This post is inspired by a phrase appearing in the latest Discovery Institute essay, in which they worry about the direction being taken by the new “Cosmos” TV series.
The DI quotes Cosmos producer, Seth MacFarlane, as promoting “…the advancement of knowledge over faith.”
This quote seems to come from an interview in Esquire Magazine.
There really isn’t much to the interview, but the phrase does kind of jump out and beg to be discussed.
davehooke,
Fair enough, but Plato’s texts are complicated enough that I don’t think anyone can tell what he really did and didn’t mean. Even the argument for philosopher-kings as the Uber-guardians of the ideal state falls apart on close examination of the internal tensions of Republic, and the entire “theory of forms” is refined to the point of self-parody by the dialectic of Parmenides.
What I get most out of Plato is as a writer rather than a philosopher, so I have sympathy with what you say. The Symposium, for example, is great literature in my opinion. (Not that I know Greek). Parmenides is certainly a weird, rather inscrutable dialogue. However, I hope we can both agree that Plato could have little understanding of the scientific language you used in your interpretation of the theory of the forms. Also, it seems to me if there is one thing that is consistently advocated by Plato it is that true knowledge is divine in origin.
As humans, we have particular kinds of sensory equipment, and as humans, we have particular kinds of internal devices and abilities. Due to the structure and limitations of that equipment and internal kinds of thought,, we necessarily organize our concept of existence accordingly. As humans, we have internal psychologies and imagination, which we employ largely in a process of recognizing patterns and conceptualizing theories about those patterns.
Our concept of what is going on when we experience and what each of the apparent particulars of that experience are and how we represent them mentally has changed from time to time and is often different from culture to culture. Such paradigms, or conceptualizations of reality, change. They can change with new discoveries, or are changed by those that are capable of rearranging current information into a new descriptive model.
IMO, it is incredibly arrogant to think that I live in some sort of privileged position with respect to time, personal capacity and culture so that I can have a true understanding of what reality is. If history is anything, it is a shining testimony to the capacity of “reality” to remain beyond the capacity of humans to get a conceptual lock on. I am quite skeptical of the capacity of any human, at any time or in any place, to “know” what reality “is”.
I am certain there is a reality, if one defines it as “what exists” and “how it exists”, because my experience, whatever it is, exists. If knowledge = certainty, then that is all I know about reality. If knowledge = a set of statements one accepts as functionally necessary upon pain of absurdity otherwise, then I know there is a world outside of my experience. However, just because something is operationally necessary doesn’t mean it is true; and, just because it would be absurd to believe otherwise, doesn’t necessarily make the otherwise untrue.
If one defines knowledge as that which one is certain of, then one could fairly call me an epistemological solipsist. I’d argue that the only thing anyone can be certain of is that they experience, and so by that definition of knowledge, everyone is an epistemological solipsist, whether they admit it or not. They might really believe that there is a world outside of their experience, but they cannot be certain of it. It might be a dream or a delusion or the internal imagination of a Boltzmann Brain. There simply is no way to be certain.
But, if knowledge is not the same as certainty, then I would say that I’m probably not an epistemological solipsist by any other definition of “know”. I’m quite confident that it is a true statement that stuff exists outside of my personal experience, but I’m skeptical that my conceptualization of what that stuff is, how it is related to me and how it works, reflects the true, actual nature of things.
My conceptualization of reality is highly functional for my purposes, but I doubt that it is true. That is one of the problems of many people who, IMO, have turned science into a kind of religion: they mistake functionality for truth,as if “metaphysically naturalistic science works” = “metaphysical naturalism is true”.
William, you continue to offer a utilitarian argument.
I don’t recognise the view of the ‘scientifically-minded atheist’ apparently being offered. The scientific commitment is to at least attempt to uncover what ‘is’ about the world, and to do things that other people can also do, irrespective of their personal leanings. How can a methodology which provides for wholesale rejection of prior theories be twisted into an accusation that its practitioners claim to ‘know’, in any final sense?
Because it is not presented by the institution of science or in academia as a mere “methodology”, that provides an interpretation or a model of observations, but rather as “fact” and “knowledge” that replaces faith, spirituality & religion, which in the mind of your average person means a claim of certainty.
Utilizing defensible semantics in a local debate doesn’t change the fact that there is a culture war between perspectives that hold their views with certainty, and one of those perspectives is the materialistic scientism perpetrated by at least certain factions in the scientific community.
Despite having been to a scientific institution, and conducted research behind such portals, I have never encountered the subset of which you speak. Your claim to know what goes on in the mind of the ‘average person’ is unsupported.
People hold their view with evidential support, rather than certainty. It may be a ‘semantic’ distinction, but your entire culture war polemic seems founded on semantics.
Yes, we can certainly agree — in fact, I’d even be willing to go a half-step further and say that it’s not entirely clear to me — at least, not based on Republic and Phaedo — whether Plato thinks that there can be anything at all like science in the first place. At times he says that there be genuine knowledge only of being, and with regard to becoming there can only be opinion. That pretty much rules out the very notion of ’empirical knowledge’. When I lecture on Greek philosophy, I tell my students that the very idea of science — that there can be knowledge about contingently existing, sense-perceptible things — is due to Aristotle.
However, I would disagree with the claim that for Plato, “true knowledge is divine in origin”. Plato says that knowledge of the Form is what the gods know, and that the Forms are similar to the gods (unchanging, perfect, eternal, etc.), but Plato doesn’t (so far as I know) regard the Forms as having been created by the gods or as dependent on the gods for their existence.
William J. Murray,
Now it looks to me as if you’re the one who is caught within an all-or-nothing conceptual trap — either one grasps absolute reality entirely and completely, or else one knows only what is ‘internal’ to one’s experience. Whereas my view is that what we know, when we know anything at all, is about reality, but that we don’t have an absolute or complete cognitive grasp of reality. (There’s always more grass to mow.)
My view is, basically, “convergent realism” — that as our theories get better, and as less adequate theories are replaced by more adequate ones, we are converging towards a completely adequate description of reality (but one that can we cannot, of course, ever reach). This is precisely why I think that scientific knowledge can count as both objective and relative.
But the epistemological basis of successful empirical inquiry is our perceptual and practical engagements with the world, and so I’m a direct critical realist about sense-perception: that there’s no epistemological barrier between mind and world.
And I do think that conflating “knowledge” with “certainty” is a dreadful error, and one that has caused much confusion in the entire modern philosophical tradition. I think that Dewey (in Quest for Certainty) showed exactly why we should reject all notions of “certainty” in how we think about knowledge, and that Wittgenstein (in On Certainty) showed how to reject all notions of “knowledge” in how we think about certainty. The upshot from Dewey is that certainty is a useless notion for doing epistemology and philosophy of science; the upshot from Wittgenstein is that certainty is a useful notion for describing our existential situatedness in the world.
So what I get from reading Dewey and Wittgenstein together is that we should maintain a distinction between what we’re doing when we’re talking about conceptual frameworks for making sense of experience (“knowledge”), and what we’re doing when we’re talking about the embodied situatedness in the world that constitutes the possibility of having experiences-to-be-made-of (“certainty”).
I agree with Allan: every* scientist that I have met was perfectly aware that all ‘knowledge’ is provisional, and their search is not for Truth(tm), but for ever better models. This fact does not seem to be very well understood by religious non-scientists, but (with a couple of exceptions) the communication failure is not the fault of the scientists.
*one was a YEC, so…
Bullshit.
This strikes me as the same sort of “all-or-nothing” fallacious thinking at the root of Ken Ham’s and so many other misguided, science illiterate arguments. I still find Asimov’s response such thinking wonderfully articulated:
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Mindpowers, you are in no position to make that comment on DNA_Jock’s personal experiences.
No. I didn’t say or imply anything remotely like that.
Adequate for what purpose? For whom?
If there is no barrier, then one wonders why conceptions of what reality is have changed over time, and are different from culture to culture. There are, of course, at the very least psychological and imaginative barriers; there are what we would term mechanical failures to contend with, such as aberrations of sensory input/interpretation and delusion; and, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who thinks that humans have a physical sensory and cognitive sensory interpretation system that just so happens to give them access to a true understanding of “reality” without it being deliberately set up that way by god is appealing to blind chance and abandoning the copernican principle – unless, of course, you think that ants and bacteria and fish can also have a good understanding of what reality actually is?
But I don’t expect that’s the argument you’re actually making.
BTW, when you start referencing other authors/philosophers, I stop reading. I don’t know what Dewey & Wittgenstein said, and I don’t care.
William J. Murray,
Interesting. Which scientists (as opposed to science journalists/writers such as CRD) do you blame for this failure of communication? Apart from PZM?
What authors did you rely on to arrive at your view of how scientific research is performed?
Apparently, you’re conflating “scientific models” with “concepts of reality”, which would explain why you quoted me making an argument about how concepts of reality change over time and culture, and directed me to a page about some argument about scientific models changing over time. Concepts of reality can vary from person to person, culture to culture, and from time to time even if scientific models remain static.
I’m not skeptical of my concept of reality because scientific models change over time. I’m skeptical of it because I understand I make errors of judgement; I make errors of concept; I have psychological structures that certainly bias my views; my sensory capacity is suspect and prone to error. My interpretive system is certainly capable of error. I’ve noticed that humans en masse, culturally speaking, can be guilty of similar issues.
I don’t know what it is about what I write that compels you and KN to interpret it as “all or nothing”. What I’m writing is the opposite of “all or nothing” – it is, IMO reasonable skepticism given the limits of the human perspective and its capacity for all kins of errors and misunderstandings.
I suggest you and KN just wish to interpret what I write certain ways. There’s nothing unreasonable about a human being being skeptical about his ability to know what “reality” actually is and how it works. I also suggest that it is only self-absorbed, ego-maniacal fanatics that are not skeptical about their capacity to know the truth about what reality is and how it works.
Are the two of you claiming that you know what reality is? That you know how it works?
This is probably true, the best one can do is choose the one hr believes less irrational or less contradictory.
This also probably true, but one thing is sure, the consequences of wich of both metaphysical system is true are different, and we have to choose to live according to one. Kant reflected this is his Critique of the practical reason.
As experience is interpreted at the light of logic, then science is also unable to solve the problem between rival metaphysical systems. An example was the discussion about is chance is a cause, science can`t answer if the world is fully determined or ramdom. We choose the metaphysical system and then we make science beleiving in a determined universe or in a ramdom one.
What you do not see is that scientific theories are models, and as models are the result of an apriori metaphisical view.
Pragmatically, what should one do, William?
Concepts of reality are informed by scientific models William. So the article is quite pertinent.
But even beyond that, the fallacious “all-or-nothing” thinking is still at the root of your erroneous approach to our current accuracy in our concepts of reality and the problem of that thinking is described in Asimov’s essay.
Well that’s not even an issue as far as I’m concerned.
Which may be so, but the fact is, you still make fewer errors of judgement and concept than folks did 500 years ago simply because our models are now more accurate
This is what compels me to interpret your statement as “all-or-nothing”:
“…at any time or in any place…” that’s an “all-or-nothing statement. And it’s just plainly wrong. We are far and away in a more privileged position to have true(r) understanding of reality. And as our scientific models improve, so to does our understanding of reality all the more.
You can of course believe and claim whatever you wish William. I simply reject your ignorance-based assertions.
I am claiming I know a great deal more about the truth of reality than someone from…say…the 7th century.
How about we simply say our models are far more effective than those of the seventh century?
Yeah…ok. I think that’s a more accurate way of stating my point. Thanks!
So, in other words, it’s all on your end – you are compelled to see X, even when I write not-X.
A suggestion is not an asssertion. It’s not based on ignorance, it’s based on your interpreting my commentary as X, when it is clearly not-X.
“Accurate” in regards to what?
On what do you base that?
That’s a reflection of your assumption that “improved” (whatever that means – improved wrt what? Predictability? Reliability?) scientific models = understanding of what reality is, which is just an a priori metaphysical assumption on your part.
All you’re doing here is assuming your consequent – that more reliable scientific models = better understanding of reality.
It’s not pertinent to any point I was making because I am not the one assuming that scientific models = reality.
I guess that depends on what their goal is, don’t you think?
I can’t speak for anyone else here, obviously, but my view isn’t that any specific scientific model is a fully adequate description of reality. Rather, my view is that the process of replacing past scientific models with present (and future) scientific models is a process of asymptotically converging on a fully adequate description of reality. In that sense, we can talk about less adequate descriptions of reality as being replaced by more adequate descriptions of reality.
[WJM] Isn’t their goal informed by what they perceive? [/WJM]
There are two different issues at stake here:
(1) can one affirm the basic truths of revealed religion without violating some basic epistemic norms, either with regard to evidence or reasoning?
(2) is there a moral obligation to affirm the basic truths of revealed religion?
In the Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argued that the answer to (1) is “yes” — one can affirm the basic truths of revealed religion (that God exists, that the soul is immortal, and that we have libertarian freedom) without violating any epistemic norms with regard to evidence or reasoning.
I think that Kant was pretty much right to answer this question that way. So unlike some atheists here, I don’t think that there’s anything irrational or unreasonable about believing that God exist, that the soul persists after death, or that there is libertarian freedom. Those aren’t beliefs that I happen to hold, but I don’t think that anyone who accepts those beliefs has failed in any way to uphold epistemic norms. (Though frankly I far prefer William James’ “The Will to Believe“!)
However, Kant also thought that the answer to (2) is “yes,” and that’s one of the major places where I disagree with Kant. In the Critique of Practical Reason he argued that we must assume these truths (“postulates of pure practical reason”) in order to be moral agents at all, because if we didn’t assume these truths, we would be constantly torn between the requirements of moral duty and our own interest in happiness. I adopt a far more tragic view of life than Kant did — I think that we must perform our moral duties, and sometimes that will not lead to happiness, and life just sucks, period.
And what you do not see, it seems, is that this isn’t an either-or — we do rely on a priori concepts in building models, and we test those models in light of experience, and we revise our a priori concepts in light of experience. What is a posteriori for one generation of inquirers becomes a priori for subsequent generations — until it is thrown open to question again, as often happens in the history of science. So there is a a priori dimension to each conceptual scheme, but there is nothing held a priori for all conceptual schemes.
This seems like mere sanity to me; I’m frankly confused as to what seems to be resistance to it.
We can do more than talk (if we wish). We can test models by observation and experiment. We can share data and experience. We can revise preconceptions in the light of evidence. We can discard what doesn’t work.
Or we can bark at the caravan as it sweeps past.
Right — I took all that as presupposed. But yes, of course — I treat testing models, sharing data and experience, revising preconceptions in light of evidence, and discarding what doesn’t work as what we must be doing in order to have good reasons to say that one model is less (or more) adequate than another.
I have no doubt you did. I was emphasizing the point to make it clearer for a commenter who sometimes demonstrates a certain inability to grasp the points others are making. 😉
Maybe here is where we differ, we do not change our metaphysical election due to an empirical observation, we only adapt the observation to our metaphisics. Example, no empirical data will led a darwinist to conclude that OOL didn´t occured by physical laws, the species evolved from FUCA to LUCA and to extant species by a natural process. No empirical data will led a creationist to change his view that God did it. And there is no way science can “falsify” a metaphisical model, because science is defined by a metaphisical model.
To make that something other than vacuous babble, you would need to present some compelling evidence that miracles occurred and explain the history of life.
Can you name any science where something like that has happened?
Science looks for regularities so unique events like miracles are outside of what science can evaluate.
Not true at all. If “miracles” cause effects in the real world then those effects can be observed and measured. Of course, what is needed is a miracle that is happening now or a miracle that is expected in a particular place and time so that recording equipment can be set up.
A miracle happening now is outside the scope of the science because is unique, you cannot find regularities to explore causes. An expected miracle is not a miracle.
Blas,
A miracle happening now is perfectly amenable scientific study, assuming observable consequences. A miracle without observable effects must pass un-noticed so how would we know it occurred?
Untrue. If you have objective, empirical evidence for an origin of life theory that doesn’t involve physical laws (whatever that might mean), I for one would consider it and provisionally accept your theory if that evidence did indeed support it.
That is true. That highlights the difference between faith and science.
A testable claim! We observe the discontinuity .
I would disagreewith the claim that an expected miracle is not a miracle. The Amazing Randi has a standing million dollar prize fo anyone demonstrating psychic powers. That would be one category of miracle. There could be other kinds.
My point is that any entity wishing to demonstrate magic would have an audience. Preferably including stage magicians capable of detecting trickery.
That said, I’ve seen a video of a card trick that could not be explained by Penn and Teller. Simply having no immediate explanation is not evidence of a miracle. The further back in history, the more dubious the eyewitness accounts. Look at any developing news story, such as the recent disappearance of an airliner, for evidence that accounts of events can be untrustworthy.
At this point, what I was attempting to reveal has been revealed. Regardless of protestations otherwise, the religious devotion to a certain ideological formulation and process of scientific investigation/conclusion is demonstrated as a form of scientism at work here, where such interpretations are fundamentally held as existential truths about reality (semantic quibbles notwithstanding).
Reality is defined by those under the sway of scientism as that which lends itself to regular repeatability and consensual verification. If it is not repeatable in a patterned, stochastic and/or regular sense, and not consensually verifiable (in a scientific way), then it is not considered real in any significant sense.
It is, of course, a circular argument that one can best understand reality through scientism if one first defines reality as that which scientism describes. The problem is, what if “reality” is much more than what scientism can describe? What if most of what actually exists cannot be predicted and is not regularly repeatable or consensually verifiable? Scientism, then, wouldn’t be a good tool for understanding reality, but would only be a good tool for finding & categorizing the subset of reality that is amenable to that method and perspective.
I would call this view scientific materialism, but I don’t really know what “matter” or “materialism” would refer to in any philosophical sense anymore. I don’t know what “materialism”, the way it is argued and characterized today, would necessarily exclude – including god, other dimensions of existence, consciousness w/out a physical body, etc. It appears to me that “materialism” allows for just about anything, including infinite universe where virtually anything can – and does – happen.
It seems to me that there isn’t really an existential argument left between materialism (the way it’s argued/presented by many here) and spiritualism/dualism/theism that some version of emergentism or quantum physics or multiverse theory cannot bridge – including gods, objective mental commoldities and afterlives and psi and ghosts and angels and demons.
Rather, the argument is about what the evidence indicates actually exists/occurs locally (in our world). It seems to me that “materialism” (as argued by many here) doesn’t entail that there is no god, and no objective morality, and no ghosts or afterlife, but only that in our particular universe and according to the scientific evidence, such things are not indicated to exist here and now.
No William. Given that KN and both came away with the same interpretation, the error – if there is one – is more on you. If your words imply a sense that I interpret as X, then it clearly is not all on my end. You are welcome to restate your point, but the way it is current phrased implies an “all-or-nothing” point of view.
Suggestions can very well be based on erroneous assertions as yours most certainly demonstrates.
Nice try William, but since at least two of us came away with interpretation X, “clearly not-X” is just laughably exaggerated. It goes without saying that you were not – and still are not – being clear. And I still submit that you are coming from an “all-or-nothing” POV until you demonstrate otherwise.
Read the essay I linked to.
Read the essay.
Funny that you claim I’ve misread you…Nowhere have I so much as implied that “scientific models=understanding of reality is”. You’ll have to do better that if you wish to demonstrate my point is somehow questionable or erroneous.
Nope…’fraid you’ve just got that plain old wrong.
petrushka,
Speaking of miracles and magic, I wish Davehooke would comment on the plausibility of the following (considering he has Orson Welles as his avatar).
At a church I used to go to, the pastor (a well-known guy, you’ve seen him on FOX), claimed that back in college he and a buddy went to the Tonight Show, and he claims that on it Orson Welles performed bonafide occult magick, masquerading as stage magic, and he and his buddy were so freaked out, that they bolted from the studio. As evidence for example, he says that when the magic started (something involving levitation), after the lights went down all of a sudden it got extremely cold (which incidentally I know is claimed to often accompany ghosts, spectres, hauntings, etc.)
I really resented him saying this about Welles, as I have a lot of respect for him. And Welles also did more than one Bible picture, and claimed to be a Christian. I believe that studios have very intense air conditioning to compensate for the lights, and after the lights went down, it may very well have gotten cold. It just seemed like slandering the deceased to claim they were practitioners of the black arts, or what have you.
Ironically though Welles’ grandmother did practice occult magic, but Welles had very unfavorable things to say about her. He also supposedly believed he was the victim of a voodoo curse while filming in Brazil, but even so, don’t think he would need actual magic to perform a levitation trick on the tonight show.
This is incorrect Blas. A “miracle” is any phenomenon that completely circumvents a known law of nature. That’s it. They are quite detectable – otherwise there’d be no such amazement. The fact that no one can ever actually point to a supposed “miracle” and note it’s extraordinary causation is the reason such things lie outside the scope of science; uniqueness has nothing to do with it.
If you are at -10 degrees centigrades im your garsen and you see a rose growing from its seed until blomming in two hours. What would be your scientific test?
You see, you are determined by your metaphysical choice. You are adking for:
” objective, empirical evidence”
For something is not empirical in nature. Only because according to you all the reality is empirical.
If you accept dicontinuity as evidence of a miracle, you have to accept that OOL is a miracle. It happened only once,
Everything happens only once. that is not what discontinuity implies.
Your rose would be a miracle. But it’s odd that such miracles — like UFO abductions — always depend on human witnesses and never in the presence of recording instruments. Miracles are very shy.
You’re the one who said “no empirical data will led a darwinist to conclude that OOL didn´t occured by physical laws”. That’s simply not true.
Bullshit!
Well, that would seem odd, considering water freezes at 273°K (and 100kPa). Also the rate of growth would be faster than normal. Lots of parameters to check should this hypothetical example occur. I’m not sure if I’d immediately fall on my knees and cry “Praise the Lord” though. I’d wonder who might enjoy playing a trick; especially if you knew about my relationship to gardens and gardening.