Monday, February 28, 2011
Charting the history of science
A little oversimplified, don't you think? In any event, even in college I knew better than to identify the Middle Ages with the Dark Ages, although plausibly there was a dark period during the early Middle Ages. Of course, the university system in Europe started during the Middle Ages, hardly a sign of overwhelming darkness.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
On the Objectivity of Science
I think Bob's point has to be modified in certain ways, in that I think that science has the means to eventually correct its biases and mistakes over time. It is a human enterprise, subject to peer pressures and what not, but eventually it has the ability to snap out of its biases. Take, for example, the behaviorist phenomenon in psychology. I remember when I was an undergraduate that the entire psychology department at ASU was one big rat lab. Eventually this broke down, and now this period of the history of psychology is made fun of. But you would have been made fun of in those days if you thought behaviorism wasn't the wave of the future. Sometimes science gets out of a rut simply because the major figures keeping it in that rut die off.
In short, I would say that science has ways of moving in the direction of objectivity, but the wheels of the science gods may move more slowly than most people realize. Hence a strong apparent consensus in the scientific community may represent nothing more than a passing phase, not a guarantee that science has reached genuine certainty.
I'm not saying Bob would deny this. I do think what you have to say that science, as a intersubjective human enterprise, moves in the direction of objectivity, though it never achieves complete objectivity.
In short, I would say that science has ways of moving in the direction of objectivity, but the wheels of the science gods may move more slowly than most people realize. Hence a strong apparent consensus in the scientific community may represent nothing more than a passing phase, not a guarantee that science has reached genuine certainty.
I'm not saying Bob would deny this. I do think what you have to say that science, as a intersubjective human enterprise, moves in the direction of objectivity, though it never achieves complete objectivity.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Bob Prokop on Science and Objectivity
Victor,
You, if anyone, are well aware that I am the very last person to admit there is anything like a real conflict between Science and Religion. That said, I am also very much opposed to some of the frankly absurd conclusions arrived at by various persons who have a less-than-professional expertise in BOTH fields. I'm thinking not only of scientifically-ignorant Young Earth Creationists, but also of those (primarily atheist) persons who claim an objectivity for Science that it in no way deserves.
With that in mind, I simply have to quote to you a passage from a remarkable book I have stumbled across: "Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science", by Jan Golinski, Cambridge University Press, 1998, page ix:
"There is nothing self-evident or inevitable about scientific claims that become established as "truths" in specific times and places. ... Scientific knowledge should be understood primarily as a human product, made with locally situated cultural and material resources, rather than simply the revelation of a pre-given order of nature."
Golinski argues that, while the "Facts" accrued by scientific research may deserve a modicum of trust and be granted a (strictly defined) degree of objectivity, the broader conclusions derived from such knowledge are inextricably part of the prevalent culture and existing power structures. He makes a convincing case.
This has HUGE implications for the OTF. It means that no atheist (or skeptic, or whatever) can claim to stand "outside" of anything, simply by incanting "scientific" tropes under the illusion (dare I say "delusion"?) that such information is inherently objective. The DATA may very well be so (and there are limits even to that), but whatever effects such raw information may have on KNOWLEDGE can never be so. The scientist (or layperson relying on scientific research) will forever be a product of his times, his culture, and his environment. No one is an outsider.
As a very specific illustration of this concept, allow me to draw your attention to a perfectly wonderful book, also by Cambridge University Press, by Maria Lane, "Geographies of Mars" (2011). The book concerns how astronomers understood Mars throughout history. You might be aware that around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries, it was widely believed, both by professional astronomers as well as by the public as a whole, that Mars was inhabited by a canal-building intelligent race. Here is what Ms. Lane has to say about that belief. It is well worth a careful read:
"The geopolitical moment in which the inhabited Mars narrative unfolded - dominated as it was by European imperialism and American expansionism - produced an intellectual and social climate in which the view of Mars as an arid, dying, irrigated world peopled by unfathomably advanced beings was really the only interpretation of Mars observations that could plausibly have been accepted by large numbers of Western scientists, writers, and audiences."
My point for bringing this up? Simply this - the widespread assertions by persons who make a habit of conjuring up "Science" (although they are most likely not themselves scientists) with the aim of confining religious thought to a supposed "God of the Gaps", and their claim that "History is on Our Side", are no less a product of the contemporary environment than the now discredited belief in intelligent life on Mars, and will someday be regarded with the same degree of amusement by future generations, who do not share our own particular cultural prejudices and blinders.
Bob
You, if anyone, are well aware that I am the very last person to admit there is anything like a real conflict between Science and Religion. That said, I am also very much opposed to some of the frankly absurd conclusions arrived at by various persons who have a less-than-professional expertise in BOTH fields. I'm thinking not only of scientifically-ignorant Young Earth Creationists, but also of those (primarily atheist) persons who claim an objectivity for Science that it in no way deserves.
With that in mind, I simply have to quote to you a passage from a remarkable book I have stumbled across: "Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science", by Jan Golinski, Cambridge University Press, 1998, page ix:
"There is nothing self-evident or inevitable about scientific claims that become established as "truths" in specific times and places. ... Scientific knowledge should be understood primarily as a human product, made with locally situated cultural and material resources, rather than simply the revelation of a pre-given order of nature."
Golinski argues that, while the "Facts" accrued by scientific research may deserve a modicum of trust and be granted a (strictly defined) degree of objectivity, the broader conclusions derived from such knowledge are inextricably part of the prevalent culture and existing power structures. He makes a convincing case.
This has HUGE implications for the OTF. It means that no atheist (or skeptic, or whatever) can claim to stand "outside" of anything, simply by incanting "scientific" tropes under the illusion (dare I say "delusion"?) that such information is inherently objective. The DATA may very well be so (and there are limits even to that), but whatever effects such raw information may have on KNOWLEDGE can never be so. The scientist (or layperson relying on scientific research) will forever be a product of his times, his culture, and his environment. No one is an outsider.
As a very specific illustration of this concept, allow me to draw your attention to a perfectly wonderful book, also by Cambridge University Press, by Maria Lane, "Geographies of Mars" (2011). The book concerns how astronomers understood Mars throughout history. You might be aware that around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries, it was widely believed, both by professional astronomers as well as by the public as a whole, that Mars was inhabited by a canal-building intelligent race. Here is what Ms. Lane has to say about that belief. It is well worth a careful read:
"The geopolitical moment in which the inhabited Mars narrative unfolded - dominated as it was by European imperialism and American expansionism - produced an intellectual and social climate in which the view of Mars as an arid, dying, irrigated world peopled by unfathomably advanced beings was really the only interpretation of Mars observations that could plausibly have been accepted by large numbers of Western scientists, writers, and audiences."
My point for bringing this up? Simply this - the widespread assertions by persons who make a habit of conjuring up "Science" (although they are most likely not themselves scientists) with the aim of confining religious thought to a supposed "God of the Gaps", and their claim that "History is on Our Side", are no less a product of the contemporary environment than the now discredited belief in intelligent life on Mars, and will someday be regarded with the same degree of amusement by future generations, who do not share our own particular cultural prejudices and blinders.
Bob
Thursday, February 24, 2011
What it is to be persuaded by an argument
This is from my reply to Keith Parsons in essay "Some Supernatural Reasons Why My Critics are Wrong" (a title that was given to my essay by someone else), in Philosophia Christi (Volume 5, no. 1, 2003).
But think for a moment about what it is to be persuaded by an argument. If we are thinking in common-sense terms, we would have to say that what goes on when we are persuaded by Parsons's argument that Arizona State will not be in the BCS this year is that we consider the epistemic strength of the premises, the grounding relation between the premises and the conclusion, and then accept the conclusion as a result of considering the evidence presented in the argument. To be convinced by an argument is for the reasons presented in the argument to play a causal role in the production of the belief. If the argument is causally irrelevant to the belief, then we cannot say that the argument was persuasive. This can often be cashed out counterfactually: If I really am persuaded by Parsons's argument, then it cannot be the case that I am such a partisan of the Arizona Wildcats that I would think the worst of the Sun Devils' prospects even if the Sun Devils had a Heisman trophy candidate at quarterback, outstanding and experienced running backs and wide receivers, a rock-solid offensive line, and was returning everyone from what had been the stingiest defense in the Pac-10 the previous year.
On the one hand, the reasons have to persuade me in virtue of their being reasons. The logical force of the argument has to have a causal impact on belief. It has to make a difference as to whether I form the belief or fail to form the belief in question. And that, by the way, is bound to make a difference as to what I do with my body. I am going to behave differently if I think the Devils have a good chance to take the Pac-10 title than if I don't. And that is going to affect what the particles in the physical world do. But if the physical is causally closed, that means that the physical and only the physical can affect where the particles in the physical world go, and, the physical is defined as lacking, at the basic level of analysis, the central features of the mental. So the only way this kind of causal relation could possibly exist, would be if we could analyze the mental in physical terms as a kind of macro-state of the physical. Just as the word "planet" is absent from physical vocabulary, but a whole bunch of particle-states add up to there being a planet, perhaps "S's belief that P" can be added up from a set of physical states. But that seems to me to be just impossible. Add up the physical all you like, and you aren't going to get "S's belief that P." The physical leaves the mental indeterminate. Yet, if science is to be possible, is has to be determinate whether, for example, Einstein is plussing or quussing when he is adding numbers in the course of developing his theory.
So, I argue that you need mental causation for the possibility of science, but you can't get that without affirming what seems to be an implausible reductionism, that conflicts with the indeterminacy of the physical.
But think for a moment about what it is to be persuaded by an argument. If we are thinking in common-sense terms, we would have to say that what goes on when we are persuaded by Parsons's argument that Arizona State will not be in the BCS this year is that we consider the epistemic strength of the premises, the grounding relation between the premises and the conclusion, and then accept the conclusion as a result of considering the evidence presented in the argument. To be convinced by an argument is for the reasons presented in the argument to play a causal role in the production of the belief. If the argument is causally irrelevant to the belief, then we cannot say that the argument was persuasive. This can often be cashed out counterfactually: If I really am persuaded by Parsons's argument, then it cannot be the case that I am such a partisan of the Arizona Wildcats that I would think the worst of the Sun Devils' prospects even if the Sun Devils had a Heisman trophy candidate at quarterback, outstanding and experienced running backs and wide receivers, a rock-solid offensive line, and was returning everyone from what had been the stingiest defense in the Pac-10 the previous year.
On the one hand, the reasons have to persuade me in virtue of their being reasons. The logical force of the argument has to have a causal impact on belief. It has to make a difference as to whether I form the belief or fail to form the belief in question. And that, by the way, is bound to make a difference as to what I do with my body. I am going to behave differently if I think the Devils have a good chance to take the Pac-10 title than if I don't. And that is going to affect what the particles in the physical world do. But if the physical is causally closed, that means that the physical and only the physical can affect where the particles in the physical world go, and, the physical is defined as lacking, at the basic level of analysis, the central features of the mental. So the only way this kind of causal relation could possibly exist, would be if we could analyze the mental in physical terms as a kind of macro-state of the physical. Just as the word "planet" is absent from physical vocabulary, but a whole bunch of particle-states add up to there being a planet, perhaps "S's belief that P" can be added up from a set of physical states. But that seems to me to be just impossible. Add up the physical all you like, and you aren't going to get "S's belief that P." The physical leaves the mental indeterminate. Yet, if science is to be possible, is has to be determinate whether, for example, Einstein is plussing or quussing when he is adding numbers in the course of developing his theory.
So, I argue that you need mental causation for the possibility of science, but you can't get that without affirming what seems to be an implausible reductionism, that conflicts with the indeterminacy of the physical.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Christians are gaining in numbers, not atheists
I am redating this post.
According to this report from Inside Catholic.
HT: Bob Prokop
According to this report from Inside Catholic.
HT: Bob Prokop
The Courtier's Reply
What the New Atheists call the Courtier's Reply concerns the fact that the New Atheist attack on theistic belief is often made in ignorance of what the theist believes. The rebuttal to the reply is that atheists claim that God does not exist, and therefore detailed accounts of exactly what Christians or other theists believe about their God is irrelevant.
In the emperor case, then king is naked, and this can be discovered by looking, and what color the imaginary clothes are supposed to be is irrelevant.
The legitimacy of this response depends on what aspects of theism are relevant to the arguments Dawkins and company are making. It is a matter of what is relevant to the reasons for rejecting Christianity or theism. Admittedly, a lack of knowledge about the difference between Arianism and orthodox trinitarianism is probably not relevant. However, to make this kind of claim, one needs to know what sorts of arguments for theism have been advanced. For example, if you go around saying that you can refute any first cause argument by asking the question who made God, you have to take into account the fact that the causal principles defenders of cosmological arguments use normally don't require that anything and everything needs a cause. In the case of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the principle is "Whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence." In the case of the Thomistic argument from contingency, there is a distinction between contingent and necessary beings, and while contingent things need causes, necessary beings do not. So your defense of the claim that all cosmological arguments fail in this way will inevitable come across as ignorant to people who know something about how such arguments are supposed to work
If your claim is that the God of the Bible is morally deficient, then you have to have some understanding about how Scripture passages are interpreted and understood by theologically informed religious believers. You could make the case against God without bringing any of this up, but if it is part of your case against God, then you need to do your homework and understand what believers actually say about this.
If your argument is that religion conflicts with science, then you have to take seriously the kinds of attempts that are made to reconcile religion and science by people who have considered the question.
Hence, some aspects of theology are going to be relevant to the arguments you would be making, and others may not be.
In the emperor case, then king is naked, and this can be discovered by looking, and what color the imaginary clothes are supposed to be is irrelevant.
The legitimacy of this response depends on what aspects of theism are relevant to the arguments Dawkins and company are making. It is a matter of what is relevant to the reasons for rejecting Christianity or theism. Admittedly, a lack of knowledge about the difference between Arianism and orthodox trinitarianism is probably not relevant. However, to make this kind of claim, one needs to know what sorts of arguments for theism have been advanced. For example, if you go around saying that you can refute any first cause argument by asking the question who made God, you have to take into account the fact that the causal principles defenders of cosmological arguments use normally don't require that anything and everything needs a cause. In the case of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the principle is "Whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence." In the case of the Thomistic argument from contingency, there is a distinction between contingent and necessary beings, and while contingent things need causes, necessary beings do not. So your defense of the claim that all cosmological arguments fail in this way will inevitable come across as ignorant to people who know something about how such arguments are supposed to work
If your claim is that the God of the Bible is morally deficient, then you have to have some understanding about how Scripture passages are interpreted and understood by theologically informed religious believers. You could make the case against God without bringing any of this up, but if it is part of your case against God, then you need to do your homework and understand what believers actually say about this.
If your argument is that religion conflicts with science, then you have to take seriously the kinds of attempts that are made to reconcile religion and science by people who have considered the question.
Hence, some aspects of theology are going to be relevant to the arguments you would be making, and others may not be.
Some further comments by Feser
I think this part of his post needs to be underscored.
Don’t expect the scales to fall from their eyes anytime soon, though. It is hard enough for anyone to say “I was wrong.” But the New Atheist has to say much more than that. To admit his errors really amounts to saying “I am exactly the sort of person that I have loudly, publicly, and repeatedly denounced and ridiculed, and the hating of whom gives me my sense of identity and self-worth.” That requires a nearly superhuman degree of honesty and courage. So, while this or that New Atheist loudmouth might, like David, finally see himself for what he really is, I think we can expect the bulk of them to continue their spiral into intellectual and moral darkness. All in the name of reason and morality, of course.
Don’t expect the scales to fall from their eyes anytime soon, though. It is hard enough for anyone to say “I was wrong.” But the New Atheist has to say much more than that. To admit his errors really amounts to saying “I am exactly the sort of person that I have loudly, publicly, and repeatedly denounced and ridiculed, and the hating of whom gives me my sense of identity and self-worth.” That requires a nearly superhuman degree of honesty and courage. So, while this or that New Atheist loudmouth might, like David, finally see himself for what he really is, I think we can expect the bulk of them to continue their spiral into intellectual and moral darkness. All in the name of reason and morality, of course.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
What does naturalism exclude?
What makes a philosophy naturalistic, or even physicalistic? We are inclined to think that traditional Christian theism is supernaturalist view, but what makes something supernatural? Unlike C. S. Lewis, I want my naturalist opponents to tell me what their naturalism excludes. Otherwise, I'm just going to argue that my Christian world-view is just a liberal form of naturalism.
The characteristics of the physical that interest me are the absence of certain critical elements from the basic level of physics: intentionality or aboutness, normativity, subjectivity or perspectivality, and purpose. Would you consider something to be naturalistic if the fundamental-level explanation for its activity were, say, teleological? If something is purposive at the basic level of analysis, could it be naturalistic in any meaningful sense. If yes, then what do we have to include in our explanation in order for us to say "OK, if that's in the basic-level explanation, it's not naturalistic anymore."
The characteristics of the physical that interest me are the absence of certain critical elements from the basic level of physics: intentionality or aboutness, normativity, subjectivity or perspectivality, and purpose. Would you consider something to be naturalistic if the fundamental-level explanation for its activity were, say, teleological? If something is purposive at the basic level of analysis, could it be naturalistic in any meaningful sense. If yes, then what do we have to include in our explanation in order for us to say "OK, if that's in the basic-level explanation, it's not naturalistic anymore."
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
The animal that destroys even itself
IT is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with its tail in its mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating its tail -- a degraded animal who destroys even himself.
Chesterton-'Orthodoxy.'
Chesterton-'Orthodoxy.'
Dinesh D'Souza on Atheism and the Science Card
I'm a little dubious about using the absence of any scientific argument in the billboard campaign for atheism as evidence for much of anything. But are atheists entitled to assume that science is on their side?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
C. S. Lewis's Meditation in a Toolshed
It is interesting to see how much this essay anticipates more recent discussions in the philosophy of mind.
HT: Steve Lovell
HT: Steve Lovell
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Bultmann's blatant chronological snobbery
A redated post, prompted by Bob Prokop's charge of chronological snobbery against Doctor Logic. I am linking to the Wikipedia entry on the fallacy of Chronological snobbery.
It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless [radio] and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of demons and spirits.
Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth
Apparently Bultmann never visited a charismatic church. Those churches are not only filled with people who believe in demons and spirits, they consider them part of daily experience.
It reminds me of Al Plantinga's joke:
Pastor 1: Do you believe in infant baptism?
Pastor 2: Believe in it? I've seen it done.
This (1/22/10) is Lewis's critique of chronological snobbery, from Surprised by Joy.
Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed forever two elements in my ow thought. In the first place he made short work of what I have called my "chronological snobbery," the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date has is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also a "period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.
It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless [radio] and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of demons and spirits.
Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth
Apparently Bultmann never visited a charismatic church. Those churches are not only filled with people who believe in demons and spirits, they consider them part of daily experience.
It reminds me of Al Plantinga's joke:
Pastor 1: Do you believe in infant baptism?
Pastor 2: Believe in it? I've seen it done.
This (1/22/10) is Lewis's critique of chronological snobbery, from Surprised by Joy.
Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed forever two elements in my ow thought. In the first place he made short work of what I have called my "chronological snobbery," the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date has is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also a "period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
My Miracles and the Case for Theism
This was my first published paper, and I see that Common Sense Atheism has made it available online.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Russell on Free Thought
Russell: The expression 'free thought' is often used as if it meant merely opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy. But this is only a symptom of free thought, frequent, but invariable. 'Free thought' means thinking freely — as freely, at least, as is possible for a human being. The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the free thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, and the tyrant of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker.
Are these the two things we need to be free of intellectually? Are there other things that we should think about being free from in order to be rational? Intellectual peer pressure, maybe?
Are these the two things we need to be free of intellectually? Are there other things that we should think about being free from in order to be rational? Intellectual peer pressure, maybe?
just plain snobbery
A redated post.
Shulamite made a comment about my reference to "just plain snobbery" as as reason why Lewis is not taken seriously amongst philosophers. It reminds me of when I was in my first year of teaching introductory philosophy at the University of Illinois. I informed my students that there were about 18 full-time teachers at the U of I, and as best as I could tell 17 of them were atheists. One student raised his hand and asked "Those atheist teachers, do they think of themselves as the supreme beings?" I didn't answer the way I should have, which would have been to say "well, not all of them."
Shulamite made a comment about my reference to "just plain snobbery" as as reason why Lewis is not taken seriously amongst philosophers. It reminds me of when I was in my first year of teaching introductory philosophy at the University of Illinois. I informed my students that there were about 18 full-time teachers at the U of I, and as best as I could tell 17 of them were atheists. One student raised his hand and asked "Those atheist teachers, do they think of themselves as the supreme beings?" I didn't answer the way I should have, which would have been to say "well, not all of them."
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