Resisting Science?
by BradfordAn article in USA Today entitled 'Resistance to science' has early roots begins with a pair of psychologists considering this question:
Stem cells, global warming, evolution, vaccination –Â why do some scientific ideas push political and societal hot buttons?
As one of the researchers correctly observes: "To be scientifically educated means you have to pick up a lot of counter-intuitive beliefs," He then goes on to make this attention getter:
One intuition that causes trouble for science is "promiscuous teleology," a natural tendency in children to see a purpose and design in everything, part of normal development in making sense of the world. For this reason, children in studies prefer creationist explanations for animals and people, studies show too.
So, seeing purpose and design is a normal tendency which must be changed. Ever mindful of Francis Crick's admonition that "biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved," TT once engaged in a counter de-programming effort which yielded some results.
The article goes on to state the unsurprising observation that: "An added childhood source of resistance is how we learn to defer to authority," but then it departs from the usual course of development to note that:
Many people who accept that natural selection and evolution are reasonable explanations for where species come from, can't explain the concepts, polls show. This "scientifically credulous subpopulation accepts this information because they trust the people who say it is true," says the review.
This is refreshing in that it is both true and counter to the usual meme that attributes the sheep mentality to other than mainstream believers. It rightly notes that belief, in the absence of an understanding of an underlying scientific explanation, is authority based. Then there is this:
Bloom adds. "We have to understand the idea that supernatural or religious ideas are not the product of stupidity or malice, but are in fact, normal human nature."
Now how did the stupidity or malice supposition get there in the first place?
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Bloom and Weisberg have a review article in this week's issue of Science (subscription required).
A couple of choice excerpts:
"Promiscuous teleology" — now that's a phrase that belongs in every ID critic's vocabulary.
Comment by keiths — May 23, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Bradford:
Um… it got there through repetitive force asserted by scientistic know-it-alls who get their itty feewings hurt if others don't bow down to their claimed 'authority'?
Comment by Joy — May 23, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:51 pm
One additional comment on the belief that the natural tendency "to see a purpose and design in everything" causes trouble for science. The negation of seeing purpose and design is not an empirically grounded axiom. It is philosphical.
Comment by Bradford — May 23, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Oh, so now at least I know what's wrong with me. I've got a psychological problem. And I've got it pretty bad because I've got suspicions and disagreements on all those things he mentions - the safety and efficacy of vaccination, global warming, neoDarwinian evolution, Big Bang cosmology.
The thing about people with psychological problems, if they are severe enough, is that they can be treated and controlled against their will.
Comment by onething — May 23, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:00 pm
There are some basic quirks of the human brain. One such is an overactive tendency to impute agency. Another basic quirk of the brain is an overactive tendency to impute materiality. For instance, when dreaming, hallucinating on alcohol or drugs, suffering from mental illness, seeing a mirage in a desert, or experiencing some other optical illusion, people sometimes imagine there's a physical reality to what they're 'seeing', when in fact there isn't.
I personally would not conclude from these facts that either agency or the physical world is an illusion. But perhaps some folks would. Of course, the truth is that the physical world and agency are both real. Only madmen and the proponents of atrocious arguments imagine otherwise.
To be sure, agency is not an empirical notion even to begin with, so it makes no sense to talk about double-checking for it. No empirical finding ever entails the existence of an agent. But no empirical finding ever entails the existence of matter either. Every experimental test is consistent with, for example, Berkeleyan idealism.
Both 'agency' and 'matter' are thus not empirical hypotheses. But think about that again for one second. What is an empirical observation if not something carried out by a rational agent? What is an act of double-checking if it's not something carried out by a rational agent? What is scientific rationality if it's not a property possessed by, and a normative ideal pursued by, rational agents?
We used to think rational agents called 'scientists' did science, but perhaps to some that's an increasingly quaint notion these days, given the advances in neuroscience. Modern brain imaging technologies are capable of revealing the mechanical correlates in the brain of apparently subjective mental acts. But what examines and interprets these brain images if not rational agents? Why should one, rationally speaking, rely on such technologies if they weren't purposely designed by rational agents?
The incoherence of doing neuroscience or any kind of science while denying the reality of rational agency is profound, since science presupposes such agency engaging in a process of justifying beliefs, not merely having beliefs. And justification is a concept of an irreducibly intentional act aimed at understanding the logical, not physical, relations that obtain between the content of the mental states of rational agents on the one hand, and various mathematical or other scientific propositions on the other. Neither such propositions, nor abstract relations obtaining among them such as logical validity, logical consistency, logical entailment, and other logical modalities, nor mental content itself, reduce to material processes.
For example, the propositions of Bayesian probability theory are often interpreted as prescribing logical rules for belief revision in the light of new evidence. But both the concept of a logical rule and the concept of evidence presuppose that rational understanding is a possible act, and hence presuppose rational agency. They do not presuppose, nor do they reduce to, material processes. And, of course, Godel's celebrated theorems prove that there are mathematical truths that rational agents can construct but which are unprovable by any possible finite mechanical process of computation, which strongly suggests, as Penrose and others have argued, that rational agency cannot be simulated or replaced completely by any purely mechanical procedure.
Comment by stunney — May 23, 2007 @ 2:00 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Well at least I can claim self-consistency"”a prerequisite to being correct. For due to their lack of testability, repeatability, and falsifiability, I would claim that neither ID nor this just-so psycho-babble qualifies as science. Anyone who accepts one of the two as science is, in my opinion, self inconsistent.
More and more I think Rutherford's "it's all physics or stamp collecting" comment was spot on!
Comment by David Heddle — May 23, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Nobody denies that rational agency exists (well, maybe some philosophers do, but no normal person), the only disagreement is about whether it is somehow foundational to the universe (as you (stunney) seem to think) or is an emergent phenomenon that arises out of mindless processes. Does mind precede matter, or matter precede mind? While I am closer to the latter position I feel that neither is quite right, which is why I spend some of my precious time hanging out here.
Another reason: I've had some experiences in my life where the universe seemed to be suffused with purpose, or "promiscuous teleology" which is as good a phrase as any to describe it. These didn't convert me to any religion or philosophy, and they might be easily attributable to some neurological hiccup. Nonetheless, I try to make sense of those experiences, and would even like to recreate them if possible.
Comment by mtraven — May 23, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Am I right to presume you are a physicist.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — May 23, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry, not for physics. Apparently, he was a mere stamp-collector himself.
Comment by Raevmo — May 23, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Sal,
You betcha.
Raevmo,
No, chemistry being a subfield of physics is consistent with his statement!
But I dead hear, not sure if it was apocryphal, that he made some snide comment about that at the NP ceremony.
Comment by David Heddle — May 23, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
David Heddle wrote:
The story I heard was that Rutherford commented that while he had studied the rapid transformation of one element into another via radioactive decay, he had never witnessed a change so rapid as his transmutation from physicist to chemist.
Comment by keiths — May 23, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
David:
I guess biology is a subfield of chemistry then, and hence a subsubfield of physics. If that is the case, who are the stamp-collectors?
Comment by Raevmo — May 23, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I'd put the entire biology department at most universities into that credulous subpopulation.
Comment by mcromer — May 23, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
This is an admirable statement of the reductionist faith.
However it must be kept in mind that no major category of holons has ever been reduced to its component holons.
This goes for reduction of chemistry to physics, reduction of protein folding morphology to chemistry, reduction of cytology to biochemistry, reduction of organ function to cell biology, reduction of organism to organ function, or reduction of society to individual human interaction.
Never once has it been demonstrated that any of these larger wholes can be fully explained by their components.
And so the entire enterprise of reductionistic materialism is a faith-based initiative.
Comment by mcromer — May 23, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:50 pm
From the article:
Yet let's not make the mistake of thinking that ID critics have somehow shed their childhood "promiscuous teleology." Because they remain closed-minded about teleology in nature, I have a hypothesis - the human tendency for "promiscuous teleology" may be repressed in such people and thus seeks an outlet in other areas. Years of experience have provided plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this hypothesis. Most critics, for example, cannot take ID proponents at "face value" but instead hyper-focus on "motivations." And if you think about it, this obsession with motivations is an attempt to "see a purpose and design in everything." Or consider how many ID critics seriously embrace conspiracy theories, often viewing the DI as some giant puppet-master that orchestrates anything and everything related to ID.
Comment by MikeGene — May 23, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Then you must have read Robert Laughlin's "A Different Universe". The author is an advocate of "strong emergence" like you appear to be. One of the examples he gives in his book is the viscosity of water, which has never been deduced from the properties of water molecules. Or has it? There was a very recent paper claiming they actually had done just that. Don't remember the reference though.
Comment by Raevmo — May 23, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
mcromer
True enough.
Those are distinguished, in part, using that old adage that "any discipline with the word science in its name, isn't."
Comment by David Heddle — May 23, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
That's because children haven't been brainwashed by the ateleologists.
When I read garbage like this, I become more and more convinced that we need to abandon the existing institutions of science which appear to be the domain of asperger's spectrum individuals (whether through birth or training) who are simply incapable of perceiving the more holistic and telic threads running through nature.
They mistake the simple thoughts which constitute a scientific model for the depth and richness of the reality in which all thoughts are embedded and the illuminating light of awareness that even allows a thought to be perceived. And then they wonder why the public is so out of touch with "scientific truth".
It is the pathologically conceptualized approach to life that mistakes thinking the word "eagle" for the experience of watching that magnificent being soar across the sky. And then pats itself on the back for knowing the word "eagle" and laughs at everyone else who talks about ineffable nature of the moment.
Blind, deaf and dumb to reality. . .
Comment by mcromer — May 23, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Not yet, although I have it on my "to read" list somewhere. . . My first introduction to anti-reductionism was Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance which I read about in the late 80s. Sheldrake's theory even proposes that these emergent properties "emerge" evolutionarily.
In any event, there has been no reduction of chemistry to the Schrodinger equation, no reduction of protein folding to the chemical attractive forces, no reduction of cell behavior to biochemistry, and no reduction of organism behavior to cellular biology.
Instead, causation appears to flow both directions from the smaller to the larger systems and vice versa.
Comment by mcromer — May 23, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:24 pm
mcromer wrote:
Matthew,
That paragraph says a lot more about your prejudices than it does about scientists.
Comment by keiths — May 23, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:29 pm
But your paradise already exists: in Saudi Arabia they have the same attitude as you. No annoying science institutes full of autistic people who simply can't see what's so obvious to regular folks. No science education because it might destroy the children's natural believe that allahdunnit. What are you waiting for?
Comment by Raevmo — May 23, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Raevmo, where do you get your conceptions of the world? Maybe this is contingent on your definition of science institutes but they do teach science in Saudi Arabia. Lord Rutherford might even say that they teach real science.
Comment by Bradford — May 23, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
i find these comments interesting, especially in contrast to harris' statements of rationality in the nonbelievers in america. as ive said elsewhere, i would say something like MAJORITY of americans are hopelessly irrational, believing whatever they believe merely on the authority of science or the authority of religion. when i "cross the lines" from out of my church community, i find athiests and evolutionists equally as irrational, and equally unable to explain why they believe what they believe.
Comment by dantedanti — May 23, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:25 pm
mtraven wrote:
I agree that the issue is whether mind or matter is ontologically foundational.
I think there's a lot of evidence that the correct answer is mind, and I explain in summary form how abductive reasoning justifies the theistic hypothesis here.
In addition to the normative character of rational agency and the complex of logical modalities that go with it which I alluded to in the post you're replying to, there's the enduring and profound nature of the physical universe's rational intelligibility. How are we to explain this?
Let's assume everyone agrees there can be no informationless stuff, and agrees that information is not completely reducible to any of its material mediums. The theist can still use these facts about information to argue for theism. Briefly stated: it is very plausible that an essential property of all information is that it is intrinsically understandable by a rational mind. So theism has non-arbitrary reasons for not taking matter as the ultimate; but for taking, instead, something intrinsically and necessarily endowed with rational understanding (and, of course, value), as the most plausible candidate for being the Ontologically and Explanatorily Ultimate Thing. Why? Because it's extremely unlikely, if not impossible due to incoherence, that information-bearing matter has the property of 'understandability by rational minds' as one of its intrinsic and essential properties, merely 'by accident' as it were. This idea was notably suggested by Wigner's well known essay, and is basically a variant or component of the generic fine-tuning argument. The universe is not only tuned for life, but also for rational minds actually understanding how the universe works! Both facts are in my view quite compelling to behold, and I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe even that it's a realistic possibility that they are merely the unintended or accidental consequences of meaningless material processes.
We can go on to wonder about the nature of the 'accident'; was it of the 'amazingly lucky coincidence' or 'fluke' kind; or was it an accident of this kind: "Well, it just happens to be the case that the basic nature of the universe/multiverse necessitates the emergent mental properties of matter and hence a fit between matter and matter's emergent mental properties-"”–such as being able to solve Fermat's Last Theorem or to discover quarks"”-is to be, um, er, ummm, expected; but, um, the universe/multiverse necessitates this fact in a wholly non-conscious, non-purposeful, unintentional, and essentially meaningless way""¦"¦.
Yeah, that kind of, ahem, 'necessary accident'"¦
There are other things that don't look right with the magicmatterdidit hypothesis. For instance, and of rather central interest to this blog, how could unintentional physical states, states of the world devoid of all mental content, originate symbolic conventions?
Then there's the hard problem of consciousness.
Over at dangerous idea this appeared today, and it tackles materialism head on with respect to that question:
If consciousness is a problem for materialism because it seems incapable of being a component of a complete, objective, but purely physical description of the universe, then it's got an even bigger problem accounting for the apparently objective nature moral value, in my view.
Somebody called Alex made this comment over on a different thread at dangerous idea on the relation between theism/atheism and ethics:
My comment there was this:
I also posted a longer comment on the same topic, which explains why I don't think materialism is coherent with our moral experience.
Comment by stunney — May 23, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Sorry, I can't give you sources off the top of my head, but less than 0.1% of GDP is spent on research in SA. Don't forget, this is the country where they prefer to let girls burn to death rather than leave a burning school dressed inappropriately.
Comment by Raevmo — May 23, 2007 @ 6:32 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
dantedanti wrote:
Has Harris stated that nonbelievers are automatically rational? If he has, I'd be interested (and surprised), because I would certainly disagree with such a statement. Do you have a quote?
Comment by keiths — May 23, 2007 @ 6:46 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Why is that very plausible? And what do you mean by "understandable" Whatever happened to the creator's mysterious ways?
Comment by Raevmo — May 23, 2007 @ 6:54 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm
keiths, part of what I think dantedanti is getting at is that religion doesn't seem to be the catalyst for irrationality. People are irrational regardless of whether or not they are religious, and so religion becomes nothing more than a convenient excuse.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 23, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Hi CC,
But religion is a catalyst for irrationality in many cases.
For example, I've known engineers who were perfectly rational when discussing technical topics, but would turn around and argue vociferously that Muhammad flew to heaven on the back of a winged horse named Burak.
I could give you similar examples from many faiths.
It's religion that is causing the irrationality in these cases.
Comment by keiths — May 23, 2007 @ 7:37 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:49 pm
How do you know that religion is the cause? Shoot me a process by which one could accurately determine source of irrationality.
Consequently, this reminds me of my days in the physics classroom where the teacher made some kids' heads spin by showing the mathematical proof that 0.999…=1. Several flat out refused to believe it. I personally blame it on repeating decimals.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 23, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Briefly stated: it is very plausible that an essential property of all information is that it is intrinsically understandable by a rational mind.
That's not too difficult Raevmo. Information is represented by symbolic notation and the correlation between symbolic notation and that which is represented by it is made by an intellect. Logical associations. They are used on IQ tests.
Comment by Bradford — May 23, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Hmmm. Then why won't they (and you for that matter) read material that challenges reductionist materialism? I offered several times to send you a chapter from an expensive academic textbook that I own, free of charge, so you could evaluate the evidence for yourself. You never responded to any of those offers (unless there was some problem with my email delivery). The only conclusion I could come to was that you are irrationally avoiding evidence that your belief system is wrong, and that you are not serious about discovering the truth, because you are quite sure you already own it.
What is it that causes the irrationality of many scientists and materialists who dismiss mountains of evidence against the materialist hypothesis without even reading it? What causes the irrationality of scientists who rail against belief in psi phenomena as "superstition" when they will not read the documented evidence for it? What causes the irrationality of postulating belief in a "real" material world when the experimental results of quantum mechanics keep telling us that the quantum world cannot be locally real? Why are materialists not willing to consider idealism as an alternative that does not suffer the infinite quagmire of the hard problem of consciousness?
It's far more fun to pick on the silliness of literalist religious belief than face your own lacunae, isn't it.
Comment by mcromer — May 23, 2007 @ 8:57 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 1:22 am
It is difficult if not impossible to do science without the supposition that there is a real world. Quantum phenomenon are no less real than any other, since they can be confirmed by experiment.
I'm not sure why you think that materialists are in a quagmire, since materialist science has been advancing nicely while psi, superstition, ID, and philosophical idealism have not advanced at all — unsuprising, since they have no method for doing so. Well, actually, you may have a point — consciousness is a quagmire for materialism, and most scientists are careful to stay out of the tarpit. The few that enter tend to get bogged down.
It is an open question whether this is because of an inherent limitation in science, or because consciousness is a concept like epicycles, phlogiston, or ether — that is, an attempt at explanation which just doesn't work very well and will eventually be replaced by something better.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 1:22 am
May 24th, 2007 at 1:27 am
cc kind of got what i was getting at…..
however, what i may mean to say is that harris, as noted, suggests that religion is a catalyst for irrationalism, that it encourages irrationalism. indirectly i read that he is also saying that science is a catalyst for rationality (and i may be able to provide you a direct quote if you press me, though im lazy, so please dont)…
problem i have with this, is that i know many athiests, and i have yet to meet one that believes in evolution or athiesm rationally, but merely through appeals to Science, and a science they dont understand in the slightlest. the same is true of many believers, irrational about their religion, as well as many other things in their lives.
point is, from my empirical experiences, i find the religious people i know (for the most part) to indulge in "wishfull thinking" the majority of the time, as well as i find those athiests i know who are hard bent on science.
do i give a shit about science? not in the least, i dont understand it, and i dont try to. it is not much interest to me how it works, other than methodologically, philosophically, and practically (like i get an ipod). i simply find that americans indulge most of their time in irrationality and "wishful thinking, add dogma in there too, no matter which side of the fence they are from (or fence sitting for that matter): athiests, christians, evolutionists, creationists, etc, etc, etc, no matter which issue, belief, goal, situation it is they are talking about. i find that science has not taught americans of any background to be any more rational. harris disagrees: its science that pushes reason and religion that pushes irrationality. people exposed to science are no more rational than anyone else, they are equally irrational from all my experience in the usa: "they taught me evolution in school, and i get an ipod. thank my dick for science"
how do we know that its Religion that is the cause of irrationality? and how do we know that Science isnt doing anything more than wrapping itself in the flag of reason, in a way that every company in america wrapped itself in the american flag after 911 (which sold a ton of shit)?
science hasnt made anyone in america anymore rational in the past however many years…at least no american i have met.
on equal note: harris, wrapped in the flag of reason, as well as anyone else has yet to provide me their evidence and nondogmatic arguement that dogma can never be good, that i should care about civlization working, that civlization wouldnt keep working if we were all dogmatic as hell. a close athiest friend of mine who is working toward his phd in philosophy and science could only say when asked these questions, "hitler is the evidence".thanks. great point.
Comment by dantedanti — May 24, 2007 @ 1:27 am
May 24th, 2007 at 2:37 am
Reason can't be measured or otherwise quantitatively assessed. Its rules, principles, and norms are not physically detectable objects. The same may be said of Value.
Science in practice can often cause people to be dreadfully irrational, because an a priori commitment to methodological naturalism can make them a) unable to see the wood for the trees, that is, unable to see the limitations that necessarily attach to observability if held as the defining criterion of rational belief; and b) unable to understand value as such.
The 20th century was the most scientific of all to date. It was also the bloodiest, and most polluted.
Some folks revel in the slogan, 'Science is as science does'. Well, what science does includes figuring out how to make better cluster bombs, gas chambers, and generally sucking insatiably at the tit of the military-industrial complex, producing orgies of irrationality in Vietnam, Iraq, etc, and in the mindless consumer culture that ignores the environmental damage, exploitation, and colossal waste that goes with it.
How do you like them apples?
Oh, you don't approve of all that? Why?
Did science tell you why? Or was it something else, such as moral conscience, about whose existence and meaning science conveniently claims to be either agnostic or skeptical, or, in its boldest incarnations, suggests is illusory or non-existent?
Comment by stunney — May 24, 2007 @ 2:37 am
May 24th, 2007 at 2:53 am
stunney wrote:
stunney,
You've let yourself get out of touch with contemporary science. Far from ignoring morality, science is hotly engaged in explaining its origins, with a great deal of success so far.
Comment by keiths — May 24, 2007 @ 2:53 am
May 24th, 2007 at 6:15 am
Raevmo wrote:
Long ago Plato saw that mathematical information is fundamental to reality and essentially correlative to mind.
More generally, information must be communicable in principle to something having mental states. If it isn't communicable even in principle, it just isn't information. And what renders it communicable in practice is the intrinsically mental phenomenon of language in its broadest sense, the sense that includes mathematical, programming, code, and ordinary human languages, and perhaps the Language of Thought, and perhaps quasi-languages among certain animal species.
What do you mean by 'mean'?
By 'understandable' I mean communicable via language (in the broad sense) to a subject capable of having the relevant mental states.
They're called quantum mechanics.
Let me repeat: long ago Plato saw that mathematical information is fundamental to reality and essentially correlative to mind.
Comment by stunney — May 24, 2007 @ 6:15 am
May 24th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Science is descriptive, morality is prescriptive.
Goodness cannot be reduced to or defined in terms of Something Else. As G. E. Moore famously put it, "Goodness is a simple, undefinable, non-natural property." It's not something amenable to testing in laboratory experiments or logically derivable from even a complete physical description of the world.
I agree with Moore on that point.
And always beware too of that Achilles Heel of 'brightism'—its penchant for committing the genetic fallacy.
Comment by stunney — May 24, 2007 @ 7:48 am
May 24th, 2007 at 9:21 am
It seems like there is more than a genetic fallacy here. Even after acknowledging the hard problem of consciousness, the materialists go on to ignore it in their "explanations". Isn't the problem of moral values a subset of the problem of qualia? How then can it be explained by science?
We need to invent a new fallacy here. Maybe we could call it the fallacy of not minding the [explanatory] gap.
Comment by Brian Killian — May 24, 2007 @ 9:21 am
May 24th, 2007 at 9:45 am
stunney invokes the idea of the "genetic fallacy" without explaining how it applies to materialism. I think it's he who is committing that error, by refusing to believe that mind can arise from the non-mental material world. That is, a materialist doesn't think that mental phenomena are any less wonderful because they arise from material brains. It's stunney who thinks that mind has to have some independent origin, who believes that a material genetic story for mind is somehow inadequate. Science, strictly speaking, doesn't make any value judgements at all, but underlying the anti-science view is the idea that mind is so wonderful that it can't have arisen from matter. That is an example of the genetic fallacy applied backwards, to go from a value judgment to a conclusion about origins. But it's just as false as the forward version.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 9:45 am
May 24th, 2007 at 9:55 am
dante, I have to say that I like your candor, even though you're tad bit rougher with your language than I would be.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 24, 2007 @ 9:55 am
May 24th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Brian Killian wrote:
I think the problem of moral values in the first instance is really a subset of the problem of intentionality rather than of the qualia problem. That is, it starts with certain beliefs and thoughts and desires—propositional attitudes—-regarding one's own inter-human conduct. I think you have to start with beliefs about right and wrong to be a moral agent. If you have no moral beliefs, I don't see how one can be deemed a moral agent at all, even though one might still have lots of feelings relation to inter-human conduct.
Qualia may certainly include moral sentiments, but lacking any moral beliefs would, in my view, prevent sentiments from attaining the status of being moral sentiments.
But since materialism can't handle intentionality either in my opinion, I don't even need to invoke qualia. How can piece of matter be about another piece; how can a piece of matter be about the proposition that torture is evil; how can a piece of matter be true or justifed or irrational or incorrect or logically inconsistent, etc?
I like it.:smile:
Comment by stunney — May 24, 2007 @ 10:33 am
May 24th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I'm still bowled over by stunney's claim that "it is very plausible that an essential property of all information is that it is intrinsically understandable by a rational mind," given that this isn't a definition of information I've ever heard in any sort of rigorous context. What do you mean by "intrinsically understandable" I'd wager you a few bucks that if I uuencode and rot13 a JPEG and send it to you without explaining what it is, you won't be able to understand it, no matter how long you squint. But I suppose you mean given any accessory information necessary to decode it, or something like that, so I'll leave out pathological cases like the above; I think we'd agree that a book contains information even if it's in a language that you can't read. (By your definition, does it still contain information if no one can read it? Does the Voynich manuscript contain information?)
Here, a thought experiment, nicked from a CS lecture of some years past. Consider a b-bit message A; it can be a poem, an encoded image, or whatever–something you understand. Now generate b random bits; call it B. (According to Shannon theory, this constitutes b bits of information, but we're not going by that.) According to you, these random bits, because they contain no message, contain no information. Now, compute the exclusive-or (XOR) of the two strings, and call it C. This has a few properties: namely, B and C are indistinguishable from each other, and each is indistinguishable from random garbage. Given one, you can't extract a single bit of A.
Here's the thing, though; computing B XOR C gives you back A in its entirety. Neither B nor C, individually, contains information, according to you. But if you combine them, they do. So your theory states that we can get information from nothing. That's kind of weird, isn't it? It's not a very rigorous theory of information you have; it seems more like hand-waving and "I know it when I see it".
Comment by grendelkhan — May 24, 2007 @ 10:59 am
May 24th, 2007 at 11:37 am
I said "real material world", not "real world".
Clearly there is a real world that we can observe. Quantum mechanics makes it quite clear that the observable world is not like anything we could term "material".
Of course reductionist science has succeeded in certain areas, but in other areas reductionism has failed completely to make any progress.
100+ years of failure to suggest an explanation for personal memory, despite billions of dollars spent and tens of thousands of animals sacrificed. We can break the brain system for accessing new memories, but that's it. No trace of the where these memories are supposed to be "stored" in the brain.
60+ years of failure to accomplish computational AI, despite billions of dollars spent and every five years a new promise of "AI, ten years out". Reminds me of the Millenial Christians who keep promising a date for Jesus to fly down on clouds, and then push it back when the return doesn't happen.
100+ years of failure to accomplish any theory whatsoever of subjectivity, which is literally everything and the only thing we can ever know for certain. We only gain access to the hypothesized model of an objective world through our subjective thoughts, sense perceptions, and emotions. The idealists state that this is because the objective world is itself built out of mind-stuff — a proposition drawing enormous support from the findings of quantum mechanics.
No plausible mechanism for protein folding
No plausible mechanism for epigenesis
No plausible mechanism for wound healing
No plausible mechanism for psi phenomena
The list goes on and on and on for the areas where reductionistic mechanism has failed to make any relevant process towards understanding holistic features of the universe.
Psi research has advanced enormously. Psi research has moved from boring activities like guessing Zener cards to more engaging experiments like the Ganzfeld. The most recent approach has been an emphasis on observing psi "in the field" through research such as testing telephone telepathy, rather than trying to find psi in artifical tasks unrelated to the natural history of psi. Your statement displays an absolute lack of familiarity with the research. There is now a good, testable theory for psi and holism — Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis of morphogenetic fields. I am curious what advances in the philosophy of materialism you feel are lacking in the philosophy of idealism.
Consciousness is not a "concept". Consciousness is a word labelling the reality that you perceive concepts, sensations, and emotions. It is the central fact of existence — that for something to be, it must be perceived. A world without consciousness cannot be distinguished from a world that does not exist.
What is much more like "epicycles" is the mechanistic interpretation of consciousness and avoidance of obvious holistic properties like epigenesis, healing, regulation, the effect of intention on the physical body, placebo effect, sickness and death caused by beliefs. Somehow all these aspects of large-scale function are supposed to all be controlled by tiny little micromachines built out of atoms that create a convincing illusion of holism.
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 11:37 am
May 24th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
There's no plausible mechanism for wound healing?
mcromer, please explain the difference between the "real material world" and the "real world"; specifically, explain the evidence for phenomena which are nonmaterial.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 24, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I read a descriptive process there, not a mechanism. Naming some of the chemicals released in the process is not the same as describing a detailed mechanism.
This is equivalent to those who believe the existence of chemical morphogens somehow explains morphogenesis, or how the existence of variant neurotransmitter receptor protein sequences in DNA somehow explains behavior.
Listing a few important reductionistic facts does not constitute a reductionistic account. Causation involves both reductionistic and holistic aspects.
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Let's grant that Sheldrake has found some evidence for telepathy. He did find some hard to explain statistically significant results that might be called telepathy (has anyone ever reproduced Sheldrake's results?) What is Sheldrake's mechanistic explanation for it, if any? And is it somehow "non-material" (whatever that means)? Just curious.
Comment by Raevmo — May 24, 2007 @ 1:07 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
mcromer:
I don't understand. The article I linked to is hardly a list of chemicals found in a wound at various points in the process; there are sets of reactions, from clotting to angiogenesis and so forth, each triggered in an understood way by previous events. For instance, blood clotting starts when the platelets in the blood are exposed to collagen. What part of this isn't a mechanism?
Comment by grendelkhan — May 24, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Grendelkhan,
Angiogenesis is not a chemical reaction. It is a morphogenetic process that involves coordinated cellular behavior and epigenetic processes. The presence of a signalling protein does not magically explain any of the rest of the process.
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
mcromer: I don't get what you mean by "not a chemical reaction"; is there some part of the process which doesn't involve a chemical reaction? Where does it say that a signalling protein "magically explains" the rest of the process?
Comment by grendelkhan — May 24, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Sure. Dozens of researchers have reproduced his results, including studies of telephone telepathy, staring detection, and dogs who know when their owner is coming home. And additional replications are ongoing.
Sheldrake does not offer a "mechanistic" explanation but rather a holistic one. I'll let him speak for himself.
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Where do you go from "a chemical reaction" to cells moving to the correct locations, dividing, differentiating into different tissue layers, creating three dimensional structures?
How does the presence of any particular chemical cause the epithelial cells to create new epigenetic structures in the wound area? Describe the reductionistic molecular machines that do this.
Of course there are chemical reactions going on. No one disputes that. But I am interested in how the presence of some chemical reactions, in and of themselves, results in the holistic process of angiogenesis?
When we see large-scale organization in nature, for example the rings of Saturn, solar flares, the circular shapes of orbits and spheres of planets, and the like, usually it is because fields are acting non-locally and holistically to influence the structures that emerge, not because the contact mechanics of little molecular machines. Particularly given the ability to regulate and heal, properties utterly beyond our reductionistic engineering, it seems increasingly likely that holistic properties are influencing biological systems in addition to the reductionistic aspects of biology.
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 4:13 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff. Did you try yourself one of those online telepathy tests, and if so how did it work out for you? I myself have never experienced telepathy as far as I can tell, but I sure would like to. Now, it seems to me that the telepathy detected so far is of a rather weak kind. Nobody seems to be able to actually use telepathy as a reliable means of communication. Why not? If there were a genetic predisposition to be better at telepathy, I would imagine that it would offer a substantial selective benefit, and by now we should be real good at it. So perhaps there is no genetic basis. Are there any ideas around on how to make more efficient use of morphogenetic fields, so that it might some day be useful in everyday life?
Comment by Raevmo — May 24, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
mcromer, are you saying that the article doesn't describe what you're asking for? Angiogenic growth factors activate receptors on endothelial cells, which release proteases that break down their surroundings and allow cells to escape and form sprouts and at this point I'm just quoting the article.
You keep using words like "reductionistic" and "holistic", but I don't think they mean what you think they mean. They're two different ways of looking at a system, but a system which displays emergent behavior doesn't require the sort of nonmaterialist woo that you seem to be so fond of; it just means it has to be looked at in a different way. You don't need anything nonmaterial to understand how air transmits sound, or how birds flock, but the behaviors are not apparent from looking at individual components (molecules, birds) of these systems.
You also equate materialistic and reductionistic science (mtraven said "materialist science" and you rephrased it as "reductionist science"), when the words mean something different. Flocking behavior, for instance, is well understood in entirely materialistic terms, and yet is, as pointed out above, does not lend itself to reductionism.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 24, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
me:
mcromer:
You can term it anything you like, but quantum mechanics is not supernatural, and both quantum phenomena and classical phenomenon are part of the natural world, which is the same as the material world, at least as I and most people use the term. I can't figure out what kind of distinction you are trying to make. Sheldrake's work is crap, as far as I can tell, but even he takes pains to note that his "morphic fields" are part of the natural world, rather than something supernatural.
me:
mcromer:
If you are doing science (or philosophy), then of course consciousness is a concept. Your subjective reality is real, but the terms you (or someone else) use to describe it are concepts that can capture it, generally imperfectly. My opinion is that "consciousness" is a very coarse and misleading term. Which is not to say it doesn't point to something real, but it doesn't point in a way that helps us understand what it is.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
mtraven wrote:
Please quote me at the bit where you think I commit the genetic fallacy.
Remember, I don't believe moral beliefs are unjustified or unreasonable or illusory or false because of morality's origins, any more than I think perceptual beliefs are because of perception's origins. Au contraire. I think both types of belief rest on our cognitive apparatus and that when functioning as it was designed by God to function, that apparatus will generally or normally yield justified beliefs.
By contrast, the attacks on the idea that morality is objective have all come from staunch atheists such as Mackie and Ayer, as well as sundry evolutionary sociobiologists.
Comment by stunney — May 24, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
Please quote me in support of your ludicrous assertion.
According to me, er, where, exactly, smart boy? You're waving your hands as you flail around trying to construct a strawman that is so unrigorous that you don't even quote anything I've said. I can't decide if the sight is more pathetic than hilarious, or vice-versa.
My theory doesn't state any such thing. Are you drunk, or something?
If you're going to drink kool-aid and blow smoke at the same time, it might be a good idea to open the windows. You might end up intellectually asphyxiating yourself in a farrago of fabrications otherwise.
Comment by stunney — May 24, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
The shape of orbits requires holism to explain? That's a new one, considering there have been mechanistic explanations of that sort of thing for a few centuries. Or by "fields acting non-locally" do you mean gravity? Gravity may be nonlocal but it isn't magical, and there's nothing holistic about it. Gravity is just as mechanical as the little molecular machines.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 6:02 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
No direct quote, stunney, but your general argument seems to be that matter is dumb, we are smart (conscious), and that you don't believe smart stuff can arise from dumb stuff. That contains the kernel of the genetic fallacy, or its contrapositive. Your reasoning seems to be: if we arose from matter then we would be dumb, like matter, but we aren't, hence we didn't arise from matter but from the Big Immaterial Spirit. I, on the other hand, do not think our material origins impugns the quality of our minds.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I never use the word "supernatural".
What exactly is "crap" about Sheldrake's work? I'm all ears.
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Yes, of course.
Of course it isn't "magical". I never claimed it was. I was using "magic" to refer to the supposition that biological epigenesis was the result of chemical reactions by themselves.
That is hardly the case. Gravity can be modelled a holistic field property or (alternately) modeled as a holistic distortion of spacetime. It appears as if every apparently separate part of the universe interacting with every other apparently separate part. What our measurements actually tell us is that gravity causes our macro-scale measurements to show the appearance of separate parts with properties that all influence each other according to Einstein's equations of special relativity, but at the microscale this notion of separate parts is absolutely and undeniably shown to be false.
The universe is an undivisible and inseparable oneness, but a oneness which takes on an appearance of separateness, space and time. But space and time are only perceptible in terms of relationships between apparently separate parts of the universe, and entanglement (and also the big bang theory) proves that the separateness is not fundamental. Since space and time are only measurable in terms of properties of the separate particles in relation to one another, and the apparently separate particles are absolutely demonstrated not to be separate in reality, there is no evidence for an independent existence for space and time either. So we are left with a measurable universe that is undeniably a unity, with space and time as derivable properties of that unity. That is a pretty amazing fact, and one completely at odds with standard notions of materialism.
This is not a fuzzy-headed speculation. This is the fundamental reality shown by the experimental findings of quantum mechanics. Anyone who argues against the fundamental unity of the observable universe is arguing against the findings of quantum mechanics. Anyone who argues for a universe that is not a fundamental indivisible whole is himself fuzzy-headed, because he is denying the experimental results of quantum mechanics.
I don't even know how to respond to begin to respond to this assertion. It is precisely backwards. Gravity and the other forces of physics are clearly and obviously holistic, given that they connect every (apparent) separate particle in the universe with influence on every other (apparent) separate particle.
Quantum mechanics and entanglement make it absolutely undeniable — there ARE no separate physical particles. It is impossible for separate physical particles to account for the experimental results of quantum mechanics. That notion is dead, gone, buried, absolutely kaput except in the imaginations of some materialists unwilling to face what quantum mechanics has proven with every experiment.
This is all amazing, but undeniably true.
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 9:01 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Sheldrake's work is crap, as far as I can tell, because as a theory it is entirely unconnected to any actual science. He invented a term, "morphic resonance", that is supposed to explain a wide variety of disparate phenomenon. This is pure crackpottery, since morphic resonance as a concept is entirely unconncected to known physical science. Whether the experiments he runs for things like staring and telepathy are valid or not, I have no idea. But if they are valid science, then the explanation for the phenomena are likely to be found in known theoretical frameworks and not some sort of arbitrary magic.
Since Sheldrake is so far out in left field and disconnected from mainstream science, there are only two possibilities: either he is a pseudoscientific crank, or he is some kind of misunderstood genius who will eventually revolutionize science once his ideas are accepted. I acknowledge that there is a possibility that the latter is the case, but it seems to me the odds are very very small.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Materialists believe in the fundamental unity of the universe — it's all just one big wave equation. So what? The problem is, in order to say anything intelligent about the universe, or even perceive it at all, you have to break it up into pieces. So, to use a form of argument you were using earlier, for practical purposes the only observable universe is one made out of separate pieces.
I really can't figure out what you think you are arguing for or against. Every physicist knows the stuff you are saying, but for the most part they don't think that it implies some sort of magic holism, or intelligent design, or any other form of woo. Some do, to be sure. But at its base quantum physics is just as mechanical (that is, it's a system of mathematical laws that describes the evolution and structure of the universe) as any other kind of physics.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
I am very happy to hear you hear this.
Let me repeat the key line:
Yes. Excellent clarity of thought there. You would not believe the amount of equivocation I hear on this.
And since you have said this without any weasel words or muddle, I suspect you also will understand the other half of the reality without much argument. To wit:
All we have access to is our subjective reality. All thoughts, emotions, and sensations appear within that subjective reality. This INCLUDES the thoughts that constitute notions of objectivity, of an independent objective reality, of a physical reality. All of those notions may well be true and correct, but we still do not have direct access to them. All we have, all any of us have, is our consciousness or, in other words, our subjectivity. And even the staunchest rationalist is in that same boat too — his or her subjectivity may be a true and correct mental model called "objectivity" but it is built out of subjective experience just like everyone else's world.
Did I state that clearly enough? Do you agree with it?
Also, I would like to send you some dead-tree (printed) reading material. You are an obviously smart and curious individual and I think you will find it intriguing. If you email me at mcromer at blast dot com and give me a postal address or a PO box I'll make the photocopies and send them to you.
It's fascinating reading, I promise, and I think you will be impressed with it. It's an extract from the academic imprint Irreducible Mind. And Keiths the offer is still open to you as well — I did make the offer to you because I was impressed with your posts here. And anyone else, whether materialist or not, I will send out a copy to the first five people who request it free of charge who drop me an email in addition to keiths and mtraven. OK, if you live overseas I might need you to cover the postage. . .
Comment by mcromer — May 24, 2007 @ 9:27 pm
May 24th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Yes and no. I don't think we have "direct access" to anything, including our own subjective experiences. Our consciousness and subjective experience is an ongoing realtime construct. Objectivity is also a construct, as you suggest above, and science is basically just a very good technique for achieving a certain kind of viewpoint, one that transcends immediate personal experience (gaining certain kinds of representational power in the process, and losing others). But they are both constructs. There isn't any such thing as direct, unmediated experience.
Comment by mtraven — May 24, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
May 25th, 2007 at 12:48 am
That is going far beyond what the data of quantum mechanics tells us.
What the data tells us is that the quantum wave equations will generate probabilities that match the probabilities of our measurements of quantum systems. The data also tells us that naive physicalism is completely wrong, because it will not match our measurements.
In the same way, general relativity provides equations that allow us to predict measurements taken at relativistic speeds.
So we have matched what physics says about the universe precisely with what mystics say about the nature of the universe. That the apparently diverse phenomena are simply manifestations of an absolute underlying unity and oneness, whether you choose to call that oneness God, Consciousness, the absolute Self, or the universal wave equation.
They look like pieces for a while (consider physics before quantum mechanics) but eventually it is seen that all the pieces are actually manifestations of a Unity.
The same thing happens with personal consciousness. It appears to be a separate self in a world of separate selves, but through self examination it is eventually seen to be one with everything. Mystics of all religions and no religions have stated this. I'm partial to Albert Einstein's formulation:
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The observation of the behavior of the separate pieces makes it eventually clear that they are not really separate after all. That's pretty damn profound.
An exploration of your own consciousness eventually shows the exact same thing - you are one with the universe. Thus mysticism lies at the core of most religious traditions, although usually heavily distorted over time as institutional power-seeking and control-mentality takes over. A very interesting thing that exploration of the inner universe and the outer universe points at exactly the same truth. Even atheist skeptics like Sam Harris and Susan Blackmore who have practiced consciousness exploration say the same thing - the separate self that you think of as you is an illusion.
There is nothing "magic" about holism. It is simply an observable aspect of the universe. We look at chemistry and see brute observables which cannot be deduced from physics. We look at cell behavior and processes and see brute observables which cannot be deduced from chemistry. And on up. Sure, the reductionists insist that there are no new factors involved, and that what looks like evolving field behavior (ie: epigenesis