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.
I suspect there’s a reason why most people, including William, go to doctors. instead of faith healers.
Depends on the circumstances. Ideally, I’d take the child to both. As I’ve repeated many times, I’m not an all-or-nothing kind of guy. It hasn’t been my experience that conscious, zealous faith or certainty is a necessary commodity for manifesting desirable outcomes via a mind-primary perspective.
More correct would be, “I didn’t word my hypothetical carefully enough to prevent William from coming up with a non-responsive ‘Gotcha’ example.”
Your fault, O’Magain, for not running your response past the legal department.
Glen Davidson
I pretty much consider doctors, in principle, the same as faith healers – facilitators/intermediaries for self- healing.
And what of surgery? What’s the “faith” equivalent that’ll cure a slipped disk? Or a cleft palate? You really should think these things through William…
Again, you seem to think that I’m describing an all or nothing system comprised of magical poofery with no limitations. Some intermediaries are necessary – but not everyone who has surgery is cured of what they went in to be cured of. Some people end up worse off, some end up dead. A treatment that works in one case may not work in another. A simple misdiagnosis can apparently kill people via the nocebo effect.
There are many ways that what I experience is successfully described by scientism. I’d be an idiot not to use it where it is useful and highly successful in my experience. But there’s no reason to go “all in” on scientism and the materialist description of the world, especially when the mind-primary perspective has proven to be extremely useful and productive to me in other areas.
He didn’t put forward a hypothetical. He put forward a universal, positive claim about people coming back from the dead. It wasn’t my job to rebut; it was his to support, which he then attempted to shift the burden to me. Even so, I demonstrated his claim wrong.
My father graduated from med school around 1930. He was told that 70 percent of people get well regardless of treatment. In 1930, William would have been correct.
I suspect he’s still correct, because people go to doctors for lots of non-life threatening conditions.
The life threatening conditions that medicine really has mastered include (in rough priority order), sanitation, immunization, antibiotics, surgery, antidepressants. I don’t have the numbers, but these are the big life savers.I should add nutrition and exercise, but these don’t really require a doctor.
Taken together, these medical activities have enabled the human population to grow exponentially, and have created new problems.
But assuming you have a child or spouse suffering from an incurable disease, I do not begrudge anyone seeking palliative treatment in addition to modern medicine.
Dembski took his autistic son to a faith healer. Well, nothing…
Jenny McCarthy’s autistic son largely recovered from diagnosed autism via a gluten-free diet, among other things: According to her, anyway:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/mccarthy.autsimtreatment/
Well, there you are, it’s that, instead. Not scientifically proven, but hey. Or maybe medical practitioners are right that it wasn’t really autism after all. But how to tell, since we’re exempting some areas from science, etc.?
Or in other words, there is a host of woo-claims, many contrary to each other as well as to science, and if you decide that you’re above science all you can do is to make your assertions.
Glen Davidson
Even more miraculous–blind mole rats don’t get cancer (or it’s extremely rare). That’s better than getting it and being healed.
No wait, if that’s the case for them it’s because there are means of preventing cancer, of fighting cancer, and no doubt it’s something that can be discovered by science. Because, why would they be subjects of miracles, or have the sort of minds that simply prevent disease?
But what if I really want to believe that they’re miraculous little animals? Why not?
It’s not like humans have an immune system that might be responsible for “spontaneous remission” of cancer, is it?
Glen Davidson
Your rhetoric doesn’t much help the accuracy of your model then. The evidence doesn’t bear a lot of weight for your model either.
Depends on what you mean by “limb”. If you are using it in the conventional sense (e.g., a leg from the end of the femur on down) then yes, it is physically impossible for said limb to spontaneously regrow on a human. Hence my comment about regrowing kidneys. Those particular cellar structures cannot regenerate.
The regrowth of a kidney cells is impossible. Ditto the regeneration of the cells of a limb. It’s a result of what is called “fixed cellular identity”.
Here’s my definition of miraculous:
mi·rac·u·lous
[ mi rákyələss ]
Regarded as caused by supernatural intervention: apparently contrary to the laws of nature and caused by a supernatural power.
In other words, for something to be considered a “miracle”, that phenomenon would have to DEFY known laws of the universe. The phenomenon would be a recorded event that COULD NOT occur by natural means. The regrowth of a kidney would do fine. Fire burning for some length of time in a vacuum would be another. A single bowling ball rising up and continuing out of the atmosphere without any means of propulsion would be another good example. Any of those would constitute miracles in my book.
And no, none of those are “highly unlikely events”. These are events that cannot occur IF (and this is the kicker) our physical laws are all there is. If the universe is actually sustained by laws of nature and nothing more, then these phenomena can never occur. However, if there are things that can cause “miracles” (e.g., actions that defy the repeatable, predictable, and consistent natural order), then in theory they can occur. I await the supernatural meddling…
They do not preclude “unlikely” phenomenon from occurring; they do prevent impossible phenomenon from occurring.
ETA: I suppose I should qualify the conditions of the impossibility of cellular regeneration in humans so that the “exception that proves the rule” lawyers don’t get the opportunity to run off on a tangent. Yes…newborns whose cells retain a certain level of identity flexibility can regrow things like the tips of their fingers, tongues, and parts of ears and such in limited capacities. Human adults…not so much.
The context being “Jesus” and “Lazarus”. Did you forget about that? It seems you did.
Sure, you’ve “proven me wrong” but at the same time not supported your claim. How very strange….
So minds can miraculously cure cancer, but they can’t regrow limbs. Why the arbitrary limitation? William has no explanation.
But his theory is better, honest! It’s only the prejudice of “scientismists” that is preventing them from embracing it wholeheartedly.
Actually, if I understand William’s “mind-primary” perspective correctly, I do believe he thinks that minds CAN influence the chance of such a miracle as limb regrowth occurring. William is not under the impression that limb regeneration is impossible; to him it is just an extremely unlikely possibility. Thus, in William’s universe, it’s possible, however unlikely, for…say…iron or carbon to spontaneously morph into hafnium or tapioca. Anything can happen, it’s just a question of the degree of probability.
I don’t think William thinks his system is necessarily better. But, according to him it works, so it would be silly to look at any other system.
Robin,
The question is why we never see it happening. William has no explanation, but scientists do.
That’s William’s “official” position, but I think it bothers him greatly that he can’t defend his position effectively at TSZ, and that his thinking is continually exposed here as irrational and emotionally driven.
William:
I pretty much consider doctors, in principle, the same as faith healers – facilitators/intermediaries for self- healing.
Just like plumbers,helping the pipes self heal.
I’ve broken my leg! Call the faith healer!
I disagree; WJM has expressly said that he’s not putting forth any claims about the nature of reality, that’s he’s not making claims that are objectively valid, and that he’s not interested in convincing anyone that his view are true. That’s effectively the same thing as not being interested in responding to criticisms or defending his views. One must notice what an extreme methodological subjectivist WJM is. His foremost concern is what makes sense to him, what is consistent with his experience, and the value his idealist metaphysics contributes to his life.
Clearly he’s not interested in persuading us of anything he says, and he doesn’t care whether or not he is taken seriously. His contributions to these discussions are therefore the mere sharing of autobiographical remarks, not intended as claims for intersubjective criticism and appraisal. They are, perhaps, not really claims at all, but mere utterances that, like the sounds made by animals, are outside the space of giving and asking for reasons.
There’s a shorter term for what you are describing.
Patrick,
I don’t understand what you’re getting at. I certainly don’t think that what I’ve attributed to WJM is true of most theologians or otherwise religious thinkers. In my experience I’ve had excellent discussions and arguments with Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish clergy and intellectuals. Unlike WJM, they all showed a sincere desire to be taken seriously and to engage in the give-and-take of rational discourse.
No. There are two types of ‘dead’.
To quote an expert on the subject of miracles:
‘Mostly dead’ can be equated with ‘freshly dead’.
William’s original examples related to people who had been dead for four or three days, respectively.
WJM then cites a BMJ article about a patient who had been dead for 25 -35 minutes. That’s fairly fresh.
Except for “on-pump” surgery, ALL patients in asystole are “Freshly dead”. Every single day such asystolic patients recover, usually as the result of medical intervention. So, from the context, it’s pretty clear that OM was referring to patients coming back from “All dead”.
Which has not been documented in modern history.
Bloody Lyall Watson.
So much for trying to be subtle — evidently I slid into obscure.
I agree with everything you wrote above. My point was that your description of William’s behavior is very close to the definition of an Internet troll.
Patrick,
Ah, OK! I was distracted by the costume!
It might be objected that I’m being unfair to WJM, but to the extent that I’m being unfair, it’s to make the following substantive philosophical points:
(1) rationality is a social and linguistic affair — that it consists in what Brandom calls a default-and-challenge model, where commitments are made, entitlements challenged, attributions proposed, acknowledgements undertaken, and so on;
(2) the exercise of rationality therefore presupposes (i) the acknowledgement of a plurality of finite persons and (ii) the acknowledgement of a reality independent of each and all of those finite persons (even if the ultimate character of that reality is essentially mind-like);
(3) there is an intimate connection between acts such as judging, asserting, and claiming and the idea of objectivity (what Kant calls ‘objective validity’); to treat an utterance as a claim or assertion is to treat it as a viable candidate for truth;
(4) “true-for-me” is a category mistake; what I take to be true is not what is true, since I could be in error. For me to say that what I take to be true is true-for-me is to say that I don’t care about finding out whether what I take to be true is true, since I am denying that any test or verification beyond my choice has any relevance to my beliefs.
(5) my criticisms of WJM’s position are therefore directed at two features of his view: (a) his subjectivist methodology for doing metaphysics, since that effectively takes all of his claims out of the entire game of giving and asking for reasons; (b) his idealism-cum-phenomenalism as the first-order claims about reality to which is committed. If he weren’t committed to (a), I’d be quite happy to engage with him about (b), but since he is committed to (a), I don’t see any point of arguing with him about (b). Or with arguing him about anything, really.
(6) however, I do think that WJM has made a serious error in conflating the naturalism/theism debate with the physicalism/idealism dichotomy. For one thing, there are non-idealist theisms (Aquinas was not an idealist!) and non-physicalist naturalisms (Dewey was not a physicalist!). For another, I think that both physicalism and idealism are fundamentally flawed; one cannot explain mind in terms of matter nor explain matter in terms of mind. But we should not be held captive by the assumptions of 17th-century metaphysicians in our attempts to determine the correct metaphysics, if there is one.
What makes you so sure that there cannot in principle be a physical explanation of mind?
My opposition to “physicalism” is this: if the only entities we’re going to allow into the fundamental metaphysics are those in particle physics — that is, if we agree with Alex Rosenberg that everything must be explained in terms of interactions between fermions and bosons — then I just don’t see how we can get from there to the concepts of consciousness and intentionality, which are ineliminable properties of anything we’d be willing to call “mind”.
I don’t object to “naturalizing” intentionality and consciousness — on the contrary, I think that some sort of naturalizing project has got to be right! But it will have to be an extremely liberal naturalism in order to give us enough ontological wiggle-room to ensure that we can explain intentionality and consciousness (and also rationality, in the case of rational minds) in terms of the highly complex patterns of behavior in certain kinds of social animals, rather than explaining them in terms of interactions between fermions and bosons.
Here’s a better way of putting the same thought: although it is of course true that the only constituents of anything at all is fermions and bosons, I don’t see how appealing to the constituents is going to yield an illuminating explanation of how mental properties are causally realized in the lives of animals, rational and otherwise. So if physicalism is committed to explaining the causal realization of mental properties in terms of the ultimate constituents, I just don’t see how that can possibly work.
By the way, I am painfully aware that “I just don’t see it” is not a refutation; it’s the admission of a cognitive weakness. Perhaps others here can show me where I’ve gone wrong.
I don’t see how your inability to see how matter produces consciousness inconveniences matter.
As nearly all you’ve expressed is personal incredulity, there is nothing much for anyone to say.
Intentionality is required to explain some systems at a certain level of explanation. This does not mean that everything does not supervene on the physical. Nor does it mean it does, of course.
I’d say that this depends on how broadly you are willing to understand “physical explanation of mind.”
Dennett describes a thought experiment with two black boxes wired to each other. You press the first button on one box, you get a green light on the other. The second, a red light. The third, a yellow light. When the boxes are opened up and examined, it is discovered that the first box selects from a number of statements. Different signals are sent to the second box depending on whether the statement is true, false, or meaningless. The end result is a green light for true sentences, red for false, and yellow for meaningless. A physical description of the system misses something important. However, this does not mean that a physical description is not in principle possible.
It’s the same reason that set the Pythagoreans off on their wild, mystic ride into rationality. They realized that the sound of two different tones had a completely mathematical relationship, that the “subjective effect” had to have an exact causal relationship with the lengths of various vibrating objects. They didn’t actually do too well with it, since they didn’t very well understand the various causes, but they did recognize that two tones an octave apart must be based on one string being twice what the smaller one is.
To be sure, that doesn’t get us straight to understanding “subjective effects,” and we may never truly understand why an octave sounds like it does. Yet the information in “subjective experience” is the “same information” (perhaps “different form” or what not) as that abstracted from the various senses, and we can cross-correlate information. Perhaps as importantly, the brain is not going to be duplicating massive amounts of data separately as “consciousness” and as some other data mass from which we can abstract data. These will be the same data, say, in the visual cortex. Consciousness of visual data being seen almost certainly has to be in the visual cortex, in fact, and the interactions of those data almost certainly have to be the basis for visual consciousness.
It’s the information underlying both abstractions and “subjective experience” that must be common to both our abstract understandings of our world and our conscious awareness of immediate experience.
Glen Davidson
Perhaps trying to address solipsism might give some insight.
From where does a solipsist get new knowledge?
What is the risk for a solipsist wanting to test his beliefs using suicide?
Just stick to physics and mathematics, Mike. We wouldn’t want a solipsist responding to your atheist-nihilist temptations.
Well, that’s less ‘enchanting’ and rather more ideological (Romanticism) than comfortable. I can understand your lean toward emergentism. It is something that hardcore physicalists seem unable to consider.
Your ‘non-physicalist naturalism’ is still imo confused and unnecessary. You want to ‘naturalise’ things that don’t need to (and shouldn’t) be naturalised. But hey, at least you’re one of very few people here that is open about what ideologies they hold. Others appear completely oblivious or simply unwilling to show, except of course for their ‘skepticism,’ which is also an ideology.
Yeah, the physicalist’s soulless conundrum. It’s what I and others do on the sociological level, working with cognitive ‘scientists’ and philosophers. The IDM otoh is attempting mentalism for OoL, by which they mean uppercase (Big-M) ‘Mind.’ Their audience is mainly evangelical Protestants in USA, many of whom are YECs, and folks like WJM, who are (impersonal) generic theists.
It is understandable why agnostic and/or pan(en)theist folks like Lizzie oppose the IDM…which explains the existence of this skepticism site contra UD. Nobody’s going to convince the majority here of a (non-physical, immaterial, even ‘unnatural’) ‘mind/Mind’ other than their own through an internet blog. It might have been a robot that typed this, not a man, not a person, not a mind and heart.
Do you believe in ghosts?
I don’t think Lizzie opposes the Intelligent Design Movement in any sense other than ID is non-scientific. I would say “oppose” it is the wrong verb for her. “Refute” is better.
They use pseudo-science as one means of pushing their right-wing theocratic agenda. It certainly should be opposed.
This is a great articulation of why I’m skeptical of a non-physical, immaterial mind. This right here says it all:
What does Gregory be by “not a man”…”not a heart”? People used to believe that the heart was the center of emotion; that it had immaterial “energies” that powered intelligence, sensation, and emotional control. We theoretically know better now, though there are still a number of folks out there who hold the heart as being able to be “heavy” or “light” in some way indicative of the person’s spirit.
So here Gregory emphasizes his point by applying metaphorically what I like to call the Tin Woodsman dichotomy. A body without heart and mind is an automaton at best, yet by all accounts there is nothing magical about the heart; it’s just a pump. It doesn’t even monitor, let alone control any hormones. Why then should we think that “the mind” is more than the workings of the brain? And if the heart is just a pump, as I submit it is, where is the seat of this supposed “man-spirit”? I hold it is just a by-product – an illusion of the complex system that is the result of billions upon billions of biological interactions. But maybe that’s just an automaton not thinking out loud…
I wouldn’t call mind or consciousness an illusion. They are what the brain does.
If there are any dualists willing to answer, I would like to ask whether souls attach themselves to the brains of any other species.
I have responded to criticism, and I have defended my views. The problem ;you have is that I’m not defending/responding as per their truth with regard to reality, because I don’t claim they are true wrt reality. Rather, what I defend and address criticisms of is the usefulness of those views wrt my experience.
Actually, my interpretations and views don’t really even have to make sense to me. They only have to apparently work. But, I guess that’s “making sense” … in a sense.
I think that from your view and others here, my views can best be categorized as a system of superstitions that I constantly test in my own subjective way and which I don’t consider necessarily applicable to others.
Well, posting information about my views here is a de facto act of offering them up to criticism and appraisal. I have also shown that I am completely willing to offer my reasons and rationales for holding my views. The real problem, I think, is that many of the criticisms and appraisals offered here are irrelevant to principles around which my view are organized, and my reasons and explanations are not readily, or even accurately, translated to or from the worldview framework of many here.
What I have expressed here is that I certainly use “scientismic” models where my experience indicates they are useful. I am not “dissing” such models – they are very useful. However, I’m not ideologically committed to the idea that one should only use such models, and that seems to cause problems in those who are apparently committed to such models. Sometimes people here react as if it is heresy to suggest non-scientific models might be better than scientific models for some people in many ways – as if one must invest an all-or-nothing commitment to the great and holy scientism.
Such models may be entirely satisfactory and effective for some/many people. They didn’t prove satisfactory for me. In some aspects of my life, I started trying out other models, first some that were readily available and then I just started making them up myself. I found that making up my own models, not replacing the “scientismic” models in all cases, but working side-by-side with those which worked well for me, started consistently producing a better, more enjoyable life.
I’m not competing against others over a more true understanding of “what reality is”, because I have noticed that other people, employing other models quite divergent from my own, seem to live quite enjoyable and satisified lives. There’s no reason for me to have competitive discussions with them in the sense that I’m trying to change their minds about something.
I’m not attempting to change the minds of others; I’m employing a mechanism here that has proven useful for me to find/develop/alter mental constructs that help me in my life.
WJM, when you write ‘scientismic,’ do you really mean ‘scientistic’? If not, how do you distinguish them? Did you make it up yourself or get it from Wiki or…?
William (to KN):
At times. Many other times, you’ve ignored criticisms and run away from questions without defending your position — because you can’t.
You can’t explain why God’s opinions regarding morality count as “objective” if ours don’t — so you ignore the question.
You can’t explain why minds can cure cancer miraculously, but they can’t regrow limbs — so you ignore the question.
I tell you that physicalism is not an ideological precommitment, and that physicalists are perfectly capable of conceiving of, understanding, and testing non-physical hypotheses. You ignore the point and go on blathering about “scientismists” and “religious devotion” to ideologies.
Not a very impressive performance.
I think the operative word here is incoherent.
I have said on a number of occasions that I do not post on these websites to convince people or to change their minds. I post to improve my own understanding. Writing out an argument focuses your thoughts. Developing an argument requires reading and understanding other people’s arguments.
Sometime you get corrected by people who basically agree with you.
But I am after a coherent argument. One with no glaring flaws. One that is well expressed. One that other people can understand.
I would be upset with myself if I constantly had to tell people that they do not understand what I am saying or that they cannot restate what I am saying in their own words. I would consider that a failure on my part.
I’m using the word to differentiate from “scientific” so that when I use the word, people (keiths) don’t attempt to quote me out of context as if I’m expressing a problem with the fundamental concept of scientific investigation. Rather, my issue is with the idea that the information gathered scientifically can only be properly interpreted and modeled according to a particular kind of ideology. I used to call it atheistic/materialistic ideology, but I really don’t know what such a designation would mean among those arguing here.
If that’s what “scientistic” means, I’ll start using that term instead.
My process is, IMO, scientific – I gather empirical facts that I experience, I make models and I empirically test them. I don’t, however, insist that my useful interpretations of those facts and the success of those models get me any closer to understanding “reality” in the external-objective sense. Nor do I insist that they would or even should work for everyone else in their experience.
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”!
Well, if after 100 times of announcing one way or another (some explicit) that I’m not arguing about whether or not a thing is true, but only about (1) whether or not it is rationally consistent, or (2) whether or not it is useful, and they still insist on framing their interpretations, challenges and criticisms as if I was asserting and arguing that a thing is true, and as if I thought it should apply to other people, you guys still cannot get it, I suggest the problem is your inability to comprehend these simple statements and keep them logged into your memory.
I suggest the reason why is that they are incongruent with your habits. You expect people to be making the same kinds of arguments, from the same general assumptions, for the same basic reasons/motivations. That’s why I had to wade through months and months of people arguing as if I was a Christian here even though I flatly stated time after time and after time that I was not a Christian.
I have stated time after time after time that my arguments have nothing to do with whether or not any proposition or entity is actually true or actually exists in reality; I’ve flatly stated several times that all I care about is that my models appear to work for me in terms of delivering my experiential goals – but yet, here many of you are, acting as if it’s the first time you’ve heard this.
For example, Petrushka, you kept reiterating the Captain Obvious fact that I make utilitarian arguments as if it was somehow revelatory. Well, at least you’ve understood that much, even if it is literally months after I’ve reiterated over and over that all I care about (in terms of worldview) is the personal *******usefulness****** of my models.
So, AF, are you taking the day off of moderating?
The problem I have with this is that the test you apply is a test that you invented yourself for making sense of your own personal experience. It’s a radical subjectivism that simply doesn’t cohere with any scientific methodology. Your method is completely un-scientific (and not merely, as you would have us believe, ‘un-scientistic’).
If you want to sign off with radical subjectivism, ok, that’s your choice; I’ll stop giving you a hard time about it. I’ve voiced my objections and said my piece. But I would still object, quite strenuously, to your use of “scientific” and “empirical” in expressing your view.
(However — consider this a peace-offering, of sorts — if you used “phenomenological” in lieu of “empirical” I wouldn’t object.)
There’s no schedule, WJ.
I think that’s the main thing you have constantly made clear, especially the bit about only caring about your own models. I do see progress in that you refer to your thoughts as models.
Just looking at the endless wrangling over the meanings of words in many of these threads, it appears that much of what is going on is about “animating” things by attaching labels to things that will make them become what one wishes them to become.
That is a much earlier stage of development that comes before the ability to apprehend the essence of something and then find the words to describe it.
The earlier stage is all about self and projection. The later stage of development is the realization that there is actually something external to self that cries out for understanding rather than projection.
I collect information scientifically – via empirical investigation. That’s certainly scientific under any general conceptualization of what science is. I then try out various ways of interpreting those facts into models that are useful for one purpose or another – that, also, is scientific. When those models contradict empirical experience, or become no longer useful, I ditch, amend or change them accordingly – that, I think, is also scientific.
I don’t really think the term “radical” is fair. I don’t claim that what science is **only** personally subjective in nature. Successful models would be intersubjectively confirmable wrt all appropriately comparable mind-states. Some things would be virtually universal because they would correlate to fundamental aspects of the human mind.
Let’s hypothesize that my mind-primary concept of reality is true. Would there be any way to test it scientifically under your premise of what science is?