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.
Yeah, why believe that? 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_by_religion
Btw, there are way, way, way more Jewish Wikipedians than representative of world population, though likely most of them are atheists, not really ‘Jewish’ in the original meaning.
It is an interesting re-direct ‘theistic realism’ -> ‘theistic science,’ KN. Thanks for pointing to it. I don’t usually go to Wiki to determine my definitions. If I have time & energy, I’ll comment.
What do you mean by ‘enchanted’? Usually I cite Max Weber’s masterful views on this, though he was admittedly ‘disenchanted’ himself, wanting to be ‘enchanted,’ just as you seem to be.
p.s. de Vries = Paul, who coined MN
By “enchanted”, I mean a Romantic conception of nature that accommodates the concepts of teleology and intentionality, and concomitant notions such as purposiveness, growth, agency, and so on.
Two recent books on my radar that (I think) defend an ‘enchanted’ conception of nature are Mind in Life (Thompson, 2007) and Incomplete Nature (Deacon, 2011). The really interesting issue within contemporary philosophical naturalism is the debate between “emergentists” and “eliminativists”. (For an excellent eliminativist critique of Deacon that lays out the issues, see here.)
I’d classify myself as an emergentist who thinks that the eliminativist criticism of emergentism is insightful and requires a serious response.
Yes, WJM, that is a major consideration that needs evaluation. Was there even any cancer there in the first place (also the term ‘cancer’ covers a wide area of emphasis so it would be helpful to supply some clarification of what type cancer was alleged to have been diagnosed). Many, many, many of these cases prove to not be so ‘dramatic’ nor unexplainable once closer scrutiny is placed on the testimonial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Calanda
thanks for that, Bias!
I don’t know if you’ve been following the debate, but this is part of the point that I have been making. IF mind is primary then this is exactly what we can expect those who conceptualize reality a certain way (materialist/physicalism) would experience, perceive, interpret, and categorize phenomena, evidence, facts, claims, testimony. IOW, even if such an event occurred or was reported within the experience of a scientismist, for every miracle or paranormal event there’s always a scientism-based dismissal or rationalization – fraud, delusion, coincidence. If free will exists, there is **always** plausible deniability for that which one excludes from their worldview – and that’s without any multiple-experiential reality scenarios.
Not that they are experiencing erroneously wrt reality, only that reality allows us to experience that which the state of our minds configure. If that is the case, the only way to “prove” anything other than scientism/scientific realism would be an individual, faith-based exploration of the potential of the mind to affect experiential reality. Because, if true, it wouldn’t be consensual or intersubjective except perhaps between those with like minds.
In my wife’s case, the doctors called it a miracle. At the time, I was an atheist. Because of that and other things, I decided that rationalizing away or dismissing such phenomena because they didn’t fit my view of reality was being dishonest. So, I started looking into it and conducting some personal experiments (which I consider individual empiricism), which led me away from being an atheist/materialist.
William,
Physicalism isn’t an ideological precommitment, William. I’m perfectly willing and able to consider non-physical explanations. It’s just that no one ever provides evidence for them that is on a par with the evidence for the things that I do accept.
OMagain mentioned the famous issue of amputees. If reality is “mind-primary”, allowing cancers to be healed by miraculous non-physical means, then why are human limbs never miraculously regrown?
Name them. That won’t compromise *anything*.
Admirable, but in the end, an error.
You are not a scientist, yet that does not stop you from making scientific judgements. You therefore make errors, simple ones.
You are not a doctor, yet that does not stop you from making medical judgements.
See a pattern yet?
And 20 years ago perhaps remissions were seen as miracles. Yet, again, that does not make it one.
Neither of those things actually happened.
Someone writes something down and calls it a miracle. That does not make it a miracle.
A doctor says something is a miracle. That does not make it a miracle.
The plural of anecdote is not evidence William. What you have is a story to tell the grandkids, not evidence of the primacy of the mind over the physical.
So, if your wife committed no evil act to get cancer and it was cured by a miracle, what about all the other people who also performed no evil act who die? What’s the difference in these cases? Why no miracle for everyone?
If your wife had a limb severed, would it be more or less of a miracle if that grew back then the cancer that went into remission?
Your standards of evidence seem remarkably low. I can only imagine if you were to encounter a skilled street magician you’d start to worship them…..
William,
If someone else in your family was to be diagnosed with terminal cancer, and you go to the same faith healer and they die anyway, what then? How can you possibly explain that rationally?
Exactly so. We start with a blank slate. William apparently wants us to accept miracles on the basis of what a doctor said decades ago. Yet what he’s trying to convince us of is that there are things that things defy scientific/rational explanation from the scientific realism/scientism perspective.
Very poor evidence for such a significant claim.
I’m not wanting anyone to accept anything, nor am I trying to convince anyone of anything. I’m describing some of what I have experienced and I’m explaining my views. What others do with that is irrelevant to me.
When you say things like:
You’ve only provided one example, one which you are expecting people to accept a miracle happened on your say-so.
How can my mind be closed to something you are not attempting to convince me of?
They might testify to it, but can they demonstrate it? No, of course not, or there would only be one religion!
Seems to me that you are trying to use your cancer example to show that the above statement has a basis in reality.
I’m simply explaining why you are wrong!
Since I already said that such phenomena defy rational explanation wrt scientific realism & scientific consensualism, you must be asking me how such a situation is rationally explicable from my particular “mind is primary” perspective. Since I never claimed that mind can be used to deliberately control everything in one’s experience, what is there for me to rationally justify? As far as I know, everyone dies eventually of one thing or another, regardless of how much faith is applied otherwise.
Many things in my experience are apparently beyond my specific, deliberate mental efforts otherwise. My current, particular, conscious thoughts are not the only thing, nor even the primary thing, that shapes my experience into specific events. Mind, IMO, is much, much more than just whatever I’m specifically conscious of in the here and now.
I have no such expectation. Such an expectation would be, IMO, utterly foolish.
Whether or not your mind is closed to X has is not dependent on whether or not I’m trying to convince you of it.
As I’ve said repeatedly, if you have free will, and if mind is primary, you cannot have anything “demonstrated” to you that you mentally preclude in the first place.
No, I wasn’t. That statement is trivially true – most people (or, at least, many, many people) are religious/spiritual, and consider the physical world one aspect of a much larger reality. Whether or not those beliefs are true is irrelevant to the fact that they have such beliefs, which is at odds with Neil’s comment which I was replying to. The idea that the physical world is some kind of illusion or lesser form of reality (comparatively) is not uncommon.
I’m not using what happened to my wife as leverage to convince anyone of anything; I’m not claiming the event convinced me of anything. It (and other things) provided me with an opportunity to begin changing my mind and start going down a different mental road. I chose to go down that road at least for a while to see where it might lead.
I don’t believe (act as if) I can convince anyone of anything. Convincing others of anything is not a motivation in anything I currently do.
How would you know?
Of course it is. That’s why it’s called “anecdotal evidence”. Anecdotal evidence is often used as prima facie evidence, or a reason, to investigate further.
Given what I’ve experienced and my current worldview, I don’t consider any of it particularly “miraculous” any more. Actually, I never did really consider any of it miraculous (I was an atheist at the time and it was the doctors that called it miraculous, not me), I just found the sequence of events extremely interesting and worth considering with an open mind.
These days, someone regrowing a limb wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I can’t speak to “many things” as I don’t know specifically what you are referring to, but remission of terminal cancer hardly qualifies as “defying rational explanation wrt scientific realism and scientific consensualism. I’m not entirely sure why you’d even make such a claim given the occurrence of remission in all medical literature.
Now, I’ve dealt with some 82,000 end-stage renal disease patients and read the literature going back across several hundred thousand (if not millions) of patients from the 1960s to the present. In not one case has any ever regrown a kidney. Not one. Given all the prayers and fervent belief of all those patients and their families, I find that very interesting.
In fact, I find it quite odd and not terribly compelling for the faithful that supposed “miracles” have limits and that things that would truly be miraculous, never occur.
If they did, and it was as common as remission of cancer, would you now, instead, be asking me why those that have been dead for years never come back to life? Or, would you be asking me why faith cannot make a battleship appear out of thin air? Or why any X (which has never been observed to occur) never miraculously happens?
You seem to equate a mind-primary reality with the idea that **anything** can happen, as if mind has no innate architecture or form or universal rules, as if all we are dealing with is the current, conscious thoughts of people when it comes to mind. Mind-primary is not the same thing as “anything is possible”, nor is mind just the conscious thoughts and beliefs of an individual.
Reporting the occurrence of remission is not a “scientismic” (to keep keiths from improper inference), rational explanation or theory of how/why it occurs.
That depends on your conceptualization of a mind-primary reality – what it is and how it operates. I’ve never made the case that “mind-primary” = “anything is possible”.
Leave no stone unturned.
I have no idea what you mean here. I don’t what your anecdotal experience has to do with the existence of rational explanations for cancer remission.
There are currently a few very good rational explanations on how cancer remission occurs. Here’s one that is being pursued as a consistent mechanism:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10688869
There are a number of others. That the specifics of the mechanistic process is still poorly understood does not somehow leave vast areas in which magic and/or miracles must be invoked to explain the occurrence. In fact, I would go so far as to hold that since we have a viable path for occurrence, the need for miracles is rather moot.
I will immediately embrace the concept of miracles, however, when someone can show me kidney has spontaneously regrown.
Speculation about possible scientismic mechanisms for remission that extend from an assumption of scientismic cause is not a scientismic/rational explanation. Point me to a paper that describes a scientismic model that can predict and/or cause remissions and then I’ll agree that spontaneous remission is not a good example of that which defies scientismic/rational explanation.
Well, while you may insist that your particular brand of “mind-primary” perspective has limits, most other folks of such perspectives insist there are no such parameters. Certainly their gods can do anything…until push comes to shove of course and then their gods become surprisingly shy and weak. But I suppose that’s a different subject…
If you’re going to claim that something is scientismically/rationally explained, that means you can scientismically predict/demonstrate it.
Speculation is not an explanation.
Scientismic is my favorite newly minted word!
Oh please…your own statement contradicts your goal-post moving parameters. “a scientismic/rational EXPLANATION” is just that…an explanation. It need not encompass any ability of control, which is what you are now insisting upon.
In the entire modern history of the world, nobody who was verified as dead has ever come back to life. How do I know it’s not possible? Well, why don’t you give me your best evidence for the fact that it is (it says so in a old book?) and then we can discuss what’s more likely, it’s not possible or it is possible and has happened.
Sure, you can include pre-history if you like. In which case watch out for the Dragon!.
Then perhaps you can demonstrate how your “anecdotal evidence” has produced a further investigation?
You had a miracle cure, what did you then do? Investigate further? How? Why are you not shouting from the rooftops that you know the cure for cancer?
Given what I understand of your worldview, I’m not surprised. And in any case, you are right, it was not miraculous. It was just something you did not understand at the time, still do not but which has been incorporated into the body of “evidence” you use to support your worldview. Totally understandable. Totally wrong.
Yet it never ever happens. Why? Sure, it might not surprise you for whatever reason, but it still never happens! Any thoughts on why?
And if by “these days” you mean “science will allow it” then you are finally coming around to the fact that progress =! miracles.
No. How silly. The point is rather that no faith healer in the history of the world has been shown to be anything other then a fraud (even if they believe it themselves!).
What a poor evasion tactic!
No, the question is rather why have you not told the world about the faith healer that you know that can cure terminal cancer!. That’s what I’m asking now. Invent any scenario you like, you are the one claiming to have a cure for cancer!
No, I’m pointing out how convenient it is that your mind-primary reality only allows things to happen that totally co-incidentally might happen anyway.
Give an example of something that cannot happen unless you are correct and perhaps…
It’s entirely possible to regrow a limb. Just ask a Salamander! And that would seem to be “less” of a miracle then curing cancer (everything you need is already there, it just needs a prod).
Yet the only “special” things that “mind as primary” seems to allow are the things that would happen anyway. Limb regrowth is therefore just as impossible as a battleship appearing out of thin air. You have undercut your own argument!
No, scientific theory about why it occurs are scientific theories about why it occurs. You have reported it as supporting evidence for your claim. It’s not.
So if curing terminal cancer is possible under “mind-primary” then why do we still have cancer?
False. I do not know where you get your ideas, but that is most definitely not a part of the methodology of science.
While quite true, I did not offer speculation. Apoptosis as an underlying mechanism of spontaneous remission has been tested – rigorously. So your characterization of speculation is misguided at best.
Shall I presume it goes nicely with your newly minted strawman?
Unless, of course, it’s WJM saying it. In which case idle speculation about “faith headers” is evidence for “mind-primary”.
I’ve never met any of them. All of the mind-primary viewpoints outside of mainstream theism that I’ve investigated agree that there are various limitations to what mind can produce in one’s experience.
I don’t now of any god that can do “anything” – other than the current, prevalent version of the muslim god Allah, which isn’t even bound to the logically consistent or logically impossible. As far as I know, all other gods have inherent limitations of one sort or another.
However, I’m not arguing for such views, I’m pointing out that you appear to have a rather uninformed conceptualization of what “mind-primary” means. As is often the case, you and those like you imagine that your adversaries believe in some kind of magical poofery where anything whatsoever – including 4-sided triangles and an apple that is not an apple an a rock so heavy god cannot lift it can be poofed into existence.
Hey, WJM, Robin appears to know something about the matter in hand. Could I suggest it’s time for you to become “satisfied with the state of the debate” and take your leave?
Then please educate poor ignorant me and give some examples of what you are talking about!.
Or is something that could have happened on it’s own anyway but which you claim some “special” thing happened instead with no way to verify it, it?
When it’s pointed out to you that you appear to have a rather uninformed conceptualization of, say, evolution then it matters. Claims by both sides can be tested.
No claim you make about “mind-primary” can be tested, so what difference does it make?
Uninformed, informed. It’s all the same. All nonsense you and religion have made up. Unless, of course, you can give me an example of what you are talking about? People coming back from the dead is it, is it?
Apparently there’s a school for Wizards! It must be true, I read it in a book!
William J. Murray,
The point is more that there is a plethora of possible explanations that do not appeal to the supernatural. Investigating these may lead to advances in therapy.
Deciding that, in your opinion, it’s all about the power of positive thinking, or green vegetables, or whatever, is an unproductive approach. And potentially dangerous if it causes people to eschew all other approaches. And if people publish books – “Pray Your Tumour Away!” – it’s reprehensible, even if well-intentioned.
Um, can I swap out all I said for that? 😛 Very well put.
It is a bit interesting that everything that the idealist can explain in terms of a universal mind that conforms to rules and principles, the physicalist can explain in terms of the powers and limits of physical (including biological) systems — and the other way around. (“you say tomayto, I say tomahto”.) There’s no experimentum crucis between idealism and physicalism.
(Whether there is ever any experimentum crucis between any rival metaphysical systems is, in my view, open to considerable doubt — if they shared enough common vocabulary and assumptions such that there could be an experimentum crucis, then they wouldn’t be rival metaphysical systems in the first place!)
Nevertheless, I think we have pretty good reasons for thinking that all of the dominant metaphysical views of the 17th and 18th centuries — idealism, materialism, and dualism — are all false. Physicalism does unacceptable violence to our ordinary intuitions about consciousness, intentionality, and value. Idealism does unacceptable violence to our ordinary intuitions about spatiality, object-hood, and embodiment. Dualism is stuck with the causal interaction problem, which is insolvable.
That may be a salient point had I advocated against research into the phenomena. I never advocate an all or nothing approach to anything. The way I hold “beliefs” should be clear evidence of that.
Unproductive towards what end? For whom? In what case? In my case, “deciding” means simply “trying out a different approach/view to see what occurs”.
Everything in life, just about, including mainstream science and medicine is at least “potentially dangerous”. Big deal.
Unless, of course, it works for someone.
Sure it can be tested. I have tested it for many years now and fleshed out what consistently works for me in terms of mentallymanifesting an enjoyable life. It’s made an enormous difference in my life and in the lives of those around me.
It just cannot be properly tested “scientismically”. It can only be tested experientially by the individual or intersubjectively with like-minded people.
One phenomenon that science has demonstrated in abundance is the human capacity for believing what the person wants to believe, affirming the consequent, and falling for a good story.
Science is said to be the way that we keep from fooling ourselves. Could it be wrong? It could be, but, really, what’s the alternative? “Testing” matters like William does? Denying science, such as evolution, when it doesn’t suit your fancy–and when it might jeopardize your preferred beliefs about “mind”?
Of course we can call unknowns “miracles,” or evidence of a “mind-primary” world. Given the human capacity for self-deception, I would rather not.
Glen Davidson
The point is that using your “thinking” it’s not possible to determine if it was co-incidence or if it really did work. That you can’t see this is not totally unexpected.
If your child got cancer would you
A) Go to a faith healer?
B) Go to a doctor?
William, I’m quite familiar with what “mind-primary” means and the various perspectives on it. Yours is not even remotely the most conventional view. But be that as it may, your general dismissive and mischaracterization rhetoric really doesn’t serve you well. It certainly doesn’t lend any credence to your claims.
I do have to laugh about your “4-sided triangles and apple that isn’t an apple” bogeyman. Those are theistic omnipotent metaphoney concepts, not skeptic omnipotent concepts. We skeptics recognize that a 4-sided triangle is impossible “by human definition” as we are the ones who arbitrarily defined what “triangle” means. Ditto for “apple” and any other weak semantic metaphoney argument someone wishes to toss out to appear thoughtful. All I can say in response is…yawn.
In any event, if your particular version of “miracle” boils down to “things that can happen, but do so only rarely”, congratulations – yours is at least a sensible, if rather mundane, “mind-primary” perspective.
Not true. http://emj.bmj.com/content/18/1/74.full
You made the positive claim that it didn’t happen. When challenged about how you know that, you then shift the burden to me to support that it did happen. That’s called shifting the burden. I’ll assume you cannot support that assertion, nor any of the other universal claims you made in this post.
Given the state of modern physics, virtually nothing is physically impossible. The road in front of you could spontaneously turn into purple taffee and not violate any known physical laws; it’s just an extremely unlikely spontaneous event.
For instance, one time a spade-like tool I was imagining physically appeared right in front of me. Did that violate any known physical laws? No. It’s just a very unlikely spontaneous arrangement of subatomic states – especially given that I was just imagining that very tool. However, it defies “scientismic”/rational explanation.
Scientismists would speculate that I imagined it or some other error of cognition occurred, or they could even speculate that I was lying. Such speculations might satisfy them. However, even if it did just manifest out of thin air right when I had imagined it, that still violates no known physical laws, and can be chalked up to an interesting coincidence.
So, it doesn’t bother me to characterize my views as being about what appears to be a general method of helping very unlikely coincidences occur, over time, in my favor. As long as it seems to work, what matters to me is the results, not the true-ness of the model.
No, you have not. You just think you have!
A test can fail….
So Jesus was a drug addict then? Laughable.
You made the original claim. You support it!
Then that puts us on a even footing eh?
Therefore faith-healing works? Laughable.
I’d see a doctor. A good one.
Whatever works for you William, whatever works for you.
Amazing how you can use science, but just sometimes and only if it suits your purpose. Very telling.
I’m not sure what you think I’m claiming here, or why you think it would matter to me if others find what I say credible. If mind-primacy as I describe it is a good, working model, then the more interested I am in the credibility others afford me can only serve to constrain my capacity to experience that which lies outside of what they would lend credibility to. It’s not in my experiential interests, generally speaking, to let others have that kind of power over me.
Do you think it is actually physically impossible for a human to spontaneously re-grow a limb? Or do you think it is just extremely unlikely? What do you think is an example of something that cannot happen?
I don’t understand your categorizations. If the miraculous means something that cannot happen, then a “miraculous event” would be a self-contradiction, meaning something happened that cannot happen. The only things I can think of that cannot happen are logical contradictions or semantic absurdities as previously mentioned. Everything else are just things that are highly unlikely events given the normal observed behavior of matter as described by models of physics and medicine.
Those observed regularities are not prescriptive; the don’t preclude unlikely things from happening. Right?
A simple “you’re right, I was wrong” would suffice.
When that happens, you can be sure that’s what I’ll say.
So, please nail a man to a cross, wait till he dies then wait another 3 days, poke a few holes in him then bring him back to life.
When you’ve done that you’ll get your “you were right and I was wrong”.
So, got any more bmj links handy?
I’m perfectly willing to admit that I have no idea if Jesus or Lazarus came back from the dead. My point was that if people actually did come back from the dead like Jesus or Lazarus are claimed to have, my wife’s cancer remission would not be nearly as dramatic in comparison.
Now it’s up to you to support your assertion that they and indeed nobody has ever come back to life from being verified as dead.
Oh, wait. Even though it wasn’t my responsibility to prove your claim false, I provided scientific evidence that your claim is false. Oh, well.
So, please nail a man to a cross, wait till he dies then wait another 3 days, poke a few holes in him then bring him back to life.
You’re moving the goal posts. You said:
http://emj.bmj.com/content/18/1/74.full
A simple “You’re right, I was wrong.” will suffice.