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.
Actually, I do think the explanation of how life on Earth got started on Earth is about the best example of something genuinely inexplicable that you could pick. Yet I don’t think we need to default to “God did it” just yet. I’m waiting for developments from SETI and Mars exploration.
One of God’s Last Gaps. Good luck.
Never say “never”! 🙂
Indeed. There’s not much more one can offer to someone who offers a disingenuous assertion.
However, if William were to drop his pretense and agenda and approach the issue more honestly, I’d be game to address the heart of his question. In particular, this:
That, I think, is the heart of the issue for many theists. It has nothing to do with whether scientists, “materialists”, or “atheists” are basing their proclamations on an ideology and the brackets are my substitution of William’s pejorative word for a more honest one. That’s just projection on the part of conservative theists and an attempt at distraction. The real issue is the belief theists hold that there’s more to understand about reality than what science can tell us. Fine. I’m game to address that.
But here’s the kicker – someone, preferably a theist, has to define what “exists” means for those things that are not repeatable, consistent, predictable and consensually verifiable. What does that mean? I am not arguing that science can tell us everything there is to know, but if one is going to posit something science cannot study at all, one has to provide some reliable alternative method for discerning this “existence”. If one is going to offer…say…revelation, it goes without saying that such a method has not be shown to be particularly reliable and is subject to “just making crap up.”
Robin, I can think of several layers of things not addressable by science.
The simplest is that which appears to be explainable, but which is beyond the reach of any known methodology. Origin of life, Origin of physical laws, consciousness, emergent attributes in chemistry. My wording may be crude, but I think you could make a list of interesting questions that are unanswered.
Another class of questions would address values, such as the value of life. Call them moral questions.
The problem I have with theism is not that I am uninterested in difficult questions, but that theists have claimed, over the course of history, to have answered them. I see that as a false claim — one that has more to do with acquiring worldly power than of illuminating dark corners.
Two people with incorrect inferences doesn’t change the fact that they are wrong. What is the “all”, and what is the “nothing”, in my position that you characterize as “all or nothing”?
But that’s the very point. What if all of reality isn’t amenable to having things proven to you? What if there are things that exist, and can happen, that you cannot approach from the “demonstrate it to me” state?
Reality – how one experiences it – could be largely mind-dependent, which would make the scientism approach self-fulfilling for those that are mentally committed to it. IOW, if your mind is committed to a reality that is only comprised of that which the “materialist” version of science can apprehend and model, then if empirical experience is largely mind-dependent, that is what your experience will prove to you. Essentially, your ideology is a self-fulfilling perspective, manufacturing experience out raw potential that is congruent with the state of your mind.
There is a reason that faith is said to move mountains, and that faith can accomplish the seemingly impossible, and that faith can change the world.
Science as a tool for “uncovering” reality is only meaningful if reality is constructed in a way that can be “uncovered”. What if it is not? What if reality is something that is, rather, created by mind? What is science then? It’s not “discovering” reality; it’s just creating a subset of experience for those that have a particular ideological view in order to – more or less – satisfy their mental desire/need.
And that reason is?
How are we to know if we don’t ask questions – send probes into space, watch our rose for inexplicable growth surges in icy weather? What if it is?
Pragmatism rules!
There is a wealth of reported experience of the miraculous. If reality is mind-primary, and if free will actually exists, then no amount of scientific examination, test or theory can prove X to someone mentally committed to Y – and this would go for those committed to science as a model for describing reality as well.
As I’ve said before, I’ve personally experienced that which defies the “scientism” view of reality. Many others claim to have experienced it as well. The problem with the “demonstrate it to me” challenge is that it may not be demonstrable to you in your current mental state.
you have to *believe* and let the tard into your head.
Again, I’m not suggesting for a moment that science provides us a picture of everything there is to know. My point in focusing on that particular set of questions is to get someone – perhaps William – to articulate what he means by “exists”.
And I agree with you Petrushka, values and origins and purposes are not categories of questions that science deals with very well. I don’t know of anyone who has suggested otherwise, which makes me wonder what “scientism” William is going on about.
If one’s conception of reality does not incorporate a method for distinguishing between reality and fantasy, then one doesn’t have a conception of reality at all. One has, at best, “reality-for-me”, which isn’t at all the same thing as reality.
Have you experienced any miraculous phenomena which could in principle be verified scientifically?
As far as I can tell here, William objecting to the thought that objects, properties, and relations have intrinsic features that do not depend on how they are characterized, and rather that those features are what make characterizations true or false.
In other words, what William calls “the ideology of scientism” is what I call the absolutely minimal notion of sanity: a grasp on the distinction between fantasy and reality.
No, but it does make your claim that you were clear in your message questionable at best.
This is the “all”:
This is the “nothing”:
Basically you stated that either we know exactly what reality is or we don’t know it at all. No in between, no getting more detailed understanding of reality as our grasp of the world around us and the universe becomes more accurate. That’s “all-or-nothing” thinking William.
Robin,
Nicely done. I concur with your interpretation of what WJM has said thus far.
It’s an interesting flight of the imagination, I’ll grant you that, but it is not compelling to me. Merely positing, “but what if there really are invisible leprechauns” doesn’t have any sway over me. The idea that there could be a part of reality that is important to me, yet has no impact on the physical world or any action I take in this physical world makes no inherent sense to me. It’s like asking me to get excited about eighty-nine cents found in another country. Why would I care?
Sure, but that’s just a different take on the “what-if-you’re-living-in-an-illusion-and-you-can’t-tell-the-difference”. Ok…and…? If reality is mind-dependent and I’m committed to a reality that doesn’t include miracles, guess what? There are no miracles in reality! Because my reality is, by definition, the ONLY ONE I CAN KNOW. So…fine…reality is just that which science can describe. End of story, we’re done here. Thanks for playing!
Uh huh…and exactly who says this? Oh…right…Those who need people to believe in their institutions to keep those institutions viable. Do let me know when you get video of the faithful moving mountains for real though.
See my response above.
I will note for the umpteenth time that William’s argument is entirely utilitarian.
Between William’s version and science’s version of utility, which are we to choose?
Hmmmm.
petrushka,
It’s not even a choice that anyone here confronts. WJM has made it perfectly clear that he mostly just cares about what is most pragmatically useful for him to believe, given his personal experience. He’s not given any of us reasons for taking seriously the possibilities he advances, and it’s not clear to me that he’s even interested in being taken seriously. All he advances are mere speculations that are on the same par as “maybe we’re all in the Matrix!” or “maybe I’m being tricked by an evil genius!”
Sure, it’s logically conceivable that the physical world depends on the mind of God — for that matter, it’s logically conceivable that Berkeley was right and that there is no physical world at all, just a variegated system of phenomena that is nothing but ideas in the Mind of God. It’s logically conceivable that we live in a cosmos of Lovecraftian horrors.
Logical conceivability and $2.50 will buy you a cup of coffee. And if all you’ve got to supplement logical conceivability with is pragmatic utility, it’s still solipsistic and narcissistic at the end of the day — you still don’t have any method of distinguishing between reality and fantasy, though you do have a method (or the fantasy of a method) for distinguishing between fantasies you happen to like and fantasies you don’t happen to like.
But how you can check it? Science can check miracles.
Sorry, you are right, you answered for OOL in the middle of eveybody talking about miracles.
The great thing about not investing religious-quality conviction in a worldview is that you don’t have to choose. Science works great for many things. It creates lots of great stuff I enjoy. One doesn’t have to abandon it to invest attention and effort under the premise that mind is primary and may be capable of doing things science would consider extremely improbable and scientism would dismiss altogether.
If scientism is true, mucking around with mind is not going to change anything other than perhaps me making a fool of myself. Obviously, I don’t care about that. However, IF mind is primary and IF I can effect highly improbable outcomes through mental exercises and/or alterations, THEN there is very little physical effort, no real risk and the capacity for truly remarkable payoff. There’s no reason **not** to give it a try.
Unless, of course, your mind is closed to it. Or, of course, if you’re perfectly satisfied with your current existence. Not reason to muck around with something that is already working.
Welles was in love with stage magic. You can see him performing a trick (obviously enabled by an invocation of The Dark One) here.
Early cinema has a strong connection to magic. One of the first popularisers of moving pictures was the illusionist George Melies. You can see his charming “cinemagic” on youtube, for example this short from 1899.
The film director creates illusions on the screen. Welles was fascinated by fakery. He even made a somewhat autobiographical film called F for Fake.
If your worldview prominently features incorporeal magic entities of great power, one or other can assail you at any time, for your benefit or your discomfort.
“I try to be a Christian. I don’t pray really, because I don’t want to bore God.” – Orson Welles, 1982.
Johnny Carson was a competent stage magician and was responsible for exposing Uri Geller.
The quotes you offer belie your mischaracterization.
What I said is that it appears to me that many here at TSZ seem to think they know what reality is and how to interpret it, and I said that I’m personally skeptical (meaning, I have reasonable doubt) that any human has the capacity to understand what reality is. We don’t even know what matter, energy or natural laws are.
I didn’t say anything about “understanding exactly what reality is”, nor did I say anything about “not understanding it at all” Nor did I imply either extreme. That is apparently baggage you and KN carry.
Humans obviously accomplish a lot in reality. They have models and methods that work quite well. That doesn’t mean their conceptualization of what reality is is, in principle, remotely accurate – although it may be.
It just necessarily means that their conception of what reality is generates very useful models that work in whatever reality actually is. My point was that the usefulness of a model is not necessarily proof that the concept of reality (that generated the model) is accurate, nor does it mean that increasingly useful models indicate a more accurate conception of reality.
That depends on what reality ***actually*** is.
Who said it had no impact on the world or on any action you take? That really would be useless sophistry. Don’t you know by now that I only believe (assume) things that appear to aid me in achieving my goals?
The assumption that mind is primary has (apparently) had an immense impact on the world I experience, how I experience it, my behavior, my emotional state, and everyone around me. It transformed my entire existence.
And there are a lot of people from different “mind is primary” belief systems that will testify to the same thing – that faith, or belief, or some kind of mental/spiritual technique appears to manufacture the miraculous and effect radical transformation.
Hmm. Perhaps I have misinterpreted e.g. Timaeus.
I’ve read this a dozen times and I can’t figure out what you’re trying to say.
Depends on what you mean by scientifically verified. I’m sure many such things can be (and are) scientifically verified to those whose mental state will allow the scientific verification of such things. There’s plenty of such information available on the internet.
Personally, though, my wife was faith healed of supposedly terminal cancer. The fact that she had the cancer before the faith healing, and it was gone after and has never showed back up (over 20 years now), is a matter of medical record. The doctors called it a miracle.
I have countless similar stories of the miraculous. It didn’t take any great faith to get it going – just the willingness to accept what I was seeing and do what became apparent that I needed to do without letting the sheer improbability or foolishness of it all stop me from even trying.
These terms are used in various ways differently by different people. That doesn’t mean that the meaning of the words is unknown. In physics, “matter” is usually used to refer to that which takes up space and has a rest mass. “Energy” can be defined as that which makes things happen. There is no change unless there is energy available. Energy is quantifiable. It has several forms (e.g kinetic, chemical, potential).
I can kind of understand why you might say “we” don’t know what matter and energy are, but even you know what physical laws are, don’t you?
Now one can demand more fine grained levels of description ad infinitum, but that doesn’t mean that it is correct to proclaim ignorance.
“Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Phillip K Dick.
davehooke,
Yeah, you’re right — now that I think of it, War of the Worlds was one big hoax by him. That’s a good angle that didn’t occur to me. Thanks for the reply.
It is not possible for scientism to be true, any more than it is possible for racism to be true. It is possible for physicalism to be true.
You can buy a toy for a few dollars in any store. It allows you to move a ball by willing it to move.
This is a burgeoning area of research, with great benefits to the disabled, and perhaps all of us in time. For example, moving a wheelchair just by thinking “left, right, forward, back” etc.
Meanwhile, you are entitled to try to use your mind powers, but best not to open your mind so far you try something like flying from a rooftop, although Bill Hicks cruelly said of those who do try it (after taking LSD), “Big deal! One less garage attendant.”
Thanks, that answers my question. Delighted to hear of your wife’s recovery as well.
William, this statement is an example of “all-or-nothing” thinking. You are “personally skeptical that any human has the capacity to understand what reality is” – that’s a nothing statement. You then ice it with “we don’t even know what matter, energy, or natural laws are” – a definitive statement that we know “nothing” about those aspects of the universe, in spite of the fact that there are a slew of scientists who do indeed know a great deal about those items.
On the contrary – you just did. Here it is again: “personally skeptical that any human has the capacity to understand what reality is”. That’s a statement that we don’t understand reality at all. There’s no conditional part to that assumption; it’s a statement of total negation of the capacity to understand reality.
Nope. Your words above state quite clearly your definitive view.
If our models are more useful, then they inherently are better reflections of reality. How could it be otherwise?
Do you have an opinion on why other people go on to die? Are those people not worthy of healing?
They may appear to aid you in achieving your goals, but they have no impact on the world or any action I take. But do point out when one of your “belief things” does have some impact on my world or an action I take.
That’s nice. I has none on mine.
No they won’t. In fact, the vast majority of them will disagree with you on all those things – that faith or belief or some kind of mental technique appears to manufacture the miraculous and effect radical transformation. Most faithful would laugh at such statements William. Certainly none of the members of any of the churches or temples I ever went to would agree with such statements. I know perhaps one yoga master who might agree with part of that, but certainly not all.
So I have no idea what your claim is supposed to support or rebut. Certainly not my statement that the idea that there could be a part of reality that is important to me, yet has no impact on the physical world or any action I take in this physical world makes no inherent sense to me.
I equate much of Williams talk about “some kind of mental/spiritual technique appears to manufacture the miraculous” to the same kind of sales blurb that books like “The Secret” use.
In essence what William is saying, to my mind is this:
Visualise something you want.
Make a plan to get it.
Execute that plan.
Get thing.
That he wraps it up in William’s woo changes little. Same blah, different way of saying it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
Those who practice the Secret and die never seem to complain about it.
No. Not understanding what reality is doesn’t necessarily mean understanding nothing about how parts of reality work. But you are apparently immune to this correction.
Considering I’ve already explained how (the predictability of scientific method being a self-fulfilling arrangement manufactured by certain kinds of mind states), I’ll just assume you are immune to this point as well.
Your assumption that greater predictability necessarily means a more accurate representation of what reality actually is, and using scientific theory and knowledge to support it, is circular. To support the ideological view that science necessarily generates more “accurate” (instead of the more humble “useful”) models wrt reality depends upon an argument about reality that doesn’t depend on science.
Some people get a placebo and are cured. Others get a placebo and get detrimental side effects. If “worthiness” has anything to do with it, IMO it would only be each patient’s sense of self-worth. But, I doubt that “self-worth” is singularly the reason for it going either way.
But the role of self-worth in manifesting experience is an interesting concept to play around with.
How despicable.
The claim that better scientific theories are better because they are more accurate maps of reality, and not merely better with regard to generating more useful predictions about future experience, rests on the thought that mere instrumentalism about scientific theories (i.e. that ‘better’ means nothing over and above ‘yielding better predictions’) cannot explain scientific progress. This is because the instrumentalist construal of scientific theories requires that progress be smooth or continuous, and we know (from the history of science) that it isn’t. Post-Kuhn, scientific realism is the only way to salvage the idea that the transition from one theory (or family of theories) to another counts as genuine progress and not mere change.
As I understand Timaeus, Plato is giving us an account of the intelligibility of the physical or natural world — it is intelligible because the Demiurge used the Forms as a model or template in arranging the primary building-blocks of material reality (themselves construed as geometric objects of some sort). So Plato is certainly a ‘creationist’ about the physical world, but not about the Forms themselves.
Question. Did any of the Greeks envision symmetry breaking or emergence?
Did thy think it possible for new things to emerge under the sun? Things not possible to anticipate via reason?
“Greek” philosophy isn’t a single, unified branch of philosophy. From the death of Socrates (399 BC) up until the closing of the Academy by Justinian (529 AD) there were several different schools of Greek (and later Roman) philosophy: Cynicism (which evolved into Stoicism), Skepticism, Aristotelian (or Peripatetic philosophy), Neoplatonism, and Epicureanism. They had quite intense disagreements about metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, theology, politics, aesthetics, and logic.
For example, Epicureanism held that perceptible objects are generated from the collisions of atoms, and that there are infinitely many atoms capable of infinitely many configurations. So they believed in ontological novelty — new physical things are coming into existence — though they also thought that, at the base-level of reality, the atoms themselves are neither created nor destroyed.
By contrast, the Aristotelians and Platonists also held that the Forms are neither created nor destroyed, though they didn’t seem to think that new kinds of physical things could into existence, since the kinds are determined by the Forms. But they didn’t seem to think there was any limit on the variety of particulars subsumed by a kind, so there is limited ontological novelty. And they certainly didn’t think that any human being could have full, complete awareness of the relevant Form. So they allowed for epistemological progress with respect to human cognition.
Sorry William, but none of my posts addressed anything about “how parts of reality work”, whatever that would mean anyway. I have stated all along that your “all-or-nothing” thinking is in regards to what reality is. And I reject that fallacious way of thinking. And I know a great deal about what reality is based on what scientific models reflect. So do most people, but then most people reject the notion that we can “wish” the way things will be.
Except that there’s no inherent connection between certain mind states (at least that you’ve substantiated) and the scientific method. Heck, I don’t even think you know what the parameters of an actual scientific model entail given your erroneous claim. So, I reject that too on the grounds that it is internally inconsistent.
BS. Learn the actual connections in science, William.
Utter horse pucks. A) Your assertion that there’s some “ideology” attached in my statements is unsubstantiated because…oh yeah…you’re just “making crap up”. B) The relative accuracy of scientific models is supported by their degree of predictability for future events. Do read the essay I linked to when your ego calms down a little. C) the accuracy of the models wrt reality is substantiated from science, so I have no idea what the last part of your assertion is supposed to mean.
I’m not delighted with the arguments that WJM has made with regard to this point, but there is an argument here worth making. Here’s one way of putting it. Compare
(1) T1 is a better model than T2 because it yields better predictions of future experiences, resolves anomalies that T2 cannot account for, coheres better with other theories, and so on;
(2) T1 is a better model than T2 because it is a more adequate description of reality.
Someone who defends (1) might well say that the problem with (2) is that it relies on a piece of metaphysics that cannot be supported by science itself. At best, science is ‘silent’ with regard to (1) and (2).
But it certainly doesn’t follow that the metaphysics implicit in (2) and absent from (1) is “ideology” or “dogmatic” or even “a priori“.
Those seem equivalent to me.
I took WJM to be arguing:
(2′) T1 is a better model than T2 because it is a more accurate description of reality.
The problem that I see with (2′), is that it depends on an untenable conception of truth. However, it is understandable that a theist would insist on a theistic conception of truth, so I don’t find WJM’s objection at all surprising.
I’ll buy that distinction, KN. However, nowhere did I make the claim of (2). I do hold that models that are more accurate in their description of a given phenomenon inherently provide a better understanding of reality, but they are not better models because they better reflect reality. The fact that they better reflect reality is simply a convenient addition.
ETA: Heh heh…”buy” not “bye”…