Pigliucci decries scientism, argues that science needs philosophy, and that most of us are doing it rong

August 30, 2012 • 5:44 am

While perusing the New Humanist website, trying to find Francis Spufford’s letter that I discussed yesterday, I came across a short piece I hadn’t seen before. It’s by Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher (also trained in biology) working at the City University of New York, and is called “Science needs philosophy” (free at the link).  If you’ve read Massimo’s website Rationally Speaking on a regular basis, you’ll know that three of his themes are the importance of philosophy for working scientists, the fact that most scientists neglect philosophy to their detriment, and that many of us are afflicted with the dread disease called scientism, which Massimo defines as “the idea that science is the ultimate arbiter of any question, or indeed even of what counts as a meaningful question.”

These points are all emphasized in the New Humanist piece, which starts off with Pigliucci’s “j’accuse”:

A recent New York Times article has noted a new trend in secular writings, what the author, James Atlas, termed “Can’t-Help-Yourself books”. This trend includes writings by prominent scientists and secularists that are characterised by two fundamental – and equally misguided – ideas: an over-enthusiastic embrace of science, and the dismissal of much of human experience under the generic label of “illusion”.

The culprits are many and influential. Physicists Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss, along with biologist EO Wilson, dismiss philosophy (and much of the humanities) as a leftover from pre-scientific thought, to be replaced by the objective and empirical truth arrived at by modern science, especially fundamental physics. Never mind that, as Daniel Dennett aptly put it a while ago, there is no such thing as philosophy-free science, but only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board unexamined.

And then there are the likes of Sam Harris, Jonathan Haidt, Alex Rosenberg and Jerry Coyne, who claim that science can provide answers to philosophical questions, and that moreover antiquated concepts like free will, consciousness and morality are just illusions, tricks played on us by our Pleistocene-evolved brains. We are not really in control of what we do and think, it’s all done automatically by an inner zombie whose actions were determined since the Big Bang. This despite the fact that serious neuroscientists like Michael Gazzaniga and Antonio Damasio are actually much more careful about what exactly their discipline brings to our understanding of the human mind.

Well, I think this is a bit unfair.  First, in my own defense, I’ve never claimed that philosophy has no value for scientists. Au contraire. As I’ve noted before, philosophers like Dan Dennett and Philip Kitcher have been really valuable to me in clarifying the meaning of evolutionary biology, for they bring their formidable philosophical skills to bear on biological problems.  (I have, however, noted that I’ve never gotten much value from “straight” philosophers of science like Kuhn or Feyerabend).  As I said in a post about Pigliucci’s attacks on Lawrence Krauss’s philosophical naïvité:

Now Massimo and I have had our differences, and I’m generally a fan of Krauss (though I didn’t much like Krauss’s new book), but I’m on Massimo’s side in this one.  Despite the famously dismissive statement by Feynman, I think philosophy can be of real value to scientists.  It has helped me, for example, rethink and clarify my notions of “free will.”

Second, it is undeniable that science has made inroads on questions that were once the purview of philosophy. Free will is one of these.  Although we can argue ad infinitum—as we do—about whether humans have free will, the notion of dualism, the basis of what I see as most people’s (and nearly all religious believers) idea of free will, was dispelled not by philosophy but by science—by the discovery that material stuff and physical forces are all there appears to be.

Further, science can shed light on philosophical questions, as we all know.  Even if you reject Sam Harris’s notion that morality equates to what maximizes our well being, we can nevertheless use the tools of science to quantify well-being—if you have a way to define it! As a prime example of how science can inform philosophy and theology, there is the physicists’ notion that a universe can indeed arise from nothing—if you define “nothing” as a quantum vacuum.

As for Pigliucci’s criticism that Harris, Haidt, Rosenberg and I subscribe to the belief that

. . . antiquated concepts like free will, consciousness and morality are just illusions, tricks played on us by our Pleistocene-evolved brains. We are not really in control of what we do and think, it’s all done automatically by an inner zombie whose actions were determined since the Big Bang.

I see it as partly right and partly wrong.  I think we are conscious, and that that phenomenon is a property of an evolved brain that may well have arisen by natural selection.  It’s not a “spirit” or a “soul” in our heads, but a property of neurons that, I think, will one day be explained.  Likewise, we may have some evolved notions of morality, though that doesn’t mean that those notions comport with modern thought. But I do think free will is an illusion in a different way, at least if one thinks that we really have a “will” that is distinct from the deterministic (or quantum-mechanical) forces that operate in our brains.  We think our actions originate spontaneously with us, and that we can freely choose between alternatives, but we can’t. The idea that we are the authors of our actions is, to me, an illusion.  So, if you accept Cashmore’s definition of free will, which I’ve bolded in the following (and I like his definition better than my own, which was the same as Searle’s), then yes, free will is an illusion:

Searle has described free will as the belief “that we could often have done otherwise than we in fact did” (15). A difficulty with this definition is that it does not distinguish free will from the variability associated with stochasticism. For this reason, I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature. Here, in some ways, it might be more appropriate to replace “genetic and environmental history” with “chemistry”—however, in this instance these terms are likely to be similar and the former is the one commonly used in such discussions. (Cashmore A., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 107:4500; 2010).

But I highly doubt that, contra Pigliucci, our actions have all been determined since the Big Bang, since quantum effects in the universe (and in evolution, in the form of mutations), would surely have changed things were the Big Bang to repeat itself.  Absent mutations, which may not be deterministic, humans might not even be around, much less the one named Jerry Coyne!

But I digress—as I always do when the question of free will arises. Pigliucci sees this misguided scientism as being dangerous for society:

I think this is a misguided and dangerous trend, which might backfire on the entire secular movement. . . Or take Rosenberg’s and (again) Harris’s categorical statement that in a deterministic world there is no such thing as consciousness or free will, and consequently no morality.

I’ve heard this before from compatibilists: don’t tell the masses that their behaviors are determined, for they’ll become cheaters and nihilists, (This view is often based on psychological studies in which people cheat more after reading that their behaviors are physically determined.) I see the argument about free will as a healthy one, and feel that there’s no need to protect people from determinism. That’s condescending. People will come to terms with determinism as they have come to terms with something worse: their own mortality. I do believe that there really is no objective morality, and that whether we behave “morally” is not a choice we can freely make. I’m not yet ready to jettison the word “morality,” as it has its uses as social shorthand, but we should realize—especially when we come to characterize or punish people for immorality—that their behavior was not under the control of some amorphous “will.”

So Pigliucci sees this determinism and ancillary ideas as dangerous for the secular movement:

This kind of intellectual hubris [the “reductive determinism” of Sam Harris and Alex Rosenberg] is known as scientism, the idea that science is the ultimate arbiter of any question, or indeed even of what counts as a meaningful question. Taken to its logical extreme, scientism leads to nihilism, and as such is both scientifically untenable (nihilism is a philosophical position, not an empirical one) and philosophically sterile. And if there is one thing that secular humanists do not want , it is to be associated with nihilism, both because it is intellectually uninteresting and because it plays into the worst stereotype of the “godless atheist” that most people still unfortunately hold.

The thing is, humans don’t take things to their logical extremes, because we’re creatures of feeling as well as logic. I don’t act like a robot even though I think I am largely a robot made of meat, and I still denigrate people whom I see behave in bad ways, even though I know they can’t help themselves. I act as if I have free will, even though I know I don’t. The fact that determinists like me aren’t nihilists, and do find meaning and beauty in our lives, shows that it can be done.  If determinism led to nihilism, physicists would be the most anarchic and immoral people on Earth!

Pigliucci contrasts scientism with humanism:

On the contrary, humanism is about taking seriously the complexity of the human condition and the limits of human knowledge. Science is a marvellous thing that has brought us computers, airplanes and modern medicine. But it has also brought us the atomic bomb, eugenics and biological warfare. It is a wonderful experience to think like a scientist – believe me, I’ve done it for decades. But that is only one mode of human thinking. Our arsenal is vast, including the ability to critically reflect on what we do and why (philosophy) and to communicate our emotions and perspectives about the world to other human beings (art and literature).

Here we see the denigration of science that invariably accompanies accusations of scientism.  But the misuses of science are not the fault of the scientific process itself, but of humans making humanistic ethical judgments about what to do with the products of science, or about what questions should be pursued. Finding out that spirochaetes cause syphillis comes from science, but deciding to withhold treatment from infected poor black people to watch the disease progress comes from bad ethical judgment.

And which scientist decries the value of art and literature, or claims that their value can be dissected only using the tools of science? Yes, some day science might be able to uncover why I personally see Joyce’s The Dead as the best fiction ever written in English, but until then I will continue to be moved to tears by it.

I have yet to see an accusation of scientism that really sticks. Pigliucci is correct in saying that philosophy does have value for science, though its value is, I think, more limited than he descries*. But too often his attacks on scientists for neglecting philosophy sound defensive, the way theologians sound when science begins to encroach on religious turf. Philosophy is of great value in giving us logical tools to think about questions, but it, too, is susceptible to scientific advances.

________

*Several readers have suggested that this word is a typo and should be “describes.” It’s not—it comes from the word “descry”

Wildlife pictures of the year

August 29, 2012 • 12:36 pm

From the BBC Nature page comes a slideshow of some of the best images from the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. There were 48,000 entries, and 100 were chosen to go on exhibit at London’s Museum of Natural History in October. I’m showing only five here, but go watch the slideshow for more (don’t miss “Midnight Snack”!).  Click all photos to enlarge:

Several cormorants try to steal fish from a gannet:

Rays underwater—a lovely image:

A fruit bat drinking from a river:

A gander defending his nest from a fox:

A bear with his dinner:

h/t: pyers

Big response to Bill Nye’s attack on creationism

August 29, 2012 • 10:13 am

Yesterday I posted Bill Nye’s anti-creationist “Big Think” video, and I didn’t expect it to be so controversial, particularly because it was on CNN and because I had supposed (without any evidence) that The Science Guy had dealt with evolution on his own show. And I didn’t realize that its location at the “religion” section of CNN would make it even more of a lightning rod.

Well, there were over 10.000 comments and tons of media attention. I didn’t realize just how big a deal The Science Guy really was. So CNN has just published an analysis of the comments, with blog co-editor Eric Marrapodi breaking them down into five groups. He gives an example of most of them, but I’ll let you go to the site see some of the lunacy. The indented parts are quotes from CNN.

1. Those using this controversy to bash religion. Atheists love the Internet, as we’ve chronicled on the Belief Blog. While they may be a small portion of the population, they seem to make up about half our commenters.  It was their chance to join with Nye and cheer him on.

I hope Marrapodi doesn’t include here those who say that creationism shouldn’t be fed to children because it’s nonsense based on an erroneous religious view. That’s not “religion-bashing”!  Were all of those “cheering Nye on” in this category? I’ve added a sixth category at the bottom.

2. Those who say wait a minute, being a creationist isn’t necessarily being anti-evolution. Lots of folks from the theistic evolution camp came out to say that believing God was involved doesn’t automatically make you anti-evolution.

Theistic evolutionists are creationists, pure and simple; they differ from straight fundamentalist creationists only in how much of life God was involved in creating, ranging from those who think God set the whole plan in motion, knowing it would culminate in that most awesome of species, US, to those who think that God tinkered with mutations to create the right species (see the philosophical work of Elliott Sober), to those who think that humans are set apart from other species because God inserted a soul in our lineage (that’s the official view of the Vatican).  That is being anti-evolution as scientists understand it, since we see evolution as a naturalistic process that has nothing to do with deities. Sadly, far more Americans are theistic evolutionists than naturalistic evolutionists: the proportions among all Americans are 38% to 16% respectively (40% are straight creationists, 6% are unsure). We have a long way to go.

3. Those who say that science is stupid and that young Earth creationism rules. Young Earth creationists, who believe the Earth is about 6,000 years old, appeared to be out in force in the comments.

Have a look at some of the comments supporting this view. Or rather, don’t. You already know what they say.

4. Those who say Nye should stick to his area of expertise.

This tweet was the most polite remark we could find on this subject. Other comments and tweets, not so much.

Greg: “Thanks Bill … but leave the teaching of my children to me. …”

Sorry, but Nye is an expert at teaching science, and parents aren’t.  And of course they’re teaching their kids fairy tales as well.

5. Those who say CNN is cooking up controversy where none exists. Lots of people suggested we were generating a story instead of covering one.

Yeah, right.  When The Science Guy speaks out against creationism when he hasn’t before, and in such strong terms, that is a story.  Not to mention that there is a continuing controversy in America about evolution, and a famous spokesman for science decided to take a stand.

But there’s one category missing, which I’ll add here:

6.  Those who say that Nye is right, and that creationism should not be taught in the schools, or to children at all!

It’s a measure of how strong Americans feel about evolution that even CNN’s postmortem report has 2,112 comments as I post this!  Have a look at some of them: many, like this one, make me weep for my country:

Doom

I feel it is everyone’s right to believe what they want. Free will. [JAC: LOL!] I believe in God. Regardless as to whether you believe in him or believe in evolution, I think that it is very arrogant for anyone to believe that they have all of the answers. On the one hand, evolutionists believe that it we came about by evolution, period. There is so much to this world that we are still discovering, to think that evolution is it, period, to me is assuming quite a bit. If you believe in God and the bible, it states that after Jesus comes again, there will be new scrolls opened, which also would mean we don’t know all of what God has in store for us. We might be amazed at the answers still to come if that is what you believe. Regardless, to act arrogant and to call those who believe in God as those believing in a myth is, to me, insulting and uneducated. You do not know for sure.

A letter to atheists from a believer

August 29, 2012 • 5:14 am

The cover of my latest issue of New Humanist (Sept./Oct.) is emblazoned with a big picture of Anthony Grayling with his resplendent hair: the article is about his New College for the Humanities scheme, which I’m dubious about (see here and here for dissenting views).  But the topic of this post is another piece in the same issue, a three-page letter by Francis Spufford called “Dear atheists. . .” (now free online; reference below). Spufford is an English writer of nonfiction whose books have been widely praised.

In his letter, though, he decries the stridency of modern atheism and claims that it’s almost a religion itself in its zeal and fervor.  He faults atheists for a lack of empathy, a failure to understand that believers, too, have doubts, and for  a dogmatism that overlooks the possibility that we, too, may be wrong.  He notes that, in response to doubts on both sides, “The proper response is humility.” (That word always sets my teeth on edge, for I find the faithful far less humble than the doubters.)

But it behooves us to listen to the criticisms of our opponents, if for no other reason than to sharpen our arguments. I’m not going to change my mind about the absence of God, but I want to understand the faith of someone as smart as Spufford.  Maybe people like him do have some valid points to make about our behavior.

The first is his attitude toward the question, “Are the assertions of religion true?”  That, of course, is one of the defining questions of New Atheists.

Along with many Sophisticated Believers™, Spufford remains ambivalent on the question of the role of evidence in religion.  At first he says it’s largely irrelevant: religion is not about evidence, but about community and feeling, and you believe in God as a result of those feelings. That, of course, was one of the main points of William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience: faith comes largely through personal revelation and experience. Here’s Spufford:

“In any case, over here on the believers’ side too, we don’t spend that much time fixated on the question of God’s existence, either. Religion isn’t a philosophical argument, just as it isn’t a dodgy cosmology, or any other kind of alternative to science. In fact, it isn’t primarily a system of propositions about the world at all. Before it is anything else, it is a structure of feelings, a house built of emotions. You don’t have the emotions because you’ve signed up to the proposition that God exists; you entertain the proposition that God exists because you’ve had the emotions.”

Well, that may seem true for Sophisticated Believers™, but remember that the vast majority of religious people are believers not because they have emotions that have driven them to faith, or because they’ve examined and signed on to the evidence for God: they’re religious because they were brought up to believe.  So you may have the emotions and then later find evidence for God, but preceding all that is the childhood brainwashing.

Nevertheless, Spufford admits that without real evidence for God, religion means nothing.  All the stained glass, flying buttresses, and religious music in the world mean nothing if there’s not really a God or a Jesus:

“. . . And yet, of course, we don’t know, and knowing matters. The ultimate test of faith must still, and always, be its truth; whether we can prove it or not, the reality of the perspectives it brings us, and the changes it puts us through, must depend in the end on it corresponding to an actual state of the universe. Religion without God makes no sense (except possibly to Buddhists). So belief for most Christians who respect truth and logic and science—which is most of us, certainly in this country—must entail a willing entry into uncertainty. It means a decision to sustain the risks and embarrassments of living a conditional, of choosing a maybe or perhaps to live out, among the many maybe or perhapses of this place; where conclusive answers are not available, and we must all do our knowing on some subjects through a glass, darkly.”

So in the end, like many Sophisticated Theologians™ including Polkinghorne, Haught, and Plantinga, Spufford says that religion must rest on a base of truth.  The problem of course, is that what the faithful see as “truth” is not the same as what scientists see as truth, or even what the layperson sees as truth when not thinking about God.  To Spufford, truth is “a willing entry into uncertainty” when we have no answers.  But think about how that comports with scientific or everyday truth. Do we “willingly enter into uncertainty” when we undergo a medical treatment, or do want the evidence that it actually works.  Do scientists willingly enter into string theory when we don’t yet know of a way to test it?  If Christians really respected “truth and logic and science”, then they wouldn’t willingly enter into the uncertainty of Christianity, for there is no good evidence for its tenets.

This is the ambivalence of the science-friendly believer.  They see the disparity between the evidential bases of faith and of science, get nervous, and then write piffle like the paragraph above to justify the fact that they, too, have “evidence.” This is what leads to the follies of accommodationism.  The main thing I want to highlight here is that many smart believers, when pressed, do admit that their faith is based on evidence, and that puts religion into the realm of empirical testability.

But there’s one part I am posting to solicit reader response: the accusation that we atheists revel in certitude, self-righteousness, and delicious anger at religion.  This is in fact the ending of the piece, and Spufford’s main point.

“. . . I think you need to be a bit clearer about what the emotional content of your atheism is. . . It isn’t enough that you yourselves don’t believe : atheism permits a delicious self-righteous anger at those who do. The very existence of religion seems to be an affront, a liberty being taken, a scab you can’t help picking. . . The Belief section of the Guardian’s Comment is Free site—where you’d think that it wouldn’t be that surprising to find discussion of, you know, belief—is inhabited almost entirely by commenters waiting for someone to have the temerity to express a religious sentiment, whereupon they can be sprayed with scorn at fire-extinguisher pressure. It’s as if there is some transgressive little ripple of satisfaction which can only be obtained by uttering the words “sky fairy” or “zombie rabbi” where a real live Christian might hear them. Now this, dear brothers and sisters, cannot be good for you. It is never a good idea to let yourself believe that the pleasures of aggression have virtue behind them. Take it from a religious person. This, we know.”

I was going to post my response to this common accusation (especially to the comment “it is never a good idea to let yourself believe that the pleasures of aggression have virtue behind them”), but I thought that it might be better to let the readers, with their diverse opinions, respond.  Some of you might agree with this, while others disagree. But I’d like to hear how atheists respond to Spufford’s accusation.  Have atheists really become too smug, self-righteous, self-satisfied, aggressive, and dogmatic?

__________________

Spufford, F. 2012. “Dear Atheists. . .” New Humanist 127:34-36.

__________________

UPDATE:  Over at Choice in Dying, Eric MacDonald posted his take on Spufford’s letter, including something that Spufford seems to have neglected:

But still, Spufford manages to avoid the real issue about belief and unbelief, and that has to do, as I said earlier, and will not repeat at length here, with the political and social implications of religious believing.  Looked at from this point of view, the decision to base your life on beliefs which not only can you not prove, but which, on the balance of the evidence, seem unlikely to be true, seems incredibly irresponsible. If religious believing had implications only for the individual believer, then it could be easily dismissed as a harmless idiosyncracy, but since almost all religious beliefs have incredibly serious implications for many people, religious belief cannot be regarded as harmless. Indeed, a glance at the behaviour of religious believers worldwide day by day makes it very clear that religion is something to be feared and justly criticised. “Houses built of emotion” is one thing, but beliefs that can lead to mass beheading for mixed-sex dancing, or the marginalisation and victimisation of gay and lesbian people, and the second-listing of women, is quite another, and it is for the latter that religious belief is justly held to require more justification than Spufford offers. I think I will withold my respect for now.

Fred Astaire Week: Fred and Cyd Charisse

August 28, 2012 • 5:30 pm

Fred Astaire Week is drawing to a close. I envision only about two more posts, but I hope you’ve enjoyed the artistry of Astaire and his partners (and don’t forget his co-choreographer Hermes Pan).

This lovely sequence, a jazz dance, is from the 1953 MGM musical The Band Wagon. Remember that Astaire was 54 at the time. The sequence is called “The Girl Hunt,” and Astaire plays a tough detective, using, in his voiceover, every cliché from the Mickey Spillane handbook. Charisse plays both the blonde, who turns out to be the killer, and the brunette vamp.

The famous part of the dance, in the “Dem Bones Cafe,” starts about 7.5 minutes in, so you can skip to that if you just want the center of the cinnamon roll. But I’d recommend watching the whole 12-minute clip.

One of the YouTube notes say the following, which I haven’t verified:

The Girl Hunt is one of the most magnificently staged numbers ever imagined.

An amusing anecdote: It has been said, that Gene Kelly became absolutely sick with envy after seeing this on opening night, and suffered a severe bout of depression for weeks thereafter. I consider The Bandwagon, along with Kiss Me Kate – the absolute best of MGM musicals, better than the over-hyped “Singing in the Rain” although it does have its redeeming moments too… Conrad Salinger’s scoring is gorgeous.

In her autobiography, Charisse compares the two great movie dancers who were her partners: Astaire and Gene Kelly (I wish I could have a week for him!):

 “As one of the handful of girls who worked with both of those dance geniuses, I think I can give an honest comparison. In my opinion, Kelly is the more inventive choreographer of the two. Astaire, with Hermes Pan‘s help, creates fabulous numbers – for himself and his partner. But Kelly can create an entire number for somebody else … I think, however, that Astaire’s coordination is better than Kelly’s … his sense of rhythm is uncanny. Kelly, on the other hand, is the stronger of the two. When he lifts you, he lifts you! … To sum it up, I’d say they were the two greatest dancing personalities who were ever on screen. But it’s like comparing apples and oranges. They’re both delicious.” 

h/t: Latha Menon

Da roolz—again!

August 28, 2012 • 1:04 pm

I hate to have to repeat this, but some of the exchanges in the comments have gotten pretty nasty over the past few weeks.  So let me reiterate two rules:

1. Do not call other commentors names, or insult them personally. We are discussing ideas, not personalities or IQs. (Of course, humor is permitted.) If I catch you insulting other commenters, I will ask you to apologize. If you don’t, I’ll blacklist you.

2.  I’m not really wild about seeing two individuals going at each other and thereby dominating a thread.  That said, I do like some give and take as well as debate. But please try not to occupy more than, say, 15-20% of the comments on a thread. Do realize that I’ve never yet seen an individual change his/her mind in such exchanges, so they’re often more about venting and aggression than enlightenment.

I am trying to keep the tone respectable here and to avoid the fracases that characterize other sites. Please try to abide by the two rules above, as well as the others I’ve posted.

kthxbye

The Science Guy goes after creationism

August 28, 2012 • 10:13 am

I have to admit that I know virtually nothing about Bill Nye the Science Guy, except that he had a science-oriented television show for kids, and that a lot of people liked him. I’ve never even seen his show.  But there seems to be a lot of buzz around his new post on the CNN website and his Big Think video (below) dissing creationism. The video pulls no punches, and good for Nye!

The only thing that irritates me about all this is that the CNN post is on the—get this—”Belief” site.  Why isn’t it on the “Science” site? What we have is not a controversy involving two beliefs; it’s a controversy between science and superstition.

Two quotes from Nye:

“I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that’s completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that’s fine.  But don’t make your kids do it.  Because we need them.  We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.  We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems.”

and his last sentences predict the demise of creationism:

“In another couple centuries I’m sure that worldview won’t even exist.  There’s no evidence for it.”

But there hasn’t been any evidence for it since 1859. The persistence of creationism is not a matter of evidence, but of faith.  The worldview won’t exist in a couple of centuries if religion goes away.  If it doesn’t, creationism will still be around.

h/t: Hempenstein