Saturday, January 17, 2015

Feynman’s painter and eliminative materialism


In case you haven’t been following it, my recent critique of novelist Scott Bakker’s Scientia Salon essay on eliminative materialism has generated quite a lot of discussion, including a series of vigorous and good-natured responses from Bakker himself both in my combox and at his own blog.  Despite the points made in my previous post, Bakker still maintains -- utterly implausibly, in my view -- that the incoherence objection begs the question against the eliminativist.  To see the problem with this response, consider a further analogy.

In Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, physicist Richard Feynman tells the story of a painter he met who confidently insisted that he could get yellow paint by mixing together nothing but red paint and white paint.  Feynman naturally found this claim highly dubious.  As an expert in the physics of light, he knew this should not be possible.  Still, he was open to hearing the guy out and being proved wrong.  So he went and got some red paint and white paint and watched the painter mix them.  Yet just as Feynman expected, all that came out was pink.  Then the painter said that all he needed now was a little yellow paint to “sharpen it up a bit” and then it would be yellow!

Needless to say, the painter’s procedure was completely farcical.  Obviously, he had done absolutely nothing to show that yellow paint really could be derived from red paint and white paint alone.  It would be ridiculous for someone to say: “Well, I don’t know.  After all, he did get pretty far along the way with just red and white paint.  He only needed to add some yellow at the very end.  So that’s at least good reason to think that someday we might be able to get all the way to yellow paint with just red paint and white paint alone.  We need to just keep mixing red and white in different ways for a few more years and see what happens.” 

It would also obviously be ridiculous for someone to accuse Feynman of begging the question or of simply dogmatically asserting that red and white paint could never yield yellow paint.  For one thing, he had independent reason to think the painter was not going to succeed.  For another, he nevertheless was open to the possibility of being proved wrong and he even asked to see the evidence that he was wrong.  The painter simply failed to provide it.  If the painter persisted in insisting that yellow paint could be derived from red and white paint alone, the lapse in rationality would be his, not Feynman’s.  For the burden of proof was not on Feynman but on the painter, and he had failed to meet it.

I submit that the eliminative materialist who accuses the incoherence objection of dogmatically begging the question is committing exactly the same fallacy as the painter’s would-be defender.  In stating his position, the eliminativist makes use of notions like “truth,” “falsehood,” “illusion,” “theory,” “evidence,” “observation,” “entailment,” etc.  Everyone, including the eliminativist, agrees that at least as usually understood, these terms entail the existence of intentionality.  But of course, the eliminativist denies the existence of intentionality.  He claims that in using notions like the ones referred to, he is just speaking loosely and could say what he wants to say in a different, non-intentional way if he needs to.   So, he owes us an account of exactly how he can do this -- how he can provide an alternative way of describing his position without saying anything that entails the existence of intentionality. 

In particular, he needs to find some way of conveying the notions of truth and falsity without implicitly committing himself to the existence of intentionality.  For at the core of eliminativism are the claims that what Wilfrid Sellars called the “scientific image” of human nature is true, correct, accurate, etc. and that the commonsense or “manifest image” of human nature is false, incorrect, illusory, etc.  So, the eliminativist needs to find some way of reconstructing these claims without implicitly presupposing intentionality.  He needs to say what he wants to say using entirely non-intentional notions, otherwise he’ll be like Feynman’s painter, who ends up smuggling in yellow paint even though he had insisted that he needed to use only red and white paint.

Now, just as Feynman regarded the painter’s task of getting yellow paint from red and white paint alone as a hopeless one, the critic of eliminative materialism regards the task of formulating eliminativism without making use of intentional notions as a hopeless one.  Just as Feynman had independent reason to think it hopeless (i.e. what he knew about the physics of light) so too does the critic have independent reason to think the eliminativist’s task is hopeless (i.e. the intentional nature of crucial notions like “truth,” “falsehood,” “illusion,” “theory,” “evidence,” “observation,” “entailment,” etc. as usually understood).  Just as Feynman was nevertheless open to be proven wrong (since he asked the painter to show him how he got yellow paint from red and white paint alone), so too is the critic of eliminative materialism open to be proven wrong (since the critic asks the eliminativist to show how his position can be re-stated in entirely non-intentional terms).  And just as Feynman’s painter failed to show that he really could get yellow paint from red and white paint alone, so too has every eliminativist attempt to reconstruct eliminativism in entirely non-intentional terms proved a failure. 

So, just as Feynman was guilty neither of dogmatism nor of begging the question, neither is the critic of eliminative materialism guilty of these things.  Nor is it a serious response to suggest that the eliminative materialist is at least able to get rid of many, even if not all, intentional notions -- any more than it would be a serious response to Feynman to say that the painter was able to make at least much of his paint out of non-yellow paint.

So, if you persist in thinking eliminative materialism has a leg to stand on, then you should think that Feynman’s painter does too.  Perhaps we’ll see science fiction novels devoted to exploring in detail “what it might look like” for there to be a world in which we could get yellow paint from red and white paint!

295 comments:

  1. Innocuous though the posts were.^

    ReplyDelete
  2. Scott Bakker: You cannot assert my account is incoherent because it presumes the truth of your account when the truth of your account is the very thing at issue. It effectively renders your account religious, INSOFAR AS THERE IS NO WAY FOR YOU TO BE WRONG.

    Well, ignoring that that is not remotely what "religious" means, it occurred to me that maybe what Bakker was getting at (and rightly so) is that "explanations", "definitions", etc., are all intentional, and so it would be begging the question in some way to insist upon explanations and definitions and the like for his non-intentional non-position. At least, that's the best I can make of it (and it may fit with some of Benjamin Cain's subsequent comments); and to some extent, I suppose it works (or doesn't non-work). Of course, the response is then obvious to Bakker's worry[sic] that people are not getting all worked up over this incredible new un-paradigm: Eh, they don't feel like it.
    We can't say that anyone "should" care about it, or "needs to", or would "find" it "useful"... all we can really [pretend to] say is that some folks do and some folks don't. Even Bakker can't have a reason for it — like his cousin, the deterministic free-will eliminativst, he just does, and it doesn't have to make sense. His apparent concern and pleading and promotion is merely a sequence of neurological events. The good news is, neither side believes there is any need to waste time discussing it further.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Scott: And just for the record: not that you're equating them here, but I regard these as two different theories of truth. Truth as "correspondence" seems to lock us into representationalism and therefore imprisonment within an "iron ring of ideas"; truth as conformity* between mind and object does not.

    I suppose "correspondence" makes a certain amount of sense when applied to things like statements or models, which are removed from the things they refer to by being something different and separate; though as you noted, what makes them "correspond" is that the in-form-ation in the model, statement, etc., con-forms to some reality. But of course this should prompt us to recall that actual things can be true themselves, such as wheels or Scotsmen. A true Scotsman conforms to the ideal essence of Scotshood (we wouldn't say he "corresponds" to it). I think this points to the metaphysical truth: some things are (true) representations; but that kind of truth is secondary to a more direct kind of truth... which is why we indeed ought to consider "conformity" more fundemental than "correspondence".

    ReplyDelete
  4. Benjamin Cain: When you’re forced to posit a miracle (such as the miracle of Creation from nothing by an uncreated person), you’re positing magic.

    Of course... assuming that you are someone who has no clue what "miracles" are or what "magic" is. And frankly I would not be surprised to find an eliminativist like that (or many others). Which is of course illustrates my point: if someone doesn't even understand the position to which he's objecting, there's no reason to take his objection seriously.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Crude: You know, I wonder about this. I'm not sure the accusations of befuddlement and fear are sincere, so much as they /sound good/. [...] Because coherency really doesn't matter, but not because their position allows them to intellectually cast it off. It's because coherency's import is a very distant second to the other benefits of the view.

    Well, that is surely true in certain individual cases. To be fair, I think plain old rationalisation applies here, so there is probably a sort of sincerity in a lot of cases where people have managed to convince themselves that the other side really doesn't understand their position. Most of us, to a greater or lesser degree, hold certain views very confidently and assume that our opponents are wrong one way or another. The problem is when someone is committed to views that don't have a foundation in reason or sanity, and so is prepared to jettison them when pressed far enough.

    the whole evidence and argument thing is either ignored altogether, or actively explained away as not necessary, or even appropriate, to believe what they do. [...] Funny, but bizarre.

    When one doesn't have a solid philosophical foundation for one's views — or any philosophical foundations in general — one finds oneself maintaining those positions by sheer force of will. And come to think of it, misplaced wilfulness is the basis for a lot of comedy routines!

    ReplyDelete
  6. [oops, the previous response to Crude was also mine.]


    Benjamin Cain: You say scientists have just as little need of atheism as they do of theism. That’s utterly wrong. What would happen if scientists started talking explicitly about God? Do you think that would further their famous ability to reach consensus? Would it make their theories more objective? Obviously not, since the assumption that there’s a God is quintessentially untestable. Scientists are pragmatic so they’re not about to get lost in fruitless theological debates. They tried that through the Dark Age. That led more often to bloodshed (Crusades, pogroms, wars between Protestants and Catholics, etc). Then they saw the halfway house of deism as being more useful to their goal of understanding how the world actually works. Now, they conduct their research as if there were no God, because theism is irrelevant to how science works. Scientists create artificial settings (laboratories) to let the empirical facts speak more or less for themselves. God is by definition nowhere among such facts (although he once was, when outer space was identified with his abode). Again, by definition, God carries out miracles and is beyond our comprehension. To posit such a being is to utterly defeat the point of scientific inquiry, which is to understand what’s going on.

    Crikey. I was taking this guy seriously, but with so many dopey caricatures in a row it’s almost as though he were going down a checklist and trying to fit them all into a single post. Is there some sort of training course that teaches this technique, or do you think it's just the result of years of practice?

    ReplyDelete
  7. EDWARD: You agree that causal cognition and intentional cognition involve different neural mechanisms, right?

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Callan S.:

    "And you use the fact you haven't explained it as if that absence of explanation promotes your position??"

    No.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Mr. Green:

    "But of course this should prompt us to recall that actual things can be true themselves, such as wheels or Scotsmen…which is why we indeed ought to consider 'conformity' more fundemental than 'correspondence'."

    Good point. I agree.

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Scott Bakker:

    So I guess we shouldn't hold our breaths waiting for you to summarize what you take to be Ed's account of intentionality. Color me surprised.

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Words don't exist."

    "What are you talking about? You just now used words to tell me that."

    "No, I didn't."

    "Sure you did. You're still using them."

    "No, I'm not. These aren't words."

    "Well, what are they, then?"

    "They're just sounds I make with my mouth that mean things."

    "Isn't that what words are?"

    "Oh, that's your game, is it? If I say anything at all, that somehow proves that I'm committed to your account of 'words' rather than mine?"

    "But you haven't given any 'account' of words—and come to think of it, neither have I. I'm just observing that you're using words in the very process of telling me that words aren't real."

    "You're just begging the question! If I use words, that somehow proves there are words! There's no way for me to win!"

    "Well, in a way that's right, but it's not because I'm begging the question. It's because if you use words, that does prove there are words."

    "Now you're just being religious!"

    ReplyDelete
  12. Bakker asks Ed: You agree that causal cognition and intentional cognition involve different neural mechanisms, right?

    I find this question very odd, since it's phrased as if it's a rhetorical question with the obvious answer 'Yes'. But since

    (1) one form of widely recognized causation is intentional agency;

    (2) a recurring position in the history of philosophy, even where influence is unlikely, is that only intentional agents are properly causes at all, or properly known to be causes (as with occasionalists or idealists, for instance);

    (3) one of the most consistently replicated results in developmental cognitive science is that the causal reasoning of young children is heavily laden with assumptions about intentionality, and, while the exact relation between the two is still being studied, one of the serious theories on the table is that intentional agency is our original and default causal concept and that we get other causal concepts from it;

    (4) one common family of theories of intentionality implies that it is an intrinsically causal concept;

    (5) causal cognition and intentional cognition are each not a single kind of cognition, but a wide variety of different kinds of reasoning (we can reason analogically, deductively, inductively, etc., about both, for instance);

    it would then be somewhat surprising if all cognition of causes involved different neural mechanisms from all cognition of intentional features. At least, if one thought that the two were in fact always neurally separate, it would require some fairly straightforward experimental reasons for thinking it so. (Of course, if past comments are any indication, Bakker might mean something very particular and specific in each case, in which case it's obviously not possible to answer until he says what he specifically has in mind.)

    It's also a little puzzling how you would distinguish causal cognition and intentional cognition except in terms of the objects that they were about, which is to say, in terms of their intentionality....

    ReplyDelete
  13. Scott Bakker said...

    EDWARD: You agree that causal cognition and intentional cognition involve different neural mechanisms, right?

    January 20, 2015 at 6:44 AM"




    That's the spirit.

    Now, if for the rest of us, Mr. Bakker would just flesh those terms out with a few more sentences ... or with a link making clear the distinction he envisions, we'll be on our way.

    Possibly the reference to "neural mechanisms" ultimately refers to some scientific literature involving brain scans?

    Or maybe not, since for us to know that intentional cognition involves different 'neural mechanisms' from causal cognition, we would have to perform a test which could track presumably distinguishable thinking-acts. ("Knowing" seems too strong a word to use here).

    It seems we would have to have some notion of what an intention was supposed to be, in order to sensibly deny it, or re-categorize it as indifferently equivalent some other phenomenon.

    You can, after all, deny unicorns exist because we have all seen imaginary pictures of them, and even fake ones in movies. Similarly with psychokinesis and other supposed phenomena.

    But that really doesn't seem to take us to the exciting, mysterious, and metaphysically fraught land to which radical eliminativists wish to journey.

    Now, at an almost trivial level, we do talk to each other as if we can, while aware of what we are doing, sustain something like visual impressions which have meanings or associations for us. We also talk as though there is a qualitative difference in our behaviors between stumbling over a rock while walking, and whittling a peg from a stick.

    Is that what is being denied: the ability, the difference, perhaps that "we" are even "doing"?

    Do we deny,

    - that we see objects, register a visual impression, and can remember from moment to moment that we are seeing, or have seen them?

    - that falling off a cliff is behaviorally different from building a house?


    In any event it would of course be interesting to observe what comparative "brain scans" reveal whether the subject is viewing a tree from the vantage point of an easy chair, or receiving an unexpected slap on the back at a gathering, or watching a buck fall off the side of a hill when his .308 round pierces its heart, or when he is simply flipping an overhanging pencil off his desk and across the room by giving the free end a slap.

    Of course, that all assumes that there is a subject who is the object of our examination, and who in turn has objects of his own.

    Maybe that is what is really being denied.

    ReplyDelete
  14. @DNW:

    "Of course, that all assumes that there is a subject who is the object of our examination, and who in turn has objects of his own.

    Maybe that is what is really being denied."

    Bakker actually does say somewhere (I linked to it in the other thread) that subjectivity isn't real; we just seem to ourselves to have it.

    Go ahead and try to get your mind around that.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Can one prove logic is valid or real absent actually being logical? I suppose that is impossible except as a kind of reductio ad absurdum program. How ought we deal with someone who claims that logic is invalid or unreal and will one day be replaced by something else? Of course, we could just point out that what he says only makes sense and is intelligible insofar as it is more or less logically formulated and in keeping with PNC, PID and PEM - but I imagine that the conversation or debate would probably proceed rather as it has so far with our eliminative materialists friends.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Just a ramble on Feser's dime ...

    While we are at it, and thinking about "truth" as conceived of in the analytic (and I guess Greek) tradition, it might be useful in a general kind of way, to keep in mind the other sense of truth, the one which refers to or includes the public or inter-subjective reliability of a staked claim or transmitted proposition.

    Truth therein becomes a social (in a small sense) measure or evaluation, as to the reliability of some claim as transmitted and understood.

    I say that a out of a collection of visibly different cylindrical rods, one stainless steel rod is 10 inches long and that it can therefore be safely be used for a valve stem on a high precision fuel system of some sort.

    Scott, sets the rod up between two centers in a temp controlled room, and, adjusting the measuring anvil pressure to 16 ounces, runs the anvils together until the null meter reads apparent zero; and he gets 10 inches 22 millionths.

    It's an acceptable value because the tolerance of the assembly is 50 millionths. But the rod was not exactly 10 inches in length. In fact, we may never be able to tell exactly how long it is if we demand infinite accuracy.

    Was what I said true within some limits? Or completely false?

    What I said, is "true enough" given the circumsatnces.

    Truth in that understanding would entail some kind of sense or rough index of the reliability or trustworthiness of a statement; rather than considering it only under the aspect of a perfect propositional correspondence.

    Somebody is always "telling" the truth.

    This brings us to the question of how truth - under either understanding - could be a "heuristic."

    It seems to me that the empirical process of testing or trying is the heuristic, and within that, the specific testing procedure is that "algorithm" everyone like to talk about so much.

    We make references to truth in approximate ways all the time; and it also seems to me that these uses generally involve an implied if not explicit reference to the reliability of the claim: or even person, as in a friend; or object, as in a sword.

    Now, as I see it, this is not really the same as descending into strong relativism, and certainly not into subjectivity. Nor does it look much like a pure dishabille pragmatism of the "It'll do" kind.

    "Truth" used in this way, by old farmers and blacksmiths, and modern metrology labs, and maybe religious personages of the past in referring to themselves, involves not simply a propositional correspondence, but what that means as an assertion made socially.

    Can we really get away from that intentional use function, and the ends and intentions implied?

    And, again, how exactly is "truth" a heuristic anyway?

    ReplyDelete

  17. If I'm going to ramble of Feser's property, I should try not to stumble.

    Read: "I say that a out of a ..."

    as, "I say that out of a ..."

    ReplyDelete
  18. Scott said...

    @DNW:

    "Of course, that all assumes that there is a subject who is the object of our examination, and who in turn has objects of his own.

    Maybe that is what is really being denied."

    Bakker actually does say somewhere (I linked to it in the other thread) that subjectivity isn't real; we just seem to ourselves to have it.

    Go ahead and try to get your mind around that.

    January 20, 2015 at 10:23 AM


    I think I'll quit while I'm behind. Can't seem to type this morning. Maybe lunch would help.

    ReplyDelete
  19. @ DNW.
    What if the rod you judged to be 10 inches actually turned out to be 10 inches and 55 millionths (i.e not within tolerance)? I would say that you weren't so much trying to judge the thing's length as you were judging its suitability for some use or purpose: and the thing either fits or qualifies or it does not. Now especially if the situation is grave, then truth becomes all the more imperative.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Timocrates said...

    @ DNW.
    What if the rod you judged to be 10 inches actually turned out to be 10 inches and 55 millionths (i.e not within tolerance)? I would say that you weren't so much trying to judge the thing's length as you were judging its suitability for some use or purpose: and the thing either fits or qualifies or it does not. Now especially if the situation is grave, then truth becomes all the more imperative.

    January 20, 2015 at 11:24 AM

    Yeah, I agree. My description of it merely employs certain conventions in order to try and establish some truth relative to an aim.

    If I misuse the conventions or lay them out wrongly, or derive them through a method in a way which provides results most others following the rules would not get, then, I have in some way not been a reliable reporter. They perform an R&R and find that because I don't know what I am doing, my statements are therefore unreliable.

    I think, - is it Flynn? - the stats expert and Sci-Fi writer with the Irish name who posts here, could probably expand on and tighten up that.

    My only aim, or intention, or object, is to try and get to just what it is that Bakker wishes to deny, as well as to affirm

    So I'm trotting out various scenarios and trying to figure out what is so difficult about them.

    We can reasonably deny false propositions, or fabulous propositions. Why the project of specifying what notion of intention we wish to impeach has become such a matter of contention, I cannot quite grasp.

    Unless that is, and as some suspect, the eliminationist project - well that is intentional language isn't it - unless, the project or view is so radically comprehensive that it entails the ultimate abolition every single moderate realist assumption, as well as the validity of all introspective acts and notions of self, as well.

    And I think, that it's now pretty clear that that has been the not entirely plainly stated assumption. And, if it is, how would you even go about arguing it? And, who or what, under eliminationist terms, would it be that would argue it?

    ReplyDelete
  21. "This brings us to the question of how truth - under either understanding - could be a "heuristic."

    The best I've been able to come up with here is that Bakker is trying to get across some form of nominalism about scientific claims/facts/true propositions. That is, he's denying there's any such thing as a "universal" notion of truth, in the sense of something like the correspondence theory.

    So when we talk about "true statements" or what have you, we're really making use of a term that has only a practical or social value. We know what we mean, insofar as we're playing our particular language game, but there's no metaphysical import beyond that. I think that's along the lines of what you're getting at here.

    The problem is, this is a debate that's been kicked around since basically forever -- it has been a problem in modern thought since (at least) Nietzsche, and it's recurred in the 20th century for the likes of Foucault and Rorty. (Of course as with most of this, the ancients got there first: see Plato's Protagoras and then the whole problem of skepticism in the Hellenistic era to watch this play out.).

    Personally I don't think that a coherentist account of truth, or even something like Davidson's project of connecting truth with meaning (in the semantic usage of meaning), which makes "truth" at least in part a subject-dependent concept (or abolishes it as a meaningful term, in e.g. Rorty or some Davidson), is actually problematic in itself, but it does have some ramifications which have to be accepted.

    If you go the nominalist route about your semantics, and say that truth is just "whatever works" (pragmatists) or "whatever coheres with your other beliefs" (coherentism) then you've adopted an anti-realist position with respect to whatever phenomena you're talking about. In the strongest form, this denies that the object of the statement exists; weaker formulations are "only" committed to a suspension of judgement, holding that the content of a true proposition is empirically adequate (or something to that effect).

    Now, again, I don't think this is problematic in itself. Where it becomes so in the case of Bakker's BBT is that he is relying on a realist account of scientific findings to progress an anti-realist position. All the talk of "cognitive systems" and neuroscientific findings and what have you is supposing a realist story: that these entities exist independent of mind and language, that scientific knowledge of these phenomena is knowledge of these really-existing entities, that the relevant theoretical statements have those entities as their content.

    And then he's using that very talk to deny that at least two of those claims are the case, and to affirm his rival anti-realist account. That's the "squaring the circle" problem we've repeatedly seen, which was the meat of Ed's original objection.

    As has been stated repeatedly, if we can get some story about how this is supposed to go, such that Bakker can account for BBT on BBT's terms, cool. But that's clearly a sore spot for him, as he's insistent that he doesn't have to do any such thing since the "thousands" [sic] of other "intentionalist" accounts can't do it either.

    ReplyDelete
  22. "Where it becomes so in the case of Bakker's BBT is that he is relying on a realist account of scientific findings to progress an anti-realist position."

    "Perhaps a profound inconsistency does haunt my thinking on these matters." - R. Scott Bakker

    ReplyDelete
  23. Scott said...

    "Where it becomes so in the case of Bakker's BBT is that he is relying on a realist account of scientific findings to progress an anti-realist position."

    "Perhaps a profound inconsistency does haunt my thinking on these matters." - R. Scott Bakker"


    Thanks for that link, it was very good.

    I am not sure what a Heideggerian is though. Not in the sense of knowing what Bakker meant he believed to be "true" while a Heideggerian.

    I suppose he means the anti-Husserl Heidegger, but "before the turn"?

    I'd like to hear more about that.

    Anyway following the link Scott Notbakker provides, we read Scott Bakker saying:

    "I’m a qualia eliminativist, for reasons parallel to Dennett’s, but worked out in more detail. I’m a propositional eliminativist: the whole semantic project of traditional analytic philosophy turns on neglect, the fetishization of ‘aboutness,’ which on my account is a radically privative way to metacognize our environmental relations, given the way our entanglement within our environments renders the causal facts of that entanglement inaccessible to cognition. This puts me on the hook for an explanation of the successes of semantics, which I think are very real, but nothing at all what they are taken to be. I literally think that logic and mathematics are a form of ‘autobiocomputer science': the result of autoprogramming. This means I’m an apriori eliminativist."

    and ...


    "The big thing, however, is that I’m an eliminativist about REFLEXIVITY. So there’s no now, no paradox, no personal identity.

    In each case, this is bound to make me sound crazy, but I actually have five big issues going for me:

    1) no one but no one can explain what they are [intentions, apparently]

    2) The simple question of how metacognition could possibly access the information to intuit any of these things even remotely ‘as they are’

    3) The science itself. ..."



    So yeah, this is pretty radical, and says outright what we have been unnecessarily inferring, and you would grant that based on his own views, there would in fact be little or no reason for him to labor rebut the existence of things which he a priori does not believe can exist, using a framing drawn from that which he believes to be unreal as he "cognizes" it, in the first place.

    The unreal (as experienced or understood), including apparently, himself.

    But then: "science".

    A science good for deconstructing, but apparently not good enough to qualify as a walking stick, or sufficient to provide a kind of sonar which does give us at least a mediated slice or indirect profile of that which "we" are Blind Brain Bumping around in.

    The thing is, that if science can reveal what is not there, can it not, at least outline no matter how indirectly, what is?

    Well, given Bakker's statements, apparently not.

    What is science, then? Is there even an operator?

    What have we been discussing?

    ReplyDelete


  24. Oh, one last thing. I should affirm that Bakker did in fact explicitly and categorically say all the things I suggested he was only implying here.

    He said them, among other places probably, in the link Scott 'NotBakker' provided.

    I think I'll browse around and see what I can pick up on his former Heideggerian views. Might help me out.

    The latter Heidegger works are great, and seem clear; as do the latterly released lectures he gave before publishing Being and Time.

    But "Being and Time" itself?

    I have two copies of it on my shelf, and I don't really understand either one of them.

    ReplyDelete
  25. It seems that Bakker has adapted Heidegger's assessment of logic in relation to the nothing. The only way we can come to appreciate his views, it would seem, is to find the mood appropriate to the disclosure of whatever fundamental "truth" is harbored within them.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I’m going to take the gloves off, but this will be my last post in this blog’s comment sections. I’m posting this purely for my enjoyment, not for anyone else’s benefit. I see now that most of you are pumping out kneejerk, quibbling disagreements, which strikes me as being too close to the stereotype of internet discussion forums which is that they’re places where civilized folks can kick back and be as primitively tribal as they like. Little actual philosophy (love of knowledge) is on display here, folks. So it’s down to comedy and entertainment.

    Crude wants to know what a scientific institution is. (He says, ‘Again with this talk of "scientific institutions". What are these institutions…?’) He’s puzzled and expects me to edify him even though he’s proffered “evidence” to disprove my claims “across the board.” This from a sorry fellow who thinks a Huffington Post article and a Wikipedia page count as worthwhile pieces of evidence. Why not just Google the words “scientific institution” if you’re having a brain freeze and can’t piece together what those words might mean in conjunction? Let’s see, what sort of institutions might scientists be involved in? Hmm. I suppose many scientists are academics, right? Yeah, so maybe the science departments at universities and colleges count as scientific institutions, especially since, as C.P. Snow pointed out, there’s a culture among scientists that differs from the humanities’ culture. So then you’ve got the academic science journals and organizations like the National Academy of Scientists. Now where else do scientists work? I suppose many are involved in the private sector such as in research and development departments of many large corporations. That would include Big Pharma, the military, and so on, in case you’re unclear on the meaning of the word “corporation.” Oh, and don’t forget applied sciences, which include engineering.

    Now that we’re clear that such things as scientific institutions exist, let’s consider whether the people involved in the culture that unites these organizations presuppose naturalism or supernaturalism in their line of work. When was the last time you saw a scientist rely on prayer or faith rather than observations and reason? You see, supernaturalism is the idea that there are powerful extraterrestrial minds out there that we can contact in nonrational ways, through inner voices, mystical experiences, or divine revelation. Naturalism is the idea that the world is known best when it’s objectified, when it’s treated as nonliving, as having no rights or ability to socialize with us. That’s why scientists rely on impersonal observation and logic. The scientific method evolved in such a way that it departed from theology. We see the evolution in the work of Newton who established that science could be rigorously rational, but who also took prophecies and bible divination seriously. Scientists should be free to study what they like, but their methods now treat phenomena as objects, not subjects, which is contrary to the supernaturalist’s penchant for positing gods. Even when studying people or societies, as in psychology or sociology, scientists break subjects down into objects, into mechanisms, systems, processes, and so forth. This is called reduction or analysis and it’s how science works. Just consult a science textbook to watch it in action.

    [continued…]

    ReplyDelete
  27. Are scientists mostly atheists? They all are, as such, meaning that in their social roles as scientists their methods of inquiry force them to act as if there were no God. Scientists have to ignore the possibility that there’s a deity out there that you can simply talk to, because they’re interested in knowing how the facts work, which means they have to break phenomena down to see for themselves rather than confessing ignorance and positing a miracle. The 2009 Pew study showed that American scientists “are, on the whole, much less religious than the general public.” That’s because Americans are 83% religious whereas scientists are 41% nonreligious. The US is an outlier, though, as is well-known, since all other advanced industrial nations are much less religious overall. So when you average out the nonreligious (atheistic) scientists in Europe, Canada, and Asia, you find that a majority of scientists don’t believe there’s a God.

    But all such polls become suspect when they mix in questions like “Do you believe there’s a higher power?” or even “Do you believe there’s something beyond nature?” In the Pew study, 18% of American scientists say they don’t believe in God, but do believe in a “universal spirit or a higher power.” Since that spirit is differentiated from God, whatever the spirit is it’s consistent with atheism, by definition, so the actual percentage of atheistic scientists in the US is 59%, with only 33% calling themselves believers in God and 7% not answering the questions. Again, this muddies the waters since many mathematicians and physicists are Platonists and so they think there are higher dimensions and so forth. Does dark matter count as natural even though it’s undetectable?

    The point is that the number of atheistic scientists (or of atheists in any highly educated population) will rise tremendously even in the US if you ask them pointed questions to determine whether their religious beliefs are the same as those of the naïve, literalistic majority. Ask them, for example, whether they think prayer works, whether Jesus rose physically from the dead, whether the Bible is inerrant, or whether God violates natural laws. If you ask them questions like those, you’re bound to find that even scientists who consider themselves spiritual (like Einstein or Spinoza) and who aren’t hostile to mainstream religion have to consider themselves nonreligious, given the silly exoteric contents of mainstream religions.

    Does any of this polling mean that atheism is true? Obviously not. My point was that the eliminativist can take the fact that most scientists are atheists or that atheism is growing in that population, to indicate that scientists won’t likely preserve our cherished self-image that falls out of anthropocentric worldviews like theism. That’s likely part of Scott Bakker’s inductive argument about where scientific knowledge is taking us. Is it taking us towards traditional religious belief or towards an apocalyptic reckoning with some unsettling existential truths? Science has already undermined a host of traditional beliefs, so it will likely do so with regard to intentional psychology. That’s part of his argument.

    [continued…]

    ReplyDelete
  28. Crude asks where my definition of “magic” came from. Answer: from the dictionary. See the second definition of “magic” at dictionary.com: “the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature.” So are inexplicable events, such as a particle’s popping into existence according to quantum mechanics, magical? No, that would be a misuse of the word, due to a greedy effort to turn science into a religion. Physicists appreciate that quantum mechanics is a tool for prediction and that we don’t currently understand why the predictions work. There are several interpretations, such as the Copenhagen one, but unlike theists who think they know the very name of the First Cause, scientists are free to confess their ignorance. Quantum mechanics as a theory ends with particles popping out of a chaotic vacuum state, as entailed by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. That’s the limit of current scientific understanding. Magic would involve adding that we can control those virtual particles by sacrificing a goat to the deity that animates them. Magic would involve a personification of natural forces. Physicists obviously don’t do any of that. They simply know they don’t know everything and don’t try to paper over that ignorance with feel-good, anthropocentric myths or superstitions.

    Crude says science isn’t atheistic or theistic, but agnostic: science is merely silent on the whole question. Indeed, in principle, scientific methods leave open that question. But in practice, scientific methods end up being functionally atheistic. Scientists are pragmatic, so they reject any explanation which is untestable or fruitless. Theism falls into that category, so scientists don’t take it seriously to the extent that they’re thinking in a scientific fashion. There is no way to set up an experiment to see whether God exists or not, since the theistic assumption could always be modified to be made consistent with any conceivable piece of evidence. So it’s not a scientific hypothesis. Moreover, scientists are conservative in that they prefer to do what’s worked a lot in the past. They’ve had great success in explaining phenomena by positing only impersonal, materialistic systems or processes (e.g. natural selection instead of intelligent design, quantum mechanics instead of the Genesis account of Creation, etc). The more success they have with such reductive explanations, the greater the inductive case for naturalism, that is, for everything’s being fundamentally so explainable. Finally, scientific knowledge explains by simplifying the phenomenon: scientists have had experience with hypotheses that can be endlessly tinkered with, by adding epicycles and the like, which is why they prefer Occam’s razor. An assumption that’s untestable because it has infinite parameters to make it consistent with any conceivable piece of evidence is rendered improbable in virtue of that lack of simplicity. So technically, scientists should be open to the nonscientific possibility that God exists, but science as a whole, in light of scientific epistemology, points away from that possibility.

    [continued…]

    ReplyDelete
  29. Crude thinks science is “blessedly silent” on “teleology’s existence” (he means the existence of teloi, not that of the study of natural purposes). This displays breathtaking ignorance of the history of modern science. Modern scientists answer “How?” questions, not “Why?” ones. They want to know how thinks work, not whether they have ultimate purposes. They’re content with what Aristotle called efficient and material causes or with initial states and ends--as in thermodynamics--that are stripped of any normative status such as being good or a goal’s fulfillment, or having been aimed or mentally directed. In the seventeenth century, Descartes, Galileo, and Francis Bacon rejected teleology and replaced it with the mechanistic paradigm, which was the beginning of modern science despite the recent setbacks for this paradigm in quantum mechanics (i.e. Bell’s theorem).

    Crude says atheism is as untestable as theism. He therefore assumes the burden of proof is shared equally by theists and atheists. But are we supposed to be agnostic about every possible explanation no matter how ill-supported by evidence? We don’t have enough memory capacity to do that, so we have to function as if most conceivable explanations were false even if they haven’t been decisively refuted. That is, the greater burden of proof falls on the person who would add to our ontology, who posits something that’s supposed to exist. But theism doesn’t even rise to that level because the concept of God is infamously incoherent, theism as an explanation is vacuous (since miracles don’t explain anything but just reinforce our ignorance), and theism as an explanation is untestable (since it contains infinite adjustable parameters).

    Anyway, the point which Crude misses with these reflexive red herrings is that functional atheism has been a boon to scientific inquiry. When scientists ignore the possibility of a deity, they end up understanding how the world works; that is, investigating the world as though it weren’t an artifact of an intelligent designer has led to abundant intellectual progress. One famous example is natural selection. The assumptions that species are on their own and that they’re not divided by designed essences, but emerge from each other led to the discovery of genes, which opened up the whole science of genetics. By contrast, the Aristotelian assumption that species are what they are because that’s what’s good for them leads nowhere. And the theistic assumption that God created life explains nothing, because God would likewise be alive. Again, the relevance of this is that these considerations add to the eliminativist’s case against folk psychology. (But again, in the end I reject eliminativism.)

    [continued…]

    ReplyDelete
  30. Crude implies that any reference to the European Dark Age is due to a canard that there was no intellectual progress in the Middle Ages. Not so, since we can speak of degrees of progress. Medieval experts were thus ignorant compared to those who benefited from the explosion of knowledge that followed the Renaissance. One reason for the disparity has to do with the above differences between the dogmatic methods used in the Thomistic synthesis between Aristotle and Christianity, which functioned as a life support system after the terrifying collapse of the Roman Empire, and the progressive, skeptical, and even subversive modern scientific method. The medievalists were too afraid to question their institutions to discover how the indifferent world works, whereas early modernists, embarrassed by the newly uncovered enlightenment of the ancient Greeks, were more confident in their native intellectual capacities.

    Crude points to a Huffington Post article as proof that only 7% of wars have been religious. That’s just laughable. Indeed, the whole question of what causes most wars is foolishly simplistic. It’s also irrelevant and just the sort of kneejerk tribal protest that adds to my cynicism about the internet’s vaunted power to set us free. My point was just that one motivation for the Scientific Revolution was to find an alternative to lethal religious gridlock, to progress beyond the squalor of much of medieval European life. Regardless of what causes most wars, it’s indisputable that religious conflicts (in addition to Church corruption and resistance to its thought control) helped to motivate the modern break from Catholic theocracy.

    Now nothing would be more predictable than that Crude will disagree with every word I’ve just written. I understand this behaviour in terms supplied by Emile Durkheim. Crude has a sacred space and must rally around it when it’s threatened with desecration. This tribalism is antithetical to the philosophical mindset, though. Philosophers confess that they’re fallible and work together in dialogue to discover the truth. Unfortunately, internet discussion forums exacerbate our tribal instincts, drive us to demonize opposing groups and defend our cherished beliefs as though our life depended on it so that we throw out all manner of fallacies to avoid the pain of cognitive dissonance. I, too, succumbed to that tribalism when I stereotyped Feser as a smug Catholic on Scott Bakker’s forum. (Mind you, I’ve now seen LOTS of smugness in his readers.) But I tried to get back to philosophical work by helping to clarify the thesis of Bakker’s eliminativism in the present forum even though I’m not myself an eliminativist. Alas, most folks here aren’t guided by a love of knowledge. So I bid you all adieu.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Benjamin Cain,

    You just doubled down on your original dubious points.

    You didn't address the fact that scientists deal with a specific subject matter - the quantifiable and measurable aspects of the corporeal world. This subject matter necessitates a particular way of investigating it. You then illicitly move from this particular method of inquiry and subject matter to broader ontological, metaphysical, and epistemological conclusions, which cannot be supported by the method and matter alone. Of course, you are far from a lone. The imaginative spirit of modern science pushes scientists and laymen in this direction - to see the world only through the tinted glasses of science. It is this imaginative impulse, this unconscious impetus to universalise a very specific field and method of inquiry, which no doubt accounts for the level of naturalism and atheism amongst scientists. Heck, it has a pervasive influence upon much of the modern world - even many of the religious often have quite a scientistic imagination these days which can be hard to break out of. But the move is illicit - fallacious - nonetheless.

    And, by the way, your comments on supernaturalism are essentially a caricature. This is probably not the best place to peddle silly caricatures of religion and religious thought.

    Also, I believe you said institution of science, not a institution or institutions of science. In English, the article can make all the difference.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Also, your points about the Middle Ages beg the question against religion. They rely on natural science being the mark of progress. And you also, obviously, make some historical blunders. Much of the post-Roman period was not, for example, Aristotelian in bent. In the East it remained more Platonic and in the West the rise of Aristotelianism was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. And, of course, the idea that the ancient world was simply forgotten about the in Middle Ages, even in the West at the heart of the dark ages, is just wrong. In fact, in many way, the Medieval understood the ancient world better than the renaissance did. For the renaissance the ancient world was often seen entirely in renaissance terms - humanist, individualist, worldly. There were certainly strains of this sort of thought in the ancient world, but it was far from the only or even defining voice.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Crude says atheism is as untestable as theism. He therefore assumes the burden of proof is shared equally by theists and atheists. But are we supposed to be agnostic about every possible explanation no matter how ill-supported by evidence?

    Wouldn't this actually be the more sceptical approach? To suspend judgment.

    Anyway, contrary to a famous New Atheist debating point, the burden of proof is equally on the atheist and theist. The atheist is making claims about what the evidence suggests and he is making claims about what alternative picture of the universe it points to (I'm presuming we are talking about metaphysical argument and not scientific).

    But theism doesn’t even rise to that level because the concept of God is infamously incoherent, As I have only heard a few internet cranks argue theism is incoherent (make of that what you will), it would be good if you could explain yourself here.

    ReplyDelete
  34. "I'm going to take the gloves off..."

    Sorry, but its obvious you've just recognized that the regulars here are in higher philosophical weight-divisions.

    ReplyDelete
  35. for the record, Cain said earlier,

    As I understand it, the idea (which is no idea in commonsense terms) is that eliminativism isn’t an argument. It’s a report or an indication of what science is showing us about the nature of reality. The report carries natural meaning in the same way that the number of rings in a tree trunk tells us the tree’s age. So scientists are discovering that nature doesn’t include ghosts or goblins, and now we can add intentionality, purpose, consciousness, and personhood to the list of myths and illusions.

    The relevance of Crude's comments to this is, I think, apparent. If Mr. Cain does not understand science very well, or the history of it, we have reason to doubt any proposition he advances, or plays devil's advocate for, on the matter of what science is revealing to us about the world. The bit about the thomistic synthesis acting as life support after the fall of the Roman empire is an especially rich example of ignorance on the relevant subject (how could Thomas have created a synthesis to act as some sort of cultural life support for the culture that preceded him? Maybe Heinlein could explain that).

    Being an amateur, I've made some real blunders myself online, so I'm not meaning to take a holier than thou stance. It just seems to me that Crude was on the ball here, and Cain's behavior deserves the Durkheim treatment.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Benjamin Cain: I’m posting this purely for my enjoyment, not for anyone else’s benefit.

    Well, at least it's nice to end on a note we can all agree on.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Shame. I was looking forward to a reply.

    e. One reason for the disparity has to do with the above differences between the dogmatic methods used in the Thomistic synthesis between Aristotle and Christianity, which functioned as a life support system after the terrifying collapse of the Roman Empire, and the progressive, skeptical, and even subversive modern scientific method. The medievalists were too afraid to question their institutions to discover how the indifferent world works, whereas early modernists, embarrassed by the newly uncovered enlightenment of the ancient Greeks, were more confident in their native intellectual capacities.

    Crude points to a Huffington Post article as proof that only 7% of wars have been religious. That’s just laughable. Indeed, the whole question of what causes most wars is foolishly simplistic. It’s also irrelevant and just the sort of kneejerk tribal protest that adds to my cynicism about the internet’s vaunted power to set us free. My point was just that one motivation for the Scientific Revolution was to find an alternative to lethal religious gridlock, to progress beyond the squalor of much of medieval European life.


    This comment seems based on a false, Gibbonian view of history. Most social history I've read points out that the concept of progress only entered the European mind with the advent of Christianity. The Ancients largely saw themselves as “descending into the future” (Cicero)—from Golden Age, to Silver Age, to muddy present.

    In fact, historians usually recognize a sort of medieval industrial revolution now, which had little do with the Baconian method, but seems to have rose more out of the people, engineers like the cathedral builders, and especially-earlier-on the monks.

    Medieval people were also excellent technology adapters, taking (for example) the water wheel from the Romans and effectively mechanizing huge numbers of tasks.

    To those interested in the relevant technology history, I recommend: Jean Gimpel's Medieval Machine [1].

    The Gibbonian paradigm is really popular in these ideological movements, but it's seems pretty much obliterated by social history and technological history in the past 80 years.



    [1] I also R. J. Forbes's Man the Maker: A History Technology and Engineering.

    ReplyDelete
  38. All appeals to progress rely on shared standards of progression anyway. If you think that traditional spirituality, religion, and mysticism are the most important standards of human individual and social life, you could easily think Britain was at its most progressive in the days of St. Patrick and the Venerable Bede.

    ReplyDelete
  39. @ Benjamin Cain

    One reason for the disparity has to do with the above differences between the dogmatic methods used in the Thomistic synthesis between Aristotle and Christianity, which functioned as a life support system after the terrifying collapse of the Roman Empire, and the progressive, skeptical, and even subversive modern scientific method.

    The Thomistic synthesis happened after the 'Dark Ages' and was far removed from the collapse of the Roman Empire. (There were also other syntheses of Aristotle and Christianity, which were at odds with the Thomistic one, because there was disagreement among different schools of medieval philosophers.)

    Regardless of what causes most wars, it’s indisputable that religious conflicts (in addition to Church corruption and resistance to its thought control) helped to motivate the modern break from Catholic theocracy.

    How is it obvious? For example, consider the 'religious' wars among the Holy Roman Empire. Princes converted to Protestantism when it would help them avoid the authority of the empire. Catholic princes, seeing the empire sufficiently weakened, often did not act alongside the emperor when they could get away with it. In other cases Catholic principalities fought alongside Protestants against other Catholics. (And vice versa.) These wars were called religious by Enlightenment thinkers, but religion was at best brought in as a justification after the fact.

    Or look to the maneuvering of figures like Catherine de Medici, who was responsible for killing thousands of Huguenots, and at other points sided with Protestant groups.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Ben,

    I’m going to take the gloves off, but this will be my last post in this blog’s comment sections. I’m posting this purely for my enjoyment, not for anyone else’s benefit.

    I guess it's not really something you enjoy anymore if you're going to take off the gloves and then take off. That rather seems like the equivalent of going 'I'm going to fire off once more, then run away with my hands over my ears yelling 'I CAN'T HEAR YOU, LA LA LA'', but hey.

    For the record, I think we're benefiting from your contributions - just not in the way you expected.

    The 2009 Pew study showed that American scientists “are, on the whole, much less religious than the general public.”

    Yep - and still, the number of scientists who believe in God plus some kind of higher power literally outnumbers the ones who don't believe in both. And of those, who knows how many are atheists rather than simple agnostics?

    Keep in mind: you're the one who appealed to 'atheist scientific institutions' as justification for you beliefs. I pointed out how ridiculous the very idea was - then went on to show that the institutions weren't comprised of the population you said, and that even the NAS's official stance runs counter to your own views.

    In other words: by your own standards, your beliefs lack support. But I did invite you to fire back, so let's see what you've got!

    This from a sorry fellow who thinks a Huffington Post article and a Wikipedia page count as worthwhile pieces of evidence.

    I cited a Pew Forum poll, a statement from the National Academy of Science, and more. The funny thing is? If I just cited HuffPo and Wikipedia, that'd be a hell of a lot more than you've offered thus far - which would be 'unsupported assertions', and now a bit of foppishness about how the gloves are coming off.

    Have at YOU, sir!

    Now that we’re clear that such things as scientific institutions exist,

    That was never denied, kiddo. What was denied was the idea that these are 'atheistic' in any meaningful way - and in particular, that their 'atheism' is scientifically supported, or even essential. That's what you need, remember?

    When was the last time you saw a scientist rely on prayer or faith rather than observations and reason?

    According to Pew Forums, apparently quite often. Now, when did they rely on prayer or faith in the laboratory? About as often as they relied on atheism or metaphysical naturalism: not very at all. Remember: what you need to prove here is scientific support for, or reliance on, metaphysical naturalism, or atheism. I've happily argued that science is utterly silent on these matters - you're the one taking the opposing view.

    Naturalism is the idea that the world is known best when it’s objectified, when it’s treated as nonliving, as having no rights or ability to socialize with us.

    No, it's not. I mean hell, even go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to see that much. In fact, according to the SEP, there's very little to naturalism other than some kind of vague dislike of things arbitrarily defined as 'spooky'. There's zero mention there of how essential it is to treat the world as "nonliving" (that would be news to biologists), "having no rights or the ability to socialize with us".

    Really, do you even read about these things before you bring them up?

    ReplyDelete
  41. That’s why scientists rely on impersonal observation and logic. The scientific method evolved in such a way that it departed from theology. We see the evolution in the work of Newton who established that science could be rigorously rational, but who also took prophecies and bible divination seriously.

    Considering Newton was pretty famous for including God in his writings about science, and seeing his framing of the natural world as flowing directly from his views about God, he's a pretty rotten example of 'the scientific method departing from theology'.

    Besides, it wasn't theology that science tried to separate itself from, but metaphysics in general. Science was supposed to be instrumental, a way to understand and control things for practical purposes. Greater, deeper questions about reality - metaphysics - was to be left out of the picture as much as possible. And lo', it has been! You'd understand and appreciate this, if you had a love of science. We may yet encourage you to take on such a view.

    Even when studying people or societies, as in psychology or sociology, scientists break subjects down into objects, into mechanisms, systems, processes, and so forth. This is called reduction or analysis and it’s how science works.

    Have you actually met any scientists before? I assure you - plenty of them are quite happy with treating subjects as whole, even *gasp* living things, and the reductionism that scientists engage in is, again, one more way of looking at things. But certainly not the only way, and not even the only way available to scientists. I assure you, psychologists and sociologists and more don't consider themselves to only be doing science when they reduce their subjects. If they did, they'd miss a whole lot of data.

    Are scientists mostly atheists? They all are, as such, meaning that in their social roles as scientists their methods of inquiry force them to act as if there were no God.

    No, they don't. Their methods of inquiry utterly limit them to acting as if the question of God (not to mention other things) was outside of the scope of their work - which it is. You will look, in vain, for scientists referencing the truth of atheism in their scientific works, or that their experiments depend crucially on brute facts. Even the more atheistic scientists keep their atheism out of their work, as well as their metaphysics - they're silent about such issues, because the scientific tools they use are inadequate for said tasks.

    The US is an outlier, though, as is well-known, since all other advanced industrial nations are much less religious overall. So when you average out the nonreligious (atheistic) scientists in Europe, Canada, and Asia, you find that a majority of scientists don’t believe there’s a God.

    Don't you find it funny that between the two of us, I'm the only one who actually referenced poll numbers, whereas you're just pulling things out of thin air? You say 'when you average out the nonreligious, you get this number' - but you don't actually do it. Not to mention "Asia" also includes state-atheist China, where Christianity is growing, but also presumably 'outlier-religious' India, not to mention various other nations.

    What you mean here is that you imagine, and really hope, there's a majority of scientists who don't believe in God - and even there, you've gone from suggesting the overwhelming atheism of scientists, to some bare attempt to fight for a technical majority. So much for the power of that argument, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  42. Jeremy Taylor,

    Well, this is true. But it doesn't even check out on their own standards. I'm not saying anything revolutionary here.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Since that spirit is differentiated from God, whatever the spirit is it’s consistent with atheism, by definition, so the actual percentage of atheistic scientists in the US is 59%,

    Not at all, especially since you equate 'atheism' with 'naturalism' - and it's entirely possible to not believe in God, yet not be a naturalist. So, no - the best you can hope for here, in the US, is "non-believers are kind of close to theists, and certainly not a majority - and the number likely goes down when we go from 'non-believer' to 'atheist''.

    The point is that the number of atheistic scientists (or of atheists in any highly educated population) will rise tremendously even in the US if you ask them pointed questions to determine whether their religious beliefs are the same as those of the naïve, literalistic majority.

    Bad news, Ben: if you believe in God, but a different God than others... you're still a theist.

    Worse news: Did you read the Pew Forum poll? Here it is again.

    Would you like to know how many scientists defined themselves as 'Atheists'?

    17%.

    20%, 'nothing in particular'. 11% agnostic.

    Some flavor of 'Christian' (Catholic, evangelical, protestant)? 30%.

    Ouch.

    Does any of this polling mean that atheism is true? Obviously not.

    Yeah, you know what? It doesn't even make atheism or naturalism more likely. In fact, you better Goddamn hope that polling data of scientists doesn't have much of an impact the validity of religious belief, because if it did, the pew forum numbers alone would be enough to gut the atheist position in favor of an utter lack of commitment.

    Woah, hold on here. Who was it who pointed out that science was utterly unconcerned with the truth or falsity of God's existence, the reality of teleology, or the truth or falsity of naturalism? Yours truly. As I said, it's my pleasure to educate you.

    My point was that the eliminativist can take the fact that most scientists are atheists or that atheism is growing in that population, to indicate that scientists won’t likely preserve our cherished self-image that falls out of anthropocentric worldviews like theism.

    Atheism != naturalism. And we've already seen that the overwhelming number of scientists who identify as atheists is, shall we say, greatly exaggerated. Further, considering that the whole idea that 'selves exist' or 'I have beliefs' thrived even in full-blown state atheist hellholes, you may want to reconsider whether your prophecies about the future and their impact on eliminative materialism are terribly accurate. The idea that non-EM views came into being due to 'anthropocentric views like theism' is just a marvel. Entertaining at least.

    So are inexplicable events, such as a particle’s popping into existence according to quantum mechanics, magical? No, that would be a misuse of the word, due to a greedy effort to turn science into a religion.

    Nowhere was it claimed that 'a particle's popping into existence' was magical. I claimed that brute facts - fundamentally unexplained and unexplainable things and events, were as magical as you can get.

    ReplyDelete
  44. There are several interpretations, such as the Copenhagen one, but unlike theists who think they know the very name of the First Cause, scientists are free to confess their ignorance.

    They are - which is precisely what separates 'scientists' from 'naturalists'. See, the naturalist can't accept "ignorance" in this case, nor can the atheist. If the naturalist or atheist simply pleads ignorance with respect to God's existence, or whether nature has a First Cause, they cease to be naturalists or atheists on the spot. Instead, they shift off into a murkier realm of metaphysical agnosticism, where God is a live possibility, even if beyond the realm of science to rule in or out. Which is fine, since science avoids atheism and 'brute facts' as much as it avoids theism and miracles.

    Crude says science isn’t atheistic or theistic, but agnostic: science is merely silent on the whole question. Indeed, in principle, scientific methods leave open that question. But in practice, scientific methods end up being functionally atheistic.

    No, scientific methods are functionally silent on the question - they don't even rise to the level of 'agnostic', because the agnostic recognizes a question that may be investigated. Scientific methods don't even get to that level; they are simply unconcerned not only with God's existence, but the truth of various metaphysical schools. Idealism is true for all the scientist can ever tell.

    Scientists are pragmatic, so they reject any explanation which is untestable or fruitless.

    Scientifically? They sure do. Otherwise? Apparently not. See the previous.

    There is no way to set up an experiment to see whether God exists or not, since the theistic assumption could always be modified to be made consistent with any conceivable piece of evidence. So it’s not a scientific hypothesis.

    As could the atheistic assumption. See PZ Myers' own views on this, or Michael Shermer's, or even Richard Dawkins', the latter of whom can't even think of evidence that would convince him of God's existence, precisely because he can always explain it away.

    Really, once again I can't help but notice - you love to act as if you speak for scientists, but you don't actually provide data. I've provided it, and it runs counter to all of your claims. Scientists don't need you as a spokesperson, Ben; they have their own institutions, remember? And some of those institutions have even issued statements - and the NAS statement (among others) runs counter to what you're saying.

    So if you're going to turn to scientists' personal beliefs and their organizational statements, it looks like your atheism is going to suffer. Such is life.

    An assumption that’s untestable because it has infinite parameters to make it consistent with any conceivable piece of evidence is rendered improbable in virtue of that lack of simplicity.

    Which rules out naturalism and its endless resources of brute facts. I'm noticing a theme here - you keep saying things that disprove your own position, and bolster mine. Have you noticed?

    ReplyDelete
  45. Crude thinks science is “blessedly silent” on “teleology’s existence” (he means the existence of teloi, not that of the study of natural purposes). This displays breathtaking ignorance of the history of modern science. Modern scientists answer “How?” questions, not “Why?” ones. They want to know how thinks work, not whether they have ultimate purposes.

    Man, you've got a breathtaking ignorance of the very statements you're quoting. Not only do scientists answer 'How?' and not 'Why?' questions, they don't even bother themselves with a good number of the 'How?' questions. And insofar as you think teleology is a 'Why?' and not a 'How?', you'd be affirming my view.

    Crude says atheism is as untestable as theism. He therefore assumes the burden of proof is shared equally by theists and atheists. But are we supposed to be agnostic about every possible explanation no matter how ill-supported by evidence? We don’t have enough memory capacity to do that, so we have to function as if most conceivable explanations were false even if they haven’t been decisively refuted.

    First, this is a 'not even wrong' claim by Ben. We don't need 'memory capacity' in this case - we simply, and "functionally", just don't consider many possibilities. We don't need to store in our heads various commitments to agnosticism - we simply go about our business with what data we have. When we make claims, we invite burdens - by making a claim, we accept an intellectual burden of proof to make our case in order to persuade others. If we fail, or if we don't even try, we have no need to accept our claims.

    That is, the greater burden of proof falls on the person who would add to our ontology, who posits something that’s supposed to exist.

    And the atheist and naturalist is in this same boat: they posit a way the universe is through and through, complete with brute facts, explanation-less causes and existences, and more. 'Our ontology' is neither naturalist nor non-naturalist - to push us in either direction is an addition.

    As for your comments about theism being incoherent, about the only thing famous about that claim is how few people accept it, even among atheists. Hence all those arguments about the evidence regarding theism, rather than mere appeals to the concept.

    Anyway, the point which Crude misses with these reflexive red herrings is that functional atheism has been a boon to scientific inquiry.

    And what Ben misses, in his frantic and desperate textwall, is that the boon to scientific inquiry has been intellectual silence on issues science can't settle, and don't need to settle - not just theism, but naturalism itself. Science focuses on tractable questions open to empirical study and testing - neither God, nor metaphysics, nor many other things besides are that.

    ReplyDelete
  46. By contrast, the Aristotelian assumption that species are what they are because that’s what’s good for them leads nowhere.

    That's not the Aristotilean position, nor is it an 'Assumption'.

    And the theistic assumption that God created life explains nothing, because God would likewise be alive.

    Actually, it explains plenty - but not everything. On the other hand, your own view ends up faulted here, since you believe that scientists treat the world as dead matter, and that they themselves are just yet more dead matter.

    Crude implies that any reference to the European Dark Age is due to a canard that there was no intellectual progress in the Middle Ages.

    Actually, Crude states that reference to 'The Dark Age' is regarded by modern historians' consensus as nonsense, and that all the talk about the supposed intellectual fear of the Christians is disproven by their preservation of the Greeks' works, their founding and encouraging of institutions of learning, and more.

    Crude points to a Huffington Post article as proof that only 7% of wars have been religious.

    No, Crude points to an article which makes reference to The Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, where they investigated 1763 wars and inquired as to their causes. Do you think 'The Huffington Post' came up with the 7% figure? Next time, you may want to read the article linked.

    My point was just that one motivation for the Scientific Revolution was to find an alternative to lethal religious gridlock, to progress beyond the squalor of much of medieval European life.

    Actually, your point was that 'pointless theological debates' "led more often to bloodshed (Crusades, pogroms, wars between Protestants and Catholics, etc)." I pointed out that gosh, that's quite a bizarre conclusion, given the 7% figure.

    Now nothing would be more predictable than that Crude will disagree with every word I’ve just written. I understand this behaviour in terms supplied by Emile Durkheim.

    Indeed, Ben. Remember: when someone disagrees with your claims, it's never because you're wrong. No, all that evidence and argumentation they provide, that's yet more evidence that they're wrong. Because if you happened to be wrong - hell, if your confidence was merely misplaced - that would shatter your little world and you'd run risk of snapping like a rubber band. So clearly, you're never proven wrong. People show themselves to be incorrect merely by disagreeing with you. And if you disagree with everything they've written, Emile Durkheim's terms are quite inappropriate.

    Alas, most folks here aren’t guided by a love of knowledge. So I bid you all adieu.

    Adios, Ben. And thank you. See, I love it when people like you 'take the gloves off' and come at me with everything they can fire with - because when their arguments and claims end up being exposed not only as shoddy, but ignorant? And when this is so, so easy to demonstrate? I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a pleasure.

    Since that spirit is differentiated from God, whatever the spirit is it’s consistent with atheism, by definition, so the actual percentage of atheistic scientists in the US is 59%,

    Not at all, especially since you equate 'atheism' with 'naturalism' - and it's entirely possible to not believe in God, yet not be a naturalist. So, no - the best you can hope for here, in the US, is "non-believers are kind of close to theists, and certainly not a majority - and the number likely goes down when we go from 'non-believer' to 'atheist''.

    ReplyDelete
  47. The point is that the number of atheistic scientists (or of atheists in any highly educated population) will rise tremendously even in the US if you ask them pointed questions to determine whether their religious beliefs are the same as those of the naïve, literalistic majority.

    Bad news, Ben: if you believe in God, but a different God than others... you're still a theist.

    Worse news: Did you read the Pew Forum poll? Here it is again.

    Would you like to know how many scientists defined themselves as 'Atheists'?

    17%.

    20%, 'nothing in particular'. 11% agnostic.

    Some flavor of 'Christian' (Catholic, evangelical, protestant)? 30%.

    Ouch.

    Does any of this polling mean that atheism is true? Obviously not.

    Yeah, you know what? It doesn't even make atheism or naturalism more likely. In fact, you better Goddamn hope that polling data of scientists doesn't have much of an impact the validity of religious belief, because if it did, the pew forum numbers alone would be enough to gut the atheist position in favor of an utter lack of commitment.

    Woah, hold on here. Who was it who pointed out that science was utterly unconcerned with the truth or falsity of God's existence, the reality of teleology, or the truth or falsity of naturalism? Yours truly. As I said, it's my pleasure to educate you.

    My point was that the eliminativist can take the fact that most scientists are atheists or that atheism is growing in that population, to indicate that scientists won’t likely preserve our cherished self-image that falls out of anthropocentric worldviews like theism.

    Atheism != naturalism. And we've already seen that the overwhelming number of scientists who identify as atheists is, shall we say, greatly exaggerated. Further, considering that the whole idea that 'selves exist' or 'I have beliefs' thrived even in full-blown state atheist hellholes, you may want to reconsider whether your prophecies about the future and their impact on eliminative materialism are terribly accurate. The idea that non-EM views came into being due to 'anthropocentric views like theism' is just a marvel. Entertaining at least.

    So are inexplicable events, such as a particle’s popping into existence according to quantum mechanics, magical? No, that would be a misuse of the word, due to a greedy effort to turn science into a religion.

    Nowhere was it claimed that 'a particle's popping into existence' was magical. I claimed that brute facts - fundamentally unexplained and unexplainable things and events, were as magical as you can get.

    There are several interpretations, such as the Copenhagen one, but unlike theists who think they know the very name of the First Cause, scientists are free to confess their ignorance.

    They are - which is precisely what separates 'scientists' from 'naturalists'. See, the naturalist can't accept "ignorance" in this case, nor can the atheist. If the naturalist or atheist simply pleads ignorance with respect to God's existence, or whether nature has a First Cause, they cease to be naturalists or atheists on the spot. Instead, they shift off into a murkier realm of metaphysical agnosticism, where God is a live possibility, even if beyond the realm of science to rule in or out. Which is fine, since science avoids atheism and 'brute facts' as much as it avoids theism and miracles.

    ReplyDelete
  48. Crude says science isn’t atheistic or theistic, but agnostic: science is merely silent on the whole question. Indeed, in principle, scientific methods leave open that question. But in practice, scientific methods end up being functionally atheistic.

    No, scientific methods are functionally silent on the question - they don't even rise to the level of 'agnostic', because the agnostic recognizes a question that may be investigated. Scientific methods don't even get to that level; they are simply unconcerned not only with God's existence, but the truth of various metaphysical schools. Idealism is true for all the scientist can ever tell.

    Scientists are pragmatic, so they reject any explanation which is untestable or fruitless.

    Scientifically? They sure do. Otherwise? Apparently not. See the previous.

    There is no way to set up an experiment to see whether God exists or not, since the theistic assumption could always be modified to be made consistent with any conceivable piece of evidence. So it’s not a scientific hypothesis.

    As could the atheistic assumption. See PZ Myers' own views on this, or Michael Shermer's, or even Richard Dawkins', the latter of whom can't even think of evidence that would convince him of God's existence, precisely because he can always explain it away.

    Really, once again I can't help but notice - you love to act as if you speak for scientists, but you don't actually provide data. I've provided it, and it runs counter to all of your claims. Scientists don't need you as a spokesperson, Ben; they have their own institutions, remember? And some of those institutions have even issued statements - and the NAS statement (among others) runs counter to what you're saying.

    So if you're going to turn to scientists' personal beliefs and their organizational statements, it looks like your atheism is going to suffer. Such is life.

    ReplyDelete
  49. An assumption that’s untestable because it has infinite parameters to make it consistent with any conceivable piece of evidence is rendered improbable in virtue of that lack of simplicity.

    Which rules out naturalism and its endless resources of brute facts. I'm noticing a theme here - you keep saying things that disprove your own position, and bolster mine. Have you noticed?

    Crude thinks science is “blessedly silent” on “teleology’s existence” (he means the existence of teloi, not that of the study of natural purposes). This displays breathtaking ignorance of the history of modern science. Modern scientists answer “How?” questions, not “Why?” ones. They want to know how thinks work, not whether they have ultimate purposes.

    Man, you've got a breathtaking ignorance of the very statements you're quoting. Not only do scientists answer 'How?' and not 'Why?' questions, they don't even bother themselves with a good number of the 'How?' questions. And insofar as you think teleology is a 'Why?' and not a 'How?', you'd be affirming my view.

    Crude says atheism is as untestable as theism. He therefore assumes the burden of proof is shared equally by theists and atheists. But are we supposed to be agnostic about every possible explanation no matter how ill-supported by evidence? We don’t have enough memory capacity to do that, so we have to function as if most conceivable explanations were false even if they haven’t been decisively refuted.

    First, this is a 'not even wrong' claim by Ben. We don't need 'memory capacity' in this case - we simply, and "functionally", just don't consider many possibilities. We don't need to store in our heads various commitments to agnosticism - we simply go about our business with what data we have. When we make claims, we invite burdens - by making a claim, we accept an intellectual burden of proof to make our case in order to persuade others. If we fail, or if we don't even try, we have no need to accept our claims.

    That is, the greater burden of proof falls on the person who would add to our ontology, who posits something that’s supposed to exist.

    And the atheist and naturalist is in this same boat: they posit a way the universe is through and through, complete with brute facts, explanation-less causes and existences, and more. 'Our ontology' is neither naturalist nor non-naturalist - to push us in either direction is an addition.

    As for your comments about theism being incoherent, about the only thing famous about that claim is how few people accept it, even among atheists. Hence all those arguments about the evidence regarding theism, rather than mere appeals to the concept.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Anyway, the point which Crude misses with these reflexive red herrings is that functional atheism has been a boon to scientific inquiry.

    And what Ben misses, in his frantic and desperate textwall, is that the boon to scientific inquiry has been intellectual silence on issues science can't settle, and don't need to settle - not just theism, but naturalism itself. Science focuses on tractable questions open to empirical study and testing - neither God, nor metaphysics, nor many other things besides are that.

    By contrast, the Aristotelian assumption that species are what they are because that’s what’s good for them leads nowhere.

    That's not the Aristotilean position, nor is it an 'Assumption'.

    And the theistic assumption that God created life explains nothing, because God would likewise be alive.

    Actually, it explains plenty - but not everything. On the other hand, your own view ends up faulted here, since you believe that scientists treat the world as dead matter, and that they themselves are just yet more dead matter.

    Crude implies that any reference to the European Dark Age is due to a canard that there was no intellectual progress in the Middle Ages.

    Actually, Crude states that reference to 'The Dark Age' is regarded by modern historians' consensus as nonsense, and that all the talk about the supposed intellectual fear of the Christians is disproven by their preservation of the Greeks' works, their founding and encouraging of institutions of learning, and more.

    Crude points to a Huffington Post article as proof that only 7% of wars have been religious.

    No, Crude points to an article which makes reference to The Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, where they investigated 1763 wars and inquired as to their causes. Do you think 'The Huffington Post' came up with the 7% figure? Next time, you may want to read the article linked.

    My point was just that one motivation for the Scientific Revolution was to find an alternative to lethal religious gridlock, to progress beyond the squalor of much of medieval European life.

    Actually, your point was that 'pointless theological debates' "led more often to bloodshed (Crusades, pogroms, wars between Protestants and Catholics, etc)." I pointed out that gosh, that's quite a bizarre conclusion, given the 7% figure.

    Now nothing would be more predictable than that Crude will disagree with every word I’ve just written. I understand this behaviour in terms supplied by Emile Durkheim.

    Indeed, Ben. Remember: when someone disagrees with your claims, it's never because you're wrong. No, all that evidence and argumentation they provide, that's yet more evidence that they're wrong. Because if you happened to be wrong - hell, if your confidence was merely misplaced - that would shatter your little world and you'd run risk of snapping like a rubber band. So clearly, you're never proven wrong. People show themselves to be incorrect merely by disagreeing with you. And if you disagree with everything they've written, Emile Durkheim's terms are quite inappropriate.

    Alas, most folks here aren’t guided by a love of knowledge. So I bid you all adieu.

    Adios, Ben. And thank you. See, I love it when people like you 'take the gloves off' and come at me with everything they can fire with - because when their arguments and claims end up being exposed not only as shoddy, but ignorant? And when this is so, so easy to demonstrate? I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a pleasure.

    ReplyDelete
  51. @ Benjamin Cain

    I see now that most of you are pumping out kneejerk, quibbling disagreements, which strikes me as being too close to the stereotype of internet discussion forums which is that they’re places where civilized folks can kick back and be as primitively tribal as they like. Little actual philosophy (love of knowledge) is on display here, folks. So it’s down to comedy and entertainment.

    Adios. I thank you for putting more effort into defending eliminativism than has Bakker.

    I have made a couple tongue-in-cheek remarks, but I think my most recent direct response to you consisted of some very serious arguments. For instance, to restate, your version of eliminativism (not that I claim you believe it, just that it differs from the academic eliminativism of Churchland and Rosenberg as well as from the futurist reductionism of Bakker) claims that the findings of science 'indicate what's happening', but in order for them to do this, we need a notion of 'indication', and this apparently relies on representation and truth. Moreover, the findings of science are filtered through the folk psychological lenses of practicing scientists (since, surely, no eliminativist pretends that science is conducted by consistent eliminativists, even if there were or could be such a thing), so if scientific findings imply that folk psychology is unreliable, then scientific findings are unreliable, so it hasn't been shown that folk psychology is unreliable.

    Moreover, the eliminativist seems to want to state simultaneously:
    - that she humbly acknowledges her incapacity to attain the truth; and
    - that others are the victims of illusions that she now evades.
    These two claims, conjoined, look a lot like the liar's paradox. To say that she doesn't have to be right in stating them doesn't help, because if this conjunction is false then eliminativism is giving up on certain major claims. Of course, it might be complained that the eliminativist doesn't care whether the conjunction is false because she doesn't care about coherence or traditional notions of truth or falsity, but then it starts to look like the eliminativist, as you envision her, has constructed a theory which she can contradict with impudence but which still should be taken to have important implications. I mean, it's a nice position if one wants to continue to make use of the notions that one eliminates, but it's hard to imagine why we should believe it actually has the implications anyone says it does.

    ReplyDelete
  52. @ People responding to Mr. Cain who could have been optimistic about the prospects of this discussion

    I think this was to be expected. After all, we failed to immediately recognise that right reason suggests the observed world is an effect of an "undead monstrosity". Indeed, a divine undead monstrosity, the cause cannot be less than the effect, after all. Perhaps Mr. S was right, after all, and sci-fi (and by extension - fantasy) is the proper object of philosophy!

    Some people (various Aristotelians and others) just can't help projecting purpose unto nature!
    First Cause? Where's your humility? HUH?!

    Also, not only is the concept of God incoherent, theism is "absurdist comedy" (for this and numerous other revelations, if one is into this sort of thing, consult Mr. Cain's blog advertised here).
    It's sad that people on this blog fail to achieve proper enlightenment, but choose to be tribal in the Age well past that of Reason.

    Having said this, I confess that I belong to a particularly vicious tribe where people think that coming to an A-T blog, making amusingly blunt characterisations/dismissals of Aristotelian philosophy without any argument/indication of an intent to engage in a discussion of relevant issues is a distinctly temerarious (and silly) thing to do.

    P.S.
    I do miss the insights of Scarecrow every now and then.

    ReplyDelete
  53. " Crude said...

    And to add to the illusion talk.

    ... The reply seems to be that the eliminative materialists may not have a theory, they may not even have an argument (certainly nothing that's even coherent)... but they have this kind of vague, hard to grasp sense, a perspective that they feel is, if not true, then something truthy-without-being-true. And that's the vantage point from which they're coming at the whole question. Their claims lack coherence, but that's okay, because what really matters isn't that they're making claims or offering evidence or doing much of anything... they're just going with some kind of flow that they can feel is correct, as hobbled as they are."


    I've been rereading through this thread, trying to pay more attention to what others have said, and I think that the post quoted above pretty well captures or frames the situation.

    It's unclear what eliminativists imagine they are doing if everything they are doing is an illusion, which illusion, as Greg I think it was said, doesn't even have any ontological status under their own system of interpretation.

    It's easy enough to imagine and concede that we usually operate somewhat like rats bumping around a maze, bouncing off walls we don't really comprehend - though we experience them in certain respects - until we either die or find our way to the pellet.

    But there has to be a rat, seeking.

    Or maybe not.

    It's becoming obvious to me that the influence of this Buddhist shit is becoming more intellectually pernicious than I would have suspected.

    And I say this having once been mildly intrigued by Zen ... of the popularized D T Suzuki kind.



    ReplyDelete
  54. Benjamin Cain,

    Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. All men have knowledge. Few men are wise.

    As for the ridiculous caricature of theists and the perverted sense of "humility" being thrown around here, when reason can be certain of something like a necessary first cause to avoid the impossibility of an infinite regress, then their is nothing contrary to humility about that.

    Forsaking our reason in order to spite Christianity is of course an option. But I warn every would-be thinker that you deny yourselves legitimate avenues of research and knowledge in the process and immediately forsake wisdom by doing so.

    Now a man can know he must needs have parents or a maker of some sort without actually knowing who his parents are. He can know things about them just given his own nature. That does not mean he utterly grasps or understands everything about them in the process.

    ReplyDelete
  55. It's becoming obvious to me that the influence of this Buddhist shit is becoming more intellectually pernicious than I would have suspected.

    It's not even Buddhism's influence as near as I can tell. People just like the word "enlightenment" and the most hatchet-job mangling of buddhist ideas. I'm pretty sure most would regard EM with amusement and/or horror.

    ReplyDelete
  56. If you're wholeheartedly embracing a contradiction, then you probably can say you're a Buddhist, right?

    ReplyDelete
  57. Yes, Crude is correct. These naturalists are not Buddhists. They mangle its ideas and have little concern with learning them in context. Buddhism does not embrace contradictions (not real ones), incoherence, or just plain nonsense. Traditional Buddhism has had no appreciable intellectual influence on those like Santi or Cain. All they have done is try to link a pseudo-Buddhism to positions they already held.

    Buddhism is an interesting and profound school of thought, in my opinion. It is a religion, with an intense interest in the sacred and even moral, and with a clear spiritual path. It has nothing to do with eliminativism, David Hume, materialism, humanism, or any other concept these Western naturalists try to foist on it.

    If anyone is interested in a good introduction to traditional Buddhist thought, I would advise Marco Pallis's work, especially his Buddhist Spectrum: Contributions to Christian-Buddhist dialogue. I would warn you though.

    And the same goes for Taoism and Jainism, which I have also occasionally seen such people try to co-opt.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Jeremy Taylor said...

    Yes, Crude is correct. These naturalists are not Buddhists. They mangle its ideas and have little concern with learning them in context. "

    Well, since I'm the one who made the most vulgarly dismissive remark, I should probably acknowledge your graciously phrased counter comment.

    There might well be some interesting things that could be learned from the tradition.

    Anyone who might have to at least some extent studied phenomenology, and then toyed with so-called "experimental phenomenology" such as it was, could probably see value in attempting different approaches to seeing or comprehending. Even if it merely involved staring at a vase until you no longer knew what it was that was seen, or who it was that was seeing ... sort of, kind of, you know.

    The Dalai Lama and that "I'm a Marxist" stuff though ... how can one take the high priest of the discipline seriously, when he goes on like that? Someone should hand the guy a hammer and set him to work. He might shape up and giggle less.

    Though I'm not sure mumble mumble Francis is much mumble mumble himself mumble mumble ....

    ReplyDelete
  59. The Dalai Lama and that "I'm a Marxist" stuff though ... how can one take the high priest of the discipline seriously, when he goes on like that?

    I will admit, the Dalai Lama to me comes across as a yutz. I say this while unaware of the Marxist comments - but then, I'm not about to equate the Lama with buddhism anymore than the Pope with Catholicism.

    That said, I do think people look at Buddhism and go 'Oh hey, they say stuff that makes no sense to me. I guess if I make no sense, I'm real deep!'

    ReplyDelete
  60. DNW,

    The approach of Buddhism is radically apophatic. The aporia you allude to are really meant to break down over-attachment to mental concepts, images, and discursive reason. In this sense there is little difference between Buddhism and the apophatic strains, or negative theology, of other major religions. Buddhism, however, puts this apophatic perspective at the heart of its spiritual praxis.

    Crude,

    I think that some naturalists are attracted to Buddhism because they think it allows them to be spiritual without having to give up naturalism, as well as to be thoroughly individualist, non-doctrinal, and permissive (especially on sexuality). Such people are radically misguided. Traditional Buddhism is certainly not naturalist. It enjoins serious, sometimes severe, spiritual effort and discipline, including moral and sexual discipline and morality (it is true that it tries to avoid elaborate discursive doctrine, though).

    The mangling of Buddhism by such Westerners is second only to their mangling of Taoism.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Could Scott Bakker reasonably say (and I don't know if this is what he is saying or that some other comment has brought this up, because I haven't kept track the hundreds of comments):

    "No, I cannot produce a complete replacement of all intentional idioms. However, this is because we are so wrapped up in the illusion of intentionality that we cannot conceive 'truth,' 'evidence,' 'theory,' etc. in a non-intentional manner. It is not an argument against eliminativism but an argument for the limitations of the human mind."

    ReplyDelete
  62. "No, I cannot prove [the solipsistic view that only I exist]. However, this is because we are so wrapped up in the illusion of [other people existing] that we cannot conceive [of the non-existence of other people]. It is not an argument against [solipsism] but an argument for the limitations of the human mind."

    ReplyDelete
  63. Well, he doesn't actually need a complete replacement of all intentional idioms; he just needs to be able to formulate his position in terms that do not presuppose intentionality, or give a way that his position can actually be identified in a way that consistently doesn't require assuming intentionality. One thing he can't do is assume that he can somehow get a God's-eye view, or float like an angel above all human limitations -- that is, he can't identify the way the world really is except in exactly the way any human being can, by operating under human limitations. If it's a limitation of human minds that we have to assume intentionality, then he's stuck with that: if that's the case, he has to assume intentionality like everyone else, and pretending he doesn't would be just another version of the same incoherence.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Sorry, my above comment was intended for mhumpher.

    ReplyDelete
  65. @Brandon

    However, my point would be that he could say "Fine, I can't formulate my position in a way that doesn't use intentional terms, however, this does not mean I presuppose intentionality. I know on an independent basis that intentionality is illusory. However, because the illusion is so powerful and the mind so weak, I cannot formulate my position in completely non-intentional way. I do not presuppose or assume intentionality. I am merely forced by the nature of the mind to formulate it with intentional idioms."

    ReplyDelete
  66. @ Brandon,

    Yes. I was trying to point out earlier every thought is ridden with intentionality and words do but express our thoughts, ideas, concepts. So unless EMists learn to speak in the tongue of angels their dream of replacement concepts is the real illusion.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Jeremy,

    You are spot on with regards "western" Buddhism. I'm beginning to better understand those of the "Traditionalist School" who distance themselves from the "garden variety" of a Huxley like Perennialism. The "new spirituality", despite its rejection of atheo-materialism, is still overwhelmingly beholden to secular/scientistic humanism- poltical correctness, egalitarianism, progressivism etc.

    ReplyDelete
  68. mhumpher,

    "...I know on an independent basis that intentionality is illusory."

    This is obviously one of his best possible options. But if he knows on an independent basis that intentionality is illusory, then either (1) he can formulate the position in terms that don't presuppose intentionality or (2) he can identify a method for establishing the truth of eliminativism that does not itself depend on presupposing intentionality in any way (even if it is difficult to convey the method except in intentionality-laden terms). But this was just what the challenge was in the first place. We'd obviously need to know the method so it could be seen that the method doesn't itself depend on intentionality.

    That's one reason I made the point about not being able to float free like an angel above human limitations: if he knows that eliminativism is true, there must be a way to know it that can itself be known not to presuppose intentionality. So what is it? But one of the repeated problems that has arisen is that the defenders of eliminativism either fall back on science -- which, as anyone understands it, builds on very, very intentionality-laden assumptions -- or have to make claims about what really happens that for all practical purposes are indistinguishable from clairvoyance (as if they are human beings somehow can transcend the limitations of human mind to see how things look if seen without any of the limitations of human beings).

    It's difficult to avoid concluding that there is a very elaborate shell-game going on. Bakker professes eliminativism, but when pressed on problems always answers like a reductionist or even a non-reductionist physicalist, both of which are intentionalist positions; when called on this fact, he insists that everything he says should be understood as an eliminativist would understand it; when asked to explain what that is, he describes it in terms that are clearly reductionist; etc., etc.

    ReplyDelete
  69. mhumpher,

    "I know on an independent basis that intentionality is illusory."

    But if Bakker's "independent basis" (say neuroscience or some such)turns out to be *itself* dependent upon intentionality for the discovery and communication of its own findings, then all that an appeal to such an "independent basis" will have achieved is to kick the can further down the road.

    So I think Brandon has reached bedrock with respect to this whole debate when he writes:

    "One thing he can't do is assume that he can somehow get a God's-eye view, or float like an angel above all human limitations -- that is, he can't identify the way the world really is except in exactly the way any human being can, by operating under human limitations. If it's a limitation of human minds that we have to assume intentionality, then he's stuck with that: if that's the case, he has to assume intentionality like everyone else, and pretending he doesn't would be just another version of the same incoherence."

    Pax

    ReplyDelete
  70. Oops, I see I was writing as Brandon was already making the same point.

    ReplyDelete
  71. With Ed Feser's permission, [he can remove this without my objection] I'd like to leave a couple of links to news items which just showed up in my mail box and relate to certain concepts of intentionality, in a variety of ways.

    Although not directly addressing the notion of intentionality, they express on various levels notions of what is taken to be intentionality; through their very existence. Both as the object and the purported explanation. Layers of intentionality are in place.

    (By the way, and for those who've kept up their studies: weren't "explicans" and "explicandum" the terms of art at some time in the past? The alternative, "explanans" for example, seems very awkward to me. Almost ludicrous. Bananarama.)


    Many here who have strong backgrounds in historical studies, like Crude perhaps, and who have kept up on the literature, will know all about this. But it may only be on the fringes of others' awareness.

    At any rate, relating to intentionality, interpretation, reinterpretaion, new light on a "dark age", religion and mind, and even the crushing of recent
    academic dogmas or intellectual conceits by new scientific analysis.

    Class it along with the Nuraghes of Sardinia, the Vinca culture, among others, as paradigm shifting areas of research.


    https://www.academia.edu/4386577/Establishing_a_Radiocarbon_Sequence_for_G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe._State_of_Research_and_New_Data



    https://www.academia.edu/1877122/The_role_of_cult_and_feasting_in_the_emergence_of_Neolithic_communities._New_evidence_from_G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_south-eastern_Turkey

    And for those who don't recall the "first the city then the temple" dogma,

    https://www.academia.edu/6198728/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_Newsletter_2014



    https://www.academia.edu/1606875/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_A_Stone_Age_ritual_center_in_southeastern_Turkey

    ReplyDelete
  72. Monk68 writes: But if Bakker's "independent basis" (say neuroscience or some such)turns out to be *itself* dependent upon intentionality for the discovery and communication of its own findings, then all that an appeal to such an "independent basis" will have achieved is to kick the can further down the road.

    I would just like to add to Monk68's point, that there are other philosophies of mind (reductionism, functionalism, etc.) equally consistent with neuroscience. It's not like Bakker can correctly say, "Look, neuroscience demands eliminativism. No other philosophy makes sense of it." These other philosophies also admit the intentionality so basic to human experience.

    ReplyDelete
  73. For the record, here is something Churchland says about the incoherence objection.

    A purely a priori objection, it dismisses EM as incoherent on grounds that, in arguing, stating, or embracing its case, it must presuppose the integrity of the very conceptual framework it proposes to eliminate. Consider, for example, the evident conflict between the eliminativist's apparent belief that FP [folk psychology] is false, and his concurrent claim that there are not beliefs.

    These and many other "pragmatic paradoxes" do indeed attend the eliminativist's current position. But they signal only the depth and far reaching character of the conceptual revolution that EM would have to contemplate, not some flaw within EM itself. Logically, the situation is entirely foursquare. Assume Q (the framework of FP assumptions); argue legitimately from Q and other empirical premises to the conclusion that not-Q; and then conclude not-Q by the principle of reductio ad absurdum.

    If the self-defeating objection were correct in this instance, it would signal a blanket refutation of all formal reductios, because they all "presuppose what they are trying to deny." Such a demonstration would be a major contribution to logic, and not just to the philosophy of mind. A more balanced opinion, I suggest, is that this venerable principle of argument is threatened neither in general, nor in the case at issue.

    Let us concede then, or even insist, that current FP permits no coherent or tension-free denial of itself within its own theoretical vocabulary. As we have just seen, this buys it no proof against empirical criticism. Moreover, a
    new psychological framework - appropriately grounded in computational neuroscience, perhaps - need have no such limitation where the coherent denial of FP is concerned. We need only construct it, and move in. We can express criticisms of FP that are entirely free of internal conflicts. This was the aim of EM in the first place.

    I think this way of stating it is much clearer than anything I have seen from Bakker. It would, in fact, be a valid way of rebutting the incoherence charge as Churchland has construed it, but a lot rides on "arguing legitimately from Q and other empirical premises to the conclusion that not-Q." For the claim is not that not-Q is deduced from Q, but that science, because it generally eliminates things, will go on to do so. So there are underdetermination problems that are more than merely theoretical. Why reject Q other than some of the empirical premises? The empirical premises have to be given as true in order for the reductio ad absurdum of Q to be legitimate, but if one does not have a non-intentional account of science, then that won't work. (This is, of course, assuming that Q conjoined with some empirical premises does imply not-Q, which also does not seem to be true for any empirical premises of which I'm aware. What is reduced to absurdity might instead be the induction on the supposed elimination by science of fairies, leperchauns, and other things that eliminativists like to talk about.)

    More seriously, this defense doesn't touch something like Ed's argument, which challenges EM by requiring that it state itself coherently. If it cannot give non-intentional accounts of things like 'truth', then it lacks content or contradicts itself. The complaint is not that EM presupposes FP. In a sense it doesn't, for its proponents passionately disavow FP. The complaint is that EM can't show what it is to do instead. (The account might seem a bit more plausible if one understands the objection in terms of the statement "I believe I have no beliefs", as Churchland does.)

    ReplyDelete
  74. Sorry, the above Churchland article is "Evaluating Our Self-Conception," Mind and Language 8, no. 2 (1993), 211-222, collected also in the Churchlands' On the Contrary.

    ReplyDelete
  75. ... Ed's argument, which challenges EM by requiring that it state itself coherently.

    Since eliminativists might object to the requirement that EM be stated coherently, I ask: If EM can't be stated coherently but is nevertheless a 'good' theory demanded by the relevant science, then what is EM? This question can only be answered by a statement of the theory that is EM. If it can't be answered, as the imagined eliminativists are now complaining, then we can't identify what EM is, and the idea that the data somehow compels EM is an illusion founded upon claims that are, taken in themselves, perhaps plausible or understandable, but which cannot constitute a coherent theory.

    ReplyDelete
  76. Greg said...

    For the record, here is something Churchland says about the incoherence objection."


    Nice commentary.

    It seems to me that Churchland is buying himself some wriggle room by referring to folk psychology.

    There is plenty in folk psychology no doubt, that could be better reformulated, and you might even be able to reduce "belief" to very little more than some complex of behavioral tendencies based on memories of past experiences or innate "wiring".

    But what's so remarkable about that?

    The remarkable thing is the apparent and eventual aim of eliminating mind - even as a reflexive complex - altogether.

    How you would, or who and what would, move into that house if it were constructed, seems problematical; even granting most of the assumptions.

    On the other hand if you go whole Bakker, then (I presume) the reductio itself is construed nothing more than a heuristic at most - a kind of way of systematically bumping up against "we" know not what.

    Looks like the basic problem recurs no matter how they frame it.

    Those who have studied the early Marx will recall a parallel theme pervading his mode of analysis; which was strictly "historical" as he defined it.

    We've seen historicism discussed here at great length in fact.

    Thus, Man, is embedded as a conscious phenomenon in evolving circumstances; arising as the consciousness of the inorganic body: a determination which he cannot in principle transcend. His perspective is radically limited by the circumstances in which the species was produced and produced itself, and his proper fate is to live out this way of being critically and scientifically, and not to try and transcend it radically by understanding what could not be stood-under, or over.

    Of course it turns out that his anti-metaphysical posturing was a metaphysical claim itself, but it seemed for a time to many people like a solution "forward".

    I guess just because that way of thinking killed millions, doesn't mean it is a bad or unhelpful thing. Since bad and helpful are just illusions anyway ...

    ReplyDelete


  77. I just posted a comment that was not particularly needed or good.

    Forget the part after the positive mention of Greg's effort.

    ReplyDelete
  78. @ DNW

    There is plenty in folk psychology no doubt, that could be better reformulated, and you might even be able to reduce "belief" to very little more than some complex of behavioral tendencies based on memories of past experiences or innate "wiring".

    Right. This is another point I was thinking about. Q is all of folk psychology. So not-Q just means that folk psychology is not true. The argument would clearly have to be repeated more specifically for the components of folk psychology, or else not-Q would be consistent with the truth of even the vast majority of folk psychology. To say not-Q is not equivalent to saying that our understanding of ourselves is systematically false.

    There is another aspect of Churchland that is interesting. Many people aim to deny that folk psychology is really a theory (or related objections, i.e. folk psychology does not aspire to precision). Churchland characterizes theories in a couple ways: as a body of social practices a la Kuhn, or as the differing learned or conditioned levels of receptivity among our perceptual faculties. He denies that theories are merely collections of propositions. So he needs an account of social practices to characterize folk psychology as a theory. (Moreover, along that sort of Kuhnian line where theories are kinds of social practices, it is more evident that scientific theories will presuppose intentionality, as do practicing scientists. The characterization of theories as social practices is a double-edged sword for Churchland; it gives him a response to those who would deny that folk psychology is a theory, but it makes it far harder to make the argument that the intentionalistic presuppositions of all practicing scientists are separable from the scientific results he takes to support his theory.)

    ReplyDelete
  79. The argument would clearly have to be repeated more specifically for the components of folk psychology, or else not-Q would be consistent with the truth of even the vast majority of folk psychology. To say not-Q is not equivalent to saying that our understanding of ourselves is systematically false.

    I add that I don't claim Churchland would deny this; his characterization there is obviously intended to be brief.

    Most of Churchland's articles focusing on folk psychology and eliminative materialism at a high level don't say much about intentionality or truth. Though it could also be questioned: to what extent are some of the finer grained distinctions made by philosophers about intentionality or qualia part of folk psychology?

    There's an odd tension in the writings of eliminative materialists. On the one hand they claim that there are tons of theories of intentionality and qualia. On the other, they characterize folk psychology as an ailing theory that we've been hanging onto for 4000 years.

    Most people don't talk about intentionality itself. Nor would people for most have history characterized "the mark of the mental" as "what it is like" to be a human.

    ReplyDelete
  80. "I think this way of stating it is much clearer than anything I have seen from Bakker."

    Still, it seems strange to say this at all, since if we say something like, "Bakker could say this thing that Churchland said" What we would mean is that Bakker could say that and it would make sense, or more sense than he has been making.

    ReplyDelete
  81. sorry... seems strange to say that in defense of EM

    ReplyDelete
  82. Greg wrote,

    "Churchland characterizes theories in a couple ways: as a body of social practices a la Kuhn, or as the differing learned or conditioned levels of receptivity among our perceptual faculties. He denies that theories are merely collections of propositions. So he needs an account of social practices to characterize folk psychology as a theory. "

    Now this I got to see! I am very interested in reading this theory that I will learn without need of propositions or a basis in certain propositions. I think perhaps they will have their best chance of success once they can immediately communicate a complete idea without use of language in any form. That would make it more difficult for most to miss that it required propositions and premises in order to arrive at its conclusions.

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  83. @Timocrates:

    "Now this I got to see!"

    We may already have seen it. Churchland's account of a "theory" as a "body of social practices" seems to be right on the money in at least one familiar instance: eliminative materialism itself seems to consist entirely of eliminative materialists' "social practice" of waving their hands in unison.

    ReplyDelete
  84. @ Scott

    I know you joke, but our friend Benjamin above told me that, though eliminative materialism undermines the findings of science, the fact that they (and their intentionality-undermining consequences) are scrawled in journals, classrooms, etc. is nevertheless an 'indication' of the death of cherished humanity's self-conception.

    Social practices can be truthy even if truth can't be.

    ReplyDelete
  85. @Greg:

    "Social practices can be truthy even if truth can't be."

    Well, sure they can! Because social practices can be abouty even if there's no aboutiness.

    ReplyDelete
  86. This comment thread is old news, but...

    Here is a quote from A E Van Vogt’s introduction to the Berkeley edition of his World of Null-A (the motive being to show what is hopefully an amusing example of another author of SF who was enamored with a quasi-scientific novelty and was flabbergasted by the inability of others to appreciate his genius. The novel idea in this case was “General Semantics”).

    “Now, if I were a writer who merely presented another man’s ideas, then I doubt if I’d have had problems with my readers. I think I presented the facts of General Semantics so well, and so skillfully, in World of Null-A and its sequel that the readers thought that that was all I should be doing. But the truth is that I, the author, saw a deeper paradox.

    Ever since Einstein’s theory of relativity, we have had the concept of the observer who - it was stated - must be taken into account. Whenever I discussed this with people, I observed they were not capable of appreciating the height of that concept. They seemed to think of the observer as, essentially, an algebraic unit. Who he was didn’t matter.

    In such sciences as chemistry and physics, so precise were the methods that, apparently, it did not matter who the observer was. Japanese, Germans, Russians, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus and Englishmen all arrived at the same impeccable conclusions, apparently bypassing their personal, racial and religious prejudices. However, everyone I talked to was aware that, as soon as members of these various nationalities or religious groups wrote history - ah, now, we had a different story (and of course a different history) from each individual."

    ReplyDelete
  87. @Matt Sheean:

    Robert Heinlein was pretty enamored of Korzybski as well. Never saw the attraction myself, though I've always enjoyed much of Heinlein's SF.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Scott,

    Yea, Heinlein's work doesn't seem to me like the work of someone who'd grok GS. At least it's not obvious

    Weird sciency and out there philosophical stuff seems to appeal to a certain kind of creative person. EM has a surrealist quality to it (though philosophically maybe dada is the right term?).

    ReplyDelete
  89. @Matt Sheean:

    "Yea, Heinlein's work doesn't seem to me like the work of someone who'd grok GS. At least it's not obvious"

    It's all over his stuff if you know where to look for it, but you're right, it's not obvious. For example, you may remember (from the very novel that gave us the word "grok") the character of Anne, one of the women who worked for Jubal Harshaw. She was a Fair Witness—a professional trained to distinguish carefully between fact and inference and report only what she saw, to the point that, when asked what color a house was, she replied, "It's white on this side" (and wouldn't even assume that this side had remained white after she'd stopped looking at it).

    ReplyDelete
  90. I remember that book (Number of the Beast, right?) being kinda zany, right? I've only read that one (and not well) and Starship Troopers (back in high school - which still isn't that long ago) and a couple shorts of his. That might be just as good an explanation for why I wasn't too aware of his association with GS (aside from the mention in the wiki article).

    I would like to add as well, or really to take back the pejorative tone of my comment about creatives being into weird ideas. While I do think it is unhealthy for the intellect, part of the fun of SF is entering into a fully realized, utterly strange world, and it seems that often the more idiosyncratic the writer's views, the more incredible (in a good way) the worlds are. Not all the time, of course, but sometimes the weirdness plays nicely into the product.

    ReplyDelete
  91. @Matt Sheean:

    "I remember that book (Number of the Beast, right?) being kinda zany, right?"

    Stranger in a Strange Land. But yep, zany.

    ReplyDelete
  92. ""Ever since Einstein’s theory of relativity, we have had the concept of the observer who - it was stated - must be taken into account. Whenever I discussed this with people, I observed they were not capable of appreciating the height of that concept. They seemed to think of the observer as, essentially, an algebraic unit. Who he was didn’t matter.

    In such sciences as chemistry and physics, so precise were the methods that, apparently, it did not matter who the observer was. Japanese, Germans, Russians, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus and Englishmen all arrived at the same impeccable conclusions, apparently bypassing their personal, racial and religious prejudices. However, everyone I talked to was aware that, as soon as members of these various nationalities or religious groups wrote history - ah, now, we had a different story (and of course a different history) from each individual."""


    That's quite a strange assertion by Van Vogt...

    I would say, first hand, that he doea NOT know or understand what the theory of relativity is... and perhaps history... (but I suppose I cannot judge him from only a single quote.)

    In Einstein's relativity it still does NOT matter WHO the observer is (not his philosophical or religious or racial backgrpound).

    Rather what DOES matter is the FRAME OF REFERENCE the observer is in.

    Now this is a bit true in Galilean relatiity as well:
    If you are on a train everything in the train is still to your point of view, while trees outside are moving.

    Another person, sitting outside will see you and everything on the train move, and for him the trees will be still.

    Einstein (special) relativity extends this concept showing that (unlike in Galilean Relativity) time is NOT absolute, but also the perception of time and the observation of events in time also depends on the frame of reference.

    For example someone sitting in a planet might see events occur as A-> B -> C in time while travelling very fast (relative to the planet) in a ship might see a different temporal ordering of such events.

    General relativity then extends the whole theory including gravity, which is a distorsion of spacetime caused by Energy-Mass (they are equivalent in relativity).

    In all this HOWEVER there is still OBJECTIVE OBSERVATION taking place (maybe using cloks and other instruments to make measurements or record when an event is percieved for example.

    Funnily enough Relativity rests on an absolute statement: all laws of physics are the same in ALL (inertial) frames of reference (hence why the s[eed of light is the same in all of them).

    What is "relative" is the observation, which changes from one frame of reference to another... but it is not something purely subjective since we can calculate and predict what an observer would measure in another frame of reference.

    (continued)

    ReplyDelete

  93. In History the story is different.

    The Human science of history is NOT the same as "writing history".

    Those who write history are not doing science, and ofen enough they are not historians, they are recording facts as they see them, sometimes their opinions and sometimes even distorting the facts to make them more agreeable to their opinion.

    For example in 1000 years much of our history might be observed through newspaper articles, blogs, youtube videos, etc... and we all know how different one fact is presented by different people...

    That is why history is much more difficult than physics on the "interpretational level".

    You cannot do experiments to test a thesis... you can only work with the documents and archeological data you find... and you must try to think as the people who wrote the documents thought (not an easy feat at all) since the way we used to think, speak and write has certainly changed with culture.

    Of course this leave ofte much more room for the historian's personal views to trickle down into what he discovers or thinks he discovers, which is quite problematic, of course.

    In spite of this there is still some objectivity in history as well, although not as easily achieved as in physics or chemistry.

    ReplyDelete