There is no end to the befuddlement that religion can cause to the rational mind, and two recent unrelated stories are perfect examples of why humanists and atheists are often seen walking around in disbelief while shaking their heads at human folly.
For instance, the chief Italian newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, has reported on March 21st about the visit of Pope Benedict to Angola. Besides the predictable nonsense about the “fact” that only Christ can give meaning to one’s life, the pontiff actually said, and I quote: “Tanti di loro vivono nella paura degli spiriti, dei poteri nefasti da cui si credono minacciati” which roughly translates to “Many of them [the Angolans] live in fear of spirits, of dark forces by which they believe they are threatened.” The Pope, in other words, exhorted his Catholic missionaries to help free the locals from superstition! I am not making this up. The head of a worldwide organization founded on multiple superstitions (they call them miracles), and who constantly threatens eternal damnation by means of an evil spirit (they call it the Devil), actually had the stone face (faccia tosta, in Italian) to criticize the local variety of superstition as irrational and bad for people’s mental health! It doesn’t get any more bizarre than this.
Or does it? Three days later the BBC reported that an Italian court of law had convicted the pilot and co-pilot of a Tuninter (a Tunisian airline) plane, as well as several others including the head of said organization. In the case of the pilot, the charge was that he acted irresponsibly during an emergency landing situation, crushing the plane into the Mediterranean and killing 16 people.
What happened, back in 2005, was that the Tuninter plane ran out of fuel in midair, because the wrong fuel gauge had been installed (that’s why the head of the airline was convicted). But the pilot, instead of beginning standard emergency procedures and directing the plane toward a nearby airport, started to pray out loud! Apparently, god wasn’t listening, and the turboprop crashed into the sea, killing several passengers.
What I think is particularly distressing about these two episodes (and countless others like them) is that the sometime silly and occasionally lethal superstition was displayed not by poor and ignorant people, but respectively by one of the most educated people in the world and by a trained airline pilot, presumably not a complete slacker in the brains department. Which brings us to the crucial question: how is it that intelligent, educated people can hold to such silly notions as eternal punishment and intercessory prayer?
Before the smug atheists among my readers indulge in too much gloating, let me remind you that I’ve also seen a fair share of irrational atheists, people who reject the existence of gods but cannot really articulate the reasons, or who nonetheless hold all sorts of other unfounded beliefs, beginning of course with the rather simplistic idea that all religious people are stupid.
All of this seems to point to the conclusion that the relationship between reason and rational belief is anything but straightforward. Plato famously said that to know something is to hold to a justified true belief. That is, for instance, to claim (even tentative) knowledge that there is no god I need to first of all really believe that there are no such things as gods (that is, I can’t just pretend) and second that it has to be the case that there really are no gods (very likely, seems to me). But I also need to be able to give reasons for why I believe what I claim to know. If the latter component is missing one cannot claim reasonable knowledge, but only a belief held because of faith or someone else’s authority — which isn’t that much better than the Pope believing that Christ is the lord and savior of humanity (hey, at least the Pope claims to actually be an authority in the matter, indeed the ultimate authority on earth!).
By that Platonic standard, I’m afraid we are in deep trouble. It is easy for most of us to laugh at the (staggering) statistics indicating that a large percentage of Americans don’t know that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around. But, if asked, how many Copernicans would actually be able to explain why they believe the heliocentric theory? If they can’t, then they are simply repeating something they heard from authorities or read in a book (which amounts to the same thing).
Of course most of us don’t have the time to go around learning about the evidence behind most things that we accept as true or likely true. We have to rely on someone else’s authority, and the question then becomes the by no means less tricky one of how to assess whose authority to believe. At the very least, this should make us rationalists a bit less smug about dismissing other people as “obviously” irrational.
Then again, there is plenty of everyday empirical evidence that nothing fails like prayer, so the next time you board a plane it may be prudent to ask the pilot what he would do in the case of an emergency...
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Could it be? Science critics calls for a truce
Sometimes you open Nature magazine and are surprised by the latest discovery in quantum mechanics or molecular biology. Browsing through the March 5, 2009 issue I was stunned by an article penned by sociologist Harry Collins, entitled “We cannot live by scepticism alone.” (The Brits call it “scepticism,” not “skepticism.”) In it, Collins criticized the extreme fringe of a field called “science studies” which has “unfortunately led some ... to conclude that science is just a form of faith or politics. They have become overly cynical of science.”
The reason this is surprising is because Collins himself is a prominent member of that “wave” of “post-modernism” that has made itself ridiculous by arguing that, say, evolution and creationism are both “cultural traditions.” While Collins himself did not write about the evolution-creation wars, as far as I know, he is infamous for having been on record saying that “the natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of scientific knowledge,” a phrase that would certainly surprise the astronomers who accepted the Copernican system, or the physicists who empirically tested Einstein’s ideas at the beginning of the 20th century.
Collins, it must be admitted, has never been one of the worst offenders in the post-modernist movement. I actually enjoyed reading his book, The Golem: What You Should Know About Science, a cautionary tale about how sociological and psychological factors do play an undeniable role in the scientific enterprise, and how, for instance, there is no such thing as a “crucial experiment” in science. Rather, the process of scientific verification is much more messy and imprecise (but often successful) than most scientists would like to admit, or that one would gather from reading the sanitized versions found in textbooks and even scholarly papers.
No, the worst offenders in the post-modernist group are people like, for instance, Bruno LaTour, the French sociologist who wrote a critique of Einstein’s theory of relativity based on a comical misunderstanding of a book Einstein wrote for the general public, and in particular of the metaphor of two observers and their reference frame that Einstein uses to make the point that there is no privileged (in the sense of universally fixed, as in the Newtonian system) system of coordinates in physics. Here is LaTour psychoanalyzing the famous physicist: “[Einstein’s] obsession with transporting information through transformation without deformation; his passion for the precise superimposition of readings; his panic at the idea that observers sent away might betray, might retain privileges, and send reports that could not be used to expand our knowledge; his desire to discipline the delegated observers and to turn them into dependent pieces of apparatus that do nothing but watch the coincidence of hands and notches.” If you get the impression that this is nonsense on stilts, that’s because it is.
Collins, however, redeems himself to a large degree with the Nature article, which strikes a much more balanced and especially constructive, tone. He writes that he wonders “if science warriors [his term for scientists who took on post-modernists] have been right to be worried about the (unintended) consequences of what social constructivists [another term for post-modernists, in this context, though there are subtle differences] were doing.” Except, of course, that those consequences — i.e., a diminution of the status of science in society — were not at all unintended. Here is philosopher Paul Feyerabend, one of the precursors and inspirations of the post-modernist/deconstructionist movement, at his best (or worst, depending on your taste):
According to Feyerabend, Galileo prevailed “because of his style and his clever techniques of persuasion, because he writes in Italian rather than in Latin, and because he appeals to people who are temperamentally opposed to the old ideas and the standards of learning connected with them.” An idiotic statement that sounds very much like Collins’ own quoted above about the irrelevance of data to the scientific enterprise.
Or how about this: “About a year ago I was short of funds. So I accepted an invitation to contribute to a book dealing with the relation between science and religion. To make the book sell I thought I should make my contribution a provocative one and the most provocative statement one can make about the relation between science and religion is that science is a religion. Having made that statement the core of my article, I discovered that lots of reasons, lots of excellent reasons, could be found for it. I enumerated the reasons, finished my article, and got paid.” Cynical, but at least he was honest about his priorities.
And there is more: “Consider the role science now plays in education. Scientific 'facts' are taught at a very early stage and in the very same manner as religious 'facts' were taught only a century ago. ... In society at large the judgment of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgments of bishops and cardinals were accepted not too long ago. ... The situation is not as hopeless as it was only a decade ago. ... We have learned that there are phenomena such as telepathy and telekinesis which are obliterated by a scientific approach and which could be used to do research in an entirely novel way. ... And then – is it not the case that the Church saved souls while science often does the very opposite? ... Three cheers to the fundamentalists in California who succeeded in having a dogmatic formulation of the theory of evolution removed from the textbooks and an account of Genesis included.” [That fundamentalist success was short-lived, fortunately.]
That is why “science warriors” (i.e., scientists) got worried about post-modernism. And Collins, in the Nature essay, admits to such excesses, stating that “post-modernists have become comfortable in their cocoon of cynicism” and that “the prospect of a society that entirely rejects the values of science is too awful to contemplate.” I guess eight years of a Republican war on science have taught a lesson even to post-modernist sociologists. Better late than never.
But Collins is right that scientists are at fault as well: “Whenever a scientist, acting in the name of science, cheats, cynically manipulates, claims to speak with the voice of capitalism, the voice of god, or even the voice of a doctrinaire atheist [notice the punch to Dawkins], it diminishes not only science but the whole of our society.” And that is exactly correct. That is why, contrary to many of my colleagues, I see much value in an intercourse between science, philosophy and science criticism — the latter being the salvageable part of the post-modernist program. Collins is absolutely correct that scientists “must think of themselves as moral leaders ... they must teach fallibility, not absolute truth ... Science can provide us with a set of values for how to run our social and political lives. But it can do it only if we accept that assessing scientific findings is a far more difficult task than was once believed, and that those findings do not lead straight to political conclusions.”
Indeed, a brighter future lies in the possibility of a cross-disciplinary cooperation among scientists and their critics in the humanities. Think of it as a balance of powers, where the activities and findings of science itself are subject to serious scrutiny, not in terms of the actual methods and findings, but in terms of the psychological, social, and political factors that may have entered into shaping research priorities and their presentation to the public. At the same time, humanists will need to respect science as the most powerful enterprise capable of yielding knowledge about the world as it really is, and therefore — as Francis Bacon would have put it — the power to change that reality to the benefit of humanity. Now, there is a compromise between the two cultures I can heartily embrace.
The reason this is surprising is because Collins himself is a prominent member of that “wave” of “post-modernism” that has made itself ridiculous by arguing that, say, evolution and creationism are both “cultural traditions.” While Collins himself did not write about the evolution-creation wars, as far as I know, he is infamous for having been on record saying that “the natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of scientific knowledge,” a phrase that would certainly surprise the astronomers who accepted the Copernican system, or the physicists who empirically tested Einstein’s ideas at the beginning of the 20th century.
Collins, it must be admitted, has never been one of the worst offenders in the post-modernist movement. I actually enjoyed reading his book, The Golem: What You Should Know About Science, a cautionary tale about how sociological and psychological factors do play an undeniable role in the scientific enterprise, and how, for instance, there is no such thing as a “crucial experiment” in science. Rather, the process of scientific verification is much more messy and imprecise (but often successful) than most scientists would like to admit, or that one would gather from reading the sanitized versions found in textbooks and even scholarly papers.
No, the worst offenders in the post-modernist group are people like, for instance, Bruno LaTour, the French sociologist who wrote a critique of Einstein’s theory of relativity based on a comical misunderstanding of a book Einstein wrote for the general public, and in particular of the metaphor of two observers and their reference frame that Einstein uses to make the point that there is no privileged (in the sense of universally fixed, as in the Newtonian system) system of coordinates in physics. Here is LaTour psychoanalyzing the famous physicist: “[Einstein’s] obsession with transporting information through transformation without deformation; his passion for the precise superimposition of readings; his panic at the idea that observers sent away might betray, might retain privileges, and send reports that could not be used to expand our knowledge; his desire to discipline the delegated observers and to turn them into dependent pieces of apparatus that do nothing but watch the coincidence of hands and notches.” If you get the impression that this is nonsense on stilts, that’s because it is.
Collins, however, redeems himself to a large degree with the Nature article, which strikes a much more balanced and especially constructive, tone. He writes that he wonders “if science warriors [his term for scientists who took on post-modernists] have been right to be worried about the (unintended) consequences of what social constructivists [another term for post-modernists, in this context, though there are subtle differences] were doing.” Except, of course, that those consequences — i.e., a diminution of the status of science in society — were not at all unintended. Here is philosopher Paul Feyerabend, one of the precursors and inspirations of the post-modernist/deconstructionist movement, at his best (or worst, depending on your taste):
According to Feyerabend, Galileo prevailed “because of his style and his clever techniques of persuasion, because he writes in Italian rather than in Latin, and because he appeals to people who are temperamentally opposed to the old ideas and the standards of learning connected with them.” An idiotic statement that sounds very much like Collins’ own quoted above about the irrelevance of data to the scientific enterprise.
Or how about this: “About a year ago I was short of funds. So I accepted an invitation to contribute to a book dealing with the relation between science and religion. To make the book sell I thought I should make my contribution a provocative one and the most provocative statement one can make about the relation between science and religion is that science is a religion. Having made that statement the core of my article, I discovered that lots of reasons, lots of excellent reasons, could be found for it. I enumerated the reasons, finished my article, and got paid.” Cynical, but at least he was honest about his priorities.
And there is more: “Consider the role science now plays in education. Scientific 'facts' are taught at a very early stage and in the very same manner as religious 'facts' were taught only a century ago. ... In society at large the judgment of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgments of bishops and cardinals were accepted not too long ago. ... The situation is not as hopeless as it was only a decade ago. ... We have learned that there are phenomena such as telepathy and telekinesis which are obliterated by a scientific approach and which could be used to do research in an entirely novel way. ... And then – is it not the case that the Church saved souls while science often does the very opposite? ... Three cheers to the fundamentalists in California who succeeded in having a dogmatic formulation of the theory of evolution removed from the textbooks and an account of Genesis included.” [That fundamentalist success was short-lived, fortunately.]
That is why “science warriors” (i.e., scientists) got worried about post-modernism. And Collins, in the Nature essay, admits to such excesses, stating that “post-modernists have become comfortable in their cocoon of cynicism” and that “the prospect of a society that entirely rejects the values of science is too awful to contemplate.” I guess eight years of a Republican war on science have taught a lesson even to post-modernist sociologists. Better late than never.
But Collins is right that scientists are at fault as well: “Whenever a scientist, acting in the name of science, cheats, cynically manipulates, claims to speak with the voice of capitalism, the voice of god, or even the voice of a doctrinaire atheist [notice the punch to Dawkins], it diminishes not only science but the whole of our society.” And that is exactly correct. That is why, contrary to many of my colleagues, I see much value in an intercourse between science, philosophy and science criticism — the latter being the salvageable part of the post-modernist program. Collins is absolutely correct that scientists “must think of themselves as moral leaders ... they must teach fallibility, not absolute truth ... Science can provide us with a set of values for how to run our social and political lives. But it can do it only if we accept that assessing scientific findings is a far more difficult task than was once believed, and that those findings do not lead straight to political conclusions.”
Indeed, a brighter future lies in the possibility of a cross-disciplinary cooperation among scientists and their critics in the humanities. Think of it as a balance of powers, where the activities and findings of science itself are subject to serious scrutiny, not in terms of the actual methods and findings, but in terms of the psychological, social, and political factors that may have entered into shaping research priorities and their presentation to the public. At the same time, humanists will need to respect science as the most powerful enterprise capable of yielding knowledge about the world as it really is, and therefore — as Francis Bacon would have put it — the power to change that reality to the benefit of humanity. Now, there is a compromise between the two cultures I can heartily embrace.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Child sex abuse: will the Catholic Church go bankrupt?
A bill to temporarily lift the statute of limitations (and then permanently increase it) on lawsuits for child sexual abuse finally has a good chance to be approved by the New York state legislature — except that it is opposed by Catholic authorities, Orthodox Jewish organizations, and the Republican Party.
The bill would give one year to victims of child sexual abuse to file a lawsuit against the alleged perpetrators, an action for which the current legislation sets a statute of five years after the victim turns 18. After one year, the statute of limitations would be permanently extended to ten years. The idea is supported by children’s advocates, who maintain that it often takes a long time to come to terms with having been the subject of sexual abuse, because of the shame and psychological trauma. Similar bills have passed in Delaware and in California, and in New York Governor Paterson has said that he would sign it.
Seems like a no brainer, right? Especially in a child-centric society like the United States, you would think that nobody would dare opposE such a bill. But you would be wrong. The spokesperson for the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that “this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church.” Besides the fact that I personally don’t think that bankrupting the Catholic Church would be a particularly terrible sin, the charge is obviously paranoid. Then again, it is true that the incoming Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, was forced to put his headquarters in Wisconsin up for sale in order to pay judgments from law suites generated by a similar law...
Catholic authorities are being helped in fighting against the bill by leaders of both Hasidic and Sephardic Jewish institutions in Brooklyn, which evidently fear that they might be the target of similar accusations and legal actions. Moreover, this is actually the fourth time that the bill has come up for consideration, each time stoically shepherded by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey of Queens (a Democrat). The previous three times the effort was blocked, with the bill never even getting to be discussed by the state Senate because of opposition by former majority leader Joseph Bruno (a Republican). Things are looking up this time, though, because thank god control of the state legislature switched to Democrats after the last elections.
The real question is this: why do some conservative religious people in a position of authority (be they Catholics, Hasidic, Sephardic) have a tendency to engage in child sexual molestation? And why can't Republican politicians help themselves from shielding the perpetrators, legally and in the public arena?
I don’t know enough about Hasidic and Sephardic Jews, but I grew up Catholic and I have a strong suspicion that the reason for the widespread sexual abuse of children within the Church is very, very simple indeed: priests can’t have sex openly, so they get it in other ways. I’m sure this suggestion won’t shock anyone with a modicum of understanding of human nature, but it is remarkable that the Church won’t do the only thing that will stop the practice (other than facing up to it instead of hiding it): let the poor bastards marry, just like the Protestants do. After all, the scriptural mandate for members of the Church not too marry is based on really shaky grounds. I’m sure God would understand.
As for why Republicans are so keen to help child molesters when they are members of the clergy, despite their vocal protestations about “putting children first” every chance they get, this too is rooted in rather simple notions. The most obvious one is that conservatives seem to think that religious authorities need to be protected at any cost, because they are, after all, the source of moral teaching for the rest of us. I doubt the irony of this position in the case of child sexual abuse perpetrated by priests reaches the average Republican mind, notoriously shielded from the real world by thick layers of denial and rationalization.
Then again, the whole relationship between conservatism and sex is so hilarious that it makes for wonderful satirical comedy. Just think of the recent scandal involving “reverend” Ted Haggart and homosexuality, or the the finding that more porn is consumed in regions of the country where religious conservatism is stronger. That’s the problem when one turns normal human behavior into “sin.” Wouldn’t it be better for priests and conservatives to simply enjoy some consensual sex among adults and leave homosexuals free to do what they like, rather than molest children and support the porn industry?
The bill would give one year to victims of child sexual abuse to file a lawsuit against the alleged perpetrators, an action for which the current legislation sets a statute of five years after the victim turns 18. After one year, the statute of limitations would be permanently extended to ten years. The idea is supported by children’s advocates, who maintain that it often takes a long time to come to terms with having been the subject of sexual abuse, because of the shame and psychological trauma. Similar bills have passed in Delaware and in California, and in New York Governor Paterson has said that he would sign it.
Seems like a no brainer, right? Especially in a child-centric society like the United States, you would think that nobody would dare opposE such a bill. But you would be wrong. The spokesperson for the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that “this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church.” Besides the fact that I personally don’t think that bankrupting the Catholic Church would be a particularly terrible sin, the charge is obviously paranoid. Then again, it is true that the incoming Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, was forced to put his headquarters in Wisconsin up for sale in order to pay judgments from law suites generated by a similar law...
Catholic authorities are being helped in fighting against the bill by leaders of both Hasidic and Sephardic Jewish institutions in Brooklyn, which evidently fear that they might be the target of similar accusations and legal actions. Moreover, this is actually the fourth time that the bill has come up for consideration, each time stoically shepherded by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey of Queens (a Democrat). The previous three times the effort was blocked, with the bill never even getting to be discussed by the state Senate because of opposition by former majority leader Joseph Bruno (a Republican). Things are looking up this time, though, because thank god control of the state legislature switched to Democrats after the last elections.
The real question is this: why do some conservative religious people in a position of authority (be they Catholics, Hasidic, Sephardic) have a tendency to engage in child sexual molestation? And why can't Republican politicians help themselves from shielding the perpetrators, legally and in the public arena?
I don’t know enough about Hasidic and Sephardic Jews, but I grew up Catholic and I have a strong suspicion that the reason for the widespread sexual abuse of children within the Church is very, very simple indeed: priests can’t have sex openly, so they get it in other ways. I’m sure this suggestion won’t shock anyone with a modicum of understanding of human nature, but it is remarkable that the Church won’t do the only thing that will stop the practice (other than facing up to it instead of hiding it): let the poor bastards marry, just like the Protestants do. After all, the scriptural mandate for members of the Church not too marry is based on really shaky grounds. I’m sure God would understand.
As for why Republicans are so keen to help child molesters when they are members of the clergy, despite their vocal protestations about “putting children first” every chance they get, this too is rooted in rather simple notions. The most obvious one is that conservatives seem to think that religious authorities need to be protected at any cost, because they are, after all, the source of moral teaching for the rest of us. I doubt the irony of this position in the case of child sexual abuse perpetrated by priests reaches the average Republican mind, notoriously shielded from the real world by thick layers of denial and rationalization.
Then again, the whole relationship between conservatism and sex is so hilarious that it makes for wonderful satirical comedy. Just think of the recent scandal involving “reverend” Ted Haggart and homosexuality, or the the finding that more porn is consumed in regions of the country where religious conservatism is stronger. That’s the problem when one turns normal human behavior into “sin.” Wouldn’t it be better for priests and conservatives to simply enjoy some consensual sex among adults and leave homosexuals free to do what they like, rather than molest children and support the porn industry?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Freethinking in Brussels
I have been in Brussels (Belgium) for the past few days, alternately enjoying the French and Flemish food, the museums (the one devoted to musical instruments is my favorite), and of course the gray, cold and rainy weather. The real reason I’m here, though, is to give a series of three lectures on matters of science, philosophy and religion at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), the “Free University.”VUB is called “free” because it was established to further freethinking, as opposed to the religious thinking promoted by Catholic universities in this country. Imagine that - a whole university that shamelessly labels itself freethinking! Indeed, the motto of VUB is “Scientia Vincere Tenebras,” which can be roughly translated as “science defeats darkness.” Except that “scientia” is actually an ancient word that refers to much more than science per se, it identifies a more encompassing concept that would include both modern science and philosophy, or the broader idea of human knowledge. This is, of course, what universities are supposed to be about, but it is hard to find a more stark and bold declaration of such intentions than in VUB’s motto and very name.
I am here as part of a program related to the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species. The program is made possible by the Willy Calewaert Chair, which made me curious to learn about who Willy Calewaert was. Turns out he was quite a pivotal figure in Belgian freethought, and had a large impact on Belgian society. Calewaert had a doctorate in law, and his career included posts as professor at the universities of Antwerp, Gent and VUB. He was also Minister of Education. He managed to get himself entangled in pretty much every major battle for human rights that characterized many European countries in the ‘60s and ‘70s: he defended not just people’s basic rights to equality, a fair socio-economic system (let’s not forget that Karl Marx lived in Brussels, where he wrote the Communist Manifesto), expression and privacy, but also fought for the passage of laws on divorce, abortion, and the right to die. Remarkably, he proposed in 1972 a law in the Belgian Parliament that recognized freethinking as a “life stance.” The law was eventually enacted in 1993 and is now part of the Constitution.
Seems to me that figures like Calewaert and institutions like the Free University of Brussels have a lot to teach the rest of the world, including the Western world (and in particular the United States, the often pompously self-professed “best democracy in the world”). I like to think that the rights Calewaert defended ought to be easily recognized as fundamental to the quality of life in any nation, but of course the reality is far from it. I would think that being a freethinker (or a humanist, or however it is one wishes to label their philosophy of life) should be not just a recognized “life stance,” but in fact the life stance to emulate as an example of the best that can be achieved by humanity when it is freed from superstition and pettiness of interests. And yet, President Obama caused an uproar for simply acknowledging the existence of non-believers in American society. I would hope that “scientia” is what we need to teach our children and young adults, because it really is our best weapon against the darkness of intolerance and credulity. But the very word scientia is unknown to most people, and the corresponding idea of a liberal arts education is under assault from both outside and within academia.
Willy Calewaert showed us the way forward, tirelessly fighting for human rights and an open society. And institutions like VUB struggle to keep that candle in the dark alight to show our fellow human beings how we can improve our life in the spirit of knowledge and tolerance. It is good to be in Brussels.
Friday, March 06, 2009
The very foundations of science
I have been downloading a cartload of books on my new Kindle lately, since I really enjoy the idea of walking into the subway carrying a rather inconspicuous, very light, yet incredibly large library with me. One of these books is Samir Okasha’s Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction, which I’m reading because I intend to review and promote it. Samir writes very clearly, and this short introduction is very useful for the general curious reader (and, frankly, some scientists of my acquaintance could use it too).Anyway, Samir devotes quite a bit of space in chapter 2 of his book to Hume’s problem of induction, which is fundamental to our understanding of how science -- indeed, reasoning in general -- works. Seems like the kinds of things that readers of this blog enjoy sinking their teeth into, so here we go.
The problem itself is well known: induction is the most common type of reasoning we all use (the other fundamental kind, deduction, is used largely within formal logic and mathematics), and it consists of generalizations from a series of observations. So when we say, for instance, that we are confident that the sun will rise tomorrow, this is not because we have a logical proof that it cannot be otherwise, but because we have seen it rising every day and we have no reason to think that tomorrow it will be otherwise. As Okasha points out, we literally stake our lives on this sort of inductive reasoning, for instance every time we bet that a car will turn to the left if we rotate the steering wheel counterclockwise. (By the way, it won’t do to claim that you expect the sun to rise or the wheels to turn because you understand the mechanism: your understanding of the mechanism is itself built on a series of inductions, it is not that there is a logical necessity for solar systems or cars to work in the particular way they do work.)
The problem is that, according to Hume, there is no rational justification for induction! You see, if I’d asked you why you use inductive reasoning, pretty much the best you can do is to reply that it has worked in the past. Which is an argument based on induction. Which means you are begging the question, in philosophical terms, engaging in circular reasoning.
This may seem yet another example of philosophers engaging in intellectual masturbation, but the more you think about it the more Hume’s problem grows on you, and becomes disturbing. To quote Okasha: “If Hume is right, the foundations on which science is built do not look quite as solid as we might have hoped.” Oops.
Several ways have been proposed out of Hume’s dilemma, none of them particularly successful. I’d like to briefly discuss here the idea -- presented by Okasha in some detail -- that the concept of probability might rescue science and reason from the problem of induction. It goes something like this: granted that induction (unlike deduction) does not guarantee truth. Perhaps, however, we can rephrase what induction allows us to do in terms of probable statements. That is, we don’t really mean that we know that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that the car will turn to the left. We mean to say that, based on past experience, we think there is a high probability that those events will happen again in the future. (Incidentally, since deduction does guarantee truth, why not use it instead? Because deductive reasoning has to start with two or more premises, and at least one of those premises is arrived at via experience, not from first principles. Which means that even deduction itself has to rely on induction, at some point or another. The mystery deepens...)
Now, the problem is that philosophers have pointed out that there are at least three concepts of probability, so we have to see which, if any, of them is going to be helpful to dispel Hume’s ghost. The first way to think about probability is as a measure of the frequency of an event: if I say that the probability of a coin to land heads up is 50% I may mean that, if I flip the coin say 100 times, on average I will get heads 50 times. This is not going to get us out of Hume’s problem, because probabilities interpreted as frequencies of events are, again, a form of induction -- we generalize from a few observations to a broader range of events instead of all possible events, but the type of reasoning is the same.
Secondly, we can think of probabilities as reflecting subjective judgment. If I say that it is probable that the coin will land heads up, I might simply be trying to express my feeling that this will be the case. You might have a different feeling, and respond that you don’t think it's probable that the coin will lend heads up. This is certainly not a viable solution to the problem of induction, because subjective probabilities are, well, subjective, and hence reflect opinions, not degrees of truth.
Lastly, one can adopt what Okasha calls the logical interpretation of probabilities, according to which there is a probability X that an event will occur means that we have objective reasons to believe (or not) that X will occur (for instance, because we understand the physics of the solar system, the mechanics of cars, or the physics of coin flipping). This doesn’t mean that we will always be correct, but it does offer a promising way out of Hume’s dilemma, since it seems to ground our judgments on a more solid foundation. Indeed, this is the option adopted by many philosophers, and would be the one probably preferred by scientists, if they ever gave this sort of thing a moment’s thought. (The statistically savvy among you may have noticed that this concept of probability is not the standard frequentist one common in classical statistical analysis, but more akin to either likelihood or Bayesian methods.)
Okasha warns his readers, however, that even the logical interpretation of probabilities runs into both philosophical and mathematical problems, but we shall leave that for another time. Let me conclude with another quote from Samir’s book, which to me encapsulates the whole point of doing philosophical analysis: “Like most philosophical questions, these questions probably do not admit of final answers, but in grappling with them we learn much about the nature and limits of scientific knowledge.” Indeed.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
The pain of envy and the pleasure of charity
Nature -- presumably through the mechanism of Darwinian selection -- has endowed us with a balanced system of pains and pleasures that correspond respectively to the sort of things we should avoid or seek in order to further our survival and reproduction. It is not surprising that the brain produces a sensation of pain when we bleed: if it didn't we may run the risk of bleeding to death without noticing (or noticing too late). Similarly, it is hardly surprising that our brain releases pleasure chemicals (literally, neural drugs) to reward us when we do something useful, like finding and eating a sugar or fat-ladened substance.
But what about social pains and pleasures? We often speak poetically and metaphorically about the pain of experiencing envy, or the pleasure of donating to a favorite charity. Turns out, such talk need not be considered quite so metaphorical. A study published in the 13 February 2009 issue of Science magazine by H. Takahashi and collaborators has investigated what happens in the brain when we experience those socially triggered feelings of envy or self-satisfaction. The results are rather stunning, if perfectly logical in hindsight: the researchers found that the same neural circuitry that is involved in the generation of physical pain and pleasure is also in charge of generating the analogous reactions in response to apparently more abstract situations. For instance, people experiencing envy because of another's success activate the pain circuitry of their brains, and when that person is befallen by misfortune, the reward neurocircuitry is activated because we feel delighted. On the more positive side, making a donation to a charity not only stimulates the reward system, but it does so more intensely than when we receive money ourselves.
Biologically this makes sense because the human species' survival and reproduction -- those golden standards of evolution -- depend as much on social interactions as on interactions with the physical environment. Cutting yourself may turn out to be lethal, but so may be getting on the wrong side of enough people in the group which you depend upon for long term sustenance. Not finding enough sugary and fatty foods is certainly bad news, but so is not finding a mate willing and able to copulate and have progeny with you (evolutionarily speaking).
I find the implications of the new research, however, to be particularly compelling for the continuing philosophical debate about the nature of emotions and the primacy of subjective experience. Some philosophers, usually of the continental tradition (particularly phenomenologists) seem to feel a particular delight (I wonder by which circuits in their brains ) in pointing out that science is intrinsically limited because it will never be able to tell us anything about first person, subjective experience of the world. Not only that, but science -- in these people's minds -- cannot even satisfactorily account for the very generation of subjective experiences (so called "qualia"), such as pain, or color.
If the point is simply that science can at best hope to describe and explain the neural circuitry that makes subjective experience possible, but that only a subject can "feel" what it is like -- in the title of a famous paper by Thomas Nagel -- to be a bat (or anything else for that matter), this seems to be rather trivial and not that interesting (although phenomenologists do make a big deal of it). The objective of science is to provide a mechanistic account of feelings, not to feel the emotions themselves. So it isn't really a failure of science at all, but rather a misconception on the part of some philosophers as to what cognitive research is attempting to do.
But reading some of the philosophical literature, one does get the impression that the science skeptics are after something more fundamental: they seem to be claiming that there is an uncanny, non-materialistic nature to subjective experiences, which therefore not only cannot be "felt" through a third party approach, but cannot even be adequately explained mechanistically. From there to the classic position of mind-matter dualism the step is short indeed.
Yet, research like the one by Takahashi and colleagues continuously chips away at a non-materialistic view of human emotions and subjective experience. We know quite a bit now about how the sensation of color, a staple of the qualia debate, actually originates. To insist that one still needs to personally experience what color feels like is -- again -- entirely beside the point: we know the neural basis of the phenomenon, we have a good understanding of the chemicals involved and how they react to light of different wavelengths, and we even have a pretty good idea of why color vision evolved to begin with. What else does one want in order to acknowledge that we do have a good scientific explanation of color? We are not quite yet in the same explanatory position concerning complex emotions like social pains and pleasures, but the study published in Science is a good step in that direction.
This, I hasten to clarify, is not a tale of science vs. philosophy, where the latter inevitably retreats in the wake of a steady advance of the former. Rather, it is a question of what happens when philosophy unnecessarily pits itself against science. Instead of reveling in pointing out the alleged limitations of science as an explanatory enterprise of natural processes, philosophers should concentrate on how a better understanding of science can help them to deal more effectively with truly philosophical questions. For instance, if we accept that certain social actions are related to neural pains and pleasures because of evolutionary history, what does that tell us about the foundations of our moral reasoning, and how can philosophy help us transcend a naturalistic morality that may have been all right in Pleistocene times, but is clearly inadequate to navigate the complex global society of the 21st century?
But what about social pains and pleasures? We often speak poetically and metaphorically about the pain of experiencing envy, or the pleasure of donating to a favorite charity. Turns out, such talk need not be considered quite so metaphorical. A study published in the 13 February 2009 issue of Science magazine by H. Takahashi and collaborators has investigated what happens in the brain when we experience those socially triggered feelings of envy or self-satisfaction. The results are rather stunning, if perfectly logical in hindsight: the researchers found that the same neural circuitry that is involved in the generation of physical pain and pleasure is also in charge of generating the analogous reactions in response to apparently more abstract situations. For instance, people experiencing envy because of another's success activate the pain circuitry of their brains, and when that person is befallen by misfortune, the reward neurocircuitry is activated because we feel delighted. On the more positive side, making a donation to a charity not only stimulates the reward system, but it does so more intensely than when we receive money ourselves.
Biologically this makes sense because the human species' survival and reproduction -- those golden standards of evolution -- depend as much on social interactions as on interactions with the physical environment. Cutting yourself may turn out to be lethal, but so may be getting on the wrong side of enough people in the group which you depend upon for long term sustenance. Not finding enough sugary and fatty foods is certainly bad news, but so is not finding a mate willing and able to copulate and have progeny with you (evolutionarily speaking).
I find the implications of the new research, however, to be particularly compelling for the continuing philosophical debate about the nature of emotions and the primacy of subjective experience. Some philosophers, usually of the continental tradition (particularly phenomenologists) seem to feel a particular delight (I wonder by which circuits in their brains ) in pointing out that science is intrinsically limited because it will never be able to tell us anything about first person, subjective experience of the world. Not only that, but science -- in these people's minds -- cannot even satisfactorily account for the very generation of subjective experiences (so called "qualia"), such as pain, or color.
If the point is simply that science can at best hope to describe and explain the neural circuitry that makes subjective experience possible, but that only a subject can "feel" what it is like -- in the title of a famous paper by Thomas Nagel -- to be a bat (or anything else for that matter), this seems to be rather trivial and not that interesting (although phenomenologists do make a big deal of it). The objective of science is to provide a mechanistic account of feelings, not to feel the emotions themselves. So it isn't really a failure of science at all, but rather a misconception on the part of some philosophers as to what cognitive research is attempting to do.
But reading some of the philosophical literature, one does get the impression that the science skeptics are after something more fundamental: they seem to be claiming that there is an uncanny, non-materialistic nature to subjective experiences, which therefore not only cannot be "felt" through a third party approach, but cannot even be adequately explained mechanistically. From there to the classic position of mind-matter dualism the step is short indeed.
Yet, research like the one by Takahashi and colleagues continuously chips away at a non-materialistic view of human emotions and subjective experience. We know quite a bit now about how the sensation of color, a staple of the qualia debate, actually originates. To insist that one still needs to personally experience what color feels like is -- again -- entirely beside the point: we know the neural basis of the phenomenon, we have a good understanding of the chemicals involved and how they react to light of different wavelengths, and we even have a pretty good idea of why color vision evolved to begin with. What else does one want in order to acknowledge that we do have a good scientific explanation of color? We are not quite yet in the same explanatory position concerning complex emotions like social pains and pleasures, but the study published in Science is a good step in that direction.
This, I hasten to clarify, is not a tale of science vs. philosophy, where the latter inevitably retreats in the wake of a steady advance of the former. Rather, it is a question of what happens when philosophy unnecessarily pits itself against science. Instead of reveling in pointing out the alleged limitations of science as an explanatory enterprise of natural processes, philosophers should concentrate on how a better understanding of science can help them to deal more effectively with truly philosophical questions. For instance, if we accept that certain social actions are related to neural pains and pleasures because of evolutionary history, what does that tell us about the foundations of our moral reasoning, and how can philosophy help us transcend a naturalistic morality that may have been all right in Pleistocene times, but is clearly inadequate to navigate the complex global society of the 21st century?
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