Quite a combination of impossible standards, artificial categories, and misunderstandings of science
Dreaded Anomaly Send a noteboard - 04/12/2011 02:53:44 AM
Which, after all, was precisely the point: To claim empiricism adequately explains everything is false, to claim it even can, unproven; unless phenomena and knowledge are finite it is not even falsifiable. So we return to the same old internal inconsistency: Logical positivism faults religion and mysticism for what it alone considers crimes but of which all are guilty.
Logical positivism is not synonymous with materialism/physicalism/naturalism.
Again, a fine belief but no more than that, and thus mere dogma; it could well be fact, but has not been proven such, and probably cannot be. Dogma is perfectly sound (but not necessarily valid) provided it and its limitations are recognized as such and not presented as established facts. In this case we have, not a rational scientific position, but the same kind of desperately human desire for certainty and predictability that motivates so many peoples religious beliefs (that is to say, a desire on which religion is not properly predicated despite many people improperly doing so anyway.) However empirically desirable, predictability and certainty are not always possible (hence the highly empirical Uncertainty Principle stating prediction and certainty can be impossible even when causality is precisely defined.)
There is no such thing as 100% certainty, because 100% is one of the bounds of probability, and therefore not actually a legitimate value for realistic probability to take, much like infinity is not actually a number*. What this means is that holding up claims to the standard of "100% proven fact" is an impossible standard. Every number, compared to infinity, goes to zero; so every probability, compared to 100%, is negligible. But we can know things with different amounts of confidence, so that is the practical definition of truth: those things in which we are the most confident. The fact of uncertainty does not make everything equally uncertain. (This is sometimes called the fallacy of gray.) And, I must note, this uncertainty exists because we only ever have some of the information; it's in our minds, not in reality.
In past millennia, people knew and understood comparatively little, so they invented "explanations" like God, ghosts, leprechauns, etc., which really served to stop curiosity. As time as gone on, we have discarded most of those invented causes in exchange for real explanations which give us actual useful knowledge. Just as induction tells you that the Earth's gravity will not cease tomorrow, induction tells me that empirical explanations will not suddenly hit a supernatural wall that has so far been utterly absent. (If you doubt this, I invite you to take a walk off the top of the nearest tall building while disbelieving gravity, and see how you feel.)
Heisenberg uncertainty makes specific predictions about the results of measuring incompatible observables. On a macroscopic scale, this uncertainty is too small to matter, so it seems like those observables (such as position and momentum) aren't incompatible, but that's just not really the case. Quantum field excitations (particles or waves) fundamentally do not have both a clearly-defined position and a clearly-defined momentum. Predictions on these scales can still be verified on a statistical basis.
*You can convert probability to a system with bounds of plus/minus infinity by first taking odds, which have bounds of zero to infinity, and then taking the logarithm of odds, as logarithms go to negative infinity at 0 and positive infinity at positive infinity. This is called the log-odds formulation, and it makes it much more intuitively clear why 99.9% vs 99.99% is very different from, say, 50% vs 51%.
Supernatural explanations have never triumphed over NATURAL ones for explaining natural phenomena, but that truism proves nothing unless all phenomena are established as natural, an assumption that cannot be taken for granted. It is presumptuous to say natural explanations sufficing for natural phenomena makes all phenomena natural. It ignores phenomena for which natural explanations are grossly inferior to supernatural ones, of which the most infamous example is probably ESP. Wikipedias article on the topic refers to another article titled "Why Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence," which contains the following paragraph:
In some areas of paranormal investigation, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), the research is already often better done than much orthodox scientific research, with controls and double-checks most scientists would regard as overkill. Skeptics mostly still feel that the intrinsic implausibility is so great that nothing short of airtight and well-repeated research would be sufficient to support ESP. Little or none of the existing research rises to that level, so we remain skeptical. (Some recent work has been of high quality, see Ray Hyman's article, "The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality", in the March/April 1996 Skeptical Inquirer, pp 24-26.) Had skeptics said some 40 years ago that all we wanted was reasonable quality replicated research, we might now be having to eat our words.
It is bad science to set an impossibly high standard solely to prevent a lesser forcing us "to eat our words." That is very much the rub; "intrinsic implausibility" is nothing more or less than the skeptics prejudiced preference to dismiss claims not proven to an impossibly absolute degree. It reduces skeptics of the supernatural to the same disreputable level as global warming skeptics, each insisting on any alternative to the most likely but most disliked one, in defiance of ever mounting evidence for it. The article notes this issue in its conclusion thus:
The skeptics' line, "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof," is justifiable on probabilistic grounds, but the difficulty of determining a priori probabilities is a serious drawback. This may prevent communication with non-skeptics unless they are willing to adopt our strict standards so as to achieve general acceptance. A strict but not "extraordinary" standard of ordinary good science and replicability is risky because most skeptics would not actually believe typical paranormal claims if evidence at that level were provided.
In other words, evidence standards adequate for claims we are inclined to accept are inadequate for claims we are inclined to dismiss. That is bias, not science.
In some areas of paranormal investigation, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), the research is already often better done than much orthodox scientific research, with controls and double-checks most scientists would regard as overkill. Skeptics mostly still feel that the intrinsic implausibility is so great that nothing short of airtight and well-repeated research would be sufficient to support ESP. Little or none of the existing research rises to that level, so we remain skeptical. (Some recent work has been of high quality, see Ray Hyman's article, "The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality", in the March/April 1996 Skeptical Inquirer, pp 24-26.) Had skeptics said some 40 years ago that all we wanted was reasonable quality replicated research, we might now be having to eat our words.
It is bad science to set an impossibly high standard solely to prevent a lesser forcing us "to eat our words." That is very much the rub; "intrinsic implausibility" is nothing more or less than the skeptics prejudiced preference to dismiss claims not proven to an impossibly absolute degree. It reduces skeptics of the supernatural to the same disreputable level as global warming skeptics, each insisting on any alternative to the most likely but most disliked one, in defiance of ever mounting evidence for it. The article notes this issue in its conclusion thus:
The skeptics' line, "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof," is justifiable on probabilistic grounds, but the difficulty of determining a priori probabilities is a serious drawback. This may prevent communication with non-skeptics unless they are willing to adopt our strict standards so as to achieve general acceptance. A strict but not "extraordinary" standard of ordinary good science and replicability is risky because most skeptics would not actually believe typical paranormal claims if evidence at that level were provided.
In other words, evidence standards adequate for claims we are inclined to accept are inadequate for claims we are inclined to dismiss. That is bias, not science.
"Supernatural phenomena" vs. "natural phenomena" is an artificial category. If something happens, it's part of nature. Any phenomena must have an impact on the universe in order to be known to exist, and that impact can be measured. If something has no impact, its existence is moot; it might as well not exist.
Your use of ESP as an example is... audacious, to say the least. The only consistent thing about ESP is its lack of replicability. Science predicts that anyone claiming psychic abilities will not be able to demonstrate them reliably; this is a sound prediction. (Further, the lack of obvious explanations in terms of other known scientific principles, i.e. implausibility, does count as probabilistic evidence against paranormal claims.)
You have almost stumbled onto a real problem in modern science in the part about varying standards of evidence, but you manage to draw an utterly wrong conclusion. The correct step to take, upon noticing such a problem, is to enforce stricter standards for everyone. There are problems with publication bias, small sample size, misunderstanding of statistical significance, etc. being noticed in some areas of psychology, biology, neuroscience, and elsewhere today; but those problems have been noticed, attention has been brought, and they will be corrected sooner or later.
Oh, and one more thing about ESP: take a look at http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/05/failing-to-replicate-bems-ability-to.html. A study claiming to demonstrate precognition was published, and another study which failed to replicate it was rejected. This demonstrates both publication bias and the unreliability of ESP claims in one fell swoop.
Actually, they often help predict and understand subsequent events, particularly the irrational ones in which humans are so often involved. Religion and philosophy far better explain "mans inhumanity to man," crime, deceit and the like than do physics or biochemistry. The Renaissance culminated in the great Edwardian promise of a scientific utopia where mans knowledge of nature made him master of himself as well as his world, yet its postmodern legacy is a generation of poverty bookended by the two largest and most destructive wars in history. Even to the extent we understand our internal and external natural influences, our mastery of ourselves and our world is no better than ever, which I contend is because, while each is subject to myriad well understood natural influences, they are also subject to supernatural ones increasingly ignored to our detriment. The expectation from the dawn of the Renaissance down to the Great War was that as our treatment of each other would improve as our understanding of ourselves and our environment did, but we have instead repeatedly observed that only the magnitude, not the nature, of our actions has changed.
Meanwhile, we cannot lose sight of our goal: If it is security, predictability and certainty are vital means to it, but if it is understanding we must recognize it guarantees neither predictability nor certainty. Understanding does not preclude them either, but they are often incidental to it, so sacrificing it for their sake eliminates it as our goal.
Meanwhile, we cannot lose sight of our goal: If it is security, predictability and certainty are vital means to it, but if it is understanding we must recognize it guarantees neither predictability nor certainty. Understanding does not preclude them either, but they are often incidental to it, so sacrificing it for their sake eliminates it as our goal.
Your lack of knowledge about the past few decades of work in cognitive science is a fact about you, not a fact about science. Cognitive science can currently explain a great deal of our mental peculiarities, many of which religion and most philosophy don't even acknowledge.
Seriously, postmodernism, one of the field of philosophy's most worthless creations? Yes, people underestimated the difficulty of solving problems, but the world wars do not "prove" anything about what you call "the great Edwardian promise" except that the time scale was off. Even if someone had known solutions for every scientific problem by 1900, that doesn't mean that everyone would have known, and understood, and been able to implement those solutions. What you are saying here comes down to the claim "we don't understand enough yet, so we never will" and that is sharply contradicted by the relatively huge increase in our understanding over the past several hundred years. You attribute to "supernatural influences" what is much better and more easily explained by basic human cognitive biases.
Those are several firm, sweeping and completely unsubstaniated statements, more typical of missionary than empiricist, and the latters chief complaint against the former. The most serious is the second paragraphs final catechism, that "mystery only exists in our minds." That is the crux of the matter, but wholly distinct from the debate between logical positivism and spirituality. That premise drove highly spiritual ancient pagans to anthropomorphosize natural phenomena in a desperate attempt to explain, comprehend, predict and thereby ultimately compensate for great natural forces arrayed against them in the war of Man vs. Nature. Despite diametrically opposed conclusions, the same motive persists today; the terror of logical positivists and ancient priesthoods alike is not Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know, but Secrets Man Cannot Know. If such things are, the goal of grappling with reality and existence until we bend and subordinate them to our will is a fools errand, because some aspects of it are forever beyond our understanding and therefore our control. The notion "mystery exists only in our minds" can and has found a home in both religion and science, but is equally harmful to both.
The universe is what it is. There is no such thing as inherent mystery; that doesn't even make sense. Things seem mysterious when we don't understand them, because we don't have enough information. There may be phenomena too complicated for us to understand using just our brains, but that is why we build machines that are better at certain tasks, so they can make predictions for us. Any thing whose existence has an impact on the universe can be known, in principle.
More simply: what evidence do you have that "Secrets Man Cannot Know" do exist? I won't even restrict you to scientific evidence. Do you have any piece of information that would cause me to update my confidence in the existence of such a thing more than infinitesimally?
Hence fully explaining love as a neurochemical process would render it quite mundane; knowing its mechanism, would suggest (though not ensure) we could control and guide it, enslave it to our direction rather then being enslaved by it. At the very least, a rational understanding of its impulses would allow rational rejection of their directives, but that is not our experience. Biochemists produce no more sovereign love potions than did their Medieval alchemist forbearers; unsurprisingly, just beginning to regulate love still eludes us even when we HAVE acquired the ability to transmute lead to gold (natural substances for which a natural process is therefore logical.) Even when we identify neurochemical influences on our emotions, humanitys record of directing them is far less than perfect.
As to meaning, if there were none save what we invented for ourselves there would be none at all, and its importance would diminish to nothing. That we deluded ourselves with belief in meaning that exists only as a phantasm of our own minds, in which even that belief ceases when we do, would make it no more relevant than delusional religious beliefs. That is the postmodern dilemma, the fork in the road from whence "God is dead" proceeds to either nihilism or hedonism, depending on whether one responds with despair or reckless abandon (not that either choice matters any more than another.)
As to meaning, if there were none save what we invented for ourselves there would be none at all, and its importance would diminish to nothing. That we deluded ourselves with belief in meaning that exists only as a phantasm of our own minds, in which even that belief ceases when we do, would make it no more relevant than delusional religious beliefs. That is the postmodern dilemma, the fork in the road from whence "God is dead" proceeds to either nihilism or hedonism, depending on whether one responds with despair or reckless abandon (not that either choice matters any more than another.)
Now you have created a distinction which defines "mundane" as "things we can control." I am not sure what the point of this is, except to seem depressing enough to make others more open to specious arguments about the supernatural. Do you find less wonder in a rainbow, knowing how it is created by the refraction of light? I don't.
Again, some may understand the mechanism behind a thing, but that does not immediately lead to everyone understanding it, or being able to utilize it. However, you are incorrect that biochemists produce no love potions: it's called oxytocin. In general, you seem to be complaining that complicated systems have complicated solutions; science cannot make things simpler than they are. We can produce silicon circuits to amazing precision, but molecular biotechnology is harder, so we're not at the same point there. Nothing implies that getting to that point is impossible, and indeed, induction suggests the opposite.
Once more, you have created an impossible standard. If universal meaning existed, then personal meaning would pale in comparison, but nothing indicates the existence of universal meaning, so such a comparison is pointless and without merit. Meaning is not "out there," waiting to be found. Think about what would happen if that were the case, and it turned out to be something we considered awful. If it turned out that the meaning of life was to kill as many people as possible, would you take a pill to make you want to kill people? That simple thought experiment reveals the truth that meaning is within us, and that truth cannot diminish its importance to us, because explaining reality does not change reality.
Asking is fine so long as one expects no thorough or useful answers; expecting science to provide such answers to all questions is very much the problem. Sometimes mechanisms cannot be discovered, and even when they can the discovery does not guarantee predictability or control. Whether or not a Great Watchmaker is inherently impossible, killing Him makes Him so. Positing a clockwork universe without a Great Watchmaker is obviously untenable, and leads to the heart of the problem with assuming all phenomena admit natural explanations: Natural law alone precludes a Big Bang. Obviously it is no more empirically permissible for science than religion to hand wave that away on the grounds contradictions between belief and observation will someday somehow be satisfactorily explained. Ultimately the choices remain a universe:
1) no more or less than a perpetual motion machine (in utter defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics,)
2) devoid of kinetic energy that it inexplicably and suddenly acquired (which suffers from the same fatal flaw as the first argument) or
3) requiring a supernatural origin.
We can play games and expect some undefined future modification of current natural law to resolve the issue, but since the only motive for doing so is avoiding case 3, that essentially IS case 3: The Big Bang is somehow an exception to the natural law it therefore vindicates as comprehensive (and people say the Bible contradicts itself.
) Natural law admits no explanation save what amounts to resorting to supernatural ones, which means all "purely" natural explanations for subsequent phenomena are predicated on that one.
The idea God created a 6000 year old universe that nonetheless gives every indication of being (at least) 15 billion year old, as some perverse test of faith, is implausible. However, the idea of a static, motionless universal singularity whose entropy, which would necessarily have been maximal, suddenly and inexplicably fell to a level never reached before or since is equally implausible, even if we accept the premise that its matter/energy is eternal. Thus I naturally reject all paradigms asserting natural explanations to the exclusion of supernatural, and vice versa, because experience and observation disallow either/or propositions.
1) no more or less than a perpetual motion machine (in utter defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics,)
2) devoid of kinetic energy that it inexplicably and suddenly acquired (which suffers from the same fatal flaw as the first argument) or
3) requiring a supernatural origin.
We can play games and expect some undefined future modification of current natural law to resolve the issue, but since the only motive for doing so is avoiding case 3, that essentially IS case 3: The Big Bang is somehow an exception to the natural law it therefore vindicates as comprehensive (and people say the Bible contradicts itself.
) Natural law admits no explanation save what amounts to resorting to supernatural ones, which means all "purely" natural explanations for subsequent phenomena are predicated on that one. The idea God created a 6000 year old universe that nonetheless gives every indication of being (at least) 15 billion year old, as some perverse test of faith, is implausible. However, the idea of a static, motionless universal singularity whose entropy, which would necessarily have been maximal, suddenly and inexplicably fell to a level never reached before or since is equally implausible, even if we accept the premise that its matter/energy is eternal. Thus I naturally reject all paradigms asserting natural explanations to the exclusion of supernatural, and vice versa, because experience and observation disallow either/or propositions.
This must be the product of trying to read "Cosmology for Dummies" upside down, while drunk, and in Sumerian. "Natural law precludes the Big Bang" is one of the most confused statements on this topic I have ever seen. The Big Bang is a singularity; after it, symmetries broke, and the effective laws of nature changed. Different pockets of the universe may have collapsed into different vacuum states. Any attempt to reason about this topic armed only with a religious apologetic's understanding of entropy is doomed from the start. Why must the entropy of a universal singularity be "maximal," and why do you think such a singularity can accurately be described by terms such as "static" and "motionless"?
(I'm not even going to touch "Positing a clockwork universe without a Great Watchmaker is obviously untenable"; that's pure sophistry.)
Not at all; religious leaders were presumptuous to claim universal certainty (much less authority) but neither religious knowledge nor authority is any more a Boolean quantity than that of any other discipline. We would not expect an art critic to speak any more authoritatively about aerodynamics than we would expect a biochemist to speak authoritatively about economics. That does not make either of them less knowledgable or authoritative within the fields in which they benefit from decades of study and experience, it simply means that the necessary focus on their respective specialities allowed correspondingly less attention to others. That incidentally makes Stephen Weinberg or Richard Dawkins authoritatively dismissing religion on the basis of physics or biology just as presumptuous as the Pope dismissing geocentrism on the basis of scripture. That each is very and intelligent, and very knowledgable in his area of expertise, does not make them any more qualified to comment on areas outside their expertise on which they are almost wholly ignorant.
Being authoritative about things which don't exist is not much to be proud of. This is, of course, why the separate magisteria idea is bunk: religions make claims about the existence of things. Any such claim is scientific in nature if it's falsifiable, and utterly pointless if it's unfalsifiable. Scientific claims are backed by evidence and religious claims are not, so science wins when religion contradicts it. That is the difference between Dawkins and the Pope.
As is no doubt obvious at this point, I would call it something many people desperately WANT to TEACH, and prove. Some things are undeniable facts yet impossible to prove, and I do not mean things like Gods existence (though that certainly qualifies,) but far less debatable facts like the shortest distance between two points being a straight line (which of course breaks down under Relativity) or the reproducibility of the same experiment under the same conditions. Just try proving those indisputable facts, and the latter is particularly problematic for empiricism, because empiricism is predicated on it, meaning any empirical proof of it that MIGHT exist would be circular reasoning. Indeed, as my wife helpfully notes, an experiment can NEVER be conducted under precisely identical conditions (and the Uncertainty Principle precludes verifying all conditions are identical even if it could be.) Given that some undeniable facts admit no absolute proof, which is the more liberated mind, the one REQUIRING proof, or the one merely preferring it?
I will direct you to the top of this post in reference to "absolute proof." We can reproduce experiments under very similar conditions and expect very similar results, which is the only reasonable requirement. (This does not work for chaotic systems at long time scales, but even then, we can predict that it doesn't work if we know the system is chaotic, or we can figure out that the system is chaotic if we don't already know so.)
Your example of the shortest distance between two points "breaking down" under relativity is confused. There is a shortest distance between two points in any geometry: it is called a geodesic. In flat space, it's a straight line. On or near Earth's surface, it's approximately a great circle (a circle with the radius of the near-spherical Earth), and this is in fact how planes fly, when possible, in order to minimize distance and therefore travel time and fuel costs.
Scooby Doo and Secular Humanism.
- 02/12/2011 09:58:49 PM
710 Views
Paraphrasing G.K. Chestertons famous affirmation of Christianity to justify secular humanism, eh?
- 02/12/2011 11:02:54 PM
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Love has nothing to do with spirituality or the supernatural; there is no universal meaning of life.
- 03/12/2011 04:33:13 AM
502 Views
Those are legitimate beliefs, but not proven facts.
- 03/12/2011 10:05:44 PM
510 Views
Quite a combination of impossible standards, artificial categories, and misunderstandings of science
- 04/12/2011 02:53:44 AM
514 Views
I have a question about log-odds formulation.
- 04/12/2011 06:36:02 AM
301 Views
It depends on if that's a realistic example or a toy example.
- 04/12/2011 05:32:34 PM
345 Views
Scooby Doo is not about secular fucking humanism. It's a Gnostic allegory.
- 02/12/2011 11:57:37 PM
392 Views
I had all but forgotten that post, one of the first I read at wotmania.
- 03/12/2011 10:09:36 PM
324 Views
Comparing me to Santa selling crack has positively made my day. Thank you! 
- 05/12/2011 01:50:54 AM
442 Views
- 05/12/2011 01:50:54 AM
442 Views
*NM*
*NM*