AW! Epistles
From Karl 6
Abstract
Sunday, 26 June 2005
“The scientists hope their alethic knowledge will converge on to epistemic knowledge, even if it is only at the asymptote, and, since physical theories perfected from studies of machines often explain perfectly well the working of Nature, it is subject to testing in that some fracture between the mechanical device-based theories and Nature will become apparent.”
Karl: The scientist may well hope that such a convergence will occur, but whether that hope will be rewarded is another question. And, as I have argued, if the criteria for testing are restricted to the explanation, prediction, and reproduction of machine performances then there is no possibility of showing any discrepancy between physical theory and ‘the workings of Nature’ , except in cases where there is discrepancies between particular theories and particular machine performances. Hence ‘mechanical realism’ cannot be tested itself—it is the metaphysics which defines what constitutes a scientific test and therefore cannot test itself. Only specific theories and techniques can be tested by using such a test.
It would not do to have the hypothesis of mechanical realism testable, otherwise it would be scientific. But the observational sciences do overlap, as you admit above, and we are back to the seamlessness of the overlap we have touched on earlier. You imply that these observational sciences become mechanically realist when they overlap, but an overlap without an obvious scar or fracture is most reasonably explained by the mechanics being a fair representation of Nature itself. Since mechanical realism has no testable consequences, I cannot see any incentive for anyone to stop believing it is revealing the workings of Nature, as science does at present. If science is what it thinks it is, then periodically, it will reach a fracture zone where it cannot represent Nature adequately. The paradigm has to change, but eventually we shall perhaps not be able to go any further empirically. Philosophy then will resume its supremacy. We might be getting there. Much of cosmology seems to be speculation, and maybe quantum physics is getting to its limits too. Mechanical realism will always be true, being untestable!
“Scientific method is a systematization of common sense and general practice.”
Okay. But this says more than the scientific method is that of ‘trial and error’ as you first said. The question is how should common sense and general practice be systematically organised? What does systematic mean in this context?
Well, you say it is more than trial and error, but I was using them as synonyms for it. Common sense and general practice have been arrived at by trial and error, and eventually notably a few hundred years ago, it was systematized into the scientific method.
“It is the realization of how we do things and the refinement of it into a method.”
Again, the question is: How?
Well, you have said that history was one of your early passions and it is by burrowing in the hsitory of science that you have made your discoveries. Saying how might be the real value of what you have explored. Instead of seeing mechanical realism as a Chinese wall against science, if you saw it as a stepping stone in the evolution of science, something constructive might come of it. Otherwise it will stand as a speculative and untestable beef.
“All of the things you cite have been examined in the unrefined way based on trial and error, and the best solutions written down to become manuals of cookery, fly fishing, seduction, and so on. The manuals are catalogues of results yielded by unsystematized common sense applied to these various crafts. The appreciation that problems in these fields can be approached systematically to yield results more quickly than random guesses and trials leads to the scientific method.”
But this, of course, as I argue in my book, makes the scientific method more about the acquisition of techne than episteme.
And I have been accepting that you seem to have something in what you say, but you bring us back to the question of definitions, fitting square objects into round holes, and seams. A human can keep the weather off by living in a cave, or by building a mud hut, or by building a concrete and glass skyscraper. The latter two are manufactured machines to live in. A cave only differs in not being manufactured. Machinery blends with the natural and techne becomes episteme.
“Though you are pooh-poohing it here, this seems to me to be what you have been saying.”
Pooh-poohing what?
That scientific method is a systematization of trial and error.
“The history of the scientific method would involve what you say about the techniques, because when it is used in different situations different techniques are used to get the result. What I said was that the techniques are not the method, or different methods, and that is because the method is, in each case, whatever technique is used, systematically trying solutions and systematically recording what the outcome is until some guess (hypothesis) is verified. That is trial and error.”
But the problem is how do we know whether we have been sufficiently or correctly systematic?
Maybe we do not, but if it causes an inadequate conclusion to be drawn, subsequent attempts to use that hypothesis will eventually fail and require a re-think. Science is built on previous science, and when some course of bricks in the construction proves to be faulty, the subsequent courses become askew or will not bear any further load. That presumably requires a paradigm shift in Kuhn’ s way of thinking. As you said, its truth status is ultimately deferred to some future state of completion, a brilliant expression of the fact that science can never be complete.
“Regarding my being asleep for the whole of my life, I read nothing in what you wrote in support of this idea that refutes what Popper proposed. None of the examinations of details, assumptions or alternatives have shown that the hypothetico-deductive method is itself false.”
Well, actually, Popper’ s method has been widely criticised and discredited by historians and philosophers of science for at least the last twenty years. Putting aside that working scientists do not actually spend very much time falsifying theories (and hence are doing something else apart from Popper’ s method), there in the problem of ancillary (or auxiliary) hypotheses. This is the killer for Popper’ s method (even Popper became aware of this vital flaw and, in his later, work focussed on the way that falsification captured the spirit of science rather than its method). In brief, the problem is that when formulating a theoretical hypothesis one needs to make all sorts of assumptions, and when designing the test one needs to make all sorts of assumptions too. The problem is when the theory fails the test then one cannot know whether it was an assumption made in the theory or an assumption made in the test that was false. The need for futher testing only exacerbates the problem by requiring futher assumptions. Hence one cannot logically falsify any theory on the basis of any test. It is an matter of intuition and social consensus. Moreover, Popper also inductively assumed that a theory falsified today in one or more experiments will be false tomorrow. Whilst most of us can accept this assumption, it was exactly the kind of assumption which Popper did not allow people to use to verify a theory. One cannot logically verify the falsification.
It is a theological belief that any novel criticism equals refutation. I say this because of the circular dynamics of theological speculation in which the same ground is revisited in an endless cycle as the fashion determines. A new criticism is taken to refute an old view not because it actually refutes it, because theology cannot be refuted but because it creates a fashion for the new view. Actually, because the old view is not refuted, the word used of it is discredited, an all together easier thing to claim. Popper is criticized, supposedly discredited but so far not refuted. I also dispute what you say about working scientists not spending their time falsifying theories. That is what they are always doing. Even if they spend a lifetime building a supercollider or merely collecting data, it was most likely done to falsify false hypotheses quite consciously, and, if not, that is what the data will be used for. I cannot believe that you, along with hacks, many Christians and scientific detractors generally, think that science must falsify the theories it holds to be true for them to be scientific theories. That was not Popper’ s idea. The point is that the hypothesis must be falsifiable, thereby dismissing from science religions, psychiatric schools and political ideologies. Science is constantly making observations to test ideas, and no test can be a test if it can always be passed. So, every time some scientific hypothesis is verified by a test that could have been failed, the scientist is trying to falsify the hypothesis. As for Popper allowing this or not allowing that, he is a philosopher of science not a legislator of it. He is trying to work out how it works at its best and from that perhaps suggesting what is best practice, but he has no authority to forbid any scientist from doing something. In fact, Popper was dissatisfied with the notion that experiments verified hypotheses because failures of some theories like Christianity, Freudianism, and Marxism could always be explained away by the theory. Verification was only valid so long as any experiment had refutation of the hypothesis as a possible outcome. It ensured it was scientific and not pseudoscience or scientism. As for auxiliary assumptions, we are in the realm of the weight of the string in simple pendulum experiments. If the experiment is well designed, then there should be no auxiliary assumptions that can be significant.
“Whether abductive reasoning is used in forming hypotheses, or Bayesean statistics ought to be used in refining them, or exceptions are found, the central activity in science remains the same. The things that make it special are that it is methodical hypothesising, and that there is a large body of hypotheses—science—that already form the ground for new solutions.”
The problem is that unless one can ground such activity in logic then it is not a special rational activity and whether something is considered methodical is a matter of intuition, aesthetics, or social convention. As I said previously.
Even if science is no more than mechanical realism, it could not succeed in making machines unless it were logical.
“Despite your disparaging manner, we agree on more than you will admit, the differences being that I am more positive about the ultimate value of science in discovering truth than you are, because you have a jaundiced attitude about it.”
Well the $64,000 question is whether your positive attitude or my jaundiced one is the correct one.
Quite so, but you have no criteria for testing your jaundiced one, as you have admitted.
“I have accepted what you have said about the mechanistic nature of physics, and think is is a useful caution, to me if no one else,”
I actually do not think that I could achieve much more than a useful caution. As I have said previously, in the emails as well as the book, I cannot show mechanical realism to be false. It simply cannot be shown to be (logically or empirically) true or false.
“but do not share your pessimism about its significance for science.”
Okay.
“It might be that there is no distinction to blur between the two forms of knowledge you describe.”
There was before the C16th century, but, since, the mechanical realist would argue that such a distinction is unnecessary or contrived.
“If your distinction between alethic and epistemic knowledge is the basis of your case, any critic will want to be sure that the distinction is a real one and not merely a contrived one, or, if the distinction is real, why alethic knowledge cannot also be, or by dint of hard work evolve into, epistemic knowledge.”
As I argue in my book, epistemic knowledge cannot be achieved through experimental physics (at least not until the perfection of experimental physics—though, even then it will be questionable). Whether or not alethic knowledge can evolve into epistemic knowledge, we are not (currently) in a position to affirm or deny. It is a guess one way or the other. If one believes that it will then one tends to be a scientifically persuaded human being. As Rom Hare said, realism is a policy and its reward are all the exciting discoveries made by pursuing it. But, to use your metaphor, whether you squirrels reach your distant mountain is another question, and, no matter how exciting they might be, all the exciting trees you squirrels find on the way tell you nothing about mountains. At most, they only teach you how to climb better.
What are the rewards of pursuing a policy of unrealism?
“When we study a machine for splitting white light into its component colours, perhaps our knowledge is alethic, but when we find that alethic knowledge also explains the angles subtended at the observer by rainbows, surely that suggests it is nevertheless a knowledge of causes since it would be a strange coincidence if our pottering with prisms turns out to offer causal correspondences with Nature that no one could have anticipated.”
As I argue in my book, the fact that interpretations of machine performances can be used to explain natural phenomena does not prove those interpretations to be correct. The intelligibility of an explanation does not prove its truth. As I argued at length in chapter 5, the use of mechanistic models to explain natural phenomena is metaphorical and poetical, in which the test of such an explanation is only confirmed within the laboratory. Even though it remains quite possible that we can explain the phenomenon of the rainbow in terms of the behaviour of light passing through water acting as a prism, testing the mechanical details of that explanation in the laboratory by ‘reproducing’ rainbows, the fact that our theory has correspondence with the appearance of the light in a natural rainbow does not in itself prove that the appearences of the prism and the rainbow operate under the same causes. It remains possible that the same appearances could be achieved through different causes. Not only does this mean that the rainbow might well occur through different causes than the prism, but appear the same, but it may also be the case that the prism might well objectively operate under a different set of causes than our theory suggests. The causal correspondence remains speculative, no matter how much simpler it makes it for the scientist to assume it. I appreciate that simplicity is very much an important criterion in theory selection, but that is a psychological attitude rather than a fact about reality. Apparent coincidences do not imply causal identity.
The presence of evidence is not evidence of presence. Yes indeed, you might be right, and the criteria we use in science might be utterly wrong, but the delusion of science is giving us all these exciting discoveries. What will Rogersism give us if we give up science? So far as I can tell nothing changes other than the delusion, so things will continue as before except that we shall all be called mechanical realists instead of scientists, and will concentrate on making ever more astonishing machines without imagining we are actually learning anything about the world in the process.
“If imposing the mechanics of the prism on to Nature is the fault that mechanical realism inevitably brings but yet it still explains the position of rainbows in the skies, then how is it faulty?”
It is not the case that it is faulty. It is the case that it is presumptive.
“That is what I mean when I say it works. It has explanatory value beyond the machine, implying that Nature can be represented as machines to explain aspects of it.”
But that is a pragmatic reason for accepting mechanical realism and whilst it may seem reasonable to a scientifically persuaded person in a technological society, this does in itself prove its objective truth. Of course Nature can be represented as machines to explain aspects of it, otherwise experimental physics would have culturally failed as a natural science, but the ability to represent Nature in this way does not prove the truth of those representations. Nature could also be represented in terms of spirits and gods with considerable explanatory success, but that does not prove that those spirits and gods really existed. The explanatory success is quite cultural. In terms of our modern technological society, describing things such as rainbows in terms of spirits or gods is so quaint that we hardly even consider it an explanation, whereas, for us, the use of an optical device, such as a prism, provides us with an almost self-evident means of explaining the phenomenon. Ontologically, the predictive successes of physics are very much limited to machine performances, whereas culturally physics has considerable explanatory value in explaining natural phenomena even in cases where it does not have predictive success. This is very evident in the case of electromagnetism—in the laboratory, when dealing with electromagnets and curcuits it is one of the best scientific theories ever devised, having a great deal of explanatory and predictive power, but it completely fails to provide accurate models of lightning. Of course it can be argued that lightning is much more complicated, but the theory still explains what it cannot predict—but then, as any genuine empiricist must agree, the fact that it fails to provide accurate predictions must raise reasonable doubt in the ontological accuracy of the model. Furthermore, QED (Quantum Electromagnetic Dynamics) as devised by Richard Feynmann is the most predictively accurate theory in physics and has a very visual way (the famous Feynmann diagram) of explaining the interaction between light and matter in terms of electron-photon interactions. Yet its object, such as the photoelectric effect, the laser, or magnetic dipole moment, is entirely ontologically restricted to machine performances because such phenomena are not apparent anywhere else. It seems to me that there are empirical reasons to be sceptical about physics as a natural science because its successes are limited to machine performances. But, as I argue in chapter 2, this merely shows that physicists are not empiricists.
We are stuck again with the confusion of proof and evidence, something that I am told by R Rosen does not happen in German because both are the same word. I do not think scientists take their models as proof of anything, especially as the models keep getting refined or bounded by further observations. They take them as evidence that they are modelling reality with some degree of accuracy, and successive models improve it. I suppose that producing rays from vacuum tubes with copper electrodes and finding that they were electromagnetic waves of peculiar penetrative power was the invention of a machine done serendipitously, as science often is. Was it serendipitous then that these x-rays were then found in Nature? I suppose it was yet another fortunate coincidence. Science has that serendipitous character of generating lucky coincidences that turn out to be exciting discoveries.
“Scientists generally seem aware that they are model building, and you perhaps achieve your objective in forcibly reminding them that their models are mechanical, but having said it, the models have explanatory value, and seem to transfer seamlessly into the natural world.”
I agree that they have explanatory value—but they only transfer seemlessly into the natural world after quite a lengthy period of education and training as a scientist. As I said:
“My whole book is about HOW mechanical models have explanatory value and allow the ariticifial apparatus in the laboratory to seamlessly represent processes in the natural world. It is an explanation of how scientic realism about machines is conceptually possible.”
To which you replied:
“It is conceptually possible and can represent processes in the natural world but is still untrue because it is not epistemic enough.”
Or even epistemic at all.
“I would begin to worry that I have indeed made a false distinction between humanly determined knowledge and actual knowledge.”
Well I have no idea what dolphins, apes, or any other animal know, but as far as I am concerned all actual knowledge is humanly determined knowledge. This does not mean that all truth is humanly determined truth—after all, there may well be many things that are true (such as whether dolphins have knowledge or not, for example) and we do not know whether they are true or not. But should we learn this truth then that actual knowledge will be humanly determined knowledge that dolphins are capable of having dophinly determined knowledge.
I try to substitute paraphrased expressions for your ones, actual knowledge being that knowledge of eternal and necessary principles that science is not discovering, and humanly determined knowledge, that imperfect knowledge that science, a human mode of disclosure, discloses as the truth.
“A more useful direction for your talents, rather than tossing philosophical nourishment to the money grubbing hacks who mud-wrestle for mogul-gelt, would be to try to solve the problem you pose of how alethic knowledge can, if it can, equate with epistemic knowledge.”
As I said in the book, for experimental physics this equation will occur (or be shown to be false) when physics is finished and complete. Until then there is no way that we can secure causal accounts to practical activity—except as part of a tentative, ongoing art. It is merely a question of our limits and a call for some modesty. But, I have to admit that I really liked the phrase, ‘rather than tossing philosophical nourishment to the money grubbing hacks who mud-wrestle for mogul-gelt’ .
“Or to cut out your jargon, which I am no doubt misunderstanding, to show what science must do to have a chance of getting at knowledge of reality since it is not doing it at present.”
As I say, physics is experimental—whether I can achieve knowledge of reality cannot be determined until the experiment (the whole experiment—which includes every possible experiment) is finished. Then we shall know one way or the other. My critical point is that we should see experimental physics as being an experiment—its outcome is unknowable in advance.
I can see nothing wrong with this summary of your position, if it can be so described. Nor can I see the majority of scientists objecting to it. Few of them are megalomaniacs like many politicians and most corporation’ s owners. Scientists are modest people, mostly cowed into subservience by poor wages and the necessity of agreeing with their employer to stay employed. They believe they are uncovering the truth but most are in such narrow fields they consider they are merely scratching the surface of a hard rock. They have no illusions about what they are doing, and will agree that the outcome of the science experiment is unknowable until it is complete. After the hubris of the nineteenth century physicists, scientists have become quite humble.
“I made a point of describing the force of the wind in terms of the damage it did and not in any mechanical way before I introduced the windmill. Seeing what force the wind can produce and the damage its energy can do suggests the windmill, not the other way around.”
Unfortunately, this is whiggish. Medieval europe possessed windmills long before there was any concept of the wind being a force or energy. You are able to so easily describe the wind in terms of force and energy because you have a scientific education and an understanding of both wind and windmills in this way. You are already historically situated. Prior to Galileo the term forza was limited to meaning mechanical advantage and it was people like Moletti and Galileo who did much of the conceptual work that allowed the idea of Nature having forces, being comprised of mechanical advantages, which then was central to Newton’ s physics and experimental physics thereafter. The term energy is an C18th terms and is very much an abstraction. Try defining it in physical terms and then defining those terms. It is impossible without becoming circular. Of course, as a chemist you will know exactly how to use a term such as energy—but, upon reflection, I am sure that you will see how its meaning is bound up with techniques and machine performances.
I agree with what you are saying about the meaning of the words I use, but I am using them because I have no other words. My point is that the people who conceived of sails on ships or windmills did it through their experience of the ‘force’ of the wind. I use the quizzical marks this time to show they would have had no such word, but still had the experience of that phenomenon of the wind we now call force. The invention of sails was doubtless purely empirical. They felt the wind, and saw it blow down trees. In the parable I gave earlier, some primitive people realised they could use a sail to propel a boat. If I am to imagine science as a handicraft, then this is how it was initiated, surely. It agrees with your own scenario, but my point is that such crafts used an experience of reality to make the machine ensuring the machine reflects natural principle at work.
“I agree that once the windmill is constructed, it can tell us more about the force and energy of the wind, but the notions of force and energy, whatever you care to call them, were already there before the mechanics allowed them to be refined.”
Not true. History shows that the opposite is the case. See my book for lots of references from very respected historians from the 1950s to the present.
I think you are taking me too literally, but my meaning is clear enough. I am not saying they had an unnamed notion of energy or force, but I am saying they had the experience of what we call force and energy in the wind. Our notions of energy and force were experienced by those people, however they might have considered them—gods, the breath of God or whatever.
“I am also ready to agree that thinking of Nature purely as an elaborate machine, perhaps ought to be resisted, especially since it was originally meant to pander to the Christians and their Creator God,”
Interesting observation. I have been doing some studying on this—as part of a chapter of a future book. The connections between the world as artifact and a creator were quite crucial for Galileo’ s, Descartes’ s, and Newton’ s (as well as others) elucidation of the new science and the nature of the world. It is also quite interesting that both Galileo and Descartes were devout (at least on paper) Catholics and Newton was a Christian (albeit of a esoteric kind). Also, even today, many of the arguments for God adopt the watch and watch-maker metaphor so easily, all based on the assumption that Nature was made (even if they do not quite intend all the mechanistic connotations of the metaphor). Again, as we both have previously agreed, there is no reason to assume that Nature has an origin at all.
“but at the same time you need to say how we could think of it instead such as to yield sound knowledge.”
As I said before, my point is that we need to see mechanistic science as a historical stage in the evolution of our society. To use your squirrel metaphor, I am just rattling some of the trees and shouting you ain’ t made it to the mountain yet. Climbing higher doesn’ t get you closer!
For me, I am more persuaded by the soundness of dialectical and hermenuetic approaches to knowledge, in which knowledge is historically situated as part of an ongoing interpretive process, and a phenomenological approach to experience. But, whether these are really sound approaches is very much open to philosophical criticism.
“What to do, quite possibly, but how to do it, quite rarely. How to do it is likely to be much more determined by the scientist than society. But I doubt that we can traverse this impasse because you need it to be so.”
I don’ t really see why I should need to do anything of the kind. I am fully aware that science is situated within a division of labour within our modern society. However, whether or not the how is explored often depends on who is holding the purse-strings, and that rarely is the scientist.
No one can dispute that owners of the money bags control science.
“It sounds as if it has more constructive possibilities than giving the impression that science is a sinister conspiracy of malicious goons.”
Sure.
“Well, again I agree with you in being skeptical about the disdainful rejection of these [homeopathic] treatments merely because there is no mechanistic explanation of them, if you are right that they do work. Testing whether some supposed treatment works or not is not intrinsically difficult, even though it might require some sophisticated organisation to avoid bias, and so on. It does not need any explanation, just suitable criteria and methods of analysis. That a treatment is found to work is the reason why further work should be done—to find the reason why! They are, though, all in biological treatments that you say you have not yet thought through.”
The problem is that for such things to have a starting point in biological science then there needs to be initial explanation of how homeopathy could work. This explanation is needed to establish the starting point of a programme of research and a series of experiments. Without this, the biological scientist can only confirm whether such remedies worked on lab rats (or whatever poor creature they select) but until they begin to explain why it works there really isn’ t any science going on at all. The establishment of statistical correlations or constant conjunctions is merely the starting point of scientific research. Morevover, because of their ‘holistic’ approach within a community, Chinese medicine is impossible to test using clinical trials. I once met a Chinese doctor (MD in the western medical sense) who was very interested in the clear successes of Chinese medicine in China. He was studying (for his PhD in psychology) the impasse that occurred between western medicine and Chinese medicine, despite wide recognition that the latter worked, because of the former’ s affirmation of the necessity of the clincal trial and the rejection of anecdotal evidence. It wasn’ t that western medicine was being dismissive of Chinese medicine but it was the case that there was no mechanistic way of testing it and hence it had to be rejected as unscientific.
I guess whatever testing is done has to be done during some epidemic like flu or maleria in some Chinese minority population in some place like Singapore, where non-Chinese control populations might be possible. I can see that it would be hard to do.
“Your criticism seems limited to physics where it might be justified, but here we are out of the realm of physics where mechanistic explanations might not be expected to be as appropriate, even if you are right about what you have claimed so far in the field of physics. It shows, if you are right about physics, you might still be wrong to tar the whole of science with the same brush.”
I am not.
You have often sounded as if you were.
“Curiously, the method of science at the personal level is itself still largely a craft. Science is the body of knowledge that practising the craft yields. Sometimes it can be used for ill, but practising the craft is generally innocent, and the practitioner rarely owns what his craft produces.”
Agreed.
“If the metaphysical basis of science is faulty, how should it be corrected, and what effect can you foresee if it is?”
It is not the case that it is faulty. It is just the case that we need to be made aware of its assuptions and to learn its limitations.
“How do I know the critique is not itself based on faulty premises?”
That is another question. And an important one at that!!!! The best way that I can see to ‘test’ a philosophical critique is to publish it and wait for the criticisms. Let other people kick it around and see how it holds up. This is why I have really enjoyed these emails with you. It is not just a matter of fun (which in most part it has been) but, even though you are not a hostile audience, so to speak (at least not in the same way that a few of your critics of the e-pistles are), you certainly are not giving me an easy ride. That is good. But you should be fair. Pick fault when you see fault (quite right too!!!) but you need to really make sure that you have understood my argument before you criticise it. I think that, even though you have kind of lost my meaning about the different kinds of knowledge and how they relate, in most part you have got the gist.
I agree that I have been critical without understanding your argument as it is properly presented in your book, but really I have tried to stay clear of it for that reason and have principally responded to your comments here. I cannot pretend I have understood what I have read in your book so far, but philosophical books like yours are not ones the philosophy tyro can just dip into like Little Jack Horner and expect to pull out a plum. Yet sometimes I have had to try to do it or not respond at all. I am not sure, though, that you have succeeded in making the work accessible to a general reader. The next one might be more suitable, or, if you have extended arguments to present there too, maybe a paperback covering both and more general aspects of the philosophy of science should follow. I just read the beginning of a book (Sex and Destiny) by Germaine Greer in which she denies that books should be openly incitements to action, but that they should incite action by making the reader think about the issues. They should melt concepts so that they will recrystallize in new ways. You are certainly doing that, but, whereas the recrystallization might suggest obvious actions in the social and personal spheres that she deals with, I keep having trouble with it here in this philosophy of science field. You have several times given me the impression that you hate science and would willingly wipe the floor with it, if it were possible. It is not likely, so you might as well settle for some more likely outcome. Greer complained against those who asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’ , and that is what has been puzzling me all along. Is philosophy merely to interpret the world or to change it? If it is to change it then the question applies. What do you want us to do?
“You have succeeded in alerting me, if no others, about the history and practice of science in that it is conceived of in mechanistic ways, but perhaps that is because, pace the Christians, Nature is mechanistic, or describable in terms of machines, and not merely because we are imposing mechanisms on to it.”
It might be or it might not be. We are not in a position to say one way or the other. That is why physics has a metaphysical foundation and it is experimental.
“In your further expansions of the linkage of physics to the technological society, you imply we are mistaken to do it, and so it is a metaphysical preconception that we should not entertain.”
Not quite. My critical point about the technological society is that it is presumed to be good for human beings to live and participate in the innovation of that society. Whilst I accept that this may well have been a reasonable assumption in the C17th and C18th, with all the benefits such a society offered, from our position in the begining of the C21st we should not take this assumption for granted.
“What then should replace it?”
From our present position it is not so much a question of what should replace it, it is more the question of how we should control and shape it—or is it too late for that, does it control and shape us? My point is that it is not immoral or reactionary to call for limits on our social headlong rush to innovate for the sake of innovation—and this is particularly important today with the almost unstoppable experimental use of GM crops. It seems to me that we should be saying that it might actually be of greater benefit to the poor of the world if we shared our tried and tested medicines (rather than our obsolete crap—merely because it is profitable to sell it at a cut rate to African countries than to dispose of it in line with first world regulations) rather than promote an untested and possibly extremely dangerous new technology (which at the end of the day is more likely to be just another opportunity for exploitation). But, as you have pointed out, this is more a question of political economy rather than science. You are right. But, my point is that science must be subordinate to such questions. In order words, scientists must learn to participate as human beings, as we all must do, in the shape and directions of the political economy of our society. This is a question of human values, ethics, meaning, and purpose. Which is why science needs to be subordinate to philosophical reflection and debate.
We agree in general, but when people like the Straussists in the USA claim a philosophical basis for their right wing ideology, with the world ruled by ‘philosophers’ , and administered by ‘gentlemen’ , all of it a cover for fascist elitism, then I baulk at it.
“What preconception can we adopt instead of the technological one?”
This very question should be ringing alarm bells for all to hear. The almost inconceivability of any rational alternative should be profoundly frightening. The technological should be treated as a means, but in our society it is an end: technical excellence has nearly become the definition of human excellence. The alternative is nearly unthinkable. Everything is being turned over to the future—without much regard for the future, I must hasten to add. Before we can really tackle the question of alternatives we really need to see the preconceptions of our society as preconceptions—we will not really have much scope for choice in the direction of our society until we see how it was a choice at the onset. This preconception is not necessarily a bad thing, but the lack of awareness of it is a folly, pure and simple.
“Or is physics only possible with this assumption behind it?”
Modern experimental physics certainly is. However, Aristotle’ s physics was not technological and there are some oriental forms of physics (such as Wi Lu) which are not either. But, the problem is that, for within our technological society, such forms of physics are just literature, poetry, and practically useless.
“If we wanted to construct a science with no technological preconceptions, where can we start, and what would we do?”
It is more the case that we need to take science and society back under rational control and engage with the debate on the political economy and direction of our society. This is more a problem of the possibility of fully participatory democracy than anything else. To a large part physics will continue for a long time yet (unless we get blown to kingdom come—again ribbing you, rather than being petty) and perhaps it should.
“If we were to find it is not possible, would that confirm that Nature is mechanical?”
No, our limitations do not demonstrate objective truths about Nature because we do not know whence our limitations arise. Perhaps we are just into the technological society too deep and it will have to run its course. My worry is that it will destroy Nature—and possibly us—before it has achieved its original aim: to liberate and enlighten humanity. I am also deeply concerned with the extent that it is becoming perverted by the ‘religious’ right into its war machine but, again that is a question of political economy.
“…it is a debate that has been going on for some time, certainly among many Pagans for whom Nature is the Goddess, but also among the general public including some liberal Christians, many scientists and, I do not doubt, many philosophers, the ones who are concerned with the real world and not abstractions.”
I’ m in good company them. Won’ t you join us?
“You recognize that science cannot be deinvented, so the debate is about what we need to do in society to direct it towards pure good rather than partial evil.”
Or, at least, partial good rather than pure evil.
OK.
“If God’s existence is a meaningful question, is it meaningful to ask whether Harvey exists? Or Puss in Boots? or Captain Marvel? Presumably, these are all meaningful questions, but are you as open minded about them as you are about the same question about God?”
It seems to me that, given that ninety percent of the world’s population believes in the existence of some kind of god, and I have yet to meet or hear of anyone who believes that Harvey the Rabbit or Puss in Boots exists, then the question of the existence of God is a more serious question that that of Harvey or Puss. But, having said that, you could have broken the news about Captain Marvel more gently than that!
Sorry! I did not mean to be brutal. You should have said! It is interesting that Captain Marvel did what must be thought of as astonishing miracles and was read by young and impressionable boys (mainly) but no one took him seriously (except you!). It shows that miracles have nothing to do with belief and mean nothing as evidence of it until the believer believes. The question of the existence of God might be more serious than that of Puss-in-Boots because people believe in God but not in Puss, but the question was about meaning, not about seriousness. If the question about the existence of God is no more meaningful than that of the existence of Puss, then it becomes serious that a large number of people take it seriously anyway.
“Many people would say they are open-minded about the existence of God but would have no doubt at all that Puss in Boots and Captain Marvel are just fictional characters.”
I would be one of them.
So, merely that a lot of people think one thing is important but another is not is sufficient reason to conclude that the one must be important, and the other not. A lot of people find Emmerdale Farm is important to them, but it is entirely fictional so far as I know. Are you open-minded about that? A lot of people think football is important, but I gather that you are not one of those. How would you summarise this subtle principle that you have discovered?
“I agree with you that in logic an almighty being could exist but never leave any sign that He did. So far as we are concerned, He does not exist, and we have no need to hypothesise that He does.”
Signs are abstract objects of interpretation. Many people find signs of God’s existence in the world: things such as beauty, compassion, love, and the complexity of the world have all been taken to be signs of the existence of God. Many people have found themselves to feel personally saved by God. On the converse, things such as children horribly malformed at birth, horrendous diseases, natural catastrophies, and other such horrible things that happen to innocents in this life which cannot be rationally attributed to human wickedness or divine justice, are all signs that a good and all powerful God does not exist. Many people have found themselves to feel abandoned or betrayed by God. They usually concluded that if a good god would not abandon or betray them then such a being does not exist.
A sensible conclusion from the premise, but I do not understand why people cannot see that their premises are human ones. That they are projecting their desires on to an almighty being they call God. If pre-Socratic Greeks knew this then why is it taking so long to percolate down to John and Joan Doe in the American mid-West, people with huge advantages over the Greeks of 2500 years ago? The reason is that the scam is deliberately perpetuated by rogues who gain out of it, and governments who use it to manipulate opinion. If philosophers think it an interesting thing to defend for argument’s sake then they are not taking it seriously enough, even though, it seems, seriousness is a serious criterion!
“There is no such evidence of any God meeting the Christian description when there ought to be indisputable evidence of Him. I repeat that this is evidence of God’s inexistence, though it is not proof of it.”
Given that you accept that there is a distinction between evidence and proof, it seems to me that you must all entertain the possibility that the Christian god might exist even if you have plenty of evidence for the inexistence of such a god. If you don’t have proof then you cannot be certain. Whilst you accept that you do not have a definitive proof of the inexistence of the Christian god then you must leave room for doubt about the truth of your conclusions. You may have misunderstood the evidence that you have or some further evidence has yet to be discovered. However, it also remains distinctly possible that the Christain god could be a falsehood, but God could exist. I am quite happy to entertain the possibility that the Christians could well be profoundly mistaken in the beliefs and it is they who are the blasphemers and worshippers of false idols and prophets.
As you say, I have already accepted all of this, but it is a technical acceptance. Technically we have proof of almost nothing—perhaps nothing at all! That is the problem that Descartes tried to solve to begin philosophising at all. But if we have proof of nothing, how can Christians be sure of what they believe to the extent of bandying it about as the truth, especially since much of it is manifestly not true. They have been gulled by their parents, pastors and priests. The honest and sensible stance is to be skeptical of everything, and that is the scientific attitude. Let us refuse to accept anything on the say so especially of pastors and priests, and accept that even our parents, and grandparents even, can themselves have been gulled into believing what is false. Again, the gospel metaphor of the camel and the eye of the needle is appropriate. Objects can go through the eye of a needle, so conceivably, somehow, a camel could, but it is not a possibility that anyone except a rich Christian needs to entertain.
“When there is no reason or evidence to believe something, then the rational being does not believe it.”
Agreed. But the rational being does not disbelieve it either. A rational person remains neutral and impartial in the absence of knowledge. An example would be the claim that the ancient civilisation Atlantis existed and was destroyed and sank into the Atlantic. There is no evidence for this claim. The earliest surviving reference so far discovered is in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus—there is nothing in earler Greek literature, nor in North African writings or art, and that includes the Egyptians, that makes any reference to Atlantis. There is no reason to believe that Atlantis existed. The belief in the existence of Atlantis would be irrational. But it is equally irrational to leap to the assertion that Atlantis therefore did not exist. As (supposedly) rational beings, we simply do not know. Evidence may come to light in the future. The absence of evidence for any thesis is not evidence for its antithesis.
Once again, I agree with most of what you say, but feel no obligation to consider every possibility that might be, and to keep reminding myself, “Ah, it might be! Don’t forget it!”. Some thing or event might be, but when I have no reason to believe it is or was, I cannot see the sense in having to consider it, let alone reminding myself of it. Skepticism saves you from that. It saves you from having to account for unlikelihoods. And I still insist that the profoundness of the absence of the evidence is relevant. So the absence of evidence when in logic and experience it ought to be present is certainly evidence for its absence. I repeat, it is not proof, but we seem to have agreed that proof of our own lives is problematic, so we have to stick with evidence, and evidence is judged on its quantity and quality to give us a likelihood. It is unlikly that Atlantis, as described by Plato, ever existed. It is not unlikely that cities did suffer destruction by earthquakes and floods, and might have served as a model for Plato’s Athens-puffing story. They were not Atlantis. Christian and Jewish believers have to fall back on this sort of false reasoning to defend the myth of Moses and the Exodus. There is no evidence of it outside of the Jewish scriptures, but two escaping slaves recorded in some ancient papyrus, Greek-style federations of tribes, gradual migrations instead of one mighty one, and so on, are all used as excuses for the lack of evidence, with no acknowledgement that these excuses destroy the biblical story, showing that the Exodus is mythical.
“If it is unreasonable to believe without reason then it is perverse to do so. It is doubly perverse to demand reasons from your opponents when you have none yourself, though that is a most typical Christian apologetic ploy.”
Whilst I agree that it is a rhetorical ploy, it is only perverse to believe without reason if being unreasonable is being perverse. Would it be perverse to act in anger and seek revenge without appeal to reasons for one’s action? Of course one would be unreasonable if one acted purely out of anger because one could enact one’s revenge on the wrong person, but it is not perverse to do so. Foolish, yes. Perverse, no. But I accept that it is perverse when some Christians refuse to accept standards of reason for their own beliefs but demand them from atheists. It is also very hypocritical.
Well, I take it to be perverse for someone to do something they know, or ought to know, to be wrong. Since Christians do not seem to be able to distinguish right from wrong, they are often perverse, but think they are models of rectitude. Anyway, we agree in the end.
“All the evidence here is that human beings who claim to be prophets or angels are confidence tricksters or madmen, and there is no evidence that any of them are actually prophets or angels.”
I very much doubt that all the evidence is that all the so-called prophets or angels were confidence tricksters or madmen. You are merely asserting this. For most part, for the biblical prophets and mythical angels there simply is a lack of any evidence about them at all. I think that you would be very hard pressed to provide evidence that Moses or Mohamed were confidence tricksters or madmen. They might have been. But then again, they might not. But I agree that there is no evidence that they were actually prophets of God. I think that it is possible that they interpreted events as being messages from the divine—something quite reasonable, given their time and place—and hence believed that they were messengers for God, and the mutability of legend, changed from generation to generation, like the game of chinese whispers, created the miracles and myth. Whilst this explanation implies that they were not necessarily prophets of God, it certainly does not support the idea that they were madmen or liars. To put it in modern context, if someone were to see a bright and distant ball of light in the sky, zig-zagging rapidly before suddenly disappearing, then they might well conclude and tell others that they had seen an alien spacecraft. If it turned out that the object was in fact an extrememly rare display of ball lightning, the person would be mistaken in their interpretation, but they would not be a liar or a madman.
I quite understand that, but I make my judgement from the record of latter day prophets for whom the words madmen or confidence tricksters apply closely. As to the bible, it is a book of myths whose characters are mainly fictional, and where they are not mainly cannot be distinguished in external recorded history. Even so, the evidence in the bible is that many of the Jewish prophets were considered madmen by the leaders of Judaism at the time, and, if there is any historical truth in the angel Gabriel visiting a virgin Mary and charmingly persuading her that she would be the mother of the Saviour, then it is pretty obvious what it is, to any uncommitted reader. “How can this be?” she protests, and the angel showed her how the Holy Spirit would come upon her! It is entertaining but not too fruitful, except to show that the evidence can easily be read into the bible that the prophets and angels were madmen and confidence tricksters, just as modern ones are. For my own part, my judgement is that the Jewish prophets were based on the propagandists sent out by Cyrus the Persian to undermine confidence in the local rulers. This is a historical truth, although little is known about them, especially as the great paternalistic religions of the world have deliberately destroyed as much as they could find about the Persian empire and its religion—the basis of all three of the others!
“That seems a reasonable basis for skepticism about such claims.”
If it were true that there was such an undeniable body of evidence that these people were all crooks or lunatics, but I am not convinced that this is the case. I’m sure that plenty have been either, but I think that many were simply mistaken, and some might have been prophets. They problem is how to tell one from the other. I do not see how one can and, hence, I am an agnostic.
We have been here before. Being an agnostic in this context must mean the same as being an unbeliever—you will not be taken in by anyone claiming to be an angel or prophet of God. That is the undoubted outcome of not believing for skeptical reasons, but being an agnostic leaves you open to the guiles of these confidence tricksters, and they are very clever. There is no point in being a confidence trickster if you are not convincing, and that means able to convince people contrary to their better judgement.
“It is the same argument as that used by the Christian God, or son of God when he said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It is a negligible probability.”
(Was “the eye of a needle” the name of a narrow gate in Jerusalem that was used to tax traders and nomads?) But, if you accept that religious claims are untestable (on Earth) then you cannot make any statements of (im)probability regarding their truth-status. It is simply a mathematical and empirical impossibility. At most you should say that they are irrelevant.
It is certainly a negligible probability that a camel would go through the eye of a needle, and evidently that was the view of the divine son of God of the Christians. Modern Christian prophets and angels or saints (like TV evangelists) are quite desperate to ensure that the flock do not start to imagine that Jesus meant this. The myth of the narrow gate is false, but has been spread by Christians, notably baptist evangelicals who seem to have invented it, to persuade their followers it is all right for their pastors to get rich and remain saints. The same construction with the same intent is recorded of some early rabbis, and seems to have been a typical skeptical response among Jews of the time. And while it might not be possible to test religious statements of post mortem bliss or horror, or whatever, it is possible to see the character of the Christian prophets of latter years and the consequences of their prophetic teachings. In my skeptical opinion, they plainly do not pass muster, and even Christians disown them, for obvious reasons.
“You make it sound as if an opinion based on good evidence is a lesser form of knowledge.”
It is what is called an “educated opinion” or an “informed opinion”. But it is still an opinion which may be true or false. It is not knowledge at all.
In that case we have no knowledge at all, so what are we arguing about, and how can anyone make a career out of it unless they are charlatans? Even learning how to make clay models and even mechanical ones is knowledge, is it not. How to use mathematics and therefore logic is knowledge too, is it not? If it is not, what is the point of it all? It seems we might as well twiddle our thumbs. The best knowledge we have is experiences that have been tested against an hypothesis that has not been shown to be false under the conditions of the test. The hypothesis is a fancy word for opinion and experiences are the evidence. It is the form that knowledge takes. What sin is anyone committing by admitting it, and decrying “knowledge” based on no evidence other than what someone says is God’s word.
“Most of what we know are opinions, albeit offered with different levels of certainty. Probably only believers like the Christians will say they know something with certainty. That is their delusion.”
And, hence, it is not knowledge. It is belief and, even if it were true belief, it would still not be knowledge. It would be a lucky guess. Furthermore, simply saying that one knows something with certainty does not make it true that one in fact knows anything. Otherwise every gambler with a “dead cert” on the next horse race would be a winner!
“All I was trying to get you to do was to abandon futile gestures such as saying this ‘might’ be so and that ‘might’ be so when all reason suggests that the might is merely a hedge to save face in case it were not so.”
Which would be all well and good if it were true. But “all reason” is not on your side. I accept that you have lots of reasons (very good ones as well as not so good) for your opinions, but you have not exhausted the possibilities into research and investigation. You are far from having achieved that. You have done a huge amount of scholarly and historical work but you have only scratched the surface of the origin of religion. Moreover, you have mainly focussed on Christianity, which is quite modern, historically speaking and the question of the origin of religion is a deeper question than the origin of Christianity. It remains possible that you might be right about Christianity but wrong about the existence of God (as would be the Christians too, if this was the case). Agnosticism is not about saving face in case God pays a visit. It is about one’s intellectual standards about how one deals with questions such as whether God exists and the nature of God. If I see no empirical or logical basis or reason for answering such a question one way or the other then I refuse to do it. Knowledge of the ontology of the divine is beyond my ken because of my standards of what knowledge is and how one achieves it. I can have opinions about what I think or feel might well be the case, but that does not mean that those educated hunches are knowledge. As I have already said, you have presented a convincing argument for your conclusions, but you still might be wrong. I hope that it is not futile to point this out.
Of course not. But it does not need pointing out. I fully accept that the needle does have an eye, but, even so, I do not have to imagine that it is even-stevens whether the camel can pass through it or not. Centaurs might once have existed, or still do somewhere, but I do not have to sit firmly in the centre of the fence on it as an issue. I can come down on one side fully confident in my decision based on the evidence there is while acknowledging the needle’s eye chance that I might be wrong. I am not compromised, but I am foolish to equate the utterly unequal probabilities that the evidence offers. That is what agnosticism is. It was invented so that Victorian dissenters could take a position that did not completely alienate the church-going hypocritical Victorian middle classes. It pretends to be an honest position but is a cop out. Now, on the narrower issue of the content of my pages, you are wrong that I am writing generally about the history of religion. I began them explicitly writing about the historical origins of Christianity, and that has led me much further afield into Judaism and Persian religion. So, you are not right that I have focused on Christianity. The pages on Judaism and Zoroastrianism show that Judaism and Christianity were both not revealed religions at all, but were grounded in Zoroastrianism. Once again, my view is that the evidence is overwhelming, but since evidence counts for nothing unless it is proof, it is a waste of time reading it. That, of course, is what the Christians like to hear.
