Category Archives: Philosophy of Science

ID & Explanations

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Every camp in the ‘biological origins debate’ has its own explanation(s) as to where the complexity and diversity of life comes from. Some of these explanations would seem to be driven by prior commitments and ideologies (on both sides) and in some cases (notably from the DI and over at UD) they are part of a bigger assault on the opposing viewpoints perceived commitments themselves.

So what makes for a good explanation? Here’s a couple of resources I found interesting:

http://www.culturallogic.com/research-links/

http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2009/12/explanations-gentle-introduction_28.html

http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-good-is-explanation-part-1.html

http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-good-is-explanation-part-2.html

Perhaps we could have a discussion on what makes for a good explanation and look at the various available explanations for biological origins in this framework?

[Multiple edits]

The Idea of “Pseudo-Science”

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When I was poking my nose around philosophy of science in the 1990s, I was told that Larry Laudan’s critique of “the demarcation criterion” had pretty much scuppered the very idea of “pseudo-science.”    Since I don’t work in philosophy of science, but take a keen (and amateurish) interest in the debates about creationism and intelligent design, I found this unfortunate.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found that some philosophers of science still take the idea of “pseudo-science” seriously and are intent on rescuing it from Laudan’s criticism.  First, I bring to your attention a recent NY Times article, “The Dangers of Pseudo-Science” (part of the usually excellent NY Time series The Stone, which brings philosophy out of the rarefied atmosphere of academia into the very slightly less rarefied atmosphere of the NY Times readership).   The authors, Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, are also the editors of Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem — which, guessing from the table of contents and reviews, will be an excellent collection.

The Limits of Evolutionism: ‘Things That Don’t Evolve’

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Just like the ideology of ‘naturalism’ claims that *everything* is ‘natural,’ the ideology of ‘evolutionism’ says that *everything* ‘evolves.’ As you have seen recently, I am questioning the ideology of evolutionism openly and directly here at TSZ.

As such, I have a simple challenge for people here:

What are examples of things that don’t ‘evolve?’

It’s a very basic and straightforward question. But it’s one that shows itself to be very difficult for people who are or consider themselves evolutionists to answer due to the ideological exaggeration of evolutionary theory (biological, cosmological, cultural or otherwise) into the belief that everything evolves, i.e. into ‘evolutionism.’ Those who are not ‘evolutionists’ (whether theists or atheists) usually find it easier to answer and thus to circumscribe the meaning of ‘evolution.’

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What is Science?

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Vincent has written an interesting OP about an essay that George Orwell wrote: what is science?

Orwell distinguishes between science as a method and science as a body of facts. I think most of us accept that. Both  Orwell and Vincent seem to be in favour of teaching the method but not the facts.

The demand for more science education, as Orwell astutely perceived, reflects an underlying political agenda, based on the naive belief – falsified by history –

Although what those facts are has changed. Vincent writes:

In Orwell’s day, it was seen as a Good Thing that students should learn about “radioactivity, or the stars, or the physiology or their own bodies”; nowadays, educating our young about Darwinian evolution, sexual health for kindergartners, and global warming is deemed to be the latest Good Thing. The focus has changed; but sadly, the paternalistic mindset of the “powers that be” hasn’t.

And the reason is we should avoid teaching scientific facts is because all science is political and the naive belief – falsified by history – that we’d all be better off if scientists ruled the world

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Is there an ‘Intelligent Design’ Community of Philosophers? A Response to Neil Rickert’s Hypothesis

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Here is what started this conversation:

“At risk of being a bit off-topic, let me add that there is a far larger “intelligent design” community. I am talking about philosophy, particularly academic philosophy. Philosophers, as a group, tend to look at things from what I consider a[n] intelligent design perspective. That perhaps comes from Plato. Perhaps it is a natural way of thinking. To be clear, that particular intelligent design community is honest and largely non-political, unlike the religious version. And yes, there are “fine tuning” ideas coming from that community.” – Neil Rickert (http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=2926&cpage=2#comment-27860)

I asked him:

“could you elaborate on this: “Philosophers, as a group, tend to look at things from what I consider a[n] intelligent design perspective”? … which philosophers, specifically who … which you suggest display a “natural way of thinking” about ‘intelligent design’?”

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Some thoughts on causality

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I have been enjoying a lengthy debate with Stephenb on causality (Lizzie also contributing brilliantly). It has made me think about causality a bit more deeply. Here are a few loosely connected ideas for comment:

  • We should be wary of making causality into an unnecessary philosophical mystery. To say A causes B is just another way of saying that if A had not happened then B would not have happened. The way we investigate if A causes B experimentally is exactly this – we remove A and see if B still happens, we bring back A and see if B returns.The detail will vary immensely form one situation to another – A and B might be billiard balls moving, A might be a magnetic field coming on and B iron filings aligning, A might be the French revolution and B the rise of Napoleon – but whatever the detail that is the story. If I observe a white ball run into a red ball and the red ball moves then I can see that if the white ball had not run into the red ball would have not have moved.  There isn’t another metaphysical attribute of the event to be deduced – the causal relationship. This is an example of “language bewitching our intelligence” into thinking we need to find something which a word refers to.
  • The law of causality is a methodological tool not a law of logic. The assumption that every event has a cause is methodologically extremely useful. It drives us to investigate the circumstances under which things happen. But it is logically possible that we may find events that sometimes happen and sometimes do not and there are no circumstances that dictate when they happen. This is what appears to have happened in quantum mechanics.

 

  • The assumption that every contingent thing that comes into existence was brought into existence by something seems to be plucked out of the air.  Among other things “coming into being”, as Lizzie has pointed out, for most things is just a rearrangement of elementary particles and as such is just another event which may or may not have a cause. We are perhaps confused by dwelling on objects with very clear boundaries in time and space such as living creatures or manufactured objects such as balloons. It becomes clearer that there is nothing special from a causality point of view about coming into existence when we  think about fuzzier objects such as mountains and rivers.

The Myth of Absolute Certainty

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I was banned from Uncommon Descent this morning for reasons unknown (though here is a plausible hypothesis). At the time of my banning, I was in the midst of a long discussion of absolute certainty and whether it can rationally be claimed. Since I can’t continue the discussion at UD, I’ll start a thread here instead and solicit the opinions of the very smart locals here at TSZ.

The question is whether there we can be absolutely certain of anything. I am not speaking of absolute certainty in the colloquial sense (“I’m absolutely certain I left the keys on the counter!”), but in the precise sense of 100.0% (unrounded) certainty, with literally no possibility at all of error — not even a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent chance of error.

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Is ‘Darwinism’ Science or Ideology or Both or Neither?

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Recently, Neil Rickert wrote to me:

“To me, the technical distinction between “Darwinian” and “Darwinism” is that “Darwinian” is a adjective while “Darwinism” is a noun.

Please start a separate thread to help clear this up.”

Similarly, this post was added recently at UD and has generated some feedback from TSZers who dialogue there:

“Everyone now knows that Darwinism, adn [sic] its parent materialism, are ridiculous, but for some people they are the only possible position. Those people would abandon the follies in an instant if they could just come up with a reliably non-theistic alternative. Meantime, the public face of Darwinism is dominated by anti-religious fanatics and self-condemned trolls. That is a key reason we can dispense with any notion that Darwinism is some kind of a science. A real science offers few attractions for such types.” – Denyse O’Leary

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Materialism and Emergentism

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At Uncommon Descent, Elizabeth mentioned that she liked what I was calling “emergentism”. Here’s a brief overview, in contrast with dualism and materialism, that perhaps will spark some discussion.

(1) Dualism gives us The Bifurcated World: the world consists of two fundamentally different kinds of substance (mind and matter), each of which is characterized by an essential property (mental and physical), and is constituted by logically and metaphysically distinct substantial particulars (minds and bodies). Nothing is essentially both physical and mental, although some things may exist as temporary unions of mind and body. (How logically and metaphysically distinct things can causally interact (or even appear) to causally interact is a serious problem.)

(2) Materialism gives us The Layered World: the world consists of a series of “levels”, each of which hierarchically imposed on the others, and each level supervenes on the level below it. Mental facts –> biological facts –> chemical facts –> molecular, atomic, and quantum facts. (A major problem with this view is that each ‘level’ has its own conceptual, ontological, and causal integrity — whereas some philosophers hold that biology is irreducible to chemistry for merely epistemological and methodological reasons, I hold the stronger view that biology is irreducible to chemistry for ontological (or metaphysical) reasons.)

(3) Emergentism gives us the Dynamic World: the world consists of processes that are inherently active and reactive, energetic, and operating at all ‘scales’ of temporal and spatial resolution — some processes are vast and slow, others small and fast, and many in-between. Some of these processes are merely physico-chemical, some are biological, and some are mental. The basic elements in this ontology are processes, not substances (as in dualism) or even particles (as in materialism).

As I see it, the frequently-heard allegation (made by dualists and theists) that emergentism is an intellectual fraud depends on whether there is a difference that makes a difference between emergence and supervenience.

What qualifies as science in the wonderful world of Disney

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[cross posted at uncommondescent: What Qualifies as Science in the Wonderful World of Disney]

The scientific enterprise entails:

1. observation
2. hypothesis
3. testing

Consider this passage from the class text of an introductory cosmology class I took once upon a time:

galaxies farther than 4300 megaparsecs from us are currently moving away from us at speeds greater than that of light. Cosmological innocents sometimes exclaim, “Gosh! Doesn’t this violate the law that massive objects can’t travel faster than the speed of light?” Actually, it doesn’t. The speed limit that states that massive objects must travel with v < c relative to each other is one of the results of special relativity, and refers to the relative motion of objects within a static space. In the context of general relativity, there is no objection to having two points moving away from each other at superluminal speed due to the expansion of space.

page 39
Introduction to Cosmology
by Barbara ryden

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Getting from Fisher to Bayes

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(slightly edited version of a comment I made at UD)

Barry Arrington has  a rather extraordinary thread at UD right now, ar

Jerad’s DDS Causes Him to Succumb to “Miller’s Mendacity” and Other Errors

It arose from a Sal’s post, here at TSZ, Siding with Mathgrrl on a point,and offering an alternative to CSI v2.0

Below is what I posted in the UD thread.

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The eleP(T|H)ant in the room

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The pattern that signifies Intelligence?

Winston Ewert has a post at Evolution News & Views that directly responds to my post here, A CSI Challenge which is nice. Dialogue is good.  Dialogue in a forum where we can both post would be even better.  He is extremely welcome to join us here 🙂

 

In my Challenge, I presented a grey-scale photograph of an unknown item, and invited people to calculate its CSI.  My intent, contrary to Ewert’s assumption, was not:

…to force an admission that such a calculation is impossible or to produce a false positive, detecting design where none was present.

but to reveal the problems inherent in such a calculation, and, in particular, the problem of computing the probability distribution of the data under the null hypothesis: The eleP(T|H)ant in the room

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The Laws of Thought

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aren’t.

They are perfectly valid rules of reasoning, of course.  Wikipedia cites Aristotle: :

  • The law of identity: “that every thing is the same with itself and different from another”: A is A and not ~A.
  • The Law of Non-contradiction: that “one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time”
  • Law of Excluded Middle: “But on the other hand there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate.”

And of course they work just fine for binary, true-or-false, statements, which is why Boolean logic is so powerful.

But I suggest they are not Laws of Thought.

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DonaldM, at UD, asks…

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…an odd, but revelatory, set of questions:

1. How do you know scientifically (and I emphasize “scientifically” here because I want to make it clear that theological, metaphysical or philosophical opinions – while important for other reasons – have no bearing on the question at hand) that the properties of the Cosmos are such that any apparent design we observe in natural systems can not be actual design, even in principle?

I don’t.

2. How do you know scientifically that Nature (or the Cosmos) is a completely closed system of natural cause and effect? (Recall Dawkins claim that a universe superintended by a Deity would look much different than ours as he says in The God Delusion several times)

I don’t.

3. How do you know scientifically that the properties of biological systems are such that any apparent design we observe in them can not be actual design, even in principle? (The Blind Watchmaker and Dawkins’s claim that “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance [emphasis mine] of having been designed for a purpose.”)

I don’t.

4. How do you know scientifically that no supernatural being, if such actually existed, could ever take any action within nature itself that would produce observable phenomenon or effect any change in the arrangement of matter or energy anywhere in the Cosmos?

I don’t.

Does anyone here?  And does any one make any such claims?  I don’t.

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Englishman in Istanbul proposes a thought experiment

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at UD:

… I wonder if I could interest you in a little thought experiment, in the form of four simple questions:

1. Is it possible that we could discover an artifact on Mars that would prove the existence of extraterrestrials, without the presence or remains of the extraterrestrials themselves?

2. If yes, exactly what kind of artifact would suffice? Car? House? Writing? Complex device? Take your pick.

3. Explain rationally why the existence of this artifact would convince you of the existence of extraterrestrials.

4. Would that explanation be scientifically sound?

I would assert the following:

a. If you answer “Yes” to Question 4, then to deny ID is valid scientific methodology is nothing short of doublethink. You are saying that a rule that holds on Mars does not hold on Earth. How can that be right?

b. If you can answer Question 3 while answering “No” to Question 4, then you are admitting that methodological naturalism/materialism is not always a reliable source of truth.

c. If you support the idea that methodological naturalism/materialism is equivalent to rational thought, then you are obligated to answer “No” to Question 1.

 

Well, I can never resist a thought experiment, and this one seems quite enlightening….

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Eppur si muove

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Cornelius Hunter has a particularly odd post up, called: More Warfare Thesis Lies, This Time From CNN.  He takes issue with a report by Florence Davey-Attlee, on Vatican seeks to rebrand its relationship with science.  His complaint is that it promotes what he calls “the false Warfare Thesis, which pits religion against science” and “is too powerful and alluring to allow the truth to get in the way”.  He writes:

The key to a good lie is to leverage the truth as much as possible. In this instance, we have two truths juxtaposed to make a lie. You see Bruno did argue for an infinite universe, and he was burned at the stake. But those are two distinct and separate facts. The implication is that the Church burned Bruno at the stake because of his scientific investigations about the universe—a perfect example of the Warfare Thesis.

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Philosophy of Mind: A Taxonomy

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I consider the following to be a “work in progress,” and will make changes as others here contribute corrections and suggestions.

The so-called “mind-body problem”, as bequeathed to us by Descartes, has invited various solutions over the centuries.  In the classical version, the basic positions were dualism, materialism, and idealism — each of which has its sub-varieties.

What is meant by “mind”?  Well, there are characteristically mental phenomena have been presented as candidates for what is essential to mindedness: rationality, intentionality, subjectivity, volition, or consciousness.  (That these don’t all overlap can be seen by asking, “are there unconscious mental states or processes?”, “what sorts of minds do non-rational animals have?” “are there purely qualitative, non-intentional mental states, e.g. pains?” and so on.)

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The Dialectic of Darwinism and Anti-Darwinism

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I here present a number of theses, each of which deserves an independent argument in support of it, but which I think are both true and defensible:

(1) The resistance to Darwinism as expressed by creationism and by intelligent design largely arises from treating “Darwinism” as a scapegoat for the social ills produced by capitalism.  It has become commonplace among creationist and other anti-Darwinists to blame Darwinism for any and all of the following: eugenics, acceptance of homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, genocide, school shootings, abortion, and decline of ecclesiastical authority.

(2) Though the obsession with sexuality and anxiety about the ambiguity of embodiment are standard-fare among the religious far-right, my interest here lies in what it is about contemporary presentations of Darwinism that make it such a tempting target for these anxieties.

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Asymmetry

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When I started this site, I had been struck by the remarkable symmetry between the objections raised by ID proponents to evolution, and the objections raised by ID opponents to ID – both “sides” seemed to think that the other side was motivated by fear of breaking ranks; fear of institutional expulsion; fear of facing up to the consequences of finding themselves mistaken; not understanding the other’s position adequately; blinkered by what they want, ideologically, to be true, etc.  Insulting characterisations are hurled freely in both directions. Those symmetries remain, as does the purpose of this site, which is to try to drill past those symmetrical prejudices to reach the mother-lode of genuine difference.

But two asymmetries now stand out to me:

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