From the APA: philosophy of science

[Same disclaimer as before: some of the following gets pretty technical, sorry guys, but we are talking professional philosophy here...]

Just two speakers for this symposium: Justin Remhof (University of Illinois-Urbana), on “Nietzsche’s reconception of science: overcoming nihilism,” and Robert Northcott (University of Missouri-St. Louis) on “Rethinking genetic drift.”

We start with Remhof. There are apparently two views of Nietzsche’s understanding of science: either in terms of scientific naturalism and its power to discover things about the world, or in terms of science as inherently nihilistic (jee, you think? Nietzsche as a nihilist?).

Remhof is going to argue that for Nietzsche science is actually life-affirming, as opposed to Christian-inspired nihilism. The basic idea is that determinate truths (coming from religion) are life-denying because they cannot be satisfied (i.e., verified). Science, on the other hand, is life-affirming because it is comfortable with the indeterminacy of our truths about the world.

I am not a Nietzsche scholar by any means, but I find it uncomfortable to put “science” in the same paragraph as words like “life-affirming reconception of ontology,” “will to power ontology,” or “extensionally individuated.” But that’s just me and my instinctive skepticism about anything that smells too much of continental philosophy...

Ok, an example straight from Remhof’s outline, seemingly quoting Nietzsche:

“If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare ‘look, a mammal,’ I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way. ... “[This] contains not a single point which would be ‘true in itself’ or really and universally valid apart from man.”

Hmm, really? It seems to me that a mammal remains a mammal whether or not there are men around to verify that fact. It is trivially true that without humans around nobody would conceptualize what a mammal is, or that the term “mammal” is linguistically arbitrary, but that’s not what Nietzsche is saying. “Mammals” are in fact an objective truth about the world, specifically they are a particular phylogenetic lineage of organisms on planet earth, with a given history and a number of non-arbitrarily distinctive features (despite the existence of Platypi).

More explicitly, again Remhof presumably quoting or paraphrasing Nietzsche:

“‘Truth’ is therefore not something there, that might be found or discovered — but something that must be created and gives name to a process ... [it is an] active determining — not a becoming conscious of something that is in itself firm and determined.”

No, no, no. Truth is something “out there,” and the only sensible discussion is about the epistemic limitations of human beings, which make it so that we can rarely be certain of the truths we think we discover. We don’t create truth, we discover it (partially, under certain conditions, using some methods, of which science is certainly a primary one).

One more perhaps obvious comment: it seems to me that “life affirming” and “life negating” are not attributes that are properly applied to science. Science’s object, unlike religion, is not to help us figure a way out of nihilism — that’s the job of philosophy!

[Incidentally, the talk referred to above is “philosophy of science” in a fairly non-standard sense of the term, from my experience.]

And now to Northcott and drift, a surprisingly controversial topic in both evolutionary genetics and philosophy of biology, about which I have written in collaboration with Jonathan Kaplan. So, generally speaking, drift is a sort of population-level “sampling error” that creates random fluctuations in gene frequencies as a result of the finiteness of the size of biological populations. (This is directly analogous to the observation that short runs of coin-flipping do not typically result in exactly 50-50 outcomes of tail and head, again because the run is short and subject to stochastic outcomes.)

According to Northcott “selection probabilities leave out many idiosyncratic [causal, as opposed to systematic] factors. The ‘sampling error’ presumed to generate drift is the result of these latter factors.”

So, we can think of drift as an outcome (instead of a process), but outcomes cannot explain themselves, so we still need a causal explanation of the outcome of drift.

Another thought is that drift is a sort of causal dustbin, something that captures the action of all factors the effects of which are not captured by selection probabilities. The problem here is that drift then becomes a placeholder for unknown causes.

A third possibility is to conceptualize drift as indiscriminate sampling (as opposed to the discriminate sampling of natural selection). This is hardly better than the dustbin scenario, since whatever factors are responsible for such indiscriminate sampling remain unknown.

Northcott puts forth the view that the real causal factor is in fact population size itself, which needs to be distinguished by other non-selective factors. He points out, though, that if in a given population we start with two alleles (A and B) at equal frequencies, and there is no selection going on, and A drifts to fixation, this is not fully explained by drift-as-finite population size because that level of population size is also compatible with B going to fixation instead.

Generally speaking, Northcott takes the currently standard view that explanations are contrastive (X rather than Y explains Z) and admits of degrees of explanation. One can in fact use probability theory to calculate an explanatory score, or degree of explanatory strength for each proposed contrast (equations provided in the paper by the author).

Applying this approach to the example of the A,B alleles above (where the explanatory contrast is between finite and infinite population size), Northcott concludes that finite population size only weakly explains why A goes to fixation rather than B, but it fully explains why either A or B will go to fixation without selection.

I actually like Robert’s approach, but some fundamental questions remain, it seems to me: in what sense, precisely, is population size a causal factor in (as opposed to just being a correlate of) changing gene frequencies? And, as the calculation above clearly shows: what other factors do explain why a particular allele rather than another goes to fixation?

From the APA: Darwinism and mind

[Warning to the general reader: this is going to be pretty technical, especially the first part...]

This is a symposium organized by Robert Brandon (Duke), featuring Karen Neander (also from Duke) and John Dupré (Exeter, England). Neander talks about functional explanations in biology in terms of “biosemantics” (an approach that attempts to explain intentionality in biological terms, particularly by invoking the process of natural selection).

Ernst Mayr famously distinguished two types of explanations in biology, proximate and ultimate. The first is a type of functional explanation (the heart has the function of pumping blood), the second is an evolutionary or teleological one (the heart evolved from simpler structures to further the survival and reproduction of organisms belonging to certain lineages). Neander criticizes what she sees as the standard view of these types of explanation, which says that only functional explanations are needed in physiology, no need to bring in teleological explanations because causation in physiology is proximal (this was in fact Mayr’s position).

Neander maintains that physiology clearly employs a normative definition of biological function, every time people make a distinction between “normal” and “abnormal” physiology (normal with respect to what standard?). The claim would then be that one cannot get to a normative function except through a teleological (evolutionary) explanation. Neander proceeded for quite some time after this, but the point seems to me rather obvious: physiological functions cannot be fully explained without evolution. In a vague — yet potentially misleading — sense then “intentionality” gets extended to any biological structure that has been selected (without true “intention”) to perform a given function.

Dupré in the Q&A defended the “standard” view, suggesting that a physiologist really is going to be distracted by asking evolutionary (“why”) questions when in fact he wishes to understand how biological structures work. As for the normative part, Dupré proposes that physiology does need a theory of normal and abnormal function, but that it does not need evolution to arrive at one. (I think on this one I tend to agree with Dupré.)

Also in the Q&A, Peter Godfrey-Smith pointed out a case in biology where normative functionality is out of place: community and ecosystem ecology. Although ecologists often talk about “ecosystem functions,” “keystone predators,” etc., they don’t (or should not) mean that things are “supposed” to work that way. But here Neander correctly points out that the difference is that in physiology, but not those cases in ecology, function is a result of natural selection, and therefore teleological (originated for a purpose).

Dupré’s talk is on “post-genomic Darwinism and human nature.” This ought to be interesting... [Great! He’s the first speaker I’ve seen here who actually uses a computer presentation!]

John claims that the work of evolutionary theory (which he somewhat incorrectly refers to as neo-Darwinism, instead of the Modern Synthesis) is far from over, contrary to what many biologists (not including yours truly) seem to think. He takes issue with several of the “neo-Darwinian” tenets, including that natural selection is the main cause of adaptation, that variation is originated endogenously, that genes are the targets of selection, and that evolutionary change always occurs gradually.

Dupré’s focus is on the picture/metaphor of the tree of life, non-genetic causes of adaptation (like phenotypic plasticity), and non-genetic (i.e., epigenetic) inheritance.

In terms of the tree of life, it is becoming increasingly clear that horizontal transfer of genes during evolution has played an unexpectedly large role, changing the metaphor of common descent from that of a tree to that of a very intricate web. For instance, there definitely is no unique tree for prokaryotes, given the high level of horizontal gene transfer in microbes. Even among eukaryotes, we have evidence of more hybridization than previously thought, depending on the particular group (especially in plants, I’d say). And of course let’s not forget viral-enabled horizontal transfer (just think that 10% of the human genome is made of fragments from former retroviruses). Finally, there is endosymbiosis as an occasional but important evolutionary mechanism. (Though, I never bought Lynn Margulis’ argument that this somehow undermines “Darwinism.”)

Dupré suggests that the evolutionary literature over-emphasizes competition and does not take seriously that organisms often form cooperative wholes in order to survive. The “neo-Darwinian” account of cooperation is limited to Hamilton-style kin selection, which seems inadequate to explain the full spectrum of cooperation among living organisms. Consider for instance Argentine ant “supercolonies” marching throughout Europe, a situation where individual colonies of ants coordinate over thousands of miles through connections among billions of individuals. The next example is of human super colonies, i.e. armies made possible by cultural evolution. In general, though, the best examples of cooperation are actually found among microbes. This is important because arguably most of earth’s biochemistry is made possible by different combinations of microbial pathways. As far as humans are concerned, 90% of cells in the human body are symbiotic microbes, which means that 99% of genes inside a human being actually reside in microbes.

John then moved to Lamarckism, a notoriously bad word in biological lingo, though he was careful in pointing out that he does not employ the term in the historical sense (then why employ it at all, just to piss off a large number of biologists?). He is actually talking about non-genetic inheritance of various types, from epigenetic to cultural, all of which can be understood in the context of what philosophers call developmental systems theory.

Dupré finally got to human nature, in this case arguing that evolution actually tells us very little about what we are like. This is in part because we don’t know enough about evolutionary processes to use the theory predictively (is that even possible, I wonder?), because naive adaptationism based on the idea of optimizing selection is simply false, and because humans do not have (enough) close relatives for meaningful phylogenetic comparative analyses. No disagreement here, as I’ve argued in a variety of places myself.

The alternative view John puts forth is that we should take much more seriously cultural evolution (and/or its interaction with biological evolutionary mechanisms), which explains how humans became humans with comparatively little input from standard genetic evolutionary theory.

From the APA: epistemology

Interesting sounding symposium put together by Stephen Grimm of Fordham University. The first speaker is Chris Tucker (Notre Dame and Auckland), with a talk on “Why open-minded people should endorse dogmatism.” Ok, ok, I’m holding my knees...

Tucker defines dogmatism as “if it seems to S that P, then S has prima facie non-inferential justification for P.” Right, so he is not talking about anything like what most people mean by “dogmatism.” Keep that in mind. Moreover, “seems” above does not reflect a mere belief on the part of S, but a forceful feeling of truth. For instance, it seems to me that there are other people in this room, or that 2 + 2 equal 4. That kind of seeming.

[Sociological note to self: unlike education — see previous post — epistemology appears to be of almost exclusive interest to male-gendered philosophers. Go figure.]

Tucker differentiates between “seemings” and sensations, as it should be obvious from the example of the 2+2=4 above. He draws this distinction more precisely on the basis of neurobiological evidence concerned with people who have “seemings” but not the corresponding sensation, and vice versa, which I find a good example of how a philosophical (conceptual) distinction makes sense of puzzling empirical data.

Broadly speaking, it appears that Tucker is saying that “dogmatism” based on “seemings” is justified when the person experiencing the seeming is in a position to have a strong, likely correct, intuition of what is going on. I’m happy to agree that this is very sensible, but I maintain that to call this “dogmatism” is a cheap trick to justify an attention-grabbing title in a talk that would otherwise not be quite so remarkable.

The second talk is by Kay Mathiesen (University of Arizona) on “groups as epistemic agents.” She argues that group-level epistemic beliefs are not necessarily the same thing as the sum of the epistemic beliefs of the individuals making up a group. Ok, I’m skeptical of this one too...

The example presented is that of two parents faced with the question of when their daughter can date. The mother seems to think that 14 is a sufficient age, the father goes for 18. They decide to present a unified front and tell their daughter that 16 is acceptable. Since neither of the two people actually thinks 16 is the answer, the “group” made up of the two parents holds to a different belief than either individual member of the group. This is certainly a good point, but I would most definitely not call this a case of “belief,” a term that immediately brings to mind very different kinds of situations. The author herself agrees that “belief” may not be the best term here, suggesting “holding a position” as an alternative. But if we are talking about holding a position rather than a belief, then in what sense is the group behaving as an epistemic agent? Where is the epistemology here?

[Incidentally, although I have no time to go into it in this post, the commentary by Michael Hicks from Brooklyn College was absolutely superb and characterized by incredible clarity. He managed — in my opinion — to drive a stake through the heart of Mathiesen’s argument.]

The final talk of the session was by Julianne Chung (Yale) on “hope, intuition and inference.” This is a response to an earlier paper by Jonathan Weinberg criticizing philosophers’ use of their “intuitions” as part of their arguments. (I must say that while not a complete skeptic about philosophical intuition, I certainly am not moved by, say, David Chalmers’ intuitions about zombies and what they tell him — but not me — about the hard problem of consciousness.) Weinberg characterizes the philosopher’s reliance on intuition as “hopeless” in the sense that it is not likely to bring about reliable inferences, for a variety of reasons including the lack of inter-subjective agreement on what the intuition actually suggests (again, see my counter-intuition that zombies don’t tell us anything about consciousness, contra Chalmers).

Chung characterizes intuition as “snap inference” in which we do not expressly list all the premises or make the argument explicit. The claim is that we could, however, do so if called upon. I don’t think this is necessarily the case, and that therefore one can make (either positive or negative) generalizations about intuitions and the related category of thought experiments.

For Chung, thought experiments illuminate the consequences of certain assumptions about whatever problem is at hand. I would not disagree as a matter of general proposition, if one adds the caveat that thought experiments may illuminate the problem, as has indeed been the case in both science and philosophy (think of both Galileo’s conceptual demonstration that the Aristotelian way of thinking of falling bodies is wrong, and Einstein’s insight into the nature of light by imagining himself riding a light wave and looking at a parallel one; in philosophy I think a good example is John Searle’s “Chinese room” experiment, which seems to me conclusively to show that there is something amiss with the functionalist view of the material basis of consciousness — raising also serious doubts about a simple computational account of the mind). Unfortunately, thought experiments can also be profoundly misleading, so they are by no means an unqualified good.

From the APA: philosophy for children?

It has always struck me as bizarre that in the United States philosophy is taught only at the college level, and even then it is considered a form of intellectual masturbation for pointy-headed intellectuals. As if somehow learning about what some of the greatest thinkers in history had to say about morality, reality, knowledge and beauty, to name but a few of the areas covered by philosophy, was not essential to shaping a mind capable of critical thinking. Then again, perhaps that’s the point: our society doesn’t want critically thinking citizens, they may start asking uncomfortably probing questions about the status quo.

This is why I am attending a session on teaching philosophy at the pre-college level at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division), which is taking place at the “crossroads of the world,” in Manhattan’s Times Square.

[Note to my philosophy colleagues: please, please get out of the awful habit of simply reading your papers, especially in a monotone. If you are not a Shakespearian actor, use a computer presentation, we will all follow you so much better...]

Michael Burroughs of the University of Memphis talked about his experiences in introducing philosophy discussion groups in local high schools in Tennessee. Predictably, the main obstacle is going through the red tape that it takes to convince administrators that this is a good idea, even when someone volunteers to do so on his own time and therefore at no cost to the school. Burroughs suggested two approaches to “selling” philosophy in high schools: on the one hand, its emphasis on critical thinking and logic may be of direct help to students in preparing for standardized tests and other horrors of modern education; on the other hand — once one is already inside the school system — it is possible to emphasize the benefits of philosophy for its own sake, as a way ofexpanding students’ minds and facilitate their understanding of complex issues.

Burroughs often approaches his students in a way similar to the many philosophy cafes that have sprung up all over the country in recent years: begin with a broad question that is both intrinsically interesting and about which students have something to say even without any background in philosophy. I mean, who is not interested in exploring the issue of “what is a good life?” The interactions between students and teacher are modeled as a community where people exchange ideas in person and on a blog, but where there is as little top-down lecturing as possible. Philosophy, in other words, is not a spectator sport.

The following speaker, Paul Thomson, is the “philosopher in residence” at the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering in New York — an unusual title to be sure! He uses the time-tested method of dialogues to introduce students to philosophy. Again, though, the emphasis is on participation: not only is each topic presented by means of a dialogue from a book, but students are then instructed to write their own dialogues on philosophical issues.

Incidentally, Thomson’s program has 96 slots available for students, and the astounding thing is that they get about 1000 applications each year. Who says kids are not interested in philosophy?

The last speaker of the session was Wendy Turgeon of St. Joseph’s College (Long Island), who takes the different approach of teaching the teachers about philosophy. One of the major obstacles she has to overcome is a widespread attitude that doing philosophy simply means having an opinion, and after all everyone has opinions, right? (Yes, but most of them are ill-founded in either fact or argument.)

The problem, according to Turgeon, is that while children are naturally curious — something that makes them open to both science and philosophy — philosophical (or scientific) thinking requires the sort of rigor that does not come naturally (to either children or adults, for that matter). It is simply not true that children are “natural philosophers” or that “there are no wrong answers” to a philosophical question.

Turgeon also noted that teachers have trouble distinguishing between philosophy and religion, or even psychology, often not grasping what it is that makes a question philosophical rather than scientific. To some extent, I would argue, this is a legitimate issue, considering that the borders between these and other fields are in fact permeable. But I suspect that the major problem is that people are much more familiar with religion, science, psychology and so forth than they are with philosophy and philosophizing.

There are a couple of problems that were evident from the APA session: first off, judging from the low number of attendees, philosophers themselves do not care enough about this issue. This is no different from scientists, many of whom put only a nominal value on public outreach and early science education. The predictable lack of results is similar: just as a large number of Americans reject evolution, vaccines and global warming, I doubt that most Americans would be able to distinguish between utilitarianism and virtue ethics, or to stay away from common logical fallacies. The second issue is: why do we so often equate pre-college education with high school? Is there a reason why primary school children could or should not be exposed to philosophy (or science, for that matter)? Religionists know better: the Jesuits famously say that if you give them a child of seven in a few years they will mold a man of faith out of him. And then it takes the rest of us a lifetime to undo the damage.

Massimo's picks

* Christmas and the Uncertainty Principle, from xkcd.

* My review of Dorothy Rowe's "What Should I believe?" in Metapsychology.

* Paul Krugman on why the US Senate is dysfunctional, and how to fix it.

* Not even veganism is ethically acceptable? Oh, c'mon!

* The Osteen empire: how to make money through Jesus. Yuck.

* The top 10 philosophical problems of the 21st century, according to Philosophy Talk. What do you think?

* Gail Collins on why exactly Joe Lieberman is so awful.

Provably Nonsense: Part I

[from guest blogger and podcast co-host Julia Galef]

It's only fair to mention that my relationship with postmodernism got off on the wrong foot. The black-turtleneck-clad grad student who TA’d one of my freshman year classes mentioned Derrida, and I innocently asked, “Who’s that?” He raised his eyebrows: “You... don't know Derrida?” No, jerkface, I wanted to retort, I'm a freshman. Just frickin' tell me already.

After he had finished marveling at my ignorance, he sent me home with a reading list: Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze... all the top philosophers, sociologists, literary critics and psychoanalysts who define the field of postmodernism. I suppose I could be accused of being biased against these guys from the get-go, due to my unfortunate introduction to them, but I do think I gave them a fair shake. Only problem was, I couldn't manage to glean any meaning from their writings. To take one representative example from M'sieur Deleuze:

“In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable, but rather ‘metastable,’ endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed ... In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a paradoxical element traverses the series and makes them resonate, enveloping the corresponding singular points in a single aleatory point and all the emissions, all dice throws, in a single cast.”

Everyone around me took such texts very seriously. “But... they're not saying anything!” I would bleat helplessly. No one ever agreed with me, so I kept wondering if I was missing something. Only later did an alternate explanation occur to me: that perhaps the people who agreed with me had all left these sorts of classes for less squishy shores.

That’s what I eventually did too (although you could argue that becoming a statistics major was overcompensating). But it still bothered me that I never found a way to prove that texts like the one above are nonsense. After all, I have to admit that just because I can’t understand a text doesn’t mean it’s meaningless; someone could always insist that I simply haven’t studied that field enough, or that my mental faculties are lacking. And it rankles me to have to essentially leave things at I think you’re wrong, you think I’m wrong; we’ll have to agree to disagree. Because, dammit, I’m right!

I think Richard Dawkins articulated the problem nicely: “No doubt there exist thoughts so profound that most of us will not understand the language in which they are expressed. And no doubt there is also language designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought. But how are we to tell the difference?”

Well, I can think of a few approaches. One kind of “test” could operate on the logic that if a field’s experts cannot distinguish between genuine texts in that field and indisputable nonsense, then we must conclude that those texts are equivalent to nonsense. (It’s a little like an inversion of the Turing test, in which the premise is that if we can’t distinguish between a conversation with a computer program and one with a human, then we must conclude that the computer’s intelligence is equivalent to human intelligence.)

That was the logic behind the famous Alan Sokal hoax. Sokal, a physicist at NYU, intentionally wrote a paper consisting of gibberish that mimicked the style and jargon of postmodernism and succeeded in getting it published in a well-regarded pomo journal. However, as much as the hoax delighted me, I'm unwilling to say that what Sokal wrote is indisputably nonsense. He intended it to be nonsense, sure, but someone could always claim that he inadvertently inserted sense into his paper. After all, it’s fairly difficult to write text that has the superficial appearance of meaning without any actual meaning. To be safe, we might need to assume that, as long as a passage is consciously generated, it’s vulnerable to accusations of meaningfulness!

So maybe our faux-pomo writing needs to be unconsciously generated if we’re going to be able to maintain that it’s meaningless. I’m not the first one to come up with this idea: this wonderful “Postmodernism Generator” creates a new essay every time you reload the page, generating text randomly within some parameters of sentence construction and common pomo vocabulary. To my untrained eye, the resulting essays read impressively like the real thing. But still, I’m afraid they might not fool an expert — the non-sequiturs are just a little too glaring.

If it’s too difficult to generate convincing fake texts by starting with meaninglessness, what if we instead started with a real text and then removed some of its meaning? Here’s one way this could work:

“My colleague would open one of Derrida’s works to a random page, pick a random sentence, write it down, and then (above or below it) write a variant in which positive and negative were interchanged, or a word or phrase was replaced with one of opposite meaning. He would then challenge the assembled Derrida partisans to guess which was the original and which was the variant. The point was that Derrida’s admirers are generally unable to distinguish his pronouncements from their opposites at better than chance level, suggesting that the content is a sophisticated form of white noise.”

I like this approach a lot, but it too is not without its problems. How many words would you need to replace? How could you be sure that your negations weren’t canceling each other out? And if your test subjects are pomo experts, how could you be sure they wouldn’t recognize the passage and be able to tell which was the “right” one just from memory?

None of these tests may be airtight, but I really like the theory behind this approach, and I haven’t given up yet! Let me know of any ideas you have for cleanly separating sense from nonsense, and help me retroactively wipe that smug smirk off of Mr. Black Turtleneck’s face.

NEXT: An entirely different approach to pomo-debunking that I’ve been working on, using information-theory. Stay tuned...

—Julia Galef

Massimo's picks

* A rare display of balls by the Democrats: (former comedian) Al Franken shuts down Joe Lieberman for having rumbled on too long on the Senate floor.

* Another serious comedian (no oxymoron there!) takes a shot at Lieberman: Jon Stewart.

* And speaking of intelligent comedy: the Onion's take on evolution. It's slow going...

* Done with your career as a scientist? Become a comedian!

* This must be the Comedy Edition of Massimo's Picks: another pearl from Jon Stewart, on the global warming summit in Copenhagen.

* Interesting finding in philosophy of science: specialists are more likely to endorse esoteric views than generalists.

* The Washington Post publishes garbage by Sarah Palin without fact checking. When are they going out of business, again?

* Insightful article in The Guardian about the climate denial industry.

James Randi, global warming and the meaning of skepticism

James “the Amazing” Randi is an icon of skepticism. The man has done more — over a span of several decades — to further the cause of critical thinking and to expose flimflammery of all sorts than arguably anyone else in the world, ever. That is why I was struck with incredulity and sadness yesterday when I read Randi’s latest take on global warming. He begins by stating that, contrary to scientists’ own self-image as almost preternaturally objective human beings, “religious and other emotional convictions drive scientists, despite what they may think their motivations are.” Well, true, to a point. Many philosophers and sociologists of science have said that before (and documented it), but your baloney detector should go up to at least yellow alert when someone starts a commentary on global warming with that particular observation.

The following paragraph is perhaps one of the most astounding I have ever seen penned by a skeptic. It reads in part: “some 32,000 scientists, 9,000 of them PhDs, have signed The Petition Project statement proclaiming that Man is not necessarily the chief cause of warming, that the phenomenon may not exist at all, and that, in any case, warming would not be disastrous.”

Wow, Randi fell for the old “thousands of scientists are against science” trick! First off, I’d like to see the 32,000 signatures (there is no link from the essay). Second, last time I checked, in order to be a career scientist you have to have a PhD, so how come only 9,000 of the signatories did? Did the rest not manage to finish graduate school? But more importantly: were the 32,000 climate scientists? Because if not, then it doesn’t matter how many of them signed the petition. I can easily get thousands of medical doctors (are they “scientists”?) to sign a petition to the effect that evolution doesn’t occur, or an equivalent number of assorted PhDs to express doubts on quantum mechanics, and so on. Having a PhD in a particular field provides no expertise whatsoever in another field, and Randi, of all people, should have known this.

“History supplies us with many examples where scientists were just plain wrong about certain matters, but ultimately discovered the truth through continued research” continues the essay. Another logical fallacy. Yes, the history of science has documented many blunders made by scientists, which usually are redressed by the built-in self-correcting mechanisms of science itself. But to imply that therefore the idea of human-caused global warming is another of these mistakes is like saying “Van Gogh was a great artist and he died penniless; I am penniless, therefore I am a great artist.” It is a non sequitur.

What sort of argument allows Randi to reach his conclusion about global warming? “The myriad of influences that act upon Earth are so many and so variable — though not capricious — that I believe we simply cannot formulate an equation into which we enter variables and come up with an answer.” Really? So Randi doesn’t think climate scientists are aware of the complexities posed by their own discipline? And they should give up building increasingly sophisticated climate models (which, by the way, don’t rely on “an equation”) because he thinks it’s too tough?

And then there is the often lurking ultra-optimism that so many climate skeptics display with no hint of contradiction: “Earth has undergone many serious changes in climate, from the Ice Ages to periods of heavily increased plant growth from their high levels of CO2, yet the biosphere has survived. We're adaptable, stubborn, and persistent — and we have what other life forms don't have: we can manipulate our environment. Show me an Inuit who can survive in his habitat without warm clothing... Humans will continue to infest Earth because we're smart.” So let me get this straight: we are not smart enough to model the changing climate, but whatever problem there is, we are smart enough to solve it. I guess what Walt Whitman used to say is true , great minds are large enough to accommodate contradictions.

But the real damning part of Randi’s essay comes when he says: “I strongly suspect that The Petition Project may be valid. I base this on my admittedly rudimentary knowledge of the facts about planet Earth. ... this my amateur opinion, based on probably insufficient data.” This is essentially saying that although Randi has no expertise whatsoever in a complex scientific field, together with very scant information on the specifics of the problem, he nonetheless “suspects” that the overwhelming majority of (PhD-holding) practitioners in that field have made a colossal mistake. So are we supposed to take his position seriously on authority alone (another logical fallacy)? And where does that authority come from? His undoubted ability to expose real nonsense like hand surgery?

Yesterday was a sad day for skepticism because Randi’s essay will now comfort legions of pseudoscientific “skeptics,” regardless of the fact that I’m sure this was not his intention. But what was his intention, exactly? If Randi were Penn & Teller, I would have a ready answer: it is the libertarian ideological bias of P&T that has led them more than once to talk real bullshit to their audiences about issues like global warming, environmentalism, world politics, and economics. But I do not know Randi’s political leanings, so I will not speculate further. My guess is that this is just classic Randi, who is known for occasionally shooting from the hip just to stir the waters a bit, with the honest intention of stimulating critical thinking. Except that these waters have been quite muddied already by big corporations who have been actively engaged in public deception about this issue for years, so that public opinion and politicians are already confused enough, almost to the point of paralysis. I really think this was an uncharacteristically bad target for Randi to choose.

More broadly, however, we need to pause and think carefully about the entire skeptical movement in light of episodes like this one. “Skepticism” in modern parlance indicates a science- or evidence-based approach to the examination of unusual claims, typically in the realms of the paranormal, astrology, alternative medicine and the like. More recently, skeptics have expanded their aim to include some controversial issues in science, under the reasonable position that science itself should not be exempt from critical analysis. Fair enough, except that science already has a large number of professional critics: scientists themselves (remember the peer review system?), as well as philosophers and sociologists of science. Moreover, while critical analysis of claims of the paranormal does not really require professional scientific expertise (indeed, Randi’s own spectacular career shows that the pertinent expert is more often a magician, since wannabe paranormalists often employ trickery to fool the public), actual science criticism does.

I am not suggesting that critical evaluation of science is a matter to be reserved only to people with PhDs. But I am suggesting that public figures like Randi, Penn & Teller, or Bill Maher (the Dawkins-award winner who thinks that vaccines cause autism and who is generally skeptical of “Western medicine”) are doing a huge disservice to both the skeptical movement and the public at large when they step into territory about which, frankly, they are simply not qualified to talk. The role of skeptics who are not professional scientists is to educate the public about critical thinking (Randi’s Foundation being one of the shiniest examples). This is done most effectively through the kind of public outreach — including spectacular demonstrations, tv shows and comedy sketches — that professional scientists don’t do because they don’t have the time and they are not good at it.

But these same people should remember that the mantle of “skepticism” does not provide one license to shoot from the hip and express a cynical attitude about anything and anyone. When we cross that line from positive skepticism into negative cynicism we do no favors to critical thinking. Instead, we undermine the whole notion and make the public as distrustful of serious scientists as they are and should be of Deepak Chopra. The public loses, and the Chopra's of the world run laughing all the way to the bank.

Postscriptum: Randi has just published a clarification of his first essay. Unfortunately, it doesn't really make things much better. He insists that he is not denying global warming per se, but "only" raising questions about the role of humans. But he repeats that he is not qualified to do so, that he still "merely expressed [his] thoughts." That's not good enough. James Randi is a major player in the skeptic movement, and that kind of position comes with responsibilities, one of which is that he really ought not to just wonder aloud about his opinions unless he has put in the time to do serious background reading on the matter at hand. I remain respectfully disappointed.

Massimo's picks

* David Pogue of the New York Times compares Amazon's Kindle to Barnes & Noble's Nook: the Kindle still seems to be far ahead of its competitor.

* Jon Stewart exposes Glenn Beck's hypocrisy, once again.

* Yours truly guest posts at Gotham Skeptic, on the difference between skepticism and atheism (also read the excellent related posts by Jake Dickerman and Michael De Dora).

* Jon Stewart proves that Fox News' Gretchen Carlson is not as dumb as she plays it. But why does she do it?

* Great little video by comedian Tim Minchin.

* Are environmentalist calls to curb population growth misguided after all? This article argues so, but I ain't convinced.

* Hospital worker fired because of a refusal to get vaccinated, on religious grounds. Good riddance.

* Mom expected god to provide food for her kids. Now she is charged with four counts of second-degree child endangerment.

* Too much positive thinking can kill your career...

* It's a miracle! I can stare into the sun. Oh, wait, I'm going blind.

Podcast Teaser: Love, a skeptical inquiry

[from guest blogger and podcast co-host Julia Galef]

Hey there, rational readers! I’m honored to be Massimo’s guest blogger and co-host of the upcoming Rationally Speaking podcast for the NYC Skeptics. Since our second episode is scheduled to air the week of Valentine's Day, we couldn’t resist making that show's topic, “The Skeptic’s Guide to Love.”

I do realize that raising this subject risks fueling the widespread and irritating misconception that “skeptic” = “cynical killjoy,” which is the last thing I want to do. So, please let the record show that I am enthusiastically pro-love. (Also pro-kindness, pro-motherhood, and pro-puppies, in case anyone’s keeping track.)

And yet... just like other mysterious and unexplained phenomena (see: “consciousness“), love makes people reach for metaphysical explanations, and that makes me reach for my skep-tools. I've noticed that many people seem to think of love as some sort of immaterial essence that is either present or absent, such as the soul. To them, “love” isn’t just the name we give to a certain set of emotions, it’s another entity altogether, of which the emotions are merely a symptom. That’s why you hear people talk about how they do or don’t “believe in” love, or about whether love exists — again, similar to the way people talk about the soul.

However, as good skeptics, what do we do when faced with a mysterious and unexplained phenomenon? We look for explanations! Science has already found correlations between particular hormones and certain forms or stages of love. Dopamine is associated with romantic obsession, and oxytocin and vasopressin with long-term attachment. Evolutionary biologists also have some theories about why love developed (pair bonding was necessary to raise our helpless human young, for example).

But will science ever really be able to explain love? No matter how many correlations we find between brain activity and love, correlation is not causation. You could even argue that, just like other qualia, the actual experience of being in love is a subjective, private phenomenon that can never be studied scientifically because each occurrence of the phenomenon has only one observer.

An aside: scientists aren’t the only ones who have tried to explain love. Philosophers since the Greeks have also considered it their domain. Personally, I don’t think philosophy is equipped to contribute anything useful to the discussion. (You’re going to disagree with me on this one, aren’t you Massimo? Bring it!)

[Massimo’s note: well, philosophy isn’t suppose to “explain” things in the manner in which science does, it is supposed to reflect on things and analyze their meanings for the human experience.]

Finally, what if we could explain love scientifically — would that change our attitude towards it? Would the knowledge that this transcendent feeling is generated by the presence of a particular chemical in our brain detract from the transcendence? And if we were forced to admit that the concepts of “soulmates” or “true” love are nonsensical, would we love less deeply?

Massimo and I have our own thoughts on the matter, of course, but we want to hear yours. Leave us your comments below, dear readers, and we look forward to discussing them in Episode #2 of Rationally Speaking: The Podcast!

-Julia

Massimo's picks

* With all the controversy about the stolen emails concerning climate change, where is the data, really? Online, available for everyone to play with.

* The CIA used to teach his agents magic tricks. Now they prefer setting up torture chambers. Times are a-change.

* Would vegetarians object to meat created from cell cultures? It may soon come to a supermarket near you.

* More about those stolen emails and the worldwide conspiracy that doesn't exist.

Podcast Teaser: Why rationality?

Dear readers, Rationally Speaking is soon going to be (also) a podcast, produced by New York City Skeptics, and co-hosted by Julia Galef and yours truly. Before each episode (initially biweekly, starting at the end of January), we will publish a “teaser” like the one below, introducing the topic of that episode and inviting comments from our readers. Your comments will provide us with additional food for thought, and the most interesting ones will be read and discussed during the show.


For our inaugural episode, we’re going to kick things off by asking: Why is “speaking rationally” a worthwhile goal, anyway? It’s not self-evident, at least not to many people. Human beings certainly don’t seem made for it. Aristotle may have famously dubbed us “the rational animal,” but cognitive science tells a different story, with plenty of evidence that our brains blithely flout logic all the time and are excellent at rationalizing our irrational decisions after the fact.


So why fight our irrational natures? After all, some people argue that irrationality can make us happier, at least in certain situations. There’s also a widespread attitude that even if irrationality has some negative consequences, it’s nevertheless inextricably linked to the best parts of our humanity: love, passion, and creativity. From this standpoint, “rational” is synonymous with “cold, soulless, dispassionate” — in other words, Vulcan.


What do you think — are reason and emotion at odds? Is there a downside to being rational, and if so, is it necessarily outweighed by the upside? And even if you personally choose to strive for rationality, should you try to make other people more rational as well? What if their irrationality makes them happy?


Leave your thoughts below, and we’ll pick the most interesting comments to discuss in Episode #1 of Rationally Speaking: The Podcast!