson’s and hemophilia has great promise in our own species.

That changed last year when three New Zealand parties agreed to make it more possible to release genetically modified native species, and to use gene therapy in humans,.  Except for one thing, and you can guess what that might be.  The bill also allows for an advisory council of the indigenous Māori people to nix gene therapy based on more-or-less spiritual relationship with native organisms. There is no scientific basis for this save for the superstition embodied in Mātauranga Māori: the melange of superstition, indigenous knowledge, ideology, and code of conduct (tikanga) that is said to constitute another “way of knowing”.

Only Ceiling Cat knows why the bill was approved by parties that aren’t keen on the concept of “co-governance”.  Surely people should realize what is gong to happen: Māori, which supposedly have an advisory capacity only, but in reality can nix any release of GMOs in native species, can bargain with the supplicants, perhaps even getting money to give permission, as Graham Adams writes in this article on the N.Z. site Point of Order. I’ll give some excerpts from the article but do realize that I don’t know a great deal about the new bill save what the article says.

Click the headline to read the piece:

I’ll just give quotes, and perhaps a bit of commentary. I’ve bolded parts that I see as more significant. Note that the text is messed up, and I don’t know how to fix it.

In August 2024, the then-Minister of Science, Innovation, and Technology, Judith Collins, announced legislation to end New Zealand’s nearly 30-year ban on gene technology outside the lab. She described the move as “a major milestone in modernising gene technology laws.”

In her Beehive media release, she said, “The changes we’re announcing today will allow researchers and companies to further develop and commercialise their innovative products. Importantly, it will help New Zealanders to better access treatments such as CAR T-cell therapy, which has been clinically proven to effectively treat some cancers. It can also help our farmers and growers mitigate emissions and increase productivity, all of which benefits our economy.”

It sounded encouragingly far-sighted, but the Gene Technology Bill she introduced to Parliament last December — declaring it to be “a great day for science” that would bring New Zealand’s “regulations for gene technology into the 21st century” — included major elements that are decidedly unscientific and distinctly backward looking.

Alongside a Technical Advisory Committee staffed by scientists, the legislation sets up a Māori Advisory Committee whose members are required to have “knowledge of mātauranga Māori (Māori traditional knowledge), tikanga Māori (Māori protocol and culture), te ao Māori (the Māori world), and taonga species.”

Anyone who wants approval for work involving native species (or affecting relationships Māori claim to have with those species) must engage with the Māori Advisory Committee, which will advise on cultural, spiritual, historical, customary, and ecological values.

Somehow, the National-led government — in charge of a country that, by its own admission, is struggling to keep up with scientific advances in gene technology in the 21st century — is willing to appoint a bevy of spiritual and cultural advisers whose advice is to be officially assessed in a similar manner to that presented by scientists.

Opposition from the conservative (in the NZ sense) ACT party:

ACT’s “differing view” in the select committee report states this (ACT will not, however, oppose the bill):

“For gene technology to succeed and be trusted, it should be based on modern science, not cultural concepts that will make it difficult for the Regulator or applicants to navigate. The [Māori Advisory] committee is entirely reliant on the concept of ‘tikanga’… ACT does not believe it has a place in scientific legislation. Tikanga is not a fixed or universal concept; it varies between iwi and hapū and lacks consistent content or application, making it unsuitable as a legal standard… The inclusion of a Technical Advisory Committee ensures that the Regulator receives robust scientific and technical input… Adding a parallel cultural advisory process risks diluting this focus and undermining confidence in the regulatory regime’s neutrality and predictability.”

And the indigenous approval can apply not just to indigenous species, but to any species with which Māori have a special relationship that got to the island before 1769::

The bill grants the right to any iwi, hapū, Māori entity or Māori individual to assert they have “a kaitiaki [guardianship] relationship with an indigenous species that would be, or has been, used as a host organism.”

A kaitiaki relationship is defined as “the relationship that any kaitiaki has, or Māori in general have, as guardian, trustee, or caretaker of an indigenous species, in accordance with tikanga.”

The Health select committee report further recommends the bill should be expanded to include relationships with “non-indigenous species of significance” to Māori that are “believed to have been brought to New Zealand before 1769 [when Cook arrived] on waka migrating from other parts of the Pacific region.”

Now “native” species aren’t necessarily indigenous: they could have arrived in NZ a long time ago from elsewhere, and also be present in other places.  And remember, too, that both Māori and European descendents are both colonists of the islands, separated by about 600 years.  It’s not clear to me why the earlier immigrants have the right to nix genetic studies of native organisms, particularly when conservation of native species is a serious issue in New Zealand. It’s entirely possible that conservation of native species might some day involve genetic modification, and why should bogus claims of “spiritual connection” have any say in conservation decisions?

Mātauranga Māori strikes again

October 22, 2025 • 10:45 am

This article from the New Zealand Herald shows what we already know: that “indigenous ways of knowing” in New Zealand, or Mātauranga Māori (henceforth “MM”) are loudy touted as making substantial contributions to scientific knowledge—in this case to predictions of volcanic eruptions.  And while it’s possible that MM can make some contributions to predictions of the damage that could result from eruption, even those predictions are nebulous. As usual, the mixture of empirical knowledge, legend, superstition, ideology, and proper behavior that constitute MM are said to be crucial for an empirical endeavor, but no specifics are ever given. In the end, it seems again that MM is tacked on to science to pretend that it’s coequal in its value, but that no evidence is given to support coequality.

You can see an archived link by clicking the headline below.

The issue is how to predict when a now-dormant volcano, Mount Taranaki on New Zealand’s North Island, will erupt again. The article summarizes a five-year study of how to predict not just that but also how to assess the damage from an eruption. The researchers apparently used real science to get the dates of eruptions (radiometric dating for dates of past eruptions, which go back to 200,000 BCE, with the most recent being 1854), and research from Massey University to calculate possible damage. That damage could be severe because Mount Taranaki can have damaging eruptions involving collapse of the volcanic cone plus dangerous mudflows. The hazards are summarized by Wikipedia:

Much of the region is at risk from lahars [mudflows], which have reached the eastern coast.[25]: 466  A volcanic event is not necessary for a lahar: even earthquakes combined with heavy rain or snow could dislodge vast quantities of unstable layers resting on steep slopes. Many farmers live in the paths of such possible destructive events.

Although volcanic eruptions are notoriously chaotic in their frequency, some scientists warn that a large eruption is “overdue”. Research from Massey University indicates that significant seismic activity from the local faults is likely again in the next 50 years and such might be permissive to an eruption. What ever in the next 50 years, the probability of at least one eruption is between 33% and 42%.[25]: 473  Prevailing winds would probably blow ash east, covering much of the North Island, and disrupting air routes, power transmission lines and local water supplies.[35]

None of the references given in the Herald piece, including this one and this one—papers and articles that discuss the volcano’s geological history and possible damage—even mention MM, but it’s still touted as helping contribute to this five-year project. Some quotes from the NZ Herald article (I’ve put my translations of the Māori, taken from the Māori Dictionary, in brackets):

A Mt Taranaki eruption could bring the region to a standstill, knock out regional infrastructure and cause up to $16 billion worth of damage, a new study has found.

Researchers across New Zealand undertook a five-year study weaving together volcanic science, dynamic risk modelling, economic analysis and mātauranga ā iwi [knowledge from the tribes] to project what would happen if the volcano erupted.

University of Auckland Professor Shane Cronin said the programme began because researchers knew there was a 30-50% chance that Taranaki could erupt in the next 50 years.

“Our job was to listen to the mounga [mountain], study its past behaviour, and start to understand what signs it might give before erupting again.”

The rest of the article discuses the dates of previous eruptions (determined by direct observation by “Westerners” or via radiometric dating), as well as the possible damage that could occur, including this:

The research revealed how a disruption to the electricity system could cascade through the oil and gas industries, transport networks, and water systems, causing widespread impacts across the= region and nation.

“The risk modelling suggests a Taranaki eruption is a potential regional disaster, it’s a national energy security challenge, and a potential future economic crisis,” Wilson said.

“The ripple effects of an eruption go far beyond ash and lahars.

“Volcanic ash can short-circuit power lines, block roads, contaminate water sources, and clog water treatment plants, causing critical infrastructure systems to fail at the exact time they’re needed most.

“Lahars could also destroy bridges and cut off lifeline services, disrupting transport and access to basic needs like food and water, as well as limiting access to some communities.”

Economic modelling predicts losses from a future eruption of Taranaki mounga could be between $12b and $16b, depending on the type, scale, and duration of the event.

This appears to have come from empirical observation, with no explicit contribution from MM.  But then they put in the indigenous “ways of knowing” stuff, heavily larded with Māori words.

Weaving m ātauranga Māori and risk science.

The programme worked in partnership with Uri to weave together  [Note the reference to “Western science”, which should be “modern science”.]

Bilingual resources, interactive StoryMaps, and wānanga [tribal or traditional knowledge; could also mean an “indigenous sage”] created spaces for kōrero [conversations] about the mounga’s past and future.

“You can’t understand volcanic risk in Taranaki without understanding the whakapapa [genealogy or history] of the mountain, whenua [land] and awa [rivers], the kōrero tuku iho [oral tradition] and mātauranga [knowledge] held by whānau [family groups], hapū [kinship groups or tribes] and iwi [tribes] who hold ancestral connections to the mounga [mountain] and have done so for generations,” said Acushla Dee Sciascia of Mapuna Consultants.

This research provided a platform for Māori researchers to contribute their voices, leading to richer outputs including monographs, visual exhibitions, and new ways of telling the mounga’s story.

“Taranaki mounga [tribal groups near the mountain] provides us with so many learnings from its past and how our tūpuna [ancestors] navigated previous volcanic events, and it’s up to us now to prepare our whānau [land] for the future,” Sciascia said.

“This programme has laid a foundation. But the real mahi [effort] is in how we carry this forward, and how we embed mātauranga Māori into everyday planning, science, and response.”

What is missing here is how mātauranga Māori really is woven together with Western science in a productive way. Conspicuously absent is any mention about how MM really does help us assess volcanic risk, and mentioning “StoryMaps”, visual exhibitions, traditional knowledge, and so on doesn’t give us any insight about the two main aspects of the article: predicting future eruptions and assessing potential damage. Nor does seeing how earlier inhabitants coped with the damage give us much help in figuring out how to cope with the damage now. In the end, it seems that straight empirical observation and empirical-based prediction is what is needed here, and I can’t for the life of me find out how MM can help with that.

Nevertheless, I’ve tried to understand how it could, and, to be fair, it’s possible that Māori could contribute to the risk assessment by describing the ways that they would deal with an eruption, and what are their strengths and weaknesses in doing so.  Also—and this is PR more than science—mixing MM in with science could prompt the Maori to take the risks of living near the volcano more seriously. But this doesn’t show how mixing MM with “Western science” gives us any idea of when Mount Taranaki is going to blow (that will be from pure science) or how to deal with possible damage (which depends on the seriousness of the eruption, something we don’t know).  Once again we find that “traditional ways of knowing” don’t seem to help with understanding the real world, though catering to its proponents may create more amity between indigenous peoples and the descendants of Western colonists.

Here’s Mount Taranaki from the Wikipedia article. I think I saw it when I visited NZ, and it’s impressive.

Public domain

And a photo I took in April, 2017. It’s not labeled, but it sure looks like Mt. Taranaki! I would ask Heather Hastie, but she is no more.

University of Auckland set to make mandatory “indigeneity” courses optional, as students considered them a waste of time and money

October 7, 2025 • 11:30 am

As  I reported in September of last year, every entering student at New Zealand’s Auckland University was required to take an “indigeneity” course—and that includes prospective science majors. As I noted:

. . . . at the University of Auckland—New Zealand’s most prestigious university—every student has to take a mandatory course related to indigenous knowledge, a course ostensibly related to their their field of study. In reality, these courses are exercises in propaganda, created to indoctrinate students into sacralizing indigenous “ways of knowing”.  As an example, I gave this course (see screenshot below), which is required for all science majors. Click to access the course description, which I went through a while back (see the link above).

. . . . If you read the course description, you’ll see that it’s largely designed to inculcate students into the (1840) Treaty of Waitangi (in Māori: “Te Tiriti o Waitangi”) as a way of showing that Māori ways of knowing, or Mātauranga Māori (MM), should be considered coequal to modern science.  This, in turn, is part of a push to insinuate indigenous ways of knowing into New Zealand science, as well as giving Māori increased power over what science is done and how it is done. (For my criticisms of this approach, see the many pieces I’ve written about it.) The general view of the indigenous people of New Zealand is that Māori have the sole power to use and control how indigenous knowledge is used. That’s in contrast to modern science, in which no ethnic group has any control about what projects are done or funded.

I gave some excerpts from the syllabus, which was designed to show students how sacred the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi was, widely interpreted to deem all endeavors in New Zealand coequal between the “Crown” (Europeans) and the indigenous Māori.  This included science, so you could regard the course below, required for all science majors, as a way to propagandize them into thinking that indigenous “ways of knowing” were coequal to modern science.  But there was a similar required course for every major.

Unfortunately, this did not go down well: many of the students considered it a waste of time.  As one university member told me:

What we have been told is that the majority of students considered the courses below an acceptable standard, but it varied faculty by faculty. Remember that each faculty had its own WTR course. I know that in Engineering students overwhelmingly criticised their WTR course, but, ironically, this will continue as compulsory in 2026 as graduate competencies that are claimed to be covered by WTR are required for degree accreditation. I suspect however that the courses will be modified. We won’t know if WTR will be optional for the Faculty of Science in 2026, but most are assuming it will be, i.e. it won’t be compulsory next year.

For some reason, engineering and medicine students will still be required to take such a course, but, as a New Zealand Herald article (archived here) notes, the rest of these courses will be optional. Perhaps Māori students may take them, but the course offered was not a science course but a propaganda course, and why waste your time on such stuff when you can be learning science? (If you want to learn indigenous culture, anthropology or sociology courses are the proper venue.)

Dawn Freshwater, the Auckland Vice-Chancellor (i.e., “The Boss”) has been mentioned here before. She dissimulated several years ago, promising that there would be a full and fair debate on the relative merits and usefulness of modern science versus indigenous “ways of knowing”. But after four years, the debate still never took place. Freshwater clearly never had any intention of allowing it. And when I swallowed hard and emailed her about this, asking where the debate was, I got no answer. Fortunately for Auckland Uni, Freshwater has announced she’s leaving.

In the article below she backs off the program, recommending that the courses be optional instead of required. A faculty vote overwhelmingly supported this.

Click to read. (“Waipapa Taumata Rau” is Māori for “The University of Auckland,” recently given that indigenous name  (as my colleague said, “This was one of the problems with the whole thing: naming the course after the University indicated that the content reflected the views of the university.”)

Anyway, I’ll give a few excerpts:


Excerpts (go to the archived link to read full article):

The University of Auckland’s controversial Treaty of Waitangi and te ao Māori courses are unlikely to remain compulsory after negative feedback from staff and students, and criticism from politicians.

The university senate has recommended that Waipapa Taumata Rau (WTR) courses become an optional choice, rather than a core requirement.

The courses were made compulsory for all first-year students this year. The backdown comes after just one completed semester.

In March, Act leader David Seymour called on the university to scrap the compulsory courses, describing them as “a perversion of academic freedom” and “a form of indoctrination”.

“The university has been reviewing the feedback about the Waipapa Taumata Rau courses,” Auckland University Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater posted online on September 12.

Freshwater, as always, tried to put a good face on it, but the feedback was dire: students, even in engineering, considered the courses a waste of time.

“While students have found the courses valuable, they have also indicated where improvements could be made and told us they would like greater flexibility in how WTR fits within their programme of study,” she wrote.

English translation: “The reviews were lousy—so lousy that we have to make the courses optional so that students can take courses in their major lacking ideological propagandizing,”

“As we do with all courses, we aim to use staff and student feedback to strengthen how they are delivered.

“To that end, and in response to that feedback, a proposal will be discussed at Senate on 15 September recommending that WTR become an optional choice within General Education for most programmes, rather than a core requirement.

The faculty vote was very lopsided: make the courses optional.  Some student comments.

Comments online included: “From what I’m seeing, you either pay for this course or some other. You can debate whether another elective or transdisciplinary would be more useful than WTR.”

Another said: “This class is literally primary school-level content. I love the idea of a compulsory class on Te Tiriti, but obviously they failed at it. This class has been the biggest waste of my time, I learnt more in my Year 4 class.”

Some students said the course costs – between $900 and $1200 – were high and the courses had little relevance to their studies when compared to other general education courses.

The majority of comments were negative but not racist.

LOL. “Negative but not racist.”  That’s an escellent take on the “equal time” proposal. And those are the comments that Freshwater said “found the courses valuable.”  The woman doesn’t know how to give a straight answer.

Act’s tertiary education spokeswoman, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, said in March that international students were being forced to pay thousands of dollars for a course with little relevance to their future careers.

To sum up, the University’s efforts to shove the sacralization of indigenous people (and the treaty of Waitani) down the throats of students failed; the students want to learn stuff relevant to their interests, and are pretty clearly sick of the pervasive indigenization of New Zealand.  I find that good in the sense that while citizens of New Zealand Aoteoroa should know about their country’s history and culture, it should not be stuck everywhere in the curriculum.

Is this a harbinger of things to come? Perhaps in New Zealand, but certainly not in Canada, where the sacralization of the indigenous people is only getting started. Expect to see the “two-eyed seeing” trope everywhere.

Finally, I bid Dr. Freshwater goodbye and good riddance.  Her tenure served only to damage education at New Zealand’s most prestigious university.