About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Jerry Coyne, then and now

By Massimo Pigliucci
This seems to me a very reasonable philosophical position about the epistemic domain of science: “Science simply doesn't deal with hypotheses about a guiding intelligence, or supernatural phenomena like miracles, because science is the search for rational explanations of natural phenomena. We don't reject the supernatural merely because we have an overweening philosophical commitment to materialism; we reject it because entertaining the supernatural has never helped us understand the natural world.”
This one, on the other hand, is philosophically very naive and pretentious: “Anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist.”
The funny thing is that these two quotes come from the same person, and were written only three years apart. The first one can be found in an article published online at Edge.org in 2007, the second one is from a blog entry posted in May of this year. The author is evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. What is going on?
First, some context. In the Edge article Jerry was commenting on the sad showing at a Republican Presidential debate where three candidates — may their names forever be cast in shame: Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Tom Tancredo — raised their hand in response to the question “does anyone here not believe in evolution?” Coyne focuses mostly on Brownback’s follow up editorial in the New York Times, correctly lambasting it for its bad logic and even worse grasp of science. (Here is my own take on Brownback’s editorial.)
The blog entry is from Jerry’s own outlet, Why Evolution is True (the title of his book), and is a harsh — and from what I can see, largely well deserved — criticism of Karl Giberson, who previously had chided Coyne and other New Atheists (do they or don’t they like that label? Coyne seems to use it without trouble).
My point, of course, is that Coyne’s philosophy of science has gotten significantly worse in the past three years, ever since he has discovered activist atheism. I have commented on this topic before, using the standard distinction between philosophical and methodological naturalism, and explaining why — to use Coyne’s own example — even the appearance of a 900-ft Jesus in the streets of London would not convince him (or me) that there isn’t a natural explanation for the phenomenon (see A.C. Clarke’s famous third law and of course this classic episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation). Here I am going to take a different approach and propose two more reasons why Coyne-2007 was right and Coyne-2010 is wrong.
The first reason to stick with science as an epistemic activity aimed at discovering empirical truths about the natural world is that gods are not hypotheses, to use Dawkins’ famous phrase in his book. Coyne and other scientists often dig up falsificationism from their limited inventory of philosophical knowledge and claim that the god hypothesis is falsifiable. Besides the fact that philosophers of science have moved well beyond falsificationism (to begin with, because of something known as the Duhem-Quine thesis), even for falsification to work one has to have a reasonably well defined hypothesis.
Karl Popper, the guy who invented falsificationism, famously thought that Einstein’s theory of relativity is an excellent example of science because it is eminently falsifiable. But he also rejected both Marxist theories of history and Freudian psychoanalysis as non-scientific because they were much too flexible: any historical event could somehow be interpreted as the result of class struggles, just as pretty much any human behavior can be “explained” through one type or another of sexual repression.
Conceptions of gods are infinitely more flexible (or vacuous, if you prefer) than either Marxist or Freudian theories, and they are thus simply not falsifiable. This is often (naively) mistaken to imply that no specific claim made by these theories can be rejected on empirical grounds. That’s as manifestly not true as it is besides the point: of course modern science can firmly reject the empirical claim that the earth is a few thousand years old; but since “the god hypothesis” doesn’t behave as a hypothesis at all from the epistemological standpoint, it doesn’t matter. In the cases we are discussing there is no science-like connection between theoretical constructs and empirically verifiable facts, so to “falsify” the latter is equivalent to shooting into a cloud of gas. It unnecessarily flatters and elevates religious belief to treat it as science.
The second point I wish to make is broader. Whenever I get into these discussions, Jerry and others who think along similar lines seem to conclude that I therefore do not have reasons to reject religious belief as the nonsense on stilts that it truly is. That is because they seem to equate science with reason, yet another position that is abysmally simplistic from a philosophical perspective. Science is conducted through the application of reason to a particular type of problems and in particular ways. But reason can be applied to other problems in other ways. Philosophy, of course, is an example, as it makes progress through the analysis and dissection of concepts, not via empirical discoveries. Logic and mathematics are additional obvious examples: mathematical theorems are neither discovered nor proved by using scientific methods at all. Unless one wishes to conclude that math is not a rational enterprise, then one is forced to admit that science = reason is a bad equation.
Indeed, even science itself is far from being an activity rooted in reason alone. A standard distinction in philosophy of science is made between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The first one deals with how scientists come up with new theories or ideas, the second one on how they proceed to empirically test or establish them. The notion is that the context of justification is where science works in a rational way, by logically connecting hypotheses and empirical facts. But discoveries are often haphazard and non-rational in nature, with scientists themselves being unable to account for how exactly they came up with a particular idea (often this happens during a walk, while taking a shower, while dreaming, or while on drugs — none of which are classical laboratory settings where people sit down and rationally work through the problem).
Things get even worse, as more recent suggestions, for instance that of Thomas Kuhn (whose notion of paradigm shifts is arguably the only other piece of philosophy of science of which most scientists are dimly aware) when he questioned the sharpness of the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. This questioning would make Coyne and colleagues even more unhappy, because it goes in the direction of further reducing the relevance of reason to the scientific enterprise.
The two points I made here amount to claiming that many scientists do not understand the nature of science as well as philosophers do, and are hence prone to make exaggerated claims about how science works and what it can do. This should not surprise anybody, since the business of scientists is to do science, not to spend time thinking about its history and methods. That is why philosophy (and history) of science are scholarly activities that are legitimately distinct from science itself.
But when it comes to writing for the general public, I suggest that scientists stick to what they know best, unless they are willing to engage the literature of the field(s) that they wish to comment upon. When Coyne makes statements of the type “anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist”, he literally does not know what he is talking about because he does not have a grasp of what it means to be “philosophically consistent” in this context. He has of course no obligation to study philosophy, but then he should refrain from writing about it as a matter of intellectual honesty toward his readers.
P.S.: it may be a little while before I'm able to answer your (surely numerous and critical) comments, since I’ll be on vacation in Iceland when this runs...

276 comments:

  1. That's all you've got? Two statements three years apart and a dim idea that activist atheism is the causal factor? That's not scientific, rational, philosophical, logical, skeptical or anything else that you profess to be concerned with. Calling this weak tea is an insult to that fine beverage.

    Oh, and your point is anything but "of course." Generally, using "of course" in a thesis statement is a sign of a weak argument. As to your arguments:

    1. Mentioned Popper and Kuhn.
    2. Claimed that opponent doesn't understand the depth of thought on your side.

    Are you trying to be the BioLogos of reconciling philosophy and activist atheism?

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  2. As for specifics:

    "Jerry and others who think along similar lines seem to conclude that I therefore do not have reasons to reject religious belief as the nonsense on stilts that it truly is." Example?

    Can't you make a defense of your philosophy of science without your goons of Logic and Mathematics hovering over your shoulder? Citing these strong henchman does not make your philosophical arguments any better.

    "[Coyne] literally does not know what he is talking about because he does not have a grasp of what it means to be “philosophically consistent” in this context." But every non-philosopher knows exactly the context in which Coyne is using "philosophically." You do have an obligation to not hijack the colloquial meaning of a word just to strut your academic knowledge around.

    Rereading the post before submitting this comment, I'm struck most of all at the strawman aspect of it. Who is 'they' in your claim that "they seem to equate science with reason". If there is none, or even if people don't quite agree with your seeming, your argument seems to fall apart.

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  3. So - if I understand you correctly - would it be correct to say that "someone who wants to be consistently committed to reason should abandon his or her faith" ?

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  4. @Norwegian: Citing "Logic and Mathematics" accomplishes the goal I believe Massimo was going for.. entities which exist within reason but not necessarily part of empirical science. They only strengthen his argument as a means of existence proof of accepted and practiced non-science.

    And we can fudge a lot by using "colloquial" meanings of words (which we do all the time). What is this colloquial meaning that yields what Massimo said irrelevant?

    And I second @Christof Jans's question. What does Massimo have to say about this reading of the article?

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  5. Brilliant piece. I'm partial here, but I sympathize with your impatience at unashamed philosophical naivety -I admire Coyne, though, even when he philosophizes oblivious to 'the literature'; it's refreshing and in the Witgensteinian tradition.

    However, I do not see any substantial disagreement between your thesis and Coyne-2010 in saying that science and religion are philosophically incompatible. Rather, what you are saying in fact supports Coyne-2010 even more than anything he has said.

    Let me explain. While Dawkins and the like, would like to suggest that science effectively defeats theism you say that they have a priori nothing to do with each other. In order for Dawkins to suggest that the god-hypotheis is wrong he at least needs to accept its reasonableness -its falsifiableness. But you reject even that. And on a very solid argument, BYW. Theism has no empirical content: it isn't even wrong; it's nonsense on stilts. I like the idea that god disappears from not being needed by science.

    But if your thesis is correct -and I think it is- then it turns out to be way more 'actively atheistic' and radically anti-accomodationist than anything Coyne or Dawkins present, even though yours is perhaps less easily graspable to the non-philosopher. Which is the opposite of what you conclude. Some clarification?

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  6. --Who is 'they' in your claim that "they seem to equate science with reason"-- Norwegian

    Take a camomile and read the post before asking rhetorical questions about a point you don't even bother to understand, such as the distinction made between domains of reason and science. 'They' = 'Jerry and others who think along similar lines'

    I understand though that reading 'activist atheism' may be enough to prompt an emotional response without reading any further and engaging with anything of substance.

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  7. Massimo, let's say you're right about the claim "There is a God" being untestable.

    Does it therefore follow that Coyne is wrong to say that such a claim is inconsistent with a scientific worldview? Seems to me like making untestable claims is *very* inconsistent with a scientific worldview. I'm surprised you disagree.

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  8. Coyne seems to assert the incompatibility of science and religion based on epistemology (contrary ways of knowing; or absence of knowing in the case of religion). But I am not sure that epistemology can carry the weight. Wouldn't the incompatibility have to be logical incompatibilty? Or putting it another way, the assertions based on religion and science would have to be contradictory, not merely contrary.

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  9. @Justin, the logic and math complaint is based on Massimo's frequent use of these as subdisclipines of philosophy to bolster the acheivements of philosophy. On your point, other than philosophical principle (meaning something useless in practice), it doesn't serve any purpose to omit math and logic from empirical science. "They only strengthen his argument as a means of existence proof of accepted and practiced non-science." I'm afraid I don't completely understand this sentence, but it seems to reiterate the point that logic and math are non-science, which is pointless.

    Jerry has said (in the context of compatibility of science and faith, after so many theists complained: of course a person could be a scientist and a beleiver), is summed up here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/my-continuing-debate-with-karl-giberson/

    This post mentions a video debate that apparently isn't public yet. And here's Russell Blackford's take: http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/06/sciencereligion-compatibility-yet-again.html

    It's hard to find a simple synonym for philosophical, but I'll attempt "theoretically".

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  10. "Does it therefore follow that Coyne is wrong to say that such a claim is inconsistent with a scientific worldview? Seems to me like making untestable claims is *very* inconsistent with a scientific worldview. I'm surprised you disagree."

    Julia,

    I don't think Massimo would disagree, but that is because the scientific worldview is a philosophical position that the scientist is not forced to take up completely.

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  11. Massimo,

    I can't find the second quote you're attributing to Jerry Coyne on the blog post you link to. Did you mean to link to a different post?

    Nowhere that I can find, does he say “Anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist.” At least not from my close reading or doing a search on the page.

    The closest I found was this:

    "The argument is, and always has been, about whether science and faith are philosophically compatible. Do they clash because they deal with “data” in disparate ways? Do they have completely different standards for judging “truth”? I say “yes,” and assert that religious scientists exist in a state of cognitive dissonance."

    Which isn't really the same thing at all. Indeed, it seems to be something you'd both agree on, right?

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  12. “Science simply doesn't deal with hypotheses about a guiding intelligence, or supernatural phenomena like miracles, because science is the search for rational explanations of natural phenomena.”

    "rational explanations" remains undefined here.

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  13. Michael De Dora said: "...the scientific worldview is a philosophical position that the scientist is not forced to take up completely."

    Okay, sure, they're not forced to take up the scientific worldview completely -- but if they do take it up incompletely then why is it wrong to say they're being inconsistent?

    It seems like I'm saying "they're being inconsistent" and you're saying "but they don't HAVE to be consistent." Which is not disagreeing with me at all.

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  14. Coyne seems to suggest that one must embrace a philosophical worldview to be a philosophically consistent scientist, while Massimo seems to suggest that in order to be a philosophically consistent scientist, all you have to do is walk the walk and talk the talk, ie do the basic everyday work of scientists. In Massimo's eye, then, a philosophically consistent scientist would not embrace Intelligent Design, but might believe in God just because he, like, does.

    I think Massimo's argument is mostly right. He's right that people sometimes use the word "science" to refer to the whole science/philosophy/REASON (emphasis on the last word) enterprise. And there's a reason for this: most active skeptics seamlessly weave science and philosophy in their thinking. It would be awkward for me to try to unravel the science and philosophy in my head, if I really had to--and I bet it would be for people like Julia too.

    But Massimo is right that for most people (who do not engage in the sorts of debates that we do) the word "science" does not refer to rational thinking generally. And so Massimo is, in my view, technically correct that you can be a philosophically consistent scientist and still believe in the Holy Ghost.

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  15. Mistake: I mean to say that Coyne suggests one must embrace a SCIENTIFIC worldview.

    As to Julia's last post:

    The point is that what we call a "scientific worldview" is basically the view that reality-at-large can be understood mostly or wholly through scientific methods, and that this view doesn't have to be embraced to achieve philosophical consistency as a scientist.

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  16. @Ritchie the Bear: I'm having a hard time imagining what would constitute philosophical inconsistency in a scientist, if not the acceptance of an untestable claim.

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  17. " I have commented on this topic before, using the standard distinction between philosophical and methodological naturalism, and explaining why — to use Coyne’s own example — even the appearance of a 900-ft Jesus in the streets of London would not convince him (or me) that there isn’t a natural explanation for the phenomenon"

    I don't think the natural / supernatural distinction in particularly useful here. If someone came up with a natural mechanism for the persistence of the soul through death, it wouldn't stop it being a soul.

    A 900-ft talking Jesus would certainly falsify the idea that there are no beings more advanced than us. You could have an realist vs anti-realist debate on the true nature of the vision.
    It would make the existence of a god a viable hypothesis which you could then falsify by search for alternative explanations. But you would have to apply the Ken Miller criteria that the god is not deceiving you.

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  18. Julia: one could act as though untestable claims were scientific, empirically discerned truths. See: intelligent design.

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  19. Surprised I have to be the first person to say this but... um maybe his views evolved?

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  20. One problem I have with Massimo's arguments is that he is still taking the notion of the supernatural more seriously than it should be, by even supposing that supernaturalness is a coherent concept. Things don't behave "rationally" or "irrationally" they just DO what they DO. And if God exists, God does what he does in certain ways and not others. He may still be beyond our analysis, but he would not be some sort of mystical blob of numinousness that just, like, does whatever.

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  21. @Ritchie the Bear:

    "acting as though untestable claims are empirically discerned" = definitely inconsistent with a scientific worldview, I agree.

    "acting as though untestable claims are true" = ...well, I would call that inconsistent with a scientific worldview also. But if you disagree, I guess it's not that important; just depends how we're defining "inconsistent."

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  22. Julia:

    I don't think the ideas of "having a scientific worldview" (so to speak" and "being philosophically consistent as a scientist" are the same, at least in the eyes of Massimo. Massimo seems to use the latter phrase to essentially mean "accepting the methodological foundations of scientific inquiry". The former would be more strongly defined as something like "believing that science is THE method for understanding reality-at-large."

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  23. Ritchie

    IF you accept that, as a matter of historical fact, science is the ONLY method we have come up so far for explaining reality-at-large, then there really is no difference. What other methods would be?

    It is a simple fact that, before ID, religion never pretended to explain nature in the sense that science tries to explain nature -that would be completely anachronistic, rather it offered a rudimentary understanding of the world, a curiosity killer.

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  24. Oh what a veritable mountain of straw! I could write a paragraph of rebuttal for nearly every sentence you wrote, but it never makes any difference anyway.

    Short version, for the umpteenth time: Every religion that has any relevance at all is falsifiable. There are possible religious claims that aren't (good old Last Thursdayism), but hardly anybody makes them, they are very, very, very explicitly not what Coyne and Dawkins mean, and they would be entirely irrelevant anyway and can safely be ignored by atheists, as a completely unfathomable and undemonstrable god cannot be used to justify specific policies or morals.

    And yet another jab at the phrase god hypothesis! Oh joy! Perhaps you would care to read Dawkin's and Stenger's books again and pay special attention to the parts where both books painstakingly and explicitly explain that they do not deal with the unfalsifiable gods that you persistently and stubbornly conflate with the falsifiable ones.

    Honestly, I also do not see the problem with the sentence that got you fired up. Coyne has very clearly spelled out what the problem is: lambasting your PhD student for accepting an idea about a process in the material world without evidence and then taking off the lab coat and accepting another process in the material world (e.g. virgin birth) without evidence is inconsistent. How can anybody seriously disagree with that?

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  25. Science gets its justification from philosophy done in a rational way. It doesn't need philosophical justification to work, but you have to do rational philosophy to grok why it works (cue sermon on map vs. territory).

    Bottom line: you don't have to be a rationalist (hence atheist) to do science in a rote, "it just works" sort of way. But anyone who really understands - on a gut level - WHY science is necessary, cannot possibly believe in gods.

    So a religious scientist is sort of like a doctor who washes their hands because they've been taught to wash their hands. Better than the alternative, but I should really tell you about this "germ theory" thing...

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  26. On second thought, I think I can put things even more starkly.

    There are TWO potential reasons why a person might value science as a process:

    (1) It just works, period.
    (2) It works BECAUSE it ensures strong causal links between your beliefs, and the actual state of the world.

    Religious believers and other irrationalists can value science for reason #(1), but if they understood underlying reason for science #(2), they would stop being irrationalists.

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  27. "Every religion that has any relevance at all is falsifiable. There are possible religious claims that aren't (...), but hardly anybody makes them"

    What normal uneducated religionist makes 'falsifiable' claims? The concept does not even arise. From a religious POV infallibility is good, falsifiability is bad. For a scientifically minded person it's the exact opposite: infallibility is bad, openness to revision is good. God hypothesis is an oxymoron, because an hypothesis is something you hold provisionally, something that could be proved wrong.

    Religion is most emphatically not open to revision: it has historically gone to great lengths to prevent any criticism. By contrast, the scientific worldview (suspension of judgement, welcoming of criticism, etc.) comes late and not naturally.

    Science and religion really are incommensurable.

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  28. Hm. To make it a bit clearer what I mean with conflation, perhaps a simple example would be in order:

    A. I hypothesize that the myth of Atlantis describes events that really happened. If that is true, then a careful scouring of the bottom of the North Atlantic should find ruins of a sunken city of significant size. If these ruins cannot be found, then it is more likely that Atlantis did not exist, and we can consider my hypothesis falsified.

    Ten years pass; in the meantime, considerable amounts of grant money were invested into a careful mapping of the Atlantic ocean, and no traces of any sunken city whatsoever were discovered. The scientific establishment moves on and considers the case settled. Now let's play...

    B. (Mr. Moving-the-goalposts) Atlantis did exist, certainly! The earthquake has just flattened every building completely, and you just did not look carefully enough. Or maybe it was somewhere else - did you check the Indian Ocean? Yes? Oh. Wait - maybe the Atlanteans were extraterrestrial?

    C. (Mr. Rabid Creationist) All scientists are part of a conspiracy to further hedonistic and nihilistic life styles in an attempt to undermine the Judeo-Christian culture of [insert country here]. They are operating under the presupposition of a-Atlanteism, and thus do not see the sunken ruins when they are staring into their faces!

    D. (Mr. Sophisticated Theologian) Oh, come on, how can you be so unsophisticated? Searching for physical evidence with the clumsy tools of science? Pfff. Everyone knows that Atlantis was only a metaphor anyway, and it is much more important what universal truths about the human condition we derive from the story of Atlantis. Oh, but I am totally going to tell my congregation next sunday that Atlantis really existed. Don't want to drive them into the arms of the fundies, do we?

    Now Massimo, your position is essentially that Coyne is forbidden to consider A a valid hypothesis simply because there are people who promote B-D without being laughed at. And you think Coyne is forbidden to laugh at B-D because he is not a philosopher. And that only philosophers may reject the existence of Atlantis. And even that considering A as a hypothesis somehow disparages philosophy, for some reason which I never quite understood.

    By the way, sometimes it seems I should have become a programmer or something. At least they don't have "philosphers of programming" sneering down at them and telling them that they don't really know what programming is about.

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  29. Winstanley:

    The point is, you can take a religious claim at its word and try to corroborate or falsify it. See my previous post.

    Our morals come from god; immaterial souls carrying our character traits exist; prayers work; the Israelites wandered through the desert, and king David built a great empire; when Jesus was resurrected, there was an earthquake and other dead people would also raise and wander through the streets; immorality causes natural disasters. These are no strawmen but actual claims made by actual believers all over the world at this very moment, and they can all be examined and falsified (beyond reasonable doubt, which is all you ever get in science, no matter what the issue).

    If somebody does not make any such claim at all, simply sitting there and going "there must be some higher intelligence behind the universe, but we can never understand its intentions", then I say, okay, fine, whatever, and can rest assured that this ineffable being is too ineffable to dictate the stoning of homosexuals or the covering up of women. Ineffable is just another word for irrelevant.

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  30. Massimo, I am confused by this post. You criticized Jerry Coyne for his lack of sophistication in philosophy. Since you know philosophy I suppose you have good reasons to say that. But what is wrong with the sentence "Anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist.”? I can't seem to find anything wrong with it, even after reading your post.

    So what religious faith do you think a scientist doesn't have to abandon to be consistent? Please name one. From your post all I can think of is "last thursdayism". Ie. It is ok for a scientist to have faith in the idea that the world was created last Thursday. I don't think so. If I am interviewing a graduate student and if I find out that he believes in Last Thursdayism, sorry I don't think he will get a PhD in any brach of science. Am I philosophically unsophisticated for doing that?

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  31. Alex SL (formerly Mintman): Being sneered at by philosophers certainly is something one has to think about when choosing an academic career. Science is generally liable to The Attack of the Philosophers, but biology is the most vulnerable. Geologists and oceanographers somehow don't have to worry too much about this risk. Mathematics and physics are risky too. But computer science is basically ok. Mathematicians sometimes hide themselves in departments of computer science just to avoid this hassle. In humanities: linguistics, history and law are to be avoided. Art is no good either (except film schools). Literature and social studies love philosophers. That's why philosophers don't go there.

    Medical schools and management schools I believe are totally free from philosophers. Somehow the more philosophically minded person can't survive there.

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  32. opticalradiation:

    Sounds as if someone could try to build a distribution model for philosophers given enough environmental information on the various branches of science and your absence/presence data. And then we could see how the species would react if the intellectual environment in, say, geology would change into that direction or another... promising stuff.

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  33. Coyne may have meant something slightly different by "philosophically consistent." Perhaps you are right that it is the wrong choice of words -- being a philosopher I suppose you would know! But I'm having trouble coming up with a better adjective than "philosophical" to describe this distinction.

    Anyway, here's the problem: Coyne and others assert that science and faith are incompatible. A different group asks, how can you say that when there are so many religious scientists? Coyne replies, "I am not making an empirical claim of incompatibility, but a philosophical claim of incompatibility." I'm sure it is clear what he is trying to say... if "philosophical" is the wrong word, what would you suggest?

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  34. Does anyone else like reading maybe 1 paragraph, tops, of the blog entry, then click on the comments and review enough of them to see if its worth jumping back to finish the blog?

    Does anyone simply comment on a comment without even bothering to read the blog? "That", he said with a decidedly judgmental tone, "would be wrong."

    So much internet philosophy, so little time.

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  35. "Every religion that has any relevance at all is falsifiable." - Alex SL

    I'm not sure how that works. How about this popular Christian proposition.

    "A perfect ideal is a necessary condition for making an ethical decision." - a religious proposition.

    How do we falsify this proposition?

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  36. Jmaes: I don't have a perfect ideal. I make ethical decisions. Therefore ideal is not necessary. Isn't that falsified?

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  37. James:

    That does not sound like a religious claim to me; there is no soul, deity, prophet, miracle, oracle, afterlife, angel or demon involved. Sounds more like moral philosophy.

    And it ticks me off, by the way, that Christians indeed often claim that a proposition like that would be "Christian". Does advocating it make you a Christian even if you consider Jesus a fraud? Does rejecting it make you a heathen even if you believe that Jesus is the son of God Almighty? Please.

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  38. Massimo: "I have commented on this topic before, using the standard distinction between philosophical and methodological naturalism."

    Methodological naturalism is only one school of thought on the scientific method. There are others - namely, the school of critical rationalism, which holds that the "demarcation between natural and supernatural explanations is arbitrary." (source: Wikipedia: "Science")

    Massimo: "Karl Popper, the guy who invented falsificationism, famously thought that Einstein’s theory of relativity is an excellent example of science because it is eminently falsifiable."

    Karl Popper is also the guy who proposed the above mentioned school of critical rationalism (falsificationism being one of its chief tenets).

    Massimo: "When Coyne makes statements of the type “anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist”, he literally does not know what he is talking about because he does not have a grasp of what it means to be “philosophically consistent” in this context."

    It really does appear to me that you are simply giving lip service to this distinction. The bottom line is that you are as much as a hard-core materialist as Coyne.

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  39. Julia: "Does it therefore follow that Coyne is wrong to say that such a claim is inconsistent with a scientific worldview? Seems to me like making untestable claims is *very* inconsistent with a scientific worldview."

    This depends on how you define the "scientific worldview." If you define it as being interchangeable with "scientific materialism," then belief in a divine or spiritual reality would be inconsistent with a scientific worldview. That being said, I would argue that scientific materialism is actually inconsistent with contemporary science.

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  40. Massimo: I read your posts a few more times but I still can't figure out what you are trying to say. You made a big deal out of falsification. What does that have to do with anything in Jerry's blogpost that you cited? He did not mention falsification at all. What did Jerry Coyne said about falsification that is so unsophisticated that you felt compelled to correct him? I failed to find any in that particular post. It was Richard Dawkins who talked about the "god hypothesis". Jerry is not Richard. Jerry did talk about the supersized Jesus but that has nothing to do with "Anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist.” The only reason you bring falsification up seems to be to mock him. Why can't you criticize what he actually wrote in that piece? You are a philosopher. You are supposed to be able to make arguments.

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  41. @opticalradiation:

    The Christian Idealist might argue: the only way to gauge whether or not a decision is ethical is by contrasting it against a perfect ideal. If you do not have a perfect ideal, then you do not make ethical decisions, and if you do make a decision that happens to be ethical, it's only by coincidence.

    It might help to think of it this way: "making" an ethical decision really means "identifying" a decision as ethical. Your suggested method of falsification presupposes a method of verifying the ethical value of decisions, and that method (whatever it may be) presupposes that there are means other than perfect ideals - which is exactly what the proposition we're trying to falsify claims there are not. So, we can't really falsify a means of verification using a means of verification that assumes the former means is false. It's viscously circular in a weird sort of way.

    Certainly, you could respond that the initial proposition was circular in the first place, so, must be false. And that's all fine, but that's logic, not science. I don't think ethical propositions are scientifically falsifiable unless the proposition contains the means of falsifying itself in the natural world. I personally tend to not take such propositions seriously, but not because I can falsify them, but because I can't (except of course, when I do take unfalsifiable propositions seriously - because I'm an unsalvageable hypocrite). But more to the point, religions often make ethical edicts which are similarly difficult to falsify, for much the same reason.

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  42. James: I don't think that works. "the only way to gauge whether or not a decision is ethical is by contrasting it against a perfect ideal" is empirically false. Gather a panel of idealist. Ask them to select from a large description of events those that they consider ethical. If the proposition is correct, the selected people will cite a perfect ideal as the reason for their decision. Count the number. That number will be very low. Claim falsified. This is called psychology.

    Now, you may say those people did not make decisions. That won't work. There is no reason to say why those are not decision a priori.

    You may say their decisions are coincidence. Ok do the experiment again and again. Repeat 100 times. You'll get the same data. That is not a coincidence.

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  43. "The point is, you can take a religious claim at its word and try to corroborate or falsify it"

    Yes you can do that. You can be a real scientist and examine the waffle in a lab to 'corroborate or falsify' transubstantiation. By all means go ahead. You might not be taken very seriously by your colleagues, though.

    For most reasonable people the way the Catholic Church protects her tenent is more than enough. As Hitchens says: "All religions take care to silence or to execute those who question them (and I choose to regard this recurrent tendency as a sign of their weakness rather than their strength)."

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  44. Every time I read Pigliucci trying to piece apart the positions of Dawkins, PZ, or Coyne it seems like hes trying really, really hard to find something to complain about.
    I suppose he views this as his duty as a public intellectual or philosopher - to question even the most respected thinkers who are for the most part in agreement with him- but honestly it has always seems as though he is splitting hairs and grasping at straws.

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  45. The all important question is: "can it still be called scientism if the appeal to science is inclusive of non-scientific ways of thinking?"

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  46. Massimo. I'm afraid your position doesn't seem much less philosophically naive than Jerry's. And I think Jerry's--naive or not--is nearer to the truth.

    You insist on a simplistic demarcation line between science and philosophy, based on an undefined natural/supernatural dichotomy. The only times I've seen you attempt to defend this demarcation criterion, e.g. in a recent podcast, you've instead fallen back on arguing that lastthursdayist claims cannot be addressed by science. Even if we accept that, it doesn't follow that supernatural claims cannot be addressed by science.

    You claim above that "philosophy... makes progress through the analysis and dissection of concepts, not via empirical discoveries." I would agree that philosophers tend to be concerned with matters where conceptual issues play a greater role, while scientists tend to be concerned with matters which are more empirically testable. That is, I think, the essence of the distinction between science and philosophy. But if you're claiming this to be a strict dichotomy, then you're wrong. It's a matter of degree. How could philosophers of science get started without making empirical observations of scientific progress? There may be some areas of philosphy that can be completely divorced from empirical reality (like pure mathematics), but most of philosophy is concerned with learning about the world from empirical observations. As such it is contiguous with science.

    Why is it so important whether an inference is labelled "scientific" or "philosophical"? What does this distinction communicate? As far as I can see, the main reason this issue excites so much hot air is that the word "science" has much more favourable connotations than the word "philosophy". To say that the case against God is a "scientific" one seems to imbue it with more authority. Perhaps it's also that some philosophers want to claim authority over scientists in this area.

    Apart from this, the question seems unimportant. What really matters is whether there is a good rational case against supernatural entities. There is probably little difference between the reasoning that leads you and Jerry to reject the existence of supernatural entities. The dispute seems to be just over whether such reasoning should be labelled "scientific" or "philosophical".

    I think the experience of scientists at making inferences about the world equips them pretty well for correctly inferring the falsehood of religious beliefs, and that's why there is a larger proportion of atheists among scientists than among non-scientists. But scientists are not necessarily good at articulating the logic behind such inferences, and Dawkins in my view is an example of this. I would expect a philosopher with a good understanding of epistemology to do better.

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  47. Julia said: "Seems to me like making untestable claims is *very* inconsistent with a scientific worldview."

    If you mean, as I presume you do, empirically untestable. Now consider this claim: 1) Any claim that is part of a scientific worldview must be empirically testable.

    Is 1) empirically testable? And another question: could this claim be part of a scientific worldview: 2) There is no greatest prime number. 2), like many mathematical claims, is provable, but not empirically testable. So it can't be part of a scientific worldview?

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  48. "Ask them to select from a large description of events those that they consider ethical. If the proposition is correct, the selected people will cite a perfect ideal as the reason for their decision. Count the number. That number will be very low. Claim falsified. This is called psychology." - opticalradiation

    Maybe some background is in order - this is Kantian, and I'm not really an expert in this stuff, so, thanks for your patience in advance (and don't expect a lot of text references, though I'm pretty sure the bit on ideals is in the Critique of Pure Reason).

    A "perfect ideal" is really just the name of the abstract source of good states. If you ask a bunch of people - yourself included - to explain their ethical choices, they will all respond with some version of either "this event was worse than the imagined opposite," or "this event was better than the imagined opposite." This general intuition is extrapolated to conclude that the knowledge of an object's good or bad is derived from the contemplation of its opposite. The claim I'm talking about lies behind this, and states that the ability to judge ethically between an object and its opposite necessitates a third object against which these two can be measured. We can call it a necessary condition of moral judgement.

    Quick thought experiment that might or might not help: you've never seen colours before. I hand you a red apple and a green apple, and ask you to tell me which is the red apple. You, of course, don't know, because you've never seen colours before. I then show you a third apple, a red apple, and I say "this is a red apple." Suddenly, you can tell me which of the two original apples was red.

    The perfect ideal is the source of the second red apple (itself a particular ideal), shown to us, in its general form, in God's example - whether we're consciously aware of this source or not. At least, so goes the argument.

    There are tons of problems with this kind of reasoning, but because this claim concerns knowledge that is antecedent to experience, none of those problems involve falsifying the claim. It is not a falsifiable claim - at least, not empirically falsifiable.

    ...boy, I am rambling on, aren't I?

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  49. Julia: "I'm having a hard time imagining what would constitute philosophical inconsistency in a scientist, if not the acceptance of an untestable claim."

    The scientific worldview includes ‘best explanation to the cause’ values such as accuracy, consistency, parsimony, scope, etc. If a theory violates a value for a non-value--like parsimony for narrative in Last Thursdayism--that constitutes a philosophical inconsistency.

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  50. Hi Massimo,

    I think you have to narrow a definition of science. The main business of science of course is testing hypotheses empirically, but I think most scientist would agree that skepticism, logic (albeit informal) en mathematics are also part of what we call ‘science’. This blurs the clear distinction you’re trying to make, namely between science on the one hand and philosophy (or reason in general) on the other. Science is never devoid of philosophy, so you can’t separate the two as neatly as you’re trying. This knowledge of philosophy of scientists is often pretty naïve (if they are aware of it al all), I agree with you on that.

    I also think that science should, in principle, not be restricted to natural explanations and causes only (methodological naturalism). Anything or anyone (including gods) that has an empirical effect on our world could be tested scientifically, at least in principle. Religions make a lot of claims with empirical effects (especially divine intervention). In fact, multiple studies on the effect of intercessory prayer have been published in respected journals, for example this one. What if this study showed a (huge) effect of prayer? And what if other studies confirmed these results? A naturalistic explanation would be very improbable indeed. The most reasonable conclusion would be that some supernatural force, probably (a) God, did interfere in our world.

    Other examples could easily be given. What if, after saying some Christian prayer, water could be really turned into wine? This also could be scientifically demonstrated, one could even do chemistry experiments. Again a natural explanation is very unlikely and a supernatural one, presumably the Christian God, is likely. Or what if it could be scientifically demonstrated that the mind could function in separation form the brain, as many people of faith claim? The experiment is not hard to set up, but the results would be hard to explain naturalistically, and a supernatural explanation would be reasonable. All these experiments could be done according to regular scientific principles, which means that the a priori exclusion of the supernatural is unnecessary. The reason we should not invest in these kind of experiments is not an a priori commitment to (methodological) naturalism, but because the supernatural has a bad track record and doesn’t seams to provide fruitful research programs.

    Of course, the believer could retort by some ad hoc explanation, but how is this different from believers in homeopathy, who also invent ad hoc explanations to explain away the scientific evidence that homeopathy doesn’t work? If time after time the evidence for a claim is lacking when it should be there, it is perfectly reasonable in science to say that the claim is false (to a certain degree of certainty of course, for science is always tentative). This has also been done for homeopathy.

    Does this show that God does not exist? That’s a bit more complicated, for it depends on what one means by the word ‘God’. Most believers adhere to a religion with a God that intervenes in this world through miracles, prayer, revelation et cetera, by which their religion enters the domain of science. All these claims could be empirically tested, and have (hitherto) failed, which means that there probably isn’t a god who intervenes in our world. Only a god who hasn’t got any interaction with our world would be out of the domain of science, but such a God doesn’t seams to have many adherents.

    At last there is scientific background knowledge, which also can constitute scientific problems for religion. Take for example the claim the God only has a mind (i.e. no accompanying brain). From the neurosciences we know very well that a mind is dependent on a (correctly functioning) brain. A mind without a brain is therefore unlikely.

    (see next post)

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  51. From al the above the following can be concluded. Science has (hitherto) shown that there is no evidence of divine interaction, while it should be there according to the believers. Therefore, a God that has interaction with his world probably doesn’t exist. Furthermore, scientific background knowledge makes the existence of the ultimate Mind improbable. This is the complicated way of saying that science and (almost any) religion are in conflict and God – as conceived by most believers – probably doesn’t exist. From what I’ve read from Coyne, this is also what he says.

    With kind regards,

    Bart Klink
    http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bart_klink/

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  52. James:

    This line of thought is based on the underlying assumption that we do actually derive notions of good and bad from thinking them through. Looking at our own and other humans' behaviour we easily see that this is plainly not the case (at least most of the time).

    Just for starters, a newborn baby soon feels that hunger is bad even if it has never had a full stomach before. Many other judgments are also hardwired into us, and others are learned but not by arriving at an intellectually satisfying conclusion, but rather by being penalized by your peers for doing the wrong thing. The real world is messy like that.

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  53. I think you missed it with this one Massimo.

    Coyne's fault was in the three year delay. He should have made the statements back to back in the first place.

    The first one, having been demonstrated with such an unprecedented level of repeatability, makes the second one a logical conclusion.

    Coyne didn't suffer from inconsistency, he suffered from identity bias: That the second would be so obvious from the first that to state it would seem insulting.

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  54. Palsey makes a significant claim that "scientific materialism is not relevant to modern science" (I paraphrase). On the face of it, that seems to be utterly ridiculous.

    However, I may just be ignorant - being a scientist, and not a philosopher of science. Is this an actual position held by a significant number of philosophers of science? Can anyone elaborate on this? What is the reasonining involved? Perhaps a link to good reading on the topic?

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  55. Massimo,
    in order to move this discussion beyond jerry coyne and demonstrate your point more forcefullyi think the following is needed:

    1. defend your your distinction between philosophy and science from ophelia benson (http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2009/dont-cross-that-line/) and Russell blackford
    (http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/06/sciencereligion-compatibility-yet-again.html)

    2. define and defend a better philosophy of science than naive popperian notion of falsification that you think should be widely adopted by scientists.

    3.define god(s) and show us what philosophy can say about such a concept(s)

    4. define the supernatural. for contrast see richard carrier definition (http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html)

    5. how do you defend a distinction between philosophical and methodological naturalism in light of essays on the topic by barbara forest (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/naturalism.html) and
    Konrad Talmont-Kaminski (http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/scientific-presuppositions-and-the-supernatural/).

    i think addressing these issues in a clear way will go a far way in showing the philosophical naivety of the new atheist.

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  56. JHSteinberg: "Palsey makes a significant claim that "scientific materialism is not relevant to modern science" (I paraphrase). On the face of it, that seems to be utterly ridiculous."

    I assume that you are referring to my previous post. That is not exactly what I stated. At any rate, "scientific materialism" is a metaphysical belief, not a scientifically-established fact. And I stand by my previous post..."scientific materialism is actually inconsistent with contemporary science."

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  57. I think it's "philosophically consistent" to examine one's own supernatural beliefs using the same method one uses to examine other myths, legends, and supernatural beliefs. Therefore, a "philosophically consistent" scientist should reject his own faith-based beliefs for the same reasons he rejects other faith-based beliefs... unless his method involves something like, "it's true if it feels true --if it 'resonates' with me." But if that's his method, it sure isn't "scientifically consistent". After all the earth "feels" flat and immobile.

    If an idea can't be tested, then there is not enough evidence to warrant a claim of knowledge.

    I thought Jerry's debate with Giberson illustrated this rather well: http://www.usatoday.com/video/index.htm?bctid=424695330001

    But then, the only philosophers I can really understand are Dennett and Bertrand Russel. A philosopher tried to make a similar point as Massimo (I think) in this recent podcast I heard http://www.irreligiosophy.com/?p=1361 , but he sounds as muddled to me as Massimo does in this article. I know Massimo thinks that it's Jerry that is confused. But I find Jerry's viewpoint much easier to parse than Massimo's. I guess I care more about the best method for understanding reality-- and not really the intricacies of philosophy so much.

    But I would like to know how a "philosophically consistent scientist" could come to believe in his particular brand of "magic" while rejecting all conflicting supernatural claims and other faith-based notions? How do you decide which invisible immeasurable beings, forces, and events to believe in and which to reject? What "philosophy" is consistent with such specious reasoning? Post modernism? Is that scientifically consistent.? Should Jerry just point out that religious scientists was just being "inconsistent" when it came to his methods in knowing about reality and not "PHILOSOPHICALLY inconsistent"?

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  58. Massimo,

    Ok, Coyne's 2010 statement is less than clear. To get things straight, would you agree with the following : to endorse a claim that, if true, would have been corroborated by now through scientific investigation, but as a matter of fact hasn't, is incompatible with the scientific attitude.

    Frankly, I don't see how you could disagree here. There is only one step left to take: the God that your average religious person believes in fits that bill, because He supposedly performs act in the natural world (miracles, healing, answering prayer) that are perfectly amenable to scientific investigation.

    To be sure, two other options are available for the religious believer: (i) retreating to a perfect conspiracy of a trickster God (Last Thursdayism) (ii) retreating to a God that is completely isolated from the natural world and that cannot interact with it in any way. (but why should we have any interest in such a God?)

    Only THOSE two conceptions of God are intrinsically and by definition unfalsifiable, NOT supernatural claims per se. To equate all religion with these two borderline cases just will not do.

    I fully agree with Bart Klink on methodological naturalism. MN is not an intrinsic and self-imposed limitation of science, but rather a provisory and empirically grounded attitude of scientists, justified in virtue of the consistent success of naturalistic explanations. In fact, I recently published a paper in Foundations of Science containing many similar arguments: http://www.springerlink.com/content/4n47717420j6437l/Final draft available here: http://sites.google.com/site/maartenboudry/teksten-1/methodological-naturalism

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  59. James: I haven't read any Kant. If that is what Kant is about, I am SO glad that I don't have to read that crap.

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  60. Phiwilli asked about my argument that making untestable claims is inconsistent with a scientific worldview.

    First, yes, I did mean empirically untestable. And to be even more precise, I should have said, "making untestable claims about what exists in the world is inconsistent with a scientific worldview." So that would of course still allow for claims about math or logic (which you asked about).

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  61. Alex SL, Ritchie the Bear, downquark, and others have argued that Massimo's distinction between natural and supernatural claims is an empty one, and I agree. I was just trying to avoid that line of argument because we've argued this point many times before with Massimo, without any resolution.

    And also, I thought we could avoid that issue because even if we allow Massimo his claim that supernatural beliefs are untestable, his argument in this post can still be challenged, by arguing that scientists who hold untestable beliefs are being philosophically inconsistent.

    Of course, there are different plausible definitions of what constitutes "philosophical consistency" for a scientist, as we've discovered in this thread -- Massimo's definition of "philosophical consistency" for scientists seems to allow belief in the existence of untestable entities, and Coyne's doesn't.

    And I'm not arguing Coyne's definition is THE only way one could define philosophical consistency for a scientist, but it does seem clear that it's one reasonable definition, reasonable enough that it doesn't deserve to be called "pretentious and naive."

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  62. articullett: "Therefore, a "philosophically consistent" scientist should reject his own faith-based beliefs for the same reasons he rejects other faith-based beliefs."

    The phrase "faith-based beliefs" appears to me to be a tautology.

    articullett: "If an idea can't be tested, then there is not enough evidence to warrant a claim of knowledge."

    That's why they're called beliefs. Also, what qualifies as "enough evidence" is largely subjective.

    articullett: "But then, the only philosophers I can really understand are Dennett and Bertrand Russel."

    That's interesting. I find Dennett's claim that "consciousness and subjective experiences are purely illusory" to be unintelligible. (His book "Consciousness Explained" should have been entitled "Consciousness Explained Away.") On the other hand, I have no problem accepting Russell's metaphysical position of neutral monism/panexperientialism.

    articullett: "How do you decide which invisible immeasurable beings, forces, and events to believe in and which to reject?"

    If I observe physical events occurring without physical causes, then I feel it is fairly safe to assume that they have nonphysical causes.

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  63. Coyne has responded. And his <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/video/index.htm?bctid=424695330001>video chat</a> with Giberson is online.

    @Winstanley: thanks, but I prefer Earl Grey.

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  64. "Massimo's definition of 'philosophical consistency' for scientists seems to allow belief in the existence of untestable entities, and Coyne's doesn't."

    Because Coyne seems to blur the line between the practice of science and the broader scientific worldview. There is a difference between holding claims to empirical testing (not all claims can be handled in such a way) and holding claims against concepts like reason (because they can be subject to evidence and argumentation, but they are not subject to testing by empirical evidence). It is very much like the difference between skeptical inquiry (science-based) and skepticism (philosophy informed by science).

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  65. @Michael -- Yes of course, Coyne was using a broader definition of "philosophical consistency" for a scientist. His definition goes beyond whether they practice science successfully and get the right answers to scientific questions -- his definition also includes whether they accept fundamental principles of epistemology (like, we have no reason to claim the existence of undetectable entities).

    And like I said, Massimo can use a narrower definition of "philosophical consistency", one which focuses just on whether a scientist practices science well, but it's not like Massimo's narrower definition is obviously right and Coyne's broader definition is obviously wrong. One's narrower, one's broader.

    So I don't see Massimo's justification for calling Coyne's broader definition "pretentious and naive."

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  66. "If I observe physical events occurring without physical causes, then I feel it is fairly safe to assume that they have nonphysical causes."

    The problem with this type of thinking is that if you lived a thousand years ago you would all sorts of beliefs in the supernatural that we now have naturalistic explanations for.

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  67. It seems as if Massimo has a huge problem with people stepping beyond their normal expertise, and for some people his beef is almost personal. I guess to be able to speak on all topics you just need to have a PhD is science, philosophy and be a skeptic.

    I think Masismo is stretching it a bit for this blog entry. It is obvious that the idea of an ominopotent god in a vacuum is beyond the realm of science (I don't think actually believes in such a god), but to the extent that this god is part of a religion, science can inform about the claims. If many of the major claims made by a religious text turn out to be false, then how is it rational to believe in that god? It is not rational, and this can be informed by science. This is not a purely scientific question, but very few things are.

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  68. @Maarten

    I read your paper when Taner Edis blogged about it a few weeks ago. In case you're interested, I posted some comments about it there:
    http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2010/06/methodological-naturalism.html

    I liked the paper and agreed with your conclusions, but had a couple of minor criticisms.

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  69. While Massimo appears to know his stuff, so much of this post comes across as a sort of philosopher's spelling flame, pedantically lashing out at some perceived semantic flaw rather than addressing the content and intent of Jerry's message. Jerry's intent seems pretty clear to me and others so if he has misspoke then instead of indulging in a long diatribe against amateurs, why not redirect that anger into informing us of his failings and then go on to deal with his actual arguments.

    For a start:

    * is personal revelation, dogma, authority and faith as a mechanism for determining truth compatible with empiricism and sceptical inquiry?

    * are there widely accepted mechanisms for detecting fraud or errors and mistakes in theology or religious belief?

    * how do these "gaps" in the scientific system (such as some foundational assumptions) compare to the required assumptions in religion?

    * how do the beliefs and conclusions of religion and science compare, and are they consistent/compatible where they overlap?

    It appears to me as if Massimo is making this personal and using it as an excuse for attacking Jerry rather than taking any time to deal with the many issues. Worse, I think Massimo is picking at some very small nits and blowing them out of proportion in order to avoid dealing with the real and substantial issues raised. It looks like a diversion. Perhaps it isn't intended and perhaps these semantic issues are a pet peeve which make him act irrationally but to outsiders like me who see this happening over and over, it's hard to not believe that Massimo can still remain unaware that he has failed to address these points, and that by avoiding them, he appears as if he cannot answer them.

    To make matters worse, Jerry and now Julia and others are able to simply and clearly express the incompatibilities while Massimo and supporters have no response but to attack science.

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  70. Well stated Julia.


    @Paisley

    "If I observe physical events occurring without physical causes, then I feel it is fairly safe to assume that they have nonphysical causes."

    CCbowers, above, answered this nicely.

    I would add that this type of thinking is also what leads to prolonging of belief in the soul and libertarian free will. We (consciously) experience an openness before us, we experience choosing between multiple open possibilities, but many of the causes (other brain events, historical environmental conditioning, innate structures, situation factors, etc.) of our choosing are transparent to us. Since "we" do not "observe" all the causes that go into our choices (and cannot observe all the causes), we assume that the whole of the choice, or the crux of the choice, are made ex nihilo by "us," and we hence turn that "us" into a transcendental entity, the soul.

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  71. ccbowers: "The problem with this type of thinking is that if you lived a thousand years ago you would all sorts of beliefs in the supernatural that we now have naturalistic explanations for."

    There is no materialistic explanation for either quantum indeterminacy or quantum entanglement. Your refusal to acknowledge this fact does not change the fact. It simply reveals that you are clinging to a faith-based commitment to materialism.

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  72. Regarding Massimo's statement that conceptions of gods are not falsifiable, Coyne states in his blog, “Sweet Jebus, I have dealt with this before, and Pigliucci knows it. Once again: yes, one cannot falsify the idea that there is a transcendent being. But one can falsify the idea that there is a transcendent being who, it is claimed, does specific things."

    Coyne's claim that one can engage in testing of some supernatural being as a causal factor is, however, incorrect. To test such a theory of supernatural causation requires the more general theory that supernatural entities exist and that they have the capacity to effect causes in the natural realm. Coyne is only claiming that causal relations can be tested, but this only makes sense if the more general theories have already been tested, which they haven't and can't. Further, to actually carry out the legitimate test Coyne claims leads to falsification, we would have to have empirical evidence of the presence of the entity in question, and look for that entity's ability to be a part of the initial causal conditions that lead to the predicted effects.

    We have no way to develop a valid test that Coyne purports to be possible.

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  73. The questions whether God exists, and whether one should be religious, seem to induce histrionics from certain of those on both sides of these futile and silly debates. We humans, and I think philosophers in particular, and even scientists, are quite capable of divorcing our conduct in "ordinary day to day life" from our most cherished beliefs and theories. It should surprise nobody that there are good scientists who believe in God, nor should it be a matter of concern in itself. Concern is justified here only when people start demanding that others think and do as they do.

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  74. Lyndon: "I would add that this type of thinking is also what leads to prolonging of belief in the soul and libertarian free will. We (consciously) experience an openness before us, we experience choosing between multiple open possibilities, but many of the causes (other brain events, historical environmental conditioning, innate structures, situation factors, etc.) of our choosing are transparent to us. Since "we" do not "observe" all the causes that go into our choices (and cannot observe all the causes), we assume that the whole of the choice, or the crux of the choice, are made ex nihilo by "us," and we hence turn that "us" into a transcendental entity, the soul."

    I basically agree. The universal belief in an immaterial soul is based (at least partially) on our first-person experience of libertarian free will. IOW, dualism is based on EMPIRICAL evidence! If materialists (such as yourself) believe that free will is purely illusory, then the onus is upon them (and you) to prove that it is. I am certainly not about to deny my first-person experiences simply because it does not accord with your faith-commitment to materialism.

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  75. Kirk,

    To test such a theory of supernatural causation requires the more general theory that supernatural entities exist and that they have the capacity to effect causes in the natural realm. Coyne is only claiming that causal relations can be tested, but this only makes sense if the more general theories have already been tested, which they haven't and can't.

    I think you're mistaken.

    If I claim, as some believers do, that prayer often results in miraculous healings then we can test to see if prayer results in any significant improvement in patient outcomes.

    In many ways I think you've got the process backwards. Before positing the existence of an entity such as a god, it's not just reasonable but desirable to have a list of phenomena which this entity can help explain.

    No one set out to prove the existence of protons before experiments like the Rutherford electron scattering experiment showed that there was a need. You seem to be saying that Rutherford couldn't have asked meaningful questions about the atom without first having a theory of all of its properties.

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  76. "because it goes in the direction of further reducing the relevance of reason to the scientific enterprise."

    Hilarious nonsense.

    "The two points I made here amount to claiming that many scientists do not understand the nature of science as well as philosophers do."

    This seems false based on your pontification and his response.

    "he does not have a grasp of what it means to be “philosophically consistent” in this context."

    Your opinion is noted and his response indicates that your opinion has no basis. How have you defined "philosophically consistent"?

    "he should refrain from writing about it as a matter of intellectual honesty toward his readers."

    Hilarious. Perhaps you should refrain from writing about it.

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  77. Massimo, I think you are becoming a Militant Philosopher or a New Philosopher.

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  78. "This line of thought is based on the underlying assumption that we do actually derive notions of good and bad from thinking them through." - Alex SL

    No. It's not. As I said, you don't have to be conscious of the pre-exiting ability to make moral judgments; however, your suggested method of falsification did rely on the assumption that people are accurately conscious of their moral choices. Regardless, the uncovering of logical assumptions is an a priori argument, not a form of falsification, which is the point in the first place.

    "James: I haven't read any Kant. If that is what Kant is about, I am SO glad that I don't have to read that crap." - opticalradiation

    It's probably best that you haven't. Kant requires close and careful reading. Oh, I shouldn't forget, this is also not a falsification. So, I guess we can't say that all religious claims reduce to falsifiable propositions.

    Honestly, I was sort of hoping that they could be.

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  79. [I went over to Coyne's blog to reassure them that their comments here hadn't been deleted, they had just been awaiting moderation... and I ended up posting the following in the thread over there. I feel compelled to re-post here, or else I feel uncomfortably like I am cheating on this blog with another one!]

    This debate over whether science can reject “supernatural” claims has been going on intermittently for months — on our blog, on our podcast, and in private. And we are no closer to resolving our disagreement than when we started, alas.

    Massimo has argued that even empirical claims made by religion cannot be disproved by science; in an older post he said, “science technically cannot even reject young earth creationism because of an escape clause known in some circles as ‘last Thursdaysm’… The idea is that… the world was created by god last Thursday (or whenever), and he arranged it this way just to test our faith.”

    In response to this line of argument I tend to say two things:

    (1) First, the words “reject” or “disprove” are generally shorthand for “disprove, conditional on our current body of scientific knowledge being true.” I’m pretty sure that’s the sense in which Coyne was using the word, and it’s certainly a more sensible way to define “disprove” than Massimo’s definition, which seems so strict as to be essentially useless. By the standard meaning of “disprove,” science certainly can disprove young-Earth creationism.

    And (2), I don’t see what makes so-called supernatural claims special in being technically unfalsifiable — you could come up with some similarly elaborate excuse to protect any claim from being disproved by science (e.g., “The psychic powers shut off in the presence of tests!”) I don’t understand why Massimo allows so-called “supernatural” claims to invoke such a loophole, rendering them immune to scientific disproof, when he doesn’t allow other claims immunity via equivalent loopholes. The only difference seems to be the presence of the label “supernatural” and I don’t see why that’s a relevant difference.

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  80. "There is no materialistic explanation for either quantum indeterminacy or quantum entanglement. Your refusal to acknowledge this fact does not change the fact. It simply reveals that you are clinging to a faith-based commitment to materialism."

    And what is the alternative explanation?

    Indeterminacy contradicts exactly what the word suggests absolute determinism. It doesn't contradict materialism.

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  81. Michael de Dora:

    Because Coyne seems to blur the line between the practice of science and the broader scientific worldview.

    What is science good for if not for building a worldview from its findings? It is nothing but a quest for a deeper understanding of the world around us.

    ccbowers / Lyndon:
    The problem with this type of thinking is that if you lived a thousand years ago you would all sorts of beliefs in the supernatural that we now have naturalistic explanations for. ... I would add that this type of thinking is also what leads to prolonging of belief in the soul and libertarian free will.

    I understand where this argument is going, and it is basically the same as previous ones I read here about how accepting goddidit as an argument is a dead end for research. But what I never understand is why accepting goddidit as the Currently Best Explanation That We Can Come Up With For Now (CBETWCCUWFN) should be any less vulnerable to somebody coming along with a better explanation than any other scientific idea. Once scientists thought that bacteria spontaneously poof into existence, and then came Pasteur and showed that they don't. Once scientists would have been unable to come up with a more convincing story than creationism, then came Darwin (this is of course greatly simplified, but it's about the principle here). Accepting the first ideas as the CBETWCCUWFN did not stop acceptence of the new, better ones. If we find tomorrow that praying to Ganeesha heals cancer (P < 0.05 and all), what keeps us from picking at it and finding out 50 years later that it was just hyperadvanced aliens messing with our heads for the giggles? Why should the vague possiblity that it is alien jokels doing that keep us from accepting the "Ganeesha exists" theory as the CBETWCCUWFN when we don't yet have any evidence for those aliens? Again: for now. This is all you ever get in science, but the goddidit as a dead end argument pretends that this would somehow be different to all other scientific ideas. Not at all: the argument is nothing but another privilege granted to religions, only in a roundabout way.

    Kirk:

    Coyne is only claiming that causal relations can be tested, but this only makes sense if the more general theories have already been tested, which they haven't and can't... We have no way to develop a valid test that Coyne purports to be possible.

    You could just as well say that nobody is allowed to observe that masses attract each other before we have found the universal formula of physics.

    Ciceronianus:

    Concern is justified here only when people start demanding that others think and do as they do.

    Nobody is discriminating against religious scientists; the point is simply that it must be allowed to say openly that their beliefs are on the same level as a fully trained scientist believing in the Easter Bunny or in goblins stealing their socks when they are not looking, i.e. silly and somewhat disconcerting. And saying that aloud is what is called New Atheism these days.

    Julia:

    Exactly; perhaps even more to the point, things like what Massimo dislikes Coyne, Dawkins etc. saying are always shorthand for "beyond reasonable doubt" and (see above) CBETWCCUWFN. Because that is all a competent scientist ever claims, in anything he or she ever says as a scientist. That goes completely without saying. Well, usually. Apparently not for Massimo, where it does not even go with Coyne in fact repeatedly saying it.

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  82. @ Julia & Massimo

    The argument that "science cannot even disprove YEC" is indeed a red herring. By such a narrow definition of "disproving", science cannot disprove anything at all. Massimo has never explicitly denied that, but by making the point with religious claims, he makes it look as though they are special in this respect, whereas clearly they are not. Immunizing strategies and escape clauses are always available, witness parapsychology. And you don’t have to be a supernaturalist to make an epistemological retreat like Last Thursdayism. Here is a perfectly natural version: extraterrestrial aliens with hyper-advanced technology have been fooling with us and have faked all the evidence for an ancient earth (think about the planet-manufacturing planet Magrathea in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). So I completely agree with Julia on this one!

    There is another point I find puzzling: this is the second time you chide the new atheists for relying on naive falsificationism, while you come off sounding like a traditional falsificationist yourself. In a previous post, you argued that the supernatural "can be compatible with any given empirical observation" as a reason for excluding it from the purview of science, and here you press the point about the unfalsifiability again.

    Finally, I can't help feeling that your post was unnecessarily condescending to Coyne ("very naive and pretentious"). You have rightly criticized PZ Myers' tone a while ago, but it seems that the discussion is heating up again... Remember that there is consensus among philosophers on this point either. If Coyne needs a crash course in philosophy, then so do a lot of academic philosophers: Evan Fales, Niall Shanks, Daniel Dennett, John Dupré etc. And me and my co-authors, another bunch of philosophers! :-)

    @ RichardW

    Thanks for your thoughtful comments on Taner Edis' blog. I agree that the definition argument can be made more sophisticated, and this would merit a more extensive discussion along the lines you suggest. However, I couldn’t find any such argument in the writings of IMN defenders anyway. Ruse's argument is very sketchy: he seems to realize that an arbitrary semantic convention is rather weak to make an epistemological point. And I think justifying the convention on historical grounds wouldn't work either. For example, as recent as in the beginning of the 20th century, biologists were looking for some sort of teleological driving force or supernatural guidance behind evolution, which they thought was necessary to account for progression and biological complexity. To call such efforts ‘unscientific’ with hindsight seems anachronistic to me.

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  83. I do not think you can move past the divides that constitute a belief in science or a belief in religion until you jettison this true/false stuff and this existence stuff. They are misleading concepts which give rise to impassioned arguments about nothing at all.

    A well-versed philosopher can say it much better than I can, but existence and truth are relative concepts. They are good for some but not all when it comes to judging the veracity or existence of any particular thing. If something exists for you it need not exist for me. it is that simple. Something that is said to be true or false does not wash there must be a subjective notion attached. Again, it is really that simple.

    We walk around and we see stuff and say it is there, therefore it exists , and yes we can prove it because it can be touched and measured. Stuff we feel? Not so much. But there is no difference between the things we feel and the things we touch and see, if we extend our view of what it means to sense something. If we treat all incoming information as information first and foremost, and treat the vehicle in which the info arrived as a secondary consideration, we are capable of viewing things in different lights, and this need not be in conflict with scientific method.,

    I know that for most believers and non-believers, the 'concept of gods' involves some kind of controller(s) without hard evidence of the control. But I don't think deism and things like disinterested controlling machinery are are making inroads in popular religious thought and I do not understand why.

    The Alex SL formerly known as Mintman raised some interesting ideas in his Atlantis riff. He talked about a myth which I bet does not have a lot of buy-in here. He talked of the ways in which the lack of evidence proves the lack of existence, and how various 'believers' changed their words to keep their argument alive. But key in what Alex said was how we could go about the investigation, and I would like to amplify this.

    Why is it that those of you who think all these thoughts about gods do not entertain (at least with what you write) the idea that the unknown is a fact of life and it should be dealt with, and not fobbed off because it doesn't play very well with others in scientific investigative settings? I do understand that for some, the issue may be reaching conclusions about religion based on lack of evidence. But my complaint is that a serious search for ETI, gods, Atlantis, and all sorts of stuff laughed off as beyond the pale is nowhere to be found in the scientific world today. In time, I think this will change, as ideas like paranormality are discarded as politically incorrect.

    No need for Alex's Bermuda Triangle-ready ocean floor excavators yet. We can take any myth that we are curious about, treat it as no more than a body of information by throwing overboard all value judgments. We do experiments. We read journals, listen to and process what others have said about the myth. We take in the lore and do some hard thinking about it. Yes, our conclusion could involve life forms here or there that we do not comprehend.

    But the strength of the lore should not be dismissed by we who know better because 5 out of our 6 or 7 known senses tell us otherwise. Strength of information can be defined as how likely is information to make inroads into a person or entity's belief system based on existing beliefs/knowledge.

    What is needed is historiography on steroids, given the conviction that everything are aware of is true in some sense, now lets learn more.

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  84. I do not think you can move past the divides that constitute a belief in science or a belief in religion until you jettison this true/false stuff and this existence stuff

    Jettison truth?

    I agree with you on one point: defenders of non-deistic religion have to undermine science, reality and truth itself in order to support their pre-scientific superstitions. If we would only get more people like you, even Massimo couldn't argue that science & religion were compatible.

    What could be more contrasting, a system which seeks to learn, grow and understand reality even at the cost of cherished ideas; and one which seeks to support dogma regardless of reality or evidence?

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  85. Michael de Dora:

    One can certainly say whatever one thinks, and I doubt anyone disputes that. Whether one should say what one thinks on this point repeatedly, noisily, rudely, contemptuously, superciliously is another thing, though, just as it is with any other assertion. I have no "dog in this race" as some people like to say; I think the entire controversy is silly. That said, I think the "new atheists" are largely boors, and that they have nothing to say that hasn't already been said, but insist on saying it, again and again, and that's tiresome and unnecessary (unless, I suppose, they've been upbraided by someone on "the other side" of this fruitless debate, and so may have a reason to respond in kind).

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  86. @Julia

    2) Spot on.

    An appeal to faith, if it's honest, is an open and unashamed rejection of reason, e.g. because of a distrust of our frail and deceptive human faculties -fideists would say. Anyone who is interested in the old topic of reason vs. faith must read Montaigne's Apologie and Popkin's History of Scepticism.

    I find it completely anachronic and frankly idiotic to pretend that faith even attempts to compete in the same league with science and rational enquiry in general. Faith is by its nature irrational, thus unanswerable. To the faithful this is a VIRTUE, to the rational person this is NOT.

    Maybe this is a Catholic cultural bias, but just because some lunatic protestants delude themselves into thinking that faith must be more *prestigious* than science, you don't have to buy into their premise that faith is concerned with empirical knowledge of the world.

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  87. @Tyro: Yes - jettison objective truths, jettison objective existence. While you might regard the information in religious lore with a more jaundiced view, I agree that it's the dogma that is the godawful aspect about religious belief.

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  88. downquark: "Indeterminacy contradicts exactly what the word suggests absolute determinism. It doesn't contradict materialism."

    Quantum indeterminacy (as well as quantum entanglement/nonlocality) contradict(s) the deterministic, mechanistic worldview that is materialism. It's that simple.

    downquark: "“And what is the alternative explanation?"

    An all pervading consciousness collapses the wave function.

    "In his collection of essays Symmetries and Reflections – Scientific Essays, he [physicist Eugene Wigner] commented "It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness."

    (source: Wikipedia: "Eugene Wigner")

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  89. "Conceptions of gods are infinitely more flexible (or vacuous, if you prefer) than either Marxist or Freudian theories, and they are thus simply not falsifiable."

    While this is true in the abstract, stripped of the context of particular religions, is it really true in any particular case?

    The philosopher of science Imre Lakatos observed that scientific theories also have a great deal of flexibility when presented with disconfirming evidence. In any such case one can revise auxiliary hypotheses while preserving the "hard core" of the theory.

    Seems to me that such flexibility is neither *necessary* in religious claims, nor unique to religious claims.

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  90. Theology has been traditionally defined as "faith seeking understanding." Faith, not skepticism, has the upper hand in the religious quest. If you really think about it, a "God" that is falsifiable does not really qualify as God. IOW, a divine or spiritual reality that is ultimately falsifiable is antithetical to religious faith. But certainly this should not preclude theological beliefs from being modified as believers see fit. Faith and rationality (in contradistinction to the skeptical viewpoint) are not mutually exclusive terms.

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  91. "An all pervading consciousness collapses the wave function."

    Oh you're one of those. There is no need for conciousness to collapse wave function, quantum computers do/will require automatic mechanisms to collapse wavefunctions when needed. If conciousness is needed the whole enterprise will fall flat on its face.

    Furthermore if it's all prevailing why does it collapse it at some point and not others, why do the particles behave statistically never significantly deviating when another conciousness or moral predicament is nearby?

    Your claim is utterly unfalsifiable and there is no evidence that conciousness itself collapses anything.

    Certainly quantum theory dispels very old conceptions of materialism but it is still viable to believe that only matter and energy exist they just behave strangely - like dice are rolling.

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  92. ciceronianus:

    I think you wanted to direct that at me, not Michael.

    Would you also have such a relaxed, no problem, it takes every kind of people attitude if a large percentage of the population and a smaller but still noticeable percentage of my colleagues in science believed in invisible sock stealing gnomes, or in elves exchanging children? Because these ideas are no more absurd and at least less morally contemptible than the logic of the core teachings of Christianity, but maybe you understand what I mean with disconcerting if you imagine grown-up, fully trained scientists promoting them?

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  93. Alex,

    I don't quite understand your comment to me and CCbowers. I was responding to Paisley's comment:

    "If I observe physical events occurring without physical causes, then I feel it is fairly safe to assume that they have nonphysical causes."


    That seems like it flies in the face of science and our best reason/philosophy, which may be at the heart of this natural-supernatural riff. If a scientist today, unlike the past, finds, lets say, that an element behaves in some way but cannot discern the underlying properties, they better not just throw up their hands and say I guess it was uncaused. Just because an individual cannot perceive the cause, it is no longer acceptable to jump to the conclusion that such an event was uncaused, as Paisley's quote suggests. There is something quite contradictory in the scientist using the standard that all events have natural causes 999/999 times in the laboratory, but when he goes to church and they say this bread has now transubstantiated into Christ but you cannot test it, that he now just accepts this belief out of it traditionally being within the "supernatural" realm and outside his belief of natural event=natural cause. Contrary to Massimo's demarcating of the supernatural, most religions cling to supernatural entities (God) and to supernatural influences or events in this world, many times in the form of a cause that was caused by something outside of nature (hence supernatural, and hence, from the naturally embedded human perspective, "uncaused").

    Anyways Alex, I was just saying that anywhere we continue to rely on, or try to go back to, "it seems uncaused from our perspective, therefore a "supernatural" or "uncaused" explanation should be claimed here," should be outright rejected at this moment, given its historical deficiency. I am not destabilizing all scientific explanations, only those that fall back on something being supernatural or uncaused (which I do not mean to extend into the quantum level, as has been stated above by downquark).

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  94. Has Massimo embraced the Dark Side? Has he become a Postmodernist? Let's see

    - argues from authority. CHECK
    - intellectual swagger. CHECK
    - awfully boring. CHECK
    - never keeps it simple. CHECK
    - never keeps it brief. CHECK
    - quotes authorities. CHECK
    - throws around his credentials. CHECK

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  95. @downquark: Re your comment

    why do the particles behave statistically never significantly deviating when another consciousness or moral predicament is nearby?

    why bring morality into the mix?

    While I am not sold on quantum cosmic consciousness it sounds much more plausible than the 'reality' of us having individual standalone models. As for the particles behaving in a statistical manner remember, its a monistic world out there, or at least that is what is postulated. The evidence is there too. Check out Schaeffer 2007. The metaphysical philosophy is a bit much for me, but what I understood from the 'emergence' section seems evidentiary.

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  96. Lyndon:

    With your example I agree completely, and especially with the reason you give: given its historical deficiency. What I take issue with (and presumably you never meant that, sorry) is pretending that it could never have gone differently, or that, say, a scientist finding today that sacrificing a goat to Baal reproducibly makes lost limbs regrow would be somehow forbidden to draw the obvious conclusion.

    Just visualizing such an example shows how absurd the idea that scientists cannot comment on supernatural processes really is.

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  97. After reading Coyne's response, I have to say that Pigliucci's post here seems trivial at best. By this I mean that, at best, Pigliucci is just toying with definitions. But at worst, it is an attempt to make religious scientists seem more scientifically-grounded than they really are.

    And I'm really getting tired of the way Massimo is always accusing new atheists of being philosophically and argumentatively unsophisticated. Massimo is just as abrasive as Dawkins, Harris, Coyne, etc, and thrice as petty.

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  98. I tend to ignore the "argument from quantum mechanics." Usually done by someone who is not a quantum physicist, and it is the argument that whatever nonsense they believe is supported by quantum indeterminacy. Sometimes it is framed with the notion that no mechanistic explanations are needed for anything (therefore anything goes?), and they point to quantum mechanics as proof that this is possible. It usually comes with a misrepresentation of quantum physics (which is somewhat understandable) in order to support some belief.

    Theoretical physicists are still wrestling with the interpretations of quantum mechanics and its reconciliation with general relativity... why do we need to insert this into discussions by nonphysicists in topics unrelated to theoretical physics?

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  99. 3 papers in Nature, 2 in Science... completed his PhD in Harvard under Richard Lewontin... frequent contributor to the NYT...Professor Coyne was already an activist atheist when you were a PhD student... really, what makes you think you are in a position to pass judgement on his stances with such arrogance? So you tell him to stick to his field... really odd advice coming from a philosopher who writes regularly about climate change...

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  100. ccbowers said...
    I have had these nonsense discussions with Artie and Paisley before on the Neurologica website. I'm glad to see Massimo learned pretty quickly that it is a fruitless endeavour. Using vague terminology incorrectly, and inserting their own ideology while trying to hide that fact.
    July 20, 2010 1:40 AM

    Is this present post a continuation of that earlier defamatory slamming?

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  101. downquark: "Oh you're one of those. There is no need for conciousness to collapse wave function, quantum computers do/will require automatic mechanisms to collapse wavefunctions when needed. If conciousness is needed the whole enterprise will fall flat on its face."

    Seth Lloyd (probably the world's foremost researcher on quantum computing) ascribed a "cosmic intelligence" to the universe...

    "Now that we are aware of the computational nature of the universe as a whole, it is tempting to ascribe to it a kind of cosmic intelligence...There is nothing wrong with thinking of the universe itself as some kind of gigantic intelligent organism, any more than it is to think of the Earth itself as a single living being (an idea known as the "Gaia hypothesis")." (source: pp. 210-211 "Programming the Universe" by Seth Lloyd)

    Also, the prospect of quantum computing is based on the reality of quantum superposition and quantum entanglement.

    downquark: "Furthermore if it's all prevailing why does it collapse it at some point and not others, why do the particles behave statistically never significantly deviating when another conciousness or moral predicament is nearby?"

    I said it was all PERVADING, not "all prevailing." IOW, consciousness is "nonlocal." Also, I fail to see what relevance "moral predicament" has with this discussion.

    downquark: "Your claim is utterly unfalsifiable and there is no evidence that conciousness itself collapses anything."

    It's an interpretation of QM as is the "many worlds interpretation."

    downquark: "Certainly quantum theory dispels very old conceptions of materialism but it is still viable to believe that only matter and energy exist they just behave strangely - like dice are rolling. "

    There is no materialistic explanation for quantum indeterminacy or quantum entanglement. Your refusal to acknowledge this fact does not change the fact. It simply reveals a mind given to intellectual dishonesty.

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  102. Lyndon: "If a scientist today, unlike the past, finds, lets say, that an element behaves in some way but cannot discern the underlying properties, they better not just throw up their hands and say I guess it was uncaused. Just because an individual cannot perceive the cause, it is no longer acceptable to jump to the conclusion that such an event was uncaused, as Paisley's quote suggests."

    That nature is deemed fundamentally indeterminate (i.e. physical events are occurring without physical cause) is part and parcel of quantum theory (arguably the most tested theory in the scientific enterprise.)

    Lyndon: "There is something quite contradictory in the scientist using the standard that all events have natural causes 999/999 times in the laboratory."

    Dualism is not incompatible with science. In fact, dualism is actually the historical metaphysical "working assumption" of science (not materialism).

    Lyndon: "I am not destabilizing all scientific explanations, only those that fall back on something being supernatural or uncaused (which I do not mean to extend into the quantum level, as has been stated above by downquark)."

    All matter reduces to quantum events (which are physically uncaused). That is according to the standard interpretation of QM. The only ones here who are demonstrating philosophical inconsistency are materialists like yourself.

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  103. Ritchie the Bear: "And I'm really getting tired of the way Massimo is always accusing new atheists of being philosophically and argumentatively unsophisticated. Massimo is just as abrasive as Dawkins, Harris, Coyne, etc, and thrice as petty."

    If Sam Harris is a "new" atheist, then he is apparently some kind of "new age" atheist. I read the "End of Faith." Clearly, he is influenced by Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism.

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  104. ccbowers: "I tend to ignore the "argument from quantum mechanics.""

    It has been my experience that most materialists do that. They simply ignore any evidence that contradicts their worldview. The bottom line is that the "scientific fundamentalists" are really no different than the "religious fundamentalists."

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  105. @Paisley
    Your Seth Loid quote has nothing to do with conciousness causing causing collapse.

    "Also, I fail to see what relevance "moral predicament" has with this discussion."

    Well one way of distinguishing a mind from mindless probability would to see how things change in a moral situation. Presumably the conciousness would act morally.

    "It's an interpretation of QM as is the "many worlds interpretation.""

    Yes an interpretation and interpreting it in terms of materialism is also valid. One more argue more valid since this "mind" has not demonstrated intelligence beyond that of a computer.

    "There is no materialistic explanation for quantum indeterminacy or quantum entanglement. Your refusal to acknowledge this fact does not change the fact. It simply reveals a mind given to intellectual dishonesty."

    You can repeat this chant and make accusations all you want, you have failed to explain WHY.

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  106. downquark: "...it is still viable to believe that only matter and energy exist they just behave strangely - like dice are rolling."

    Not clear on the dice part, but your argument for materialism ignores what Lloyd, Wheeler, and others who work with your name take for granted. It's not all about matter and energy anymore. It's about information, which may manifest itself as matter, energy, and other things, possibly even consciousness.

    This view also makes an argument about dualism unnecessary, because the imaginary border between stuff and non-stuff is rendered fuzzy at best.

    @Massimo "But discoveries are often haphazard and non-rational in nature, with scientists themselves being unable to account for how exactly they came up with a particular idea While others accuse you of boring post-modernism ?? :) ?? :), this seems to be the closest you get. Can science can give clear hypotheses as to the mechanics of dreams, intuition, and other forms of knowledge acquisition? It really doesn't have a clue here, and that is less about trashing science, than a call for a change in how we think about and do science. The change is about synthesizing what we have recently learned and it involves how information is treated.

    Most of us do not understand enough quantum mechanics to be literate in the field. But most of us also do not understand enough classical mechanics to talk about matter and energy with authority, yet we draw working conclusions that we can pocket and use. Same goes for the quantum.

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  107. Alex:

    You're right about the confusion: my apologies to you and Michael.

    I don't think it's entirely fair to compare Christianity to the examples you give. After all, Christianity incorporated most of Western thought over its long history. If you read its more adept apologists, it will seem you're reading a kind of neo-Platonic philosophy, for example, in which reference to the more incredible aspects of the religion is not made. The fact is, some intelligent, even brilliant, people have professed to be Christian or to belong to other religions. Perhaps, though, none of these people could pretend to the lofty status and dignity of a scientist.

    The key word in your response is "promote." If I came to work some day (not that I'm a scientist, alas)and a colleague rushed up to me, announced he/she was a disciple of Christ, or Dawkins for that matter, and urged me to enthusiastically agree, I'd object and think I had reasons to do so. If they kept quiet about their beliefs and did their work well, I wouldn't care about their beliefs and they would be none of my business. Perhaps we'd all be better off if we didn't insist that all think and act as we do.

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  108. Paisley: not disagreeing on Harris' attachment to eastern religion.

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  109. "It has been my experience that most materialists do that. They simply ignore any evidence that contradicts their worldview. The bottom line is that the "scientific fundamentalists" are really no different than the "religious fundamentalists."

    Its not about ignoring evidence. You put forth no compelling evidence at all. We do not need to bring quantum mechanics into every discussion. Its a distraction from the real argument, that is why it is ignored. It becomes an impasse, based upon an area of science not completely understood by experts in the field, let alone you. There are materialist theories regarding the things you mention, but it doesn't matter because the topic is irrelevant to the topics in which you bring it up.

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  110. "Not clear on the dice part, but your argument for materialism ignores what Lloyd, Wheeler, and others who work with your name take for granted. It's not all about matter and energy anymore. It's about information, which may manifest itself as matter, energy, and other things, possibly even consciousness."

    When a wavefunction collapses the characteristics are selected (seemingly randomly) for its final state. The wavefunction prior to collapse contains the odds that it would assume each possible state. It's as if the particle rolled a dice (a weighted dice).

    Suggesting a new fundamental quantity is one thing but suggesting it can form a conciousness or "things" independent of matter and energy is quite another.

    You must be very careful when dealing with physics jargon in other contexts. For instance, a post modernist may suggest that particle physics is racist because we assert that all stable matter is "white". In the context of quantum chromodynamics "colour" is simply a name for a physical quantity they didn't have another name for, it has nothing to do with colour itself (let alone race).

    I urge restraint in your interpretations when theoretical physicists talk about "information". It may transpire that s class of water contains more "information" than your brain.

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  111. downquark: "Your Seth Loid quote has nothing to do with conciousness causing causing collapse."

    You are entirely missing the point. The realization of quantum computers does not undermine the cosmic mind argument (as you would have us believe); it only serves to reinforce it.

    downquark: "Well one way of distinguishing a mind from mindless probability would to see how things change in a moral situation. Presumably the conciousness would act morally."

    Okay, I am beginning to see what you are driving at (although, I am not making any kind of "moral argument for cosmic consciousness" here). I would argue that "spontaneous" behavior is indicative of conscious behavior. Subatomic particles (e.g. electrons) clearly exhibit spontaneous behavior.

    "Even an electron has at least a rudimentary mental pole, resperesented mathematically by the quantum potential."

    (source: pg. 387 "The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory" by David Bohm and B.J. Hiley)

    Also, I am now better able to address a question you asked in your previous post: "Why do the particles behave statistically never significantly deviating when another conciousness or moral predicament is nearby?"

    Well, the fact is that researchers are amassing data from an ongoing experiment which seems to suggest that "global conscious attention" can change the behavior of "random number generators" (basically quantum computers that generate random bits) from acting randomly to more orderly. The experimental results can be interpret as evidence for a collective or global consciousness (although, no doubt, skeptics will interpret the data differently by simply writing it off). Below is a link to a "You Tube" video that briefly discusses the experimental project.

    "The Global Consciousness Project"

    downquark: "Yes an interpretation and interpreting it in terms of materialism is also valid. One more argue more valid since this "mind" has not demonstrated intelligence beyond that of a computer."

    The first point I would make is that the interpretation that I am proposing is a valid interpretation. So, you (and other skeptics) cannot say that there is no evidence whatsoever for a universal mind. There most certainly is. And there are Nobel laureates in physics who have interpreted the data as such.

    The second point is that there is no strictly materialistic interpretation of QM. And if you disagree, then I challenge you to provide me with one. Also, according to the materialist worldview, the brain is a computer which generates consciousness and intelligence. If the entire universe is postulated to be a self-programming computer (which is exactly what Seth Lloyd has postulated in his book by applying "information theory" to quantum theory in order to create what is known as "digital physics"), then it logically follows that the universe is exhibiting some kind of cosmic intelligence. Furthermore, I have provided you with a quote from Lloyd himself in which he states that one could draw this conclusion.

    downquark: "You can repeat this chant and make accusations all you want, you have failed to explain WHY."

    I have explained WHY. There is no materialistic explanation for quantum indeterminacy and quantum entanglement. And until you are able to provide me with a materialistic explanation, then I will continue to harp on this point. I am afraid that you do not have the luxury of ignoring scientific evidence simply because it does not accord with your worldview, especially when you and your ilk continue to promote this ridiculous notion that atheistic materialism is the only philosophical position consistent with science.

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  112. ciceronianus:

    Why should I only read the least crazy of the entire spectrum and ignore the rest when I inform my opinion about the spectrum as a whole? And again, I am not saying that religious scientists cannot "pretend to the lofty status and dignity of a scientist". Nor does Coyne or anybody else. The sentence went: if you want to be a philosophically consistent scientist. Note the qualifier.

    Maybe it is some mental deficiency that I have, but I cannot understand how somebody can use reason and require evidence when studying the population genetics of this plant or the phylogeny of that other group over there and then turn around and completely switch off their reason when contemplating virgin birth, the existence of souls or whether women are divinely commanded to cover their hair. If I tried to do both things at the same time, my brain would leak out of my ears.

    None of the three colleagues I have just implicitly mentioned are pushing their views on others, right. Nor do I think that moderate religion is as bad as the literalistic kind or some such nonsense. But the question is, if you allow things to be accepted without good reason, and do not openly question this irrationality, where do you arbitrarily stop? If no good reasons are need to maintain a belief, anything goes.

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  113. downquark: "Not clear on the dice part, but your argument for materialism ignores what Lloyd, Wheeler, and others who work with your name take for granted. It's not all about matter and energy anymore. It's about information, which may manifest itself as matter, energy, and other things, possibly even consciousness.

    This view also makes an argument about dualism unnecessary, because the imaginary border between stuff and non-stuff is rendered fuzzy at best.
    "

    Digital physics (information theory applied to the laws of physics) is compatible with a type of dualism - namely, "hylomorphic dualism." Hylomorphism is the dualism (the duality of "form and matter") of Aristotelian physics and Thomistic metaphysics (the standard metaphysics of Catholicism). Below is a link to a PBS "Closer to Truth" video in which Robert Lawrence Kuhn discusses this subject matter with physicist Frank Tipler. It is a short video. You may find it interesting.

    "Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact (Frank Tipler)"

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  114. Ritchie the Bear: "[I'm] not disagreeing on Harris' attachment to eastern religion."

    Okay, but I was not necessarily implying that you were. The reason I raised the issue is because the atheistic and skeptical community (by and large) have enthusiastically embraced him and his views. In fact, Jerry Coyne (who is the topic of this particular blog) has Sam Harris endorsing his book "Why Evolution Is True." Personally, I do not have a problem with Sam Harris' views (at least not on consciousness, mysticism, spirituality, Buddhism, Advaita, etc.) since they mostly agree with my own. I am simply surprised to learn that the majority of skeptics do not either. (To be fair, Massimo has called out Sam Harris on his views. At least in this respect, Massimo is consistent.)

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  115. @Paisley 8-Aug-2010 20:00:: Lots of entanglement going on in this thread - I wrote that, not downquark. Anyway, I just spent some time on listening to Radin's talks. I have heard of hylomorphism, but not my cup of tea, as it embraces both dualism AND objectivity. Which brings me to

    @downquark 8-Aug-2010 11:42:: I understand your points better, and of course should tread with care when on physicists' turf, but I am talking about plain old information, not a quantum physicist's idea of information.

    Others care more about quantum consciousness, I just think that its a reasonable proposition, as is the possibility that a glass of water has 'more' info in it than my brain or even yours. Don't know that one can decide these things without examining the consumers of the information.

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  116. Okay All,

    just got back from a very relaxing vacation in Iceland, from where - as you've noticed - I stayed away from the internet, and so missed all the fun. It seems to me that this post shows what's wonderful and what's irritating about blogging. 115 comments and a very vigorous discussion with several people making very good points. That's the good part. People who accuse me of postmodernism, arrogance and of being bored while evidently coming back to the blog over and overv like addicts. That's the irritating bit. But thanks for visiting, I read all the comments, though of course it would require a book to answer them all properly. Now, there's an idea...

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  117. Interesting commentary on Coyne's response to my post:

    http://bit.ly/cq1MCF

    (Yes, I'm biased by calling this "interesting," so sue me.)

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  118. FYI, my comment on Jerry's post:

    My Dear Jerry,

    in answer to your two proposed hypotheses to explain my "sweaty" behavior:

    > 1. He doesn’t like me

    I've met you exactly once. I have no personal opinion about you, so there is no reason to wine about imaginary personal dislikes.

    > 2. He thinks I don’t know anything about philosophy and therefore I — and most other scientists — should shut up about it.

    That's exactly on the mark, unless you are willing to do your homework seriously. I'm sure you would say the same to anyone who started writing about speciation without knowing the basics, yes?

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  119. Dave S: "Lots of entanglement going on in this thread - I wrote that, not downquark."

    Yes, I did get entangled here. That was a typo on my part.

    Dave S: "Anyway, I just spent some time on listening to Radin's talks. I have heard of hylomorphism, but not my cup of tea, as it embraces both dualism AND objectivity."

    That video was an interview with Tipler, not Radin. I have never heard Radin speak of hylomorphism. Hylomorphic dualism is not the same as Cartesian dualism. The dualism is between form (or "in-formation") and matter (mass/energy). Also, others have presented "information" as the "neutral stuff" in neutral monism and/or dual-aspect monism.

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  120. Ah. So. And thus we are to understand that you consider the phrase “Anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist”, uttered by a career scientist while discussing how to best do science, promote scientific thinking and behave in a consistently scientific manner, as equivalent with him trying to publish a philosophy textbook?

    Come on. Seriously. When you apply for an academic position in the USA, you are required to write a long blah outlining your teaching philosophy, and another one about your research interests and philosophy. Then please do go ahead and tell every scientist who has ever diligently done that they are embarrassing naifs who aren't allowed to do that. And what about everybody who has ever said that his philosophy in life included not lying or suchlike? So many people to lambaste, so little time.

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  121. ccbowers: "Its not about ignoring evidence. You put forth no compelling evidence at all. We do not need to bring quantum mechanics into every discussion. Its a distraction from the real argument, that is why it is ignored. It becomes an impasse, based upon an area of science not completely understood by experts in the field, let alone you. There are materialist theories regarding the things you mention, but it doesn't matter because the topic is irrelevant to the topics in which you bring it up."

    The real argument that is being made on this thread is that a scientist is engaging in some kind of cognitive dissonance if he does not subscribe to materialism because the only scientifically-valid viewpoint is materialism. This is pure nonsense. And I will continue to broach the subject of QM as long as ignorant materialists like yourself keep making this ridiculous argument.

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  122. @Paisley,

    Your argument that QM stymies materialism is true in a not very new or interesting way. Such an argument would also be true of any form of atomism, not just weird QM. Let's just say that the fundamental elements were protons, neutrons and electrons. You could say "what caused these particles?" And science would be, as it has to be, mute in response. We don't know. Materialism isn't required to answer all questions of causality in order to be true. Neither "what happened before the big bang?" nor "What causes quantum events?" is a damning question. They are simply unanswered questions, and as such, not a very good place to found your idealism.

    Is your best hope for Ultimate Consciousness "quantum indeterminism"? Galen Strawson doesn't seem to feel it refutes determinism in his article on free will. Nor does @Allen who in all other respects supports your anti-realism project. But if you think ultimate consciousness can show up in the lab, I'm all for it. Just make sure your experiments are well designed.

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  123. "That's the good part. People who accuse me of postmodernism, arrogance and of being bored while evidently coming back to the blog over and overv like addicts. That's the irritating bit."

    So if one is irritated with particular aspects of an author's writing, one should either abandon that author completely or continue reading without criticizing those parts which one objects to?

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  124. Massimo: "That's exactly on the mark, unless you are willing to do your homework seriously. I'm sure you would say the same to anyone who started writing about speciation without knowing the basics, yes?"

    Just curious. Will you hold Steven Novella to same set of standards?

    Also, I did do my homework and this is what I found...

    "Are We Ready for an 'Extended Evolutionary Synthesis'" by Jerry Coyne.

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  125. "You are entirely missing the point. The realization of quantum computers does not undermine the cosmic mind argument (as you would have us believe); it only serves to reinforce it."

    You're starting to sound like a creationist repeating dogmas. If a consciousness is required for the computation then how can the computation be the consciousness?

    "Okay, I am beginning to see what you are driving at (although, I am not making any kind of "moral argument for cosmic consciousness" here). I would argue that "spontaneous" behavior is indicative of conscious behavior. Subatomic particles (e.g. electrons) clearly exhibit spontaneous behavior."

    They surely do exhibit it, but consciousness is not spontaneous, People do not drive on random sides of the road, people do not kill each other for no reason, the ones who do are considered mentally ill.

    Do you consider a lottery machine conscious?

    @At your youtube video

    I'm not sure why I should take the work of a parapsychologist over my own education and experience but lets look at his claims.

    I would need to know if he was using software or hardware random number generators (RNGs). Software are in-fact only pseudo-random, they are completely deterministic and a deviation would mean that either the algorithm was broken or a catastrophic processing error occurred. This is very worrying for people who work with machines that tend to explode in such an event.

    If it was a hardware generator then the cryptographers of the world would do well to return the software method.

    "Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact (Frank Tipler)"
    He says that consciousness is a function of matter and energy, this is not different to the materialist position.
    He is not fantastically convincing, the 1st and 2nd law apply equally to crystal rocks, fire and air. But we don't declare them conscious.

    "Others care more about quantum consciousness, I just think that its a reasonable proposition, as is the possibility that a glass of water has 'more' info in it than my brain or even yours. Don't know that one can decide these things without examining the consumers of the information. "
    Well exactly, even in information theory there is no single definition of information. If you ignore compressibility then a blank hard drive has as much information as a hard drive with the works of Shakespeare and a hard drive with random garbage.

    If you include compressibility then the random garbage has more information than the Shakespeare. Human languages have a limit number of words and limit number of ways to arrange them meaningfully, thus there is a lot of redundancy.

    It's common to fall into the intelligent designer's trap believing that "information" has inherent human meaning.

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  126. Massimo, great reply. You are doing an excellent imitation of your caricature of Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers.

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  127. @Massimo:

    Isn't this a bit rich, coming from you? I mean, you wrote a breathtakingly misinformed book on evolutionary biology which was roundly panned by scientists. The common criticism was that you had not read any of the literature on the subject that would have steered you in a different direction. So, given that in science, unlike philosophy, there is an actual body of data to engage with as opposed to some philosophy books that one should probably read to get a sense of the course of the argument, don't you think you too should have shut up about science?

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  128. That's exactly on the mark, unless you are willing to do your homework seriously. I'm sure you would say the same to anyone who started writing about speciation without knowing the basics, yes?

    It may be obvious to you that Jerry is misinformed and doesn't even know the basics but it's not as clear to us if the comments are any indication.

    I understand that it may be a big task to fully educate us, but is it really too much to ask for you to sketch out some of the areas which he hasn't considered? Since you compared this to evolution, many bloggers and authors do exactly this when confronted with Creationists where the material to cover is at least as extensive and the knowledge gap is greater (not to mention the audience is overtly hostile). Maybe some people here are set in their ways but many of us are open to evidence and argument. To me, it appears as if you have not honestly engaged his arguments and instead spent your time attacking him. If this wasn't your intent, maybe you could look at other ways of delivering your message.

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  129. I'm not addicted to this blog, it just amuses me to see you take fire from both Professor Coyne's followers and your own co-bloggers. Meanwhile your fellow philosopher followers are too busy discussing... quantum computers. LOL

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  130. Always glad to provide amusement, but I'm not sure it's particularly interesting to count "my" vs. "his" people in this kind of discussion. This isn't a popularity context.

    As for my evolution book being criticized by biologists, I'm not sure which book the reference was to, but let's remember that criticism is what one gets regularly in academia, and of course just as many people have reviewed my books positively. Serious criticism of an article or book is no sign of incompetence of the author, just of honest intellectual disagreement among practitioners of the field. Please also remember that I am a credentialed biologist, with more than a hundred technical publications in the field.

    Making clear where Jerry goes astray: I think I've done that repeatedly, just go back and read this post as well as my previous ones on this topic. Introductions to philosophy of science are easy to find, and a blog post is certainly not the appropriate format for it. I recommend particularly:

    http://amzn.to/adJubp
    or http://amzn.to/9uKeol

    Incidentally, quoting other people's work is most definitely not "an argument from authority."

    Finally, of course it is natural - and indeed a good idea - to keep reading a blog even if one disagrees with the author's posts. But it strikes me as a bit strange to keep coming back to a blog by someone who one considers fundamentally incompetent, intellectually dishonest, postmodernist (!!) and so on. Then again, taste is taste...

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  131. Alex SL:

    You have a point about the use of the words "philosophically consistent." Frankly, I'm not entirely certain what that means, and would think certain religious beliefs would not be inconsistent with science as practiced by a working scientist, albeit unfounded. But requiring complete consistency in thought and conduct isn't something we normally do, for good or ill. There are and have been philosophers, for example, who deny we can really know if there is an "external world" (or what it really is if there is one) or "other minds." Nevertheless, they blithely go about their days acting precisely like they believe--and actually know--there is an "external world" and "other minds." If they were philosophically consistent, they wouldn't do so.

    You may be expecting/demanding too much of religious scientists. Humans can do, and do, this sort of thing.

    This is an argument against those positions, I would say, and a telling one. When they maintain there is no "external world", etc., we're justified in pointing out their inconsistency given their own conduct. What grounds is there for doing more than this?

    I don't buy the "slippery slope" argument in this or in other matters. We can intelligently determine when to object; there need be "no stopping point." When they act as missionaries, or make demands, or act in a repressive manner, that's one thing; when they privately practice their faith, that's another.

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  132. Why do you read Jerry's blog then?

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  133. No, there are reasons to come back, for instance if one objects to repeated impolite unargued posts saying Jerry Coyne doesn't have a PhD in philosophy so he is wrong.

    Your reply to him was extraordinarily cheap.

    And to an outsider, the claim to have no personal dislike of him is simply incredible, given how often you do hostile posts about him.

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  134. ". Meanwhile your fellow philosopher followers are too busy discussing... quantum computers. "

    I'm a physicist. And I don't think Paisley is a philosopher.

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  135. Massimo:

    I don't see how you can expect to convince people that your knowledge of Philosophy is particularly relevant to this issue when you do not actually cite much academic work in Philosophy when discussing it. You have brought up Forrest's article, but Coyne stated in his blog that he's quite familiar with Forrest's article.

    Maybe you think that you show the relevance of philosophical knowledge by showing superior reasoning abilities in some very general sense? If so, you need to clear this delusion. You do not seem to have stronger general reasoning abilities than similarly intelligent non-philosophers, including Julia Galef, Jerry Coyne, and Richard Dawkins. Reading your writings would never convince anyone that a PhD in philosophy makes you a vastly superior deducer and inducer.

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  136. "But it strikes me as a bit strange to keep coming back to a blog by someone who one considers fundamentally incompetent, intellectually dishonest, postmodernist (!!) and so on. Then again, taste is taste..."
    Now, come on, I even keep an eye over O'Leary's blogs. Always useful to kow what's discussed around.
    And you do have some great posts yourself and there are other people posting here I like to read.

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  137. opticalradiation, I read Jerry's blog (occasionally) because he knows what he is writing about whenever he writes about biology.

    Ophelia, if you think I'm impolite and Jerry is the ultimate gentleman I think you are reading different blogs. I repeat: I don't have any personal hostility against Coyne, regardless of what you or him may think. But I do think bad arguments need to be corrected whenever possible, especially if coming from established academics. It's no different from his repeated attacks on his favorite targets.

    Ritchie, I'm not sure why such venom. I never claimed to be intellectually superior to anyone. But the fact is that Coyne, Dawkins and co. do make bad philosophical arguments - not surprisingly, considering that philosophy is not their specialty. As for citing work in support of my theses, have you already read and digested the two books I mentioned above? I'm impressed. Also, asking for endless academic citations is a cheap shot, considering that this is a blog for general readers (and that Coyne doesn't indulge in that habit either). And of course it comes at the same time when other people complain of "argument from authority" whenever I do cite someone. Oh well, "I learned my lesson well; can't please everyone; so I gotta please myself." Cheers.

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  138. Massimo:

    I think you took my statement as more venomous than it was. You're right that people throw out accusations of arguments from authority for no reason. I was just trying to say that you have not substantiated the "gotta be a philosopher" shpeel. Was it not enough to just argue that Coyne was wrong? If you had just done that then he couldn't have dismissed you as pretentious, which is what you did, and how you sort of (just sort of, really!) seemed.

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  139. Ritchie,

    you may have a point, but consider the following. First, I actually made *arguments* against Jerry, I didn't simply tell him to shut up because he is a philosopher - as much as he would like people to think that.

    Second, it strikes me as exceedingly anti-intellectual (especially for an academic) to criticize another because he has pointed out someone's lack of credentials. Is this not what Jerry and a lot of others do when arguing with creationists, for instance? Don't we have a right to point out that a "Doctor" of homeopathy is no such thing? Yes, Jerry's philosophical blunders are nowhere near creationism or homeopathy, but I hope you get my drift.

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  140. Hey, hey: "Post Comments at firewalled workplace and on blackberries and other places you shouldn't post comments" has been reenabled!

    @Paisley Aug 9 12:05AM Did watch the Radin video. Did not watch the one about hylomorphism.

    @downquark - Yes the lottery machine can be said to be conscious, its very important to widen our view on what it means to be sentient, aware, or whatever...

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  141. OK, Massimo, let me try a different way of addressing your argument -- through a dialogue:
    ~~~~~~~~

    Deistic Scientist: "I claim that a non-interfering deity exists, even though there is no evidence that could ever test for such an entity's existence."

    Crackpot: "I claim that the Bigfoot monster exists, but it is so smart that it can evade every attempt we make to detect it."

    Deistic Scientist: "Well, Crackpot, I see no reason to believe in this Bigfoot monster."

    Coyne et al: "Wait a minute, Deistic Scientist, that seems inconsistent with what you said a minute ago. Why are you willing to say that a non-interfering deity exists despite the fact that it's untestable, but you're not willing to say that the Bigfoot monster exists?"

    Deistic Scientist: Well, because an untestable deity is supernatural, whereas the Bigfoot monster is natural."

    Coyne et al: "And why is that distinction relevant? Both claims are untestable. Why are you willing to accept the untestable claim labeled 'supernatural' but not the one labeled 'natural'?"

    ~~~~~~~~~~
    (Disclaimer: this represents my sense of Coyne's viewpoint, though I can't officially speak for him. But in any case it does represent my viewpoint, and apparently that of many commenters.)

    So, Massimo, this is where I'm at in my understanding of this issue. I haven't yet heard any answer to that final question in the dialogue.

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  142. Julia,

    that's easy. Regardless of what Crackpot says, there is no reason to think that a given natural phenomenon cannot be detected in principle. (For instance, often paranormalists make a similar argument, claiming that parapsychological phenomena recede when skeptics are around. In doing so, however, they take parapsychology entirely out of the realm of science.)

    A supernatural phenomenon, unlike Bigfoot, can be whatever anyone wishes it to be, which means that anybody's statement is just as good (or, rather, bad) as anyone else's.

    Moreover, Julia, I have said repeatedly that science doesn't have a problem just with the supernatural, but with a lot of natural phenomena as well, because it's epistemic domain is more limited than you, Coyne etc. seem to acknowledge (or wish).

    For instance, in Nonsense on Stilts I make an argument that string theory is not, at the moment at least, science. So here we have perfectly reasonable - even mathematically rigorous - statements about the world, which however are not empirically testable, and therefore science do not make.

    Moreover, of course, any statement made in logic and math is not empirically testable, so that's out of the realm of science too. So is aesthetic judgment, of course, and to some extent also moral statements (regardless of what Sam Harris maintains, and despite the fact that I do think that science can *inform* ethics).

    What I am thinking at this very moment is natural (I guarantee you, I ain't no god ;-) and yet there is no way to do any empirical science about it.

    And so on, and so forth.

    The point being not only that the supernatural is distinct from the natural by the fact that it is entirely arbitrary (a basic point in philosophy of science: science can work only on things that behave regularly and predictably), but in fact science's proper domain doesn't extend even to all natural processes and phenomena.

    Why anyone should think that this conclusion somehow diminishes science or enhances supernaturalism is beyond me. That's like saying that since astronomers can't do horoscopes, somehow this is a limitation of astronomy and a point scored by astrology. But I'm sure I'll hear more about it...

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  143. "The point being not only that the supernatural is distinct from the natural by the fact that it is entirely arbitrary (a basic point in philosophy of science: science can work only on things that behave regularly and predictably), but in fact science's proper domain doesn't extend even to all natural processes and phenomena."

    I do not see why the supernatural (if it exists) has to arbitrary. There are plenty of theologies and new age beliefs that have extremely strict rules on what ghosts, spirits, jinns and demons are capable off.

    If someone wants to propose a law based supernatural phenomenon I don't see why it is not addressable with science.

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  144. downquark, come on, because if the supernatural has to obey laws then it becomes natural. That's our understanding of nature: it follows laws (or regularities, more generally). And most people understand gods as omnipotent and characterized by their own inscrutable will, hence my definition of the supernatural.

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  145. Massimo, I was trying to imagine some claim about the existence of something in the natural world that is, in principle, undetectable. But if you don't like my Bigfoot example because a monster can't be untestable -- contra Crackpot's insistence -- then let's just use your own example of string theory.

    Let's say you're correct that string theory makes untestable-even-in-principle claims about what exists in our universe. (Some dispute that, but for the sake of argument here let's assume you're right.)

    So if you agree that a scientific worldview doesn't support belief in string theory (because it's untestable even in principle), then how can it support belief in a deistic god (which is also untestable even in principle)?

    Not trying to rebut you, really -- just trying to understand your argument.

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  146. Not all "supernatural" beings have godly status, but if you want to define it as such then the domain of your argument shrinks.

    So if my theology would hold a god that is incapable of say lying or going near "sin" then it would become a natural phenomenon?

    If a demon can walk through walls and move faster than light but can't enter a church then it becomes a natural phenomenon?

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  147. Julia,

    no worries, I take all these exchanges in the spirit of reciprocal intellectual inquiry. I am puzzled, however, by your latest objection: "how can [science] support belief in a deistic god (which is also untestable even in principle)?"

    Where did I ever say that science "supports" beliefs in gods, of any kind? I simply said that science has nothing to say about these beliefs (and it is therefore not logically incompatible with them) for a similar reason that it has (at the moment) nothing to say about curled multidimensional space: no empirical evidence of any sort.

    To reiterate: my position is two-fold: a) science has nothing to say about the supernatural because science's proper domain is that of regular (i.e., lawful) empirically verifiable phenomena; b) science has also nothing or little to say about a host of other things which, while being natural, are also not amenable to empirical investigation.

    To quote Wittgenstein (I know, bad!): "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

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  148. downquark, a demon who can travel faster than light would be violating - as far as we know - natural laws, so it would be supernatural.

    But that's besides the point. My point is that nobody can put non-arbitrary limits on the supernatural. You can claim that your demon can't enter churches, I claim it does; you say tomato, I say tomato (yeah, it doesn't come out right in writing...).

    Again, please watch the wonderful Star Trek episode where all of this truly comes to life, interestingly, in the case of an alleged demon:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708702/

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  149. Massimo,

    It sounds like you're saying that by making their claims even wilder than the 'crackpot' claims, you grant Julia's deistic scientists more credibility and not less. That seems backwards to me.


    I still feel I'm missing something here, maybe you can fill in the gap.

    Given high-profile members that have personal convictions but a lack of supporting evidence, how do we respond?

    Science: withhold acceptance

    Religion: accept uncritically

    Two totally opposing responses. I can't see how this can possibly be considered consistent. And this isn't just on issues like the existence of a non-interventionist god but issues affecting our lives. You seem to be saying that the increasingly wild ad-hoc excuses of why the evidence doesn't support their claims (or why there shouldn't be evidence at all) is somehow a virtue. That in itself seems like another wild inconsistency - this would be a glaring mark against any belief in any scientific endeavour but it's accepted in religion (probably a modern affect, a response to a string of failure to gather supporting evidence and not a characteristic of religion itself).

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  150. Massimo,

    "a basic point in philosophy of science: science can work only on things that behave regularly and predictably"

    Of course we can only draw useful inferences from observations if they are consistent enough for us to recognise some pattern. But who's to say that a supernatural entity won't produce a consistent pattern? If God exists and intervenes in the world in some more or less consistent way (e.g. answering prayers), then he produces a pattern which we may notice. The fact that God could do anything doesn't mean that he must behave in an utterly chaotic fashion, producing no recognisable patterns. He wouldn't be much of a God if he did.

    In response to downquark, you wrote:

    "And most people understand gods as omnipotent and characterized by their own inscrutable will, hence my definition of the supernatural."

    So what exactly is your definition of the supernatural?

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  151. downquark, a demon who can travel faster than light would be violating - as far as we know - natural laws, so it would be supernatural.

    I call shenanigans!

    If we found this, we would just modify our physical theories, just like we did with QM, relativity and other things which contradicted our previous understanding.

    If your claims were right, we'd seal physics in amber and everything subsequent would be supernatural, from entanglement to time dilation. It doesn't work like that.

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  152. "You can claim that your demon can't enter churches, I claim it does; you say tomato, I say tomato (yeah, it doesn't come out right in writing...)."

    But that is testable. If a visible demon is chasing you and you hide in a church, or an illness disappears (a physical manifestation of a demon) when you enter a church then that is empirical evidence.

    Yes I have seen that star trek episode. I would refer you to the episodes with the character Q. He is for all intents and purposes a god but still has several short-comings.

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  153. "if the supernatural has to obey laws then it becomes natural"

    Not at all. As downquark suggests, almost all supernatural entities are posited to have wills, beliefs, desires, motivations, etc. -- in other words, a psychology. That presumably makes them in principle as predictable (and researchable) as humans. If the supernatural were completely arbitrary, humans wouldn't assign it human psychology.

    "most people understand gods as omnipotent"

    Historically that is false, and even in modern Christianity limits on omnipotence are often invoked as a solution to the problem of evil.

    "and characterized by their own inscrutable will"

    Yet not so inscrutable that, in the Christian tradition, we are supposed to know that the Christian god "loves" humanity, gets angry at times (at least in the Old Testament), engages in bargaining with humans, etc. etc. etc. In other words, the Christian god has a very human psychology. Indeed, theologians count on the Christian god have a comprehensible nature to explain (or least place limits on the explantions offered for) their god's alleged behaviour.

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  154. Massimo: "But that's besides the point. My point is that nobody can put non-arbitrary limits on the supernatural. You can claim that your demon can't enter churches, I claim it does; you say tomato, I say tomato (yeah, it doesn't come out right in writing...)."

    You seem to be conflating two ideas:

    1. Claimants about a supernatural entity arbitrarily assigning properties to the entity.

    2. A supernatural entity behaving in an arbitrary way.

    Julia addressed point #1 earlier, and I don't remember seeing you reply. Just because claimants could make arbitrary new claims about a supernatural entity, that doesn't mean we can't consider a given hypothesis about a supernatural entity. And anyway claimants can make arbitrary new claims about natural entities too, so this is not a relevant distinction.

    I addressed #2 in my last post.

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  155. Massimo,

    Would you place the issues of induction, causality and free will solely in the magisterium of Philosophy?

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  156. "science has also nothing or little to say about a host of other things which, while being natural, are also not amenable to empirical investigation."
    Is logical empiricism then dead beyond the kicking?

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  157. massimo,
    i think i see where the communication disconnect is taking place.

    your views about the domain of science and the supernatural are contested and there are other coherent definitions that others can hold that don't lead to these restriction on science.
    e.g. see
    Russell blackford
    (http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/06/sciencereligion-compatibility-yet-again.html)

    richard carrier definition (http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html)

    i think you need to explain to us why you think your views are superior to those and which views does jerry have.

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  158. Massimo stated:

    "a demon who can travel faster than light would be violating - as far as we know - natural laws, so it would be supernatural."

    This seems like a bad way of demarcating what is natural and what is supernatural, as has been shown by history.


    I said something like this earlier, but, for example, if we found something that was traveling faster than light, it would be violating what WE know of the "natural" world now, but, (I believe) it would be a mistake to claim that it is "supernatural." It seems a mistake to say that our knowledge, our perspective at the moment, IS what is "natural," and that which falls outside that knowledge is "supernatural."

    Scientists, hopefully, would not be so quick to label an observed phenomena as "supernatural" just because they cannot, from their present perspective, fathom a "natural" explanation for it. Of course, if that scientist believes in realms beyond the natural, as against scientists who do not, they may be more inclined to quickly claim a phenomena as supernatural.

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  159. Okay, Massimo, I feel like I'm getting closer to understanding your argument here.

    Let's go back to Coyne's explanation of what he meant. He said:
    "What I mean by “philosophical consistency” is that one’s philosophies are consistent. In the case of a scientist, one’s scientific philosophy is that you don’t accept the existence of things for which there is no evidence. In the case of a religious person, your philosophy requires you to believe in things for which there is either no evidence or counterevidence."

    Now let me do a test to see if I'm understanding you correctly -- if you were to revise Coyne's paragraph to make it reflect your view, you would say (hypothetical Massimo-edits in CAPS):
    "In the case of a scientist, one’s scientific philosophy is that you don’t accept the existence of things for which there COULD BE EVIDENCE BUT FOR WHICH THERE is no evidence. In the case of a religious person, your philosophy requires you to believe in things for which there COULD NEVER BE EVIDENCE."

    So you're saying that there is no inconsistency between the scientific philosophy and the religious philosophy, because each rule applies to a different set of "things," (i.e., things for which there could be evidence, versus things for which there could never be evidence)?

    If that's an accurate representation of your argument, then I would agree there is technically no conflict between the two philosophies. Although I'd say that the idea of believing in things for which there could never be evidence violates some fundamental principles of reason, principles which I generally include in the definition of "scientific philosophy" but which I will acknowledge don't necessarily have to be included in the definition thereof.

    And I'd also say that this still leaves open the question of whether there could, in principle, be evidence for the supernatural. I think the way you're defining "supernatural" is much stricter than most people's definition -- I think most people would say that if every single one of the prophecies in the Bible started coming true, then they would be at least a little more convinced of Christianity, though they would still call Christianity "supernatural." Whereas you seem to be saying that being unconfirmable and unfalsifiable by evidence are part of the definition of "supernatural."

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  160. One more question, Massimo, to help me understand your argument fully:

    My dialogue was addressing whether it's inconsistent with a scientific philosophy to believe in a non-interfering deity, for which there could never be any evidence.

    But that leaves unresolved the question: Is it inconsistent with a scientific philosophy to believe in an interfering deity, such as the Christian god, and to explain away the contradictions with science with some form of "Last Thursdaysm"?

    Because I know that you've said before that "science technically cannot even reject young earth creationism" due to Last Thursdaysm -- so I guess you would say that young earth creationism is not inconsistent with a scientific philosophy?

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  161. @Julia

    Although I'd say that the idea of believing in things for which there could never be evidence violates some fundamental principles of reason, principles which I generally include in the definition of "scientific philosophy" but which I will acknowledge don't necessarily have to be included in the definition thereof.

    Doesn't leave much room for metaphysics--e.g. "belief" in Reason itself. (When people say they base such a belief in Reason's "utility," they leave out the part where they are sure they aren't being deceived--why the world is more accurately described through Reason and science than Last Thursdayism. How could there ever be "evidence" for such a thing?)

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  162. Massimo,

    Maarten (a philosopher) and I have above (August 05, 2010 5:44 PM and August 06, 2010 5:10 AM ) pointed out the same criticism on your standpoint. Maarten has published an elaborated version of this criticism in a philosophical journal. Could you respond to our points?

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  163. Why should science be obliged to provide evidence to rebut last Thursdayism when there has been no evidence presented in its favor that's non-rebuttable?

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  164. The supernatural is usually understood as that which is outside of the natural, i.e., something that doesn't follow natural laws or regularities.

    Here is a standard dictionary definition: "(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond the laws of nature."

    Notice that even Carrier admits that his definition is different from that of "the legal and science community" - one can always redefine things as one pleases and derive different conclusions from the new definition.

    As for Blackford, he doesn't give a definition, and he does say that most religious traditions characterize the supernatural as "capricious" - exactly my point.

    Ophelia seems to have strange ideas about the whole thing. She asks: "But if science depends on those assumptions why aren’t those assumptions simply part of science?" Because they are not empirically verifiable, for crying out loud!

    Julia, I'm not sure what you (or Coyne) mean by "scientific philosophy." If you mean philosophical naturalism - which is the position I take - yes, most definitely religion is incompatible with it. But that's a philosophy, it ain't science.

    Science is a set of methods based on some philosophical assumptions (regardless of what Ophelia says). The methods apply properly only to things that are empirically verifiable, and the assumptions cannot be tested within science (e.g., realism, the idea that there is a physical world out there). All I am saying is that the methods of science have nothing to say about the supernatural.

    When you say "the idea of believing in things for which there could never be evidence violates some fundamental principles of reason" I completely agree. But science does not equal reason, the latter is a much ampler notion and to equate the two is to engage in scientism.

    Even if all the prophecies of the Bible came true, one could still think of alternative, naturalistic explanations (a la "The Devil's Due" in ST:TNG).

    As I said many times before, of course science can reject YEC notions on empirical ground, but since gods ain't hypotheses in any meaningful sense of the term, the believer remains unmoved - Last Thursdaysm being one way out of the conundrum (another one being that there are atheistic conspiracies within the scientific community).

    What Coyne is trying to articulate - and can't find a philosophically coherent way of doing - is the sentiment beautifully expressed by Richard Feynman, when he said (in "The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist") that the true incompatibility between science and religion is a matter of attitude: scientists (and reasonable people more generally) are open to inquiry based on evidence, while faith prides itself in ignoring evidence and reason.

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  165. Bart, I have had plenty of discussions with Maarten about these points. We just have to agree to disagree. If I have the time I will write a technical response to your paper, surely you don't expect me to do this in a blog post.

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  166. The problem with "supernatural" claims is in defining or stating them, as has been show by others here. I claim, as I have elsewhere on this blog, that "supernatural" propositions are either meaningless ("ineffable," beyond our understanding) or they are actually being stated under a "natural" understanding, which is quite often the case. I am going to restate those conclusions here, just because we have run into them again, and I believe I still stand by them:


    "[Barbara] Forrest claims:

    "Supernatural claims are, admittedly, semantically meaningful as explanatory principles, i.e., we understand what is meant by a proposition such as, "God designed and created the universe.""

    I disagree with her on this point, I do not believe there are "semantically meaningful" supernatural claims. I would say that statements about the supernatural are either not "semantically meaningful," or meaningful but only because we have translated them to natural propositions. On one hand, I can understand her example, "God designed and created the universe," but I only interpret this meaning through the way humans "design" and "create" things, which is a wholly natural process, I assume. I cannot fathom or find semantic meaningfulness in a proposal of supernatural designing and creation unless it is done like humans do it, which would mean it has a natural process and explanation. I assume other "supernatural" claims that have commonly been made (such as Apollo appearing or Zeus's lightning), although seemingly meaningful, actually suffer from similar difficulty of being both meaningful to humans while at the same time adequately expressing what is happening supernaturally. Therefore, it is impossible to be both a supernatural proposition and semantically meaningful."


    "From this, it seems like we could logically claim that there are limits to science, such as unable to extend into the supernatural, but all specific claims as to supernatural limits that have previously been made have been either falsely demarcated (actually natural claims) or were meaningless statements. Saying science cannot refute or confirm the supernatural is true by logic, but to specifically lay out a claim, such as science cannot refute or confirm "God", is either not true (this particular conception of God was actually testable or of a natural disposition) or was a meaningless, empty attribution of what "God" is (since we are unable to grasp the concept "God")."

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  167. Massimo, you said: "As I said many times before, of course science can reject YEC notions on empirical ground, but since gods ain't hypotheses in any meaningful sense of the term, the believer remains unmoved - Last Thursdaysm being one way out of the conundrum"

    Sorry, but I'm still unable to ascertain from this what you think the answer is to my question, "Would you consider it philosophically inconsistent for a scientist to believe in Last Thursdaysm?"

    Answering this question seems like the crux of the issue of whether you and Coyne actually disagree. When Coyne talks about faith I believe he's usually talking about the non-deistic faiths (i.e., the ones that make claims about gods interfering in the world, claims which contradict scientific evidence -- which is nearly all faiths); he's said repeatedly that he agrees science can't falsify deism.

    (If he HAD been talking about deism in his comment about "philosophical inconsistency" between science and religion, then the disagreement between you two seems to simply boil down to Coyne's definition of a scientific worldview including fundamental principles of reason, and yours not.)

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  168. Julia, no, Coyne and I don't disagree just about deism. In response to your question:

    "Would you consider it philosophically inconsistent for a scientist to believe in Last Thursdaysm?"

    I would consider it stupid and irrational. But if a scientist were to tell me that he could scientifically demonstrate that Last Thursdaysm is wrong I would laugh all the way to the library, where I would give him a very simple intro text in philosophy of science - the kind that likely Coyne has never read.

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  169. I would consider it stupid and irrational. But if a scientist were to tell me that he could scientifically demonstrate that Last Thursdaysm is wrong I would laugh all the way to the library, where I would give him a very simple intro text in philosophy of science - the kind that likely Coyne has never read.

    In other words, the belief in Last Thursdayism is incompatible with science?

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  170. Massimo, sorry to belabor this point, but you still didn't actually answer my question.

    Coyne's argument was that a scientist who believed in a (non-deistic, let's assume) faith would be philosophically inconsistent.

    Do you, in fact, disagree with that?

    If the reason you think you disagree is that you think by "philosophically inconsistent" he meant that science can disprove Last Thursdaysm, I'm pretty sure you're wrong (about what he meant).

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  171. Last Thursdayism may not be provably wrong, but by definition it is scientifically irrelevant, since it produces a world that is in principle completely indistinguishable from this one. Ditto for Descartes' Evil Geniusism, and Matrixism, and Inceptionism (all of which are empirically indistinguishable from each other and from this world in principle). A difference that (in principle) makes no difference is no difference.

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  172. I ask again, why would science be obliged to prove a "stupid and irrational" concept wrong if by the logic of empiricism it was clearly stupid and irrational?

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  173. If there is no evidence and could never be any evidence, then how could someone come to know about that unevidenced something?

    How is the supernatural different than magic?

    Is Massimo's position the following: "so long the "magic" is unfalsifiable and the "magic" is logically consistent, then it's 'philosophically consistent' with science?"

    What philosophy consistent with science allows someone to believe that some "magic" is part of reality (true), while discarding the majority of such claims as fanciful?

    If Jerry had said that the religious scientist is "methodologically inconsistent" would Massimo agree? What if he just said the religious scientist is being inconsistent without any modifiers?

    Are Scientology "Thetans" scientifically consistent? How about engrams? Reincarnation? Zeus? Wormhole visitors? Channeling the dead? The belief that people "create their own reality" via their thoughts?

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  174. Massimo,

    Is it not the case that religion/science incompatibilists are making a normative claim governing belief, and that's where the claimed inconsistency lies?

    To say that a belief of a certain form is incompatible with science (or rational inquiry generally) is to say that it is violates some set of standards, including ones such as "one should only believe X if it is supported by evidence or rational argument." A belief which does not result from a reliable methodology (like science) or from logical argument would fail to be consistent with this standard.

    But that's not the complete story; science has an ethical component. If a faith/science compatibilist discards the normative side of science, then she might achieve consistency as science would be a `research tool' in the most minimal sense. However, if she wants to claim that others should accept scientific results as justified by scientific and rational methodologies, then she contradicts herself.

    By this, one can not consistently make the following claims:

    1) Based on what we know from science, ID is false.
    2) Faith-based claims which do not directly contradict accepted scientific fact are compatible with science.

    Given compatibility through discarding the relevant norms, one can only say something like "ID is not the product of method X." A compatibilist can not claim that ID is false in and of itself nor criticize a proponent for extra-scientific/extra-rational reasoning. The very idea of criticizing a creationist for "bad science" is rendered incoherent.

    tl;dr If one agrees that science/rational inquiry are the reliable methods for arriving at the truth, one can make room for faith only through dispensing with one of two things:

    1) Science arrives at objective truths.
    2) There is an ethical obligation to accept the results of scientific methods.

    I would call the rejection of either a serious inconsistency with scientific thought.

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  175. Why do I have the nagging feeling that I'm speaking a different language here? And yet my word processor is not set to Italian. Oh well, here we go, again:

    Tyro: the word "incompatible" here doesn't apply, or is to vague to mean anything. If a belief is irrational but makes no scientifically testable claims that belief is both irrational and science has nothing to say about it. Compatibility doesn't enter into it.

    Julia, I've answered your question many times, in many forms. I'm not sure what Coyne means by philosophically inconsistent, and apparently neither do you (or Coyne). If he did not mean that science can disprove belief in X then what on earth could he possibly mean? (Other than the type of incompatibility expressed by Feynman, about which I agree.)

    Artie, there is no obligation whatsoever! That's my point! Julia, Coyne, etc. seem to feel that science is obliged to address each and every idiotic notion that human minds can concoct, or it fails. I don't, the failure isn't on science's part, it's on people who insist in believe in irrational notions.

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  176. Science, in other words, can still become engaged in a rational assessment of a potentially harmful or otherwise troublesome proposition. Maybe we could call this rational empiricism.
    Or not.

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  177. If a belief is irrational but makes no scientifically testable claims that belief is both irrational and science has nothing to say about it. Compatibility doesn't enter into it.

    Science isn't merely a set of conclusions but a methodology and a process for discriminating between competing proposals/descriptions/hypotheses. If a proposal about the world "irrational" and "stupid", it is surely not scientific yet there are beliefs (like YEC) which are held not merely in the absence of evidence but in spite of the evidence. It is a belief which is arrived at and supported by a process anathema to rationality.

    If this is not incompatible, please please please tell me what words we should be using to describe this difference. I'm calling it "incompatible" because this methodology can not be mapped onto any scientific method and the conclusions can not be reached through any scientific process, yet it is a question about the world around us (an not ethics, mathematics, aesthetics, etc).

    If this isn't 'incompatible', what is it?

    science is obliged to address each and every idiotic notion that human minds can concoct

    Science isn't obliged to answer ANY questions so should we exempt all questions from scientific scrutiny?

    Christian dogma (which is what I assume you are referring to by "idiotic notions") does deal with issues science deals with every day: medicine (life after death, healing the blind), chemistry (water to wine), cosmology, physics, geology, hygiene, you name it. How idiotic do these notions have to be for them to be compatible with science?

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  178. Ophelia seems to have strange ideas about the whole thing. She asks: "But if science depends on those assumptions why aren’t those assumptions simply part of science?" Because they are not empirically verifiable, for crying out loud!

    No doubt I do have strange ideas; I'm pig ignorant; so help me out. If science depends on certain assumptions then why aren't those assumptions part of science, broadly defined? I see why narrower definitions are needed for some purposes, but I don’t see how philosophical assumptions that science depends on can be radically separate from science. Isn't there overlap? As in that table you did last fall?

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  179. If a belief is irrational but makes no scientifically testable claims that belief is both irrational and science has nothing to say about it...I'm not sure what Coyne means by philosophically inconsistent, and apparently neither do you (or Coyne). If he did not mean that science can disprove belief in X then what on earth could he possibly mean?

    That it is irrational to believe things that are irrational and that that is inconsistent with the scientific way of thinking. That's what I've always understood him to mean.

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  180. Massimo said: "I'm not sure what Coyne means by philosophically inconsistent, and apparently neither do you (or Coyne)."

    Well, I can tell you what I assumed Coyne meant, and which I would also endorse:

    Non-deistic faiths make claims that flatly contradict scientific evidence, so by pretty much any definition of "inconsistent," it would be inconsistent to accept those claims while also accepting scientific evidence. Your other option would be to try and reconcile those claims with the scientific evidence, but in order to do that, you have to make very elaborate and implausible additional claims (e.g., Last Thursdaysm) for which there either is, or can be, no evidence.

    And explaining natural phenomena with implausible and elaborate claims for which there is no evidence is inconsistent with the method that makes science work.

    That's what I mean when I say non-deistic faith is inconsistent with science, and I suspect it's at least similar to what Coyne meant. So if you disagree with what I just said, I'd be curious to hear why; and if not, then perhaps you don't disagree with Coyne after all.

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  181. Massimo:

    Let me first express my gratitute for finally getting some attempt at explanation when you address Julia's Bigfoot example (I repeatedly tried to make the same point, usually using Nessie or alien visitors as the example du jour). Finally you examine a specific case instead of making blanket assertions. However, it does not really convince me (surprise, surprise, I know). So the thing is, you would arbitrarily allow a priest to claim that god is ineffable*, therefore beyond the reach of science. But then a homeopath or cryptozoology enthusiast claims the same: it does work/exist, just never when you are looking. So then you say, that is different - although hardly anybody except you ever understands how; we are talking claims by the apologists here, and no, they aren't different, it is the exact same hand-waving and ad-hoccery.

    Alternatively and more understandably, you now say that this also moves the claim beyond science. But what are we to make of it then? Do you honestly propose that a scientist is forbidden to say that homeopathy does not work or that bigfoot likely does not exist the second an apologist starts throwing out ad-hoc arguments? But scientists do that all the time, and they are right to do so; science cannot work as science if no gratuitous, fanciful claim can be commented on. You may consider burden of proof and parsimony to be philosophical concepts, but they are at the core of what makes science science. Consistently applying the same approach you would apply to religious concepts to all other vacuous claims would mean that no scientist is allowed to ever say anything at all about anything.

    That is the whole crux: a scientist must be allowed, nay, is required to say that something is bull simply because it is not scientific. Reading that, you see my science and raise me one mathematics, arguing that there are other ways to generate knowledge that are beyond science. Quite so - and nobody denies that. But is mathematics about what objects and processes exist in the world around us? Clearly not: 1+1=2 remains universally true even if the empirically explorable universe does not contain two quarks to actually add up in practice. It is a completely different kind of knowledge that math or logic are aimed at. Religious claims, however, are always about what objects and processes exist in the universe: gods, souls, angels, demons, afterlife, miracles etc. (the fact that theologians may also dabble in moral philosophy notwithstanding, it is simply not what makes religion religion). And for that kind of knowledge there is precisely one "way of knowing" that produces true justified beliefs, and that is science. Could be that a second is possible, but we have not discovered or developed it yet. And that seems to be the argument that Coyne and Ophelia are making (as do I), that religious claims are of the same nature as scientific claims only false and unjustified, and not of the same nature as claims in mathematics.

    *) But again, consider various specific examples of religious claims in practice and you will in fact quickly note that ineffability is nothing but a pretext pulled out for shielding the belief from rationalists. In reality, what people want from their religion is regular, reliable, lawful behavior: the secure feeling of having The Truth and not the admission that nobody can know.

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  182. Julia, You say--"Non-deistic faiths make claims that flatly contradict scientific evidence," but there are non-deistic faiths that don't contradict scientific evidence. For example, Mark Johnston's book Saving God is naturalistic religion--no conflict with science whatever. Alternatively, the idea that God's preferences determine morality isn't really deistic, because it gives God relevance not just to creation but to people's lives today. There are excellent philosophers who take these ideas seriously, as well as many who object to them. Looking at the total picture, I really can't see how a "philosophically consistent scientist" must either reject faith or accept a very minimal deism. There are other possibilities.

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  183. Ophelia, it is strange to ask why science's assumptions are not part of science. That they are not is a universally acknowledged precept in philosophy of science, and the reason for it is that those assumptions are not empirically testable, period.

    As for the relationship between science and philosophy, as you know I do think it is complex and without sharp discontinuity, but not in this area: epistemology is pretty far from empirically based science.

    Julia, as much as you would love for me to say that Coyne and I don't disagree, I'll have to disappoint you once more. First of all, it's not just deistic faith that is not in contradiction with science's claims: any mainstream Christian who accepts that the Bible is about parables and metaphors, hence not to be understood as a science textbook, would also be immune from any scientific attack. Ken Miller comes to mind, for instance.

    Second, of course "explaining natural phenomena with implausible and elaborate claims for which there is no evidence is inconsistent with the method that makes science work," but now you are begging the question: my point was that certain claims are simply outside of science's domain, so why would you want to judge all claims by their consistency with the methods of science? (As a side point, I'd like you to notice that here you are invoking Occam's razor, a philosophical assumption for which there is absolutely no empirical justification within science...)

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  184. Alternatively, the idea that God's preferences determine morality isn't really deistic, because it gives God relevance not just to creation but to people's lives today.

    If God's preferences determine morality, how are we supposed to discover them? Direct revelation? Traditional sources? Once you start asking this question, you are back in the realm of testable hypotheses - do different sources conflict or agree?

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  185. Massimo you are right, it's not a popularity contest. Actually I was a follower of your blog and not his. But right now who is right and who is wrong is beyond the point. It doesn't hurt to be polite and your original post was gratuitously rude and supercilious (I defer to statistics here, and a considerable sample of readers, including Prof. Coyne agree). Since you haven't even conceded this, let alone stepped down from your pedestal, it all has the strong and foul smell of a publicity stunt performed for shock value. As I said before, good for amusement, but very very bad for academic prestige.
    Best regards

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  186. @downquark:

    As a physicist, would you say that every electron has knowledge of every other electron in our universe? There do seem to be many scientists in this camp who act like they know what they are talking about.

    @Massimo and others pretending not to struggle with the demarcation of natural and supernatural: Wouldn't it be easier to try and define 'natural'? I don't think so, because with 'natural' I come up with definitions using the word 'observable'. That's subjective. With 'nature', I come up with words like 'essential', so that's objective. So natural is 'observable reality'. Whose reality? yours? mine? or 'everyone's?

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  187. any mainstream Christian who accepts that the Bible is about parables and metaphors, hence not to be understood as a science textbook, would also be immune from any scientific attack. Ken Miller comes to mind, for instance.

    Why would Ken Miller come to mind? He certainly expresses a lot of non-scientific positions (such as the "god of the quantum gaps") as soon as the subject shifts away from actual biology.

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  188. Hunca, well, thanks for your frankness. Obviously, I have a different opinion. It takes some work to avoid noticing the constant rudeness and gratuitousness of the tone of many of Coyne's posts, which is one of the things that irritated me. It also seriously irritates me when people exploit their academic stature in field A to pompously and inappropriately comment on field B, as Jerry does whenever he talks about philosophy. I consider that a bad case of anti-intellectualism. But if you think I'm the one at fault, so be it.

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  189. massimo,
    i think the discussion rest on what you take coyne definition of the supernatural to be. one of the aims of the carrier essay is to show that your(the?) definition of the supernatural does not correspond well with what persons usual mean by the supernatural. it aims to provide a better definition of the supernatural and concludes that science can reject it. for the purposes of this discussion, this shows that one can have a coherent scientific position that can reject the supernatural.

    excerpts below:

    carrier wrote "... philosophy is wasting its time if its definitions of words do not track what people really mean when they use them. And when we look at the real world, we find the supernatural is universally meant and understood to mean something metaphysically different from the natural. I could adduce many examples of the bad fit between real language and this ill-advised attempt at an "official" definition, ...therefore, "supernaturalism" means that at least some mental things cannot be reduced to nonmental things ..."

    "...But whatever the essential metaphysics of naturalism and supernaturalism may be, the epistemological question remains: even supposing the supernatural is possible, as something metaphysically distinct from the natural, does this distinction entail that the supernatural is untestable and therefore unknowable?

    I don't see how. There is nothing inherent in either my definition of the supernatural or in the definition of scientific method (see Sense and Goodness, pp. 214-26) that leads to any such entailment. And all of the examples I have given are clearly capable of scientific test and empirical demonstration. The claim that supernatural hypotheses can never be verified or falsified, are untestable, and therefore unknowable, is therefore not tenable. With sufficient evidence I am certain any reasonable scientist would be persuaded to believe any of the supernatural scenarios I have described above. In fact, with sufficient standards and documentation I am certain I could get them into any peer reviewed scientific journal.

    Hence I reject radical methodological naturalism, which holds that science can only investigate natural phenomena. Nonsense. Science would have no special problem investigating the supernatural. If there were any."

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  190. O'Neil,

    I understand Carrier's take, but - contrary to the impression one might get from reading comments here - most philosophers actually disagree, and for good reasons.

    As your excerpts show, Carrier acknowledges that when most people talk about the supernatural they mean something metaphysically distinct from the natural. One important component of this difference is that the supernatural does not have to follow natural laws / regularities.

    It is a well understood idea in philosophy of science that science *requires* regularities because scientific reasoning is based on induction. Hence, science doesn't work as a tool to investigate the supernatural. (Of course, I don't believe there actually *is* anything to investigate.)

    Indeed, as I pointed out to Julia several times today, science is a toolbox that doesn't work well even for many things that are not supernatural, and it seems to me a hopeless and intellectually arrogant posture to pretend that anything and everything has to be subject to the scrutiny of science.

    A common saying among philosophers is that just because you happen to have a hammer it doesn't mean that every problem is a nail...

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  191. Massmimo: "A common saying among philosophers is that just because you happen to have a hammer it doesn't mean that every problem is a nail..."

    That's a common American expression.

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  192. (from the other thread:)
    Alex. It's. Not. The. Same. Issue. At. All.

    Okay, I officially give up now.

    I understand the argument, if I am not mistaken, to be thus: A god that regularly intervenes in the world is precisely the same concept as an inscrutable, remote one that doesn't do anything; and thus if we reject the first based on no evidence, we are guilty of arrogantly trying to disprove the second one with 100% certainty even if we repeatedly and explicitly and specifically and over and over and over say that we don't mean that; but then again, a scientist can reject every positive claim in their field based on no evidence, as per their standard practice, with the single exception of supernatural claims; the distinction being that supernatural (whatever it is) is just really different from natural, no matter how flexible and goal post shifting a claim about natural processes is phrased or how testable the claim about a supernatural one is. No matter if it looks exactly like a nail, it isn't, the reason being because I say so.

    Understood, I think, though not why it is supposed to make any sense.

    Well, I hope I can still look forward to discussions of other issues here where people are still able to even entertain the notion that they might be seeing them from the wrong angle, and that they can still learn something. The one about the singularity recently was interesting. But I certainly have not learned anything this time, except how quickly a rational discussion between people who all arrived at the same atheism only via different ways can deteriorate into reciprocal accusations of arrogance; there was simply too much assertion and too little explanation.

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  193. massimo,
    i have two problems. first regularities, science do make claims about non-regular events especially when they have a strong historic components such as the "The Big Bang", endosymbiotic theory,etc it is simply a matter of the best explanation for the evidence.
    secondly while there is no necessity for the supernatural to follow natural laws (i would also argue that there is no necessity for the natural worlds to follow regular laws either and science can still say something in these worlds also but i will leave that aside for now) they typically do. this is because they aren't arbitrarily chosen but tend to be chosen so they can interact with the humans sense in some comprehensible way and are motivated by human like desires. given these non-arbitrary anthropomorphic feature and carrier definition of the supernatural it does not seem to me to follow that science can't say anything about the supernatural.

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  194. Massimo,

    This is somewhat off topic, but seeing as how the argument seems to be just going in circles, perhaps you'll forgive me.

    I would be very interested to read a post (or series of posts) giving a general idea of your philosophy of science (despite your avowals that a blog post is not the place for such things).

    Additionally, you have several times recently that I can recall made remarks similar to the idea that "Science is only part of rationality" (if I characterize your position correctly). What is your fuller account of what it means to be a rational individual?

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  195. Massimo: "The supernatural is usually understood as that which is outside of the natural, i.e., something that doesn't follow natural laws or regularities."

    Dualism entails a belief in the "natural" and the "supernatural." (The natural is equated with the physical or material; the supernatural with the nonphysical or immaterial). Is dualism incompatible with science? Answer: No. Karl Popper (arguably the most influential philosopher of science in the 20th century) was a flaming dualist. John Eccles (prominent neuroscientist and Nobel laureate) was a flaming dualist. But more to the point, has science ever established that consciousness is physical? Answer: No. Where's the inconsistency?

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  196. "As your excerpts show, Carrier acknowledges that when most people talk about the supernatural they mean something metaphysically distinct from the natural. One important component of this difference is that the supernatural does not have to follow natural laws / regularities."

    It does not have to follow natural laws but that isn't the same thing as saying there isn't another category of law that it has to obey.

    "As a physicist, would you say that every electron has knowledge of every other electron in our universe? There do seem to be many scientists in this camp who act like they know what they are talking about."

    Well even in classical terms an electron has mass and electric charge and in principle these fields extend to infinity. But there are particles with the same charge as the electron (the muon for example) the electromagnetic field would not be able to tell the difference.

    If you are talking about entanglement then it will "know" about whatever it is entangled with but after wavefunction collapse they are free to go about independently.

    But I would ask you to respect the distinction between testable and untestable interpretations. But the intricacies of wavefunction collapse are not entirely necessary for basic experimental work.

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  197. “downquark, come on, because if the supernatural has to obey laws then it becomes natural. That's our understanding of nature: it follows laws (or regularities, more generally).”

    Massimo, as I read it, this is the fallacy of affirming the consequent: from “if it’s natural, it follows laws and regularities” and “X is not natural”, it does not follow that “X does not follow laws and regularities”. Even if the God we’re talking about is supposed to be omnipotent, it doesn’t follow that He has to act in a completely capricious and unpredictable way (I’m rehearsing what many people here have said already, but I feel you have never given an adequate reply). On the contrary, the very fact that God is omnipotent means that no-one can stop him from acting in a perfectly predictable and regular way, if only He chooses to do so.

    “As a side point, I'd like you to notice that here you are invoking Occam's razor, a philosophical assumption for which there is absolutely no empirical justification within science...”

    Not so fast! There is a whole school of naturalized epistemology in philosophy which tries to justify epistemic virtues like simplicity and parsimony on empirical grounds instead of a priori philosophical ones. From that point of view, the pattern of acceptance and rejection of theories in the history of science has just shown that Occam’s razor is generally conducive to scientific progress. See the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on simplicity: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/

    One more thing about the tone of the debate... No offence, Massimo, but in a previous round of debate on the very same topic, Coyne was still humble enough to write that “I’m not a philosopher, so maybe Massimo’s argument is more subtle than I perceive.” That doesn’t strike me as an arrogant posture. I know you disagree with the ideas of the new atheists, but nobody has ever been convinced by being called “very naïve and pretentious”, it always makes people more defensive (see Coyne’s pointless comment about personal dislikes). As Julia wrote, you and Coyne certainly agree on the basics. As I see it, Massimo wants to disentangle science from all inferences and principles that are not strictly empirical and testable. I think that distinction is feasible but somewhat artificial (see Occam’s razor), but even if I and all the other people who have argued here in the same vein are wrong, it still seems to be largely a semantic discussion. The demarcation between science and philosophy and the definition of natural vs. supernatural is nowhere carved in stone. It’s possible to have reasoned discussion about this, but there is no philosophical consensus about this in any case.

    “If I have the time I will write a technical response to your paper, surely you don't expect me to do this in a blog post.”

    By all means, you’re welcome. :-)

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  198. Massimo,

    To build on Julia's question approach: what if you read a scientist blogging that they thought that Young Earth Creationism (complete with a Last Thursdayism defence against evidence) was philosophically inconsistent with science. You would of course construe the author's meaning of philosophical consistency to be that which seems to make most sense in the context; we could imagine the author justifying the omission of pages of technical definition with the response "surely you don't expect me to do this in a blog post" ;-).

    Would you think this blog entry fairly reasonable or would you think it worthy of a public blasting ("philosophically very naive and pretentious" etc)? I appreciate that not all questions are "yes"/"no"-able but I think it would be really useful for our understanding if you could get as close as possible.

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  199. Massimo,

    Exactly because science works with laws/regularities it can detect supernatural events that disturb these regularities. If there is a God who answers to intercessory prayers, one could expect a difference between the prayer group and the control group. This would certainly disturb the natural regularities and would therefore be visible to science. This test of the supernatural can be conducted according to normal scientific procedures. Many similar tests on the supernatural could be thought of. I don’t see why such experiments on the supernatural would be scientifically improper.

    Furthermore, I think it’s important to distinguish between if science can detect the supernatural and if it can explain how it works. Your argument that science needs regularities to work at all seems to apply only when it tries to explain something, not when it only has to detect something (a supernatural event in this case).

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  200. Hmm, I go to sleep for a few hours, and the comments keep piling up. I'm pretty close to resting my case, I think there has been a vigorous discussion here, and that's all I was aiming for. Still, a few more comments:

    O'Neill, good point about the Big Bang and historical sciences (see one of the chapters in Nonsense on Stilts). Indeed, some historical research is not actually amenable to scientific methodology. As for the BB, theories concerning it still require the continuity of the laws of nature.

    Camus Dude, I've actually done several posts on philosophy of science, and I will certainly return to the topic again. What I said on this thread is that people calling for a detailed scholarly analysis of Coyne's positions (which are not scholarly detailed themselves) are being disingenuous. As for the non-rationality of science, philosophers since Popper have pointed out that discoveries often come about by non-rational means, and that rationality enters - at best (as Kuhn pointed out) - only in the context of the verification of such discoveries (the reference is to ideas coming when one is in the shower, asleep, going for a walk, or on drugs - as opposed to when thinking things through rationally).

    Maarten, no fallacy was implied by my reasoning at all. It's not that gods *have* to act in a capricious way, is that nobody can tell if and when they do, which means that *any* empirical observation is compatible with "god did it, and his will is inscrutable." I don't put much stock in evolutionary epistemology, which at best explains basic features of human perception and reasoning, certainly has no prescriptive value, and doesn't even begin to tell us why/how we can do high math or complex science (are you going to tell me that those abilities were selected for?). As for Coyne's tone, go back and read what he has been writing for a couple of years now, and you'll see what I mean. (In private correspondence with me he recently even said that PZ's intemperance against Michael De Dora was perfectly justified, apparently gratuitous insult is part of his acceptable toolbox.)

    ian, excellent points. I don't subscribe to NOMA because I think the "magisterium" of religion is an empty set. Ghosts can be thought of as supernatural entities (they violate the laws of nature), so they are no different from gods, in my book. Yes, I believe you are correct in your analysis of why "the Coynenites" are so upset. But since I am neither an "accommodationist" nor do I cut any slack to religion, I see their fire as significantly misdirected. My concern is that if we follow the scientistic path science loses in the long run.

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