On Motives
by Steve PetermannMy goodness there is a lot of attention paid to motives in this debate. But why? It seems to me that judging from the emotional intensity of many on both sides, motives are absolutely rampant. So? Who among us is not motivated by something to be involved in this debate. Some may be motivated by scientific and intellectual interests, some by religious convictions, others to defend a worldview, and still others for the thrill of battle. While some motives might be considered more noble than others, who would even want to debate someone with no strong motive to engage.
Seems to me that resorting to an argument-from-motive at best reflects a laziness to address the issues, and at worst is an unscrupulous attempt to cast aspersions on the intellectual integrity of someone. Or even worse yet an appeal that whole groups who hold certain worldviews are ignorant, stupid, or incorrigible somehow.
Fact of the matter is there are no fields of exploration where motives have no play. Certainly personal motives create a bias, but that in and of itself is not a negative. Instead it provides the impetus and drive for those explorations. Can motives result in distortions? Sure. However, I think history has shown that those "who get it right" are somehow able to hold their subjective bias in abeyance enough to "let the argument and data talk".
An argument-from-motive is like a racist remark that appeals to a stereotype to sway opinion, but is really an attempt to avoid engaging in debate with integrity. It's an easy way out but when it becomes a mantra, as it has, it is also so transparent to weakness that it loses points instead of gaining them. In the final analysis it will be the power of arguments that win the day. Appeals to motives will only delay the inevitable.
June 28th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
I don't know what to make of this entry.
Willful ignorance is problem that's inherent to motivating agendas, because the validity of the other side's argument means nothing to either, so neither side is willing to recognize any valid points and so it's all decided by who has the political advantage.
The most powerful argument only has an affect on people who are willing to concede valid points, and these people don't seem to exist anywhere in this debate.
Comment by island — June 28, 2005 @ 1:55 pm
June 28th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Hi Island,
Your post seems to be focusing on the extreme elements in the debate. For those folks on both sides, I agree with you that arguments are almost irrelevant. However, I also believe that there are moderate elements as well who, while they have their own subjective motivations and view points have a certain degree of openess and certainly a civility.
I guess I'll have to disagree with you that they don't exist. I like to think that the host contributors to this blog are willing to concede valid points. On the other side of the debate are examples like Michael Ruse and some others who participate on ARN and ISCID.
At any rate, I believe that the moderate individuals are recognized as such and may, in fact, garner more attention and appreciation than the shrill elements. There are many observers who are frustrated with the hyper-rhetoric and want to somehow get the straight skoop so they can make up their own minds. For them, they should look to what the moderate opponents on both sides are saying.
Comment by Steve Petermann — June 28, 2005 @ 2:49 pm
June 28th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
Hi, Steve! After following the responses to Mike's threads here and at ARN on the "Post-Wedge World," I'm afraid I'm more convinced than ever that the dueling metaphysics that characterize these debates are too far gone to even begin to qualify as "rational," or even as "scientific."
Being of the opinion that one's metaphysical views should be held apart from the scientific examination of nature so as to maintain at least a general atmosphere of objectivity, I see that this just isn't possible for most people when the scientific subject is origins - the nature of who and what we are. My background is physics, where this admixture of deeply-held metaphysical beliefs and physical nature seldom arises these days. Of course it has arisen at times in the past, and will no doubt do so in the future as well, but in general terms paradigms in physics are upset fairly regularly - at least generationally - so it's almost expected. Thus unless one is talking non-falsifiable "theories" [such as the current state of Supersymmetry, Strings, Superstrings, quantum gravity, Copenhagen v. Multiverses], metaphysics doesn't enter the equations.
The last great metaphysical debate centered on Steady State v. Big Bang, and it raged for 37 years. The evidence won in the end despite pitched battles and authoritative weight-wielding against it. IOW, the old guys finally died off and the new guys followed the evidence. That debate was heavily invested in metaphysics, and "orthodoxy" insisted for quite awhile that incoming evidence should be hidden or ignored for no other reason than that a beginning for space and time would give "aid and comfort to the [creationist] enemy."
Science needs to figure out if it's about metaphysics or about nature and stick to the game plan as objectively as possible. If science wants to be in the metaphysics business, it's going to have to meet its rivals fairly on the metaphysical playing field without attempts to pretend it's something it's not. If it's not in the metaphysics business, it needs to exercise some in-house authority over the metaphysical corruptions individual scientists and science groupies are exposing it to every day in public, in the press and on the internet. Loudly.
I personally see no reason for science - in physics or biology - to deny evidence of teleological design. I do not consider the idea to be particularly metaphysical, nor do I see that it threatens any useful research avenues. In fact, I think such a paradigm could lead to extremely useful research avenues (some already engaged, below the metaphysical radar and out of the public eye) - thus productive of useful knowledge we could apply. The whole "random" wall around causation in the biological half of the neodarwinian equation is a non-starter - a serious knowledge-killer IMHO. It's time to look beyond the wall and see what there is to see.
My motive is that I think radical neodarwinism stands in the way of productive research and useful knowledge. I think the materialist metaphysic (in defiance of all evidence) is positively harmful to science and to humanity at large. I think there's something to the idea of teleological design, and that qualified scientists should be encouraged to go looking. Were metaphysics not an issue, science could do that instead of wasting valuable time and energy playing metaphysical football with creationists as if neither science nor religion has anything useful to contribute to society.
Comment by Joy — June 28, 2005 @ 3:10 pm
June 28th, 2005 at 5:19 pm
Hi Joy,
Seems to me the tricky thing about the ID debate is that it has implications for both science and metaphysics, and I'm sure you are right that most people have a problem of either seeing the distinction or knowing how to deal with it. I, however, am not all that concerned about striking a strong distinction between the two as long as they are made explicit and a certain amount of discipline applied to the influence of both. I'm not really worried about the effect of metaphysical biases on science, because I feel that great scientists are inherently willing to abandon those biases if argument and data leads them somewhere else. As for "not so great" scientists who can't do that, they will have to be satisfied with mediocrity.
If science is ultimately the search for the causal truth about reality and if forming metaphysical hypotheses is a helpful part of that process, then I say go for it.
Also since you shared your motives, I'll come clean with mine as well. My overarching motive is to discover the truth of things as best I can. If those explorations reasonably dismantle my telic intuitions, I'll abandom them. Since, however, so far they haven't my subsequent motivation is simliar to that of William Dembski here. I've seen too many people have their faith ridiculed and shattered by the pervasive materialist worldview in our culture, particularly in university. It is my belief that the basic intuitions these folks have about the purposefulness and meaningfullness of life grounded in some relational ultimate is not only true but rigorously defensible, rationally and scientifically. There is no need for those folks to feel like second class intellects. Science may play the role as a healthy therapeutic to certain explications of those intutions but that's not only OK but a good thing. Ultimately there are good reasons to honor those intuitions and allow them to blossom in a climate of critical search for the truth.
Comment by Steve Petermann — June 28, 2005 @ 5:19 pm
June 29th, 2005 at 11:44 am
Hi Steve,
You may have a point that I just don't often encounter from people that are actively involved in the debate.
I agree with Joy, and I have the physics.
Comment by island — June 29, 2005 @ 11:44 am
June 29th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
My motive is to vindicate Einstein. Charlatin that I am.
Joy, did you know that General Relativity is significantly weakened if the universe isn't "closest at hand" to the spirit of GR, which defines good reason why Einstein never stopped "believing" that the universe was finite and closed? Freedmann put a serious hurting on Einstein after he abandoned his static model, and it's common knowledge that they beat him up pretty bad in Copenhagen, as well, becuase he still held fast to his "belief" that there is some underlying structure to the closed, finite universe which determines the method to nature's madness.
Comment by island — June 29, 2005 @ 12:28 pm
June 29th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Hi, Island! Einstein has been 'vindicated' in more than a few ways since his death, including on the cosmological constant they're now calling "dark energy" because they don't know what the heck else to call it, and they don't want to be seen 'vindicating' GR.
Einstein's story is a particularly inspirational one in my opinion. Let's face it - a lowly patent examiner couldn't revolutionize science these days despite being extremely clever at maths, physics and engineering. The better to sort the wannabe perpetual motion machines from the "as seen on TV" patentable gadgets. His genius was the Big Picture, an ability to project his mind way out in space and time to bring 'observer status' to spacetime itself.
Yet there's also something to the Small Picture. It draws more attention because it's so darned "mysterious." Have to say I'm inclined to side with GR and Penrose against the stubborn multiversers (seems an incredible fantasy to me) - reality is, For All Practical Purposes [FAPP] real. Without that there's no excuse for science at all.
Ultimate motivations are likely to boil down to metaphysics no matter how you slice it. Everyone experiences life in time as a continuous movement from which we draw "meaning." For Einstein, the metaphysic was there in the very fact that reality is comprehensible to the human mind. He was never comfortable to accept the metaphysic that comprehensibility is entirely an illusory product of mind.
If we are ever to stumble upon something approaching an absolute 'truth' about reality, I figure it'll have borrowed threads from a number of partial, provisional 'truths'. Like Penrose, I think GR is incomplete. I also think RQFT [Relativistic Quantum Field Theory] is incomplete. Both serve well in their domains, but there's a unifying factor still MIA.
The best any "truth-seeker" can do is go looking. That's never really a waste of time, IMO. Motivations can be self-limiting, and they can lead into blind alleys too. Yet even knowledge of what is NOT "truth" serves the quest for "truth" - and mitigates motivations.
I'd like to hear more of your views. Could you post to the new "Something Completely Different" thread? We could do some exploring there of what's not purely topical here.
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2005 @ 2:14 pm
June 29th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
Motivations can fall out of the closest thing to truth that can exist, which would be the most accurate reflection of nature in the least number of steps, aka, the preferred theory.
The metaphysics can be reduced to the clarity of the human interface with nature, since the closest reflection can never be absolutely perfect for this imperfect reason. It can, however, be very near to that, which is why the preferred theory is naturally preferred.
It's "closest at hand"… to nature.
I'll post something in the other thread.
Comment by island — June 29, 2005 @ 2:24 pm