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.

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Double podcast teaser! Vegetarianism and the relationship between science and values

by Massimo Pigliucci

Julia and I are about to tape two new episodes of the Rationally Speaking podcast, one on the ethics and science of vegetarianism, the second one on the nuanced relationship between science and values.
Vegetarianism: is it a good idea? Vegetarianism is a complex set of beliefs and practices, spanning from the extreme “fruitarianism,” where people only eat fruits and other plant parts that can be gathered without “harming” the plant (though I’m sure the plant would rather keep its fruits and use them for the evolutionary purpose of dispersing its own offspring) to various forms of “flexitaranism,” like pollotarianism (poultry is okay to eat) and pescetarianism (fisk okay).
There is much discussion about both the science and the ethics of the various forms of vegetarianism. Is it true that a vegetarian diet increases one’s health? Yes, but only in certain respects, partially because vegetarians also tend to be health conscious in general (they exercise, don’t smoke, drink less, etc.), and it is not the case for the more extreme versions (including veganism), where one needs to be extremely careful to achieve a balanced diet which may need to be supplemented artificially, especially for growing children.
What is the ethical case for vegetarianism? Again, the answer is complex. It seems hard to logically defend fruitarianism, and borderline to make a moral argument for veganism, but broader forms of vegetarianism certainly get at important issues of suffering and mistreatment of both animals and industry workers, not to mention that the environmental impact of meat eating is much more damaging than that of vegetarianism. And so the debate rages on.
Value-free science? Many scientists think that science is about objectivity and “just the facts, ma’am.” Not so fast, philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have argued now for a number of decades. While I certainly have no sympathy for the extreme postmodernist position exemplified by the so-called “strong programme” in sociology of science — that science is entirely the result of social construction — there are several interesting and delicate facets of the problem to explore.
To begin with, there are values embedded in the practice of science itself: testability, accuracy, generality, simplicity, and the like. Needless to say, few if any of these can be justified within science itself — there is no experiment confirming Occam’s razor, for instance. Then there are the many moral dimensions of science practice, both in terms of ethical issues internal to science (fraud) and of the much broader ones affecting society at large (societal consequences of research and technological advances).
There is also the issue of diversity in science. Until very recently, and in many fields still today, science has largely been an affair conducted by white males. And this has historically resulted in a large amount of nonsense — say about gender differences, or ethnic differences — put forth as objective knowledge and accepted by the public because it has the imprimatur of science. But, you might say, that was the past, now we have corrected the errors and moved on. Except that such an argument ignores the fact that there is little reason to think that only we have gotten it just right, that the current generation is somehow immune from an otherwise uninterrupted history of science-based blunders.
Yet another interesting dimension of the relationship between values and science concerns which scientific questions we should pursue (and, often, fund with public money). Scientists often act as they ought to be the only arbiters here, and talk as if some questions were “obviously” intrinsically important. But when your research is costly and paid for by the public, perhaps society deserves a bit more of an explanation concerning why millions of dollars ought to be spent on obscure problems that apparently interest only a handful of university professors concentrated in one or a few countries. Clearly, here too there is much to discuss, and we welcome your comments and questions ahead of the podcast.

79 comments:

  1. Regarding Occam's Razor, there is a justification for it based on probability theory, see:

    http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/01/12/occams-razor-bayes-theorem/
    http://telescoper.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/bayes-razor/
    http://www.stat.duke.edu/~berger/papers/ockham.html

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  2. Yes, but that's not a justification from within science (probability theory is statistics, i.e., math). And of course Bayesianism itself needs to be justified, as sympathetic as I am to that approach.

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  3. Regarding vegetarianism, I think it eventually boils down to the issue of human uniqueness: how unique you think that humans are compared to other animals? for non-vegeterian like myslef, I have mixed feelings about it since clearly humans and other animals are part of the same evolutionary processes. On the other hand, human do have unique characteristics that do not exit in other animals (or at least are largely exaggerated). Of course, a vegeterian will say that because of this unique traits, such as moral judgment, or the ability to get food by other means, we need to be better than tiger than hunt the deer.

    In addition, I believe that it's natural to prefer the well being of other humans over animals, and acknowledge that eating meat was an important part of our evolutionary development. Of course, that doesn't mean that we have to eat meat just becaus we have this evolutionary tendency, but when is your own discomfort large enough that you should basically sacrify something important for the benefits of other animals?

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  4. I don't understand why you connect the lack of diversity in the past with scientific blunders of the past in a causal way. I understand the significance of both, but your implication is that the former caused the latter (as demonstrated in your use of "resulted in..."). It appears most reasonably that many societal factors historically are responsible for both the lack of diversity and the biases of those times. Of course we are not immune to all biases now, but I'm not sure that anyone argues that.

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  5. The arguments for vegetariansim I find most compelling have more to do with the eating meat in practice rather than in principle. The arguments about how animals are treated and their suffering seem to argue for more humane treatment rather than obstaining altogether.

    Also many vegetarians I have enountered seem to object to their food coming into contact with meat, and I don't see logical the connection between an occurence like that and their arguments for being vegetarian. This demonstrates to me that for many people who are committed to a rigid set of rules, their eating choices are no really logically formed and in many ways arbitrary, but I guess that shouldn't be a surprised.

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  6. gil said: I believe that it's natural to prefer the well being of other humans over animals

    I believe that it's natural (as in: naturally selected) for humans to prefer their own survival (i.e. a prerequisite for well-being) and that of their close kin over that of others (i.e. human or otherwise). But, then, nature also equipped us with a capacity to acquire other preferences, which we may judge to be moral, immoral, or morally neutral/amoral.

    I think we're at a point in our cultural evolution that we can intuitively say what you say here, thereby suggesting that we (or our tradition) has expanded our circle of moral considerability from what it was in earlier (say, prehistoric) settings. Thus, quite "naturally", I say: That's a good thing.

    Should we expand the circle further? I say: Maybe, but doing so poses not only political problems (as in: What if the decision is controversial among different interest groups?), but it also poses logical problems (as in: How far can we run with this chain-of-thought before we run into contradictions with other moral values or principles that we hold dear?).

    That said, my impression from previous posts and comments is that Massimo and Julia are both somewhat more sympathetic to vegetarianism than I am (although, as a former vegetarianism, and later vegan, that wasn't always the case). If so, then I hope that at least one of them is willing to play a convincing "devil's advocate" in the upcoming podcast.

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  7. I'd like to hear a little chat about denials of the fact/value distinction and what that would mean for science (see pragmatism).

    # Thought Experiment #

    Take the following sentence:
    "It is a foo that scorpions are poisonous, but their deadliness is generally bar."

    Imagine a discussion about the factuality of some phenomenon. Imagine hearing the same discussion with the words "fact" and "fiction" replaced with "foo" or "bar", but without being told which was which. It seems that something would be lost. The mere distinction between fact and fiction - the only meaning foo and bar preserve - seems to demand evaluation. Yet, the fact/value seems to suggest that facts convey distinction without evaluation. Built into the concept of fact is that it is somehow more valuable than fiction, and we seem to never be indifferent to that.
    # End Thought Experiment #

    Can facts and values be atomically entangled?

    Regarding vegetarianism, I'm concerned with the status of anthropomorphism. It's often argued that eating animals is considered permissible only by virtue of anthropomorphic prejudice. If this is true, it seems just as arguable that cannibalism is impermissible by virtue of anthropomorphic prejudice. It might seem absurd that a rejection of anthropomorphic prejudice would result in cannibalism rather than vegetarianism, but it seems that the basis of this absurdity is the very anthropomorphic prejudice that is at risk in the first place. If you think about it for a moment, it seems possible that our intuitions regarding the suffering of others might be dependent on some form of anthropomorphism; that is, our tendency given a cabbage, a puppy, a snake, and a rock, to be first concerned about the suffering of the puppy, then the snake, then the cabbage, then the rock (with some variability in order).

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  8. "I’m sure the plant would rather keep its fruits and use them for the evolutionary purpose of dispersing its own offspring"

    The "evolutionary purpose" served by fruit WAS to be eaten, thereby dispersing the seeds of the quasi-purposive plant's offspring.

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  9. PS: When I say "devil's advocate", I mean to suggest that a counter-argument to the idea that vegetarianism is the best and/or only way to reduce animal suffering is worth considering. (Let's leave the counter-argument that animal suffering is good in itself to the sadists, shall we?)

    For example, one can advocate for industry practices, laws, and enforcement agencies that ensure better conditions for livestock animals without necessarily requiring a change in anyone's diet (or at least not a meatless one). But, admittedly, that's a non-option for those who argue that raising animals for slaughter is immoral in itself; i.e. regardless of how successful we are at ensuring that their lives are pleasant and their deaths painless, and regardless of which species we're considering.

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  10. I wonder what kind of justification "within science" would be possible if this one does not count as one. Bayesian inference is solid and doesnt need much more justification. The only problem is that, depending on the nature of the specific problem and the amount of data available, posterior distributions might differ greatly depending on the selection of the priors which are often justified post hoc. Not to mention of course that the posterior is also a probability distribution and might not get very narrow regardless of the posteriors or the data at hand. If the possible posteriors dont converge or are too wide well there you have it, you just dont know. Besides occams razor is (or should) be stated as a probabilistic law.

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  11. Did you hear the one about the foobarbarian and the rock?

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  12. Well, this is interesting. Just last night I was thinking about how vegetarianism might be one area where science helps us most in answering a moral dilemma. Hm ...

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  13. I've been vegetarian for almost 18 years. The way I maintain my diet is very healthy. I'd be lying though if I didn't say that it's easy for people to do it not so healthy and just fill up on Cheetos which are technically veggie. There are a lot of health benefits if done properly though. Reduced risk of Alzheimer's, reduced risk of heart attacks, heart disease, various kinds of cancers. But it has to be done with some knowledge of what you're consuming.

    The thing with science and believing it unconditionally, is science is not a static field. It's dynamic. It's always changing. We're always improving our methods and manner of research. What we've done in the past or present may not be wrong, but it may not be as accurate or as efficiently done as it could be in the future. It's always evolving.

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  14. I eat meat but I do not support factory farming.

    We raise goats and chickens and also hunt for our meat. We have self proclaimed "vegan" friends that will holiday with us and eat our meat.

    It grates on me when the ethics of vegetarianism is spoken about. It is better framed in terms of the ethics of supporting factory farming of animals. Surely that more accurately addresses the ethical issues that are primarily discussed in this context.

    In your recent Q & A podcast where the vegetarian question raised Julia spent the time talking about whether animals feel pain or not. It astounded me that that was the main response to the ethical question of meat eating. What has that to do with eating meat I wondered? I know my animals feel pain, but I don't inflict any upon them. Then it hit me that I was listening to a podcast coming out of a large American city. Perhaps there should be an episode on the ethics of raising humans alienated from their own food supply? :-)

    While in a large US city vegetarianism and non-support of factory farming largely overlap, the way the argument gets framed fuels an irrational ideology. Here, in Australia, vegetarians will quote me US statistics about the amount of grain it takes to raise a cow etc to justify their position despite the fact that cattle in Australia are primarily pasture raised (and no, that pasture could not be used to grow crops instead). Yet they ignore the impact on wildlife of land clearing in the Amazon to grow their supposedly guilt-free soya beans.

    So please do all you can to stop the disgusting farming practices that the US is exporting around the world. But don't frame it in terms of the ethics of eating meat.

    As for the health side of things, again it seems to be framed in terms of consuming what comes out of the US industrial systems. Personally I'll go with evolution in determining what is healthy for me to eat.

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  15. Veganism is harder to defend than vegetarianism? I don't follow. The very same abuse and killing go into meat as go into eggs and milk. The male counterparts of laying hens are killed at birth, and the females are treated abysmally. The male counterparts of dairy cows are turned into veal--and veal calves are horribly abused. There's really the same argument for both veganism and vegetarianism. One is harder than the other--like giving a $10,000 to charity is harder than giving $1,000. But the underlying moral rationale is really identical. In a very unrealistic thought experiment you can conceivably draw a moral line between eggs/milk and meat, but in the real world, I'm afraid not.

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  16. James, I think most philosophers after Quine deny that there is a sharp distinction between facts and values, not in Harris' sense (i.e., that values are a kind of fact), but in the sense that something becomes a "fact" only within a particular theoretical framework (a point actually made even by Darwin!). Otherwise we just have a chaotic mush of "things about the world."

    cc, there actually is pretty good evidence connecting scientific blunders about gender (or ethnics) bias to the lack of diversity of the scientific community. For instance, the first scientists to show that commonly accepted measures of brain size and its significance where flowed were, uhm, women. Apparently, elementary considerations about measurement error and biological allometry had never occurred to their esteemed (male) colleagues. Much more on this in Helen Longino's book: Science as Social Knowledge (among others).

    Baron, I'm perfectly aware of the evolutionary purpose of fruits. I was a botanist. Unfortunately, humans, especially those living in houses, and particularly in urban environments, are hardly as efficient as birds at seed dispersal on behalf of plants...

    Kostas, my point was exactly that there cannot be justification of things like Occam's razor within science. And probability theory is not science, it's math. And there are plenty of objections to Bayesianism (again, as much as I am myself very much sympathetic to it), and those objections ain't gonna be settled empirically.

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  17. Jean, veganism is more difficult to practice from a health perspective. And there is evidence to the effect that turning the planet into agricultural land has its own environmental problems.

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  18. The issues about the treatment of animals are the same--that's all I meant to say. OK...maybe that's obvious!

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  19. i was vegetarian for over a year at one point, for ethical reasons. it took a lot of will power because i don't have a conscience, and in the end it didn't last purely for practical reasons. if a pig is as sentient and intelligent as an x-month-old human child then where is the logic in killing one for food and suffering moral outrage at suggestions of maltreating the other?

    the only contribution science can make to the question is how intelligent/sentient an animal is (is eating insects OK but eating a chimp wrong?), but conclusions from this will never be adopted in practice because of evolved human instincts.

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  20. Massimo said to Jean: And there is evidence to the effect that turning the planet into agricultural land has its own environmental problems.

    And the problem is not merely "environmental" in the ecological/anthropocentric sense of destroying the biodiversity that human life may depend upon (via takeover of wild habitats). It's also "environmental" in the individualistic/animal-rights sense that it entails killing (some would say: murdering) a lot of sentient creatures who inhabit the wild, so as to accommodate more vegans.

    Besides, those of us who live in rural areas among farmers know first-hand that it takes bloodshed to protect vegetable crops from wildlife, like deer, groundhogs, etc. From this angle, veganism seems less like a rule against humans' killing animals and more like a rule against their direct use of animals that were killed for human benefit.

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  21. "Unfortunately, humans, especially those living in houses, and particularly in urban environments, are hardly as efficient as birds at seed dispersal on behalf of plants..."
    Again I beg to differ with the 'unfortunate' character of the outcome as it applies to plant needs and quasi-desires. Tasty fruit was meant to attract more animals to eat fully than it was for birds to peck at, so that hopefully entire seeds would pass through and be spread accordingly. That humans would later eat the fruits and thus grow more plants deliberately was arguably an unanticipated boon and the opposite of unfortunate.

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  22. jcm, You're assuming that plant farming takes up more space than animal farming, but all the evidence I've seen says it's just the opposite. See, for example, the UN report Livestock's Long Shadow. The rapid increase in animal consumption in developing countries is putting extra stress on animal habitats.

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  23. PS: I sometimes wonder which are more harmful to the environment (in both senses that I use above): the leather & fur industries that supply raw materials to the clothing & fashion industries? or those industries which manufacture synthetic replacements (e.g. plastics) for those raw materials? I'm not sure of the answer, but it's a question that often seems missing from environmentalist arguments for/against veganism.

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  24. I'm a vegetarian and find it pretty straightforward for a rational being to be so:
    1. I like animals and want to reduce their suffering
    2. I like my health and animal products are positively associated with myriad human problems (cancers, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, etc)
    3. I like to reduce my environmental footprint and being a vegetarian accomplishes this easily.

    On the other side: meat sorta tastes good (but aren't rational people supposed to value logic over emotion?)

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  25. Jean, I'm not making that assumption at all. (Heck, I read Diet for a Small Planet - and liked it, too.) In fact, I would agree that, when a given piece of land is equally suitable for either raising plants or raising animals, it's more efficient to raise plants.

    The trick is to:

    A) achieve proper use of the land that's already been developed, since any further takeover of the earth increases environmental risks, whether it be for agriculture (including that which supports vegans) or some other purpose; and

    B) use whatever developed land is available for agriculture properly, such that we grow plants where it is most appropriate (e.g. where the land is relatively flat and the soil rich) and and raise livestock where it is not.*

    In principle, veganism is not necessarily incompatible with either A or B, except for the part of B which mentions raising livestock where suitable. But it does not necessarily work in their favor, either.

    So my comment above was not intended to let omnivores off the hook (environmentally speaking), so much as to point out the non-environmental basis of vegan ideology, and also to point out that, insofar as any demand for agricultural land (including vegans') competes with wildlife's demands for that same land, wildlife tends to lose out, such that we all (including vegans) have blood on our hands.

    * Note: Advocates of "permaculture" like to point out the synergies between raising both plants and animals in proximity to one another (e.g. using the latter as a local source of fertilizer and pest control), but I'm assuming an economy of scale here, which may preclude somewhat taking advantage of such synergies.

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  26. I would like to hear the argument for moral consistency (formerly known as the argument for marginal cases) addressed in the podcast

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  27. Argh.

    To begin with, there are values embedded in the practice of science itself: testability, accuracy, generality, simplicity, and the like. Needless to say, few if any of these can be justified within science itself — there is no experiment confirming Occam’s razor, for instance.

    Yes, just like using paint is a value embedded in painting; nor can the value of using paint be demonstrated logically within painting. Consequently, painters are completely helpless without a philosopher constantly telling them what to do!

    Then there are the many moral dimensions of science practice, both in terms of ethical issues internal to science (fraud) and of the much broader ones affecting society at large (societal consequences of research and technological advances).

    The first is simply talking about bad versus good science, so what is the point? And the second is a very tired canard. Science is just about the knowledge, and deciding whether we actually want to use that knowledge is not a scientific process. Nobody in their right mind can pretend it is. Scientific knowledge alone compels us as much to chose a specific path of action as logic alone: not at all. The values (i.e. things that actually ARE values as opposed to the criteria and methods you mention above) are completely external.

    There is also the issue of diversity in science. Until very recently, and in many fields still today, science has largely been an affair conducted by white males. And this has historically resulted in a large amount of nonsense — say about gender differences, or ethnic differences — put forth as objective knowledge and accepted by the public because it has the imprimatur of science.

    You are talking bad science again. Is all painting suspect if there was once a misogynist painter who did a poor job on your house? Well, who knows, perhaps you would see it that way, especially if you get the feeling that there is another modern painter who belittles the philosophy of painting...

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  28. Derek,

    I agree that your choice is rational, but an omnivore can meet your goals, as well.

    For example, eating an omnivorous diet that's high in plant-based foods and low in animal-based ones (e.g. like what we find in the USDA Food Pyramid) would help to achieve your second and third goals. And, as for your first goal, advocating for certain laws & practices might actually be more effective at reducing animal suffering than changing one's diet.

    Not that you said otherwise, but I thought it was worth pointing out that vegetarianism is not your only option (and, in my case, it's no longer an option, given my other values & commitments).

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  29. "There is also the issue of diversity in science. Until very recently, and in many fields still today, science has largely been an affair conducted by white males. And this has historically resulted in a large amount of nonsense — say about gender differences, or ethnic differences — put forth as objective knowledge and accepted by the public because it has the imprimatur of science."

    Was this a necessary condition for non-knowledge being put forth as objective knowledge, a sufficient condition for non-knowledge being put forth as objective knowledge, or neither? If neither, why are there no relevant ancillary arguments?

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  30. Speaking as a vegetarian and scientist in training (a microbiology student), I am very excited for both episodes.

    I was raised a vegetarian by my parents who had did it for ethical reasons but I don't really hold these ideas. Now I just avoid meat out of habit and preference (I don't really like the taste). I'm sure I've got health benefits from it but any reduction to my carbon foodprint is unlikely since I'll buy fruit and vegetables flown from across the world.

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  31. Proofed and Reposted:

    I find that most vegans and many vegetarians have an exaggerated sense of importance. "Think Globally, Act Arrogantly" would be my motto for them. In your last podcast, you waved off a straw man version of the "Tragedy of the Commons," dismissing it as an untenable justification for eating meat. Not so fast! Whether or not I eat meat will not affect the fate of the the environment or even the animals I eat. Should I choose not to eat a steak, no cow will be spared. They all arrive at my table killed before I decide to eat them or not.

    It is rational to choose the pleasure of meat over the negligible and probably futile gesture of vegetarianism. It is rational to choose a quick efficient and delicious source of protein while not having to waste time thinking about (and explaining) the kashrut of a holier-than-though diet. Campaigning to reform the meat industry while eating Kansas City Steaks seems rational and ethical to me. The same goes for Al Gore flying around in a private jet to alert people about Climate Change. The Tragedy of the Commons will never be overcome through "purity of heart" or good motives. Systemic policy changes, like including the real environmental and health costs of food products in their prices -- measures like these are all that matter. It has to be public policy or shut up about it. Other than that, let's not get too precious about what's on our plates.

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  32. Most of the arguments for veganism and vegetarianism seem to be mostly arguments against the cruelty of factory farming. Game animals live free and die pretty quick (instantly if the hunter is good). I can't see that leaving them to starve, die of disease or be eaten alive by a predator are actually superior 'moral' choices. Personally I'd be all for better farm and land regulation reducing the environmental destruction of cattle raising, but then again I'd support laws forbidding any land to be used to create the addictive poison known as tobacco.

    Human beings as seed dispersers is a big failure considering all the seedless varieties of fruits that are grown.

    There is also the issue of diversity in science. Until very recently, and in many fields still today, science has largely been an affair conducted by white males.

    And what is that issue exactly? Are you trying to imply that there is some ideal ethnic blend of scientists and if it were performed by this eclectic group then it would be free of nonsense? Because I am thinking that it would just have a greater variety of nonsense and that would not be much better unless you see variety as a goal in and of itself.

    Science is simply the quest for the most accurate model of reality and as long as you are not speaking of the details of a particular cultural psychology then there is no reason it can't be done by anyone. The speed of light doesn't care about ethnic diversity. Not to worry though. I believe the women are now outnumbering the men in colleges so perhaps in the future most science will be done by women.

    Considering that as with all human endeavors the motive for science is founded not on reason, but on desire - the desire to know (or the desire to do something which requires knowing). It is not exactly shocking that some emotion creeps into the methods as well. One could strive to minimize the emotional taint, but I don't think elimination will be possible until the robot overlords arrive.

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  33. But when your research is costly and paid for by the public, perhaps society deserves a bit more of an explanation concerning why millions of dollars ought to be spent on obscure problems that apparently interest only a handful of university professors concentrated in one or a few countries.

    In the end, rudimentary human activities such as "flying in private jets" or "eating meat" will not destroy this planet. The fundamental reason being, that if our "evolved" intelligence lacks the capacity [or resolve] to support the demands of our ever increasing population while maintaining the delicate balance with nature, nature will restore balance and eliminate our demands by reducing the human population. This principal holds true for every species that overpopulates. Voluntary depopulation seem impractical, however, consider the Sagan axiom which states that life is to precious to be limited to one planet. He was stating that humans needed to spread out, in the event the earth was ever destroyed, life would preserver. Being the only species with a high enough cognitive function to secure the future of life from the inevitable earth ending cataclysm, it is our duty to spread life amongst the cosmos. We should spend the millions to refund NASA and the Mars colony project. Then we'll build a giant spaceship, put all the meat eaters and anti-evolutionists… (just kidding)

    My point is, it's not to early [in the way of technological development], in fact it may already be too late [in the way of over-leveraged global economies], to start considering the depopulation of earth by the colonization of surrounding planetary bodies.

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  34. Perhaps someone could ask:
    Given that exploitation of animal products as it is practised at the moment involves hideous damage to animal physical and psychological welfare,damage apparently condemned by most of the industry's customers, why do these latter not stop consuming animal products UNTIL the systems of production are made "humane"? Some process which hurts humans would be discontinued until made safe, not continued blithely while someone thinks out an improvement.( I'm leaving to one side here "organic" production etc - there are other questions for them!)
    I do not myself consider cutting off animals from their lives for non-essential reasons (such as meat-eating) ever to be morally correct and would be intrigued to hear someone explain why they even WISH to continue killing and exploiting for non-necessary products (btw, Massimo, the American Dietetic Association has reaffirmed that well-planned vegan diets are perfectly adequate for humans from cradle to grave, so you don't need to have health concerns: actually it's pathetically easy to be a vegan).
    Why would anyone WANT to carry on with the whole hideous business now we know it's unnecessary? Why isn't everyone relieved to be able to live better lives now we have better dietetic information?

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  35. Baron:

    > That humans would later eat the fruits and thus grow more plants deliberately was arguably an unanticipated boon and the opposite of unfortunate. <

    Except that as someone else pointed out, a lot of cultivated fruit is now seedless, and even those that are represent a tiny fraction of biodiversity.

    Alex,

    > just like using paint is a value embedded in painting; nor can the value of using paint be demonstrated logically within painting. Consequently, painters are completely helpless without a philosopher constantly telling them what to do! <

    I appreciate the humor, but I don't see why you keep being allergic to any external critique of science. No, painting doesn't raise significant philosophical problems, which is why there is no philosophy (or sociology) of painting, but there are philosophies and sociologies of science.

    > simply talking about bad versus good science <

    Ah, see, philosophical distinctions are important, and you are not making them. Fraud is not bad science, it's an ethical violation. Bad science is science that is not correctly carried out, which is differently from being fraudulently carried out.

    > Is all painting suspect if there was once a misogynist painter who did a poor job on your house? <

    Again, bad analogy. First of all, yes of course paintings by a particular artist can be misogynist. But that's an aesthetic judgment, about which art critics can write. Misogynist or racist science has far greater social consequences. And please drop the strawman qualifier "all." Nobody is dismissing all of science on the ground that science is affected by the ideologies of the people who do it.

    Thameron,

    > Are you trying to imply that there is some ideal ethnic blend of scientists and if it were performed by this eclectic group then it would be free of nonsense? <

    No, but the argument is that ethnic and gender diversity is the best a human community can do to keep ideological biases in check, on the simple ground that if we are all white males we may have a bit more trouble spotting our own ideological idiosyncrasies. It seems to me hard to argue against it, but I'm sure someone will find a way.

    > The speed of light doesn't care about ethnic diversity. <

    No, it doesn't. But conclusions about the genetic bases of behavioral differences among ethnic groups have been affected by who was doing the research. And that's a historical fact about science, not wishful thinking.

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  36. "allergic to any external critique of science" is saying a bit too much. The point is not that scientists, like everybody else, cannot tolerate external watchmen. The point is that you (and others who cannot necessarily be expected to know better) keep insisting that criteria like "testability, accuracy, generality, simplicity" are somehow external to science. And I insist that they are a fundamental part of what science is - remove testability or parsimony and science simply does not exist any more, just like removing paint would make painting impossible, philosophical implications yes or no. There is just as much scientistic overreach in a scientist applying the principle of parsimony to a question (we both know which one I am referring to) as there is for a painter to insist in using paint, and in that sense the analogy stands.

    You are right that there are moral difference between somebody being incompetent or a fraud, of course, but I fail to see how fraud would not fall under the scope of bad science. Whether some constructor is incompetent or deliberately uses weak materials to cut corners, the resulting building will still be a bad one.

    Misogynist or racist science has far greater social consequences.

    If it is good science, it cannot be misogynist or racist, it will just be a description of facts and processes that exist whether we like them or no. We can find out whether female apelings play more often with dolls than their male counterparts, and that is just a fact. When then somebody takes that fact and concludes that therefore all human females belong into the kitchen and we should scrap all equal opportunity programs, that is not science any more. It is then really that overstepping, that scientism, that you like to accuse people of who simply draw conclusions about the existence of things in the universe (which is really the core capability of science).

    And please drop the strawman qualifier "all." Nobody is dismissing all of science on the ground that science is affected by the ideologies of the people who do it.

    "Suspect", not dismissed, and that is clearly what you were going for. Also interesting how you consider it legitimate to liberally distribute charges of scientism but get annoyed when I have a similar visceral reaction to the standard talking points of postmodernism. Yes, I know, you say you aren't a postmodernist, but read your paragraph on misogyny again and tell me that it cannot reasonably evoke memories of certain discussions about "patriarchal approaches" to physics or suchlike.

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  37. "The point is that you (and others who cannot necessarily be expected to know better) keep insisting that criteria like "testability, accuracy, generality, simplicity" are somehow external to science" - Alex SL

    I think the claim isn't that these characteristics are outside of science, but that their justification is outside science's reach. After all, it would be circular to say that science justifies science.

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  38. Modern science does seem to contain one fundamental flaw; and it does concern who's conducting it. By "conducting" I really mean to say "funding". I can't speak as to the significance, race and gender have on the outcomes of modern science. It is undeniable that the racially and sexually oppressive social environments of the past have left their marks on the present and need to be addressed. Because of this, it would not surprise me at all to read a study that revealed a qualification bias in various scientific fields along racial or gender lines. This is not to say that the scientific community is controlled by racists and sexists, but rather, to say that this implicates a shortcoming in our educational system. The problem does not appear to be a funding issue, a racial/gender issue, or even a teacher issue. The problem is that parents in poor and undereducated communities, do not place an emphasis on the importance of learning. Subsequently, the children, not holding school work and study in high regard, simply do not put forth the effort necessary to do well. The inequality cycle can only be broken by training the parents in underprivileged communities in how to fulfill their necessary role in the lives of their children.

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  39. There is a topic in philosophy of science that raises important considerations as related to this "Just the facts, ma'am" idea that science is, or should be, concerned only with objective facts resulting from the practice of science. As framed in earlier posts to the thread, that, when carried out properly, science will not yield a result that imposes underlying ideologies.

    Whatever your particular demarcation criterion, If we should break down the practice of science, it seems correct to say it consist mostly in statements of observation of phenomena, say, confirming or dis-confirming predictions of theories, finding fossils,etc., almost all essentially consist of observations (or groups of observations) amounting to evidence for or against scientific theories. These observations, then, amount to what we are so calling "the facts." Further it does not seem unreasonable to assert that these observations are at least partially justified by sensory experience.

    To say, then, that science is strictly about facts and these facts, when properly ascertained, are completely objective statements about the world is to say that observation and sensory experience are completely objective when done correctly. The issue I am getting at is the problematic nature of observation, or, as sometimes referred to, the theory-ladenness of observation.
    The idea is in order to test any scientific statement, we must assume, so that our result may make sense in a particular scientific context, some other scientific statements (think of the difference between a child looking at a culture plate and trying to "observe the phenomena" as compared to a scientist looking at it saying, consciously or unconsciously, to himself "how does what I am seeing relate to what I know about the scientific facts of bacteriology?" Its not the child, though his sensory capacities are just as acute, that comes to the observation statement: "that staphylococcus colony is undergoing lysis!" It is the "good scientist" all the while thinking: "I am just reporting the facts." Thus the experiment is not solely the objective observation of a phenomenon. It is the theoretical interpretation of that phenomenon, that is, it is the result of sensory input interpreted using a set of theories.

    O. Neurath uses an analogy in the context of protocol statements that is relevant here, he compares scientists to sailors - having to rebuild their ship at sea, never able to completely dismantle the entire structure. They must single out bad planks and fix them in isolation, while the greater structure acts to keep them afloat. Eventually the ship can be of completely different and demonstrably better parts, but each step is dependent on the previous construction to provide the necessary structure on which to build.

    This does not so much provide strong indication that individual scientists bring VALUE ridden constructs into experimental outcomes, but it does demonstrate that the very practice of science is laden with theoretical baggage that is often completely unconscious or simply indispensable to current understanding of the result. There is no reason value systems wouldnt fall under this umbrella of predisposed context on which to interpret observations. Clearly, we can see how this might lead to blunders and biased outcomes, and deserve to be treated seriously. The point is that "just the facts" science need not be postulated as the proper attitude of the good scientist, for one, it may be impossible to practically adopt such a position, further in fields of science that rely on observation you may be throwing out the baby with the bathwater to do so. This does reinforce however, as Massimo indicates, that diversity in science is certainly desirable in dispensing with specific, perhaps unconscious, social, cultural, and psychological backgrounds of scientists.

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  40. James,

    Yes, but so what? The analogy with painting stands for that too, as there is no single paint job that will provide a logical proof that painting things is, in general, a good idea. (And can you actually justify any system of thought from within itself? Is there a logical proof to show that logic works? I am not a logician, so just asking.)

    But we still paint, and we still do science, because it works. Nobody can pretend to actually believe that there is no particular reason to assume the sun will rise again tomorrow just because it did so every day since the earth was formed, as per the problem of induction. I they actually believed that, they would be paralyzed with inaction, so they don't.

    Anyway, as implied this has to be seen in the context of Massimo's claim in earlier discussions that a scientist who would conclude that something can be assumed not to exist because there is no evidence for its existence is overstepping the bounds of science. If you do not accept that parsimony / Occam's Razor are part of what science is, then a scientist cannot even conclude that the sun does not consist out of 80% Phantasticum, a new element that does not weigh anything, emits no radiation, is not the product of another element's decay and does not decay itself. The scientist also could not conclude that we evolved out of ape-like ancestors, as without parsimony, it is just as probable that we evolved out of cabbage-like ancestors and picked up all those ape characters independently, without ever leaving fossils of the intermediate stages.

    If, however, you grant science the razor, then certain things follow for what science qua science can (and must) conclude that Massimo does not like.

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  41. @OneDayMore: I love your posts, and was very happy to see you back posting here.

    While not a vegetarian, and not a lover of being preached at either, understand that to not eat meat is an expression of empathy for our 'animal cousins'. But as a vegan wraps his or her jaws around any given collection of bean, how the freak do they know they are not committing a bean-massacre?

    Animals closer to humans than beans - eating animals bad, eating beans OK.

    It's all relative, all relative. Morals, ethics, and history are created and propagated by victors.

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  42. Alex,

    > The point is not that scientists, like everybody else, cannot tolerate external watchmen. <

    Watchmen? Methinks someone is protesting too much. I am in favor of interdisciplinary dialogue and reciprocal feedback, I ain't try to appoint no watchmen my friend.

    > I insist that they are a fundamental part of what science is <

    And nobody is arguing that they are not. The argument is that these criteria are extra-scientific in the sense that they cannot be tested scientifically. They come from rational considerations, they are epistemology, not science.

    And by the way, you seem to think that Occam's razor has always been applied in science, or that it always is even today across fields. But I know you have heard of epicycles, or of cladistic approaches that do not rely on parsimony, and the like.

    > You are right that there are moral difference between somebody being incompetent or a fraud, of course, but I fail to see how fraud would not fall under the scope of bad science <

    That's a matter of semantics, some people prefer to use different words where there is a distinction, as you just acknowledged.

    > If it is good science, it cannot be misogynist or racist, it will just be a description of facts and processes that exist whether we like them or no. <

    But the point is that generations of scientists were absolutely convinced that they were doing sound science when in fact they were simply twisting the data to fit their preconceived ideologies. Which shows that ideology can lead science astray for decades. And it took a more varied ideological mix to point out the absurdity of some of those claims.

    > "Suspect", not dismissed, and that is clearly what you were going for <

    That's in your mind, I stand by what I explicitly say, not by where you think I was going.

    > interesting how you consider it legitimate to liberally distribute charges of scientism but get annoyed when I have a similar visceral reaction to the standard talking points of postmodernism. <

    I beg to differ that I charge people with scientism on visceral grounds. And who the hell is defending postmodernism anyhow?

    > read your paragraph on misogyny again and tell me that it cannot reasonably evoke memories of certain discussions about "patriarchal approaches" to physics or suchlike <

    The problem is that the basic idea of some postmodernist critique is correct: science is a human activity, and as such it is mixed to a deep degree with ideology and other human foibles. It is a grave mistake to throw the baby out with the postmodern murky water.

    > The analogy with painting stands for that too <

    The analogy with painting is just as bad as Coyne's analogy with plumbing. Seems to me a desperate ploy concocted to defend a degree of purity and hegemony of science that in the long run simply undermines the really good stuff that science is and represents.

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  43. "Yes, but so what?" - Alex SL

    So, you were misrepresenting the claim - I'm sure not intentionally. I was correcting it. That you may or may not have a second argument that pertains to the claim has no bearing on the fact that your first claim was aimed at a straw man.

    Notice though, that your new argument is a philosophical one. It's circular to argue that philosophy is not required for science; now, if you could demonstrate it, you might have something. But really, even the distinction between demonstrating and arguing is a philosophical one, isn't it?

    So, bring it back around. Why doesn't painting rely on philosophy? Well, actually, it does. Not the "doing" of painting; a monkey can paint without philosophy. Philosophy is needed to understand a painting. Just as it is needed to understand science. Without philosophy both are reduced to a jumble of meaningless spots before our eyes. Because philosophy is a necessary condition for understanding, any activity of understanding requires philosophy; any act of understanding IS philosophy.

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  44. Massimo said: The problem is that the basic idea of some postmodernist critique is correct: science is a human activity, and as such it is mixed to a deep degree with ideology and other human foibles. It is a grave mistake to throw the baby out with the postmodern murky water.

    For whatever it's worth, this lay person (as in: non-scientist/non-philosopher) agrees.

    Post-modernism's "cardinal sin" is its reduction of scientific discovery to "just another narrative", as if its rational underpinnings and historical record of results were no better than those of, say, prophecy, astrology, or tarot-card reading.

    Yet, even once we agree on the epistemic supremacy of scientific methodology, there are still so many ways that it can be used wrongly (e.g. against the interests of the majority of citizens) that it seems foolish to assume (or pretend) that scientists alone are qualified to judge, say, which research projects deserve funding or which individuals are eligible to join their ranks, even though their expertise provides highly valuable inputs into both (political) decisions.

    Some years ago, I read an interesting book on this topic by Phillip Kitcher, called Science, Truth, and Democracy. I recommend it (especially to Alex).

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  45. Massimo,

    I insist that they are a fundamental part of what science is - And nobody is arguing that they are not.

    Aha. But you do not accept what follows directly from this?

    The argument is that these criteria are extra-scientific in the sense that they cannot be tested scientifically.

    Did anybody ever argue otherwise? That is the point of my painting analogy!

    They come from rational considerations, they are epistemology, not science.

    Yes, in theory, although I would argue that in actual fact they first came from trial and error, and then they were rationalized after they were found to be helpful. It would be nice to think that every major progress in the world came from some philosopher staring vacantly into the air for a few years and then jumping up and telling their contemporaries how to, say, do science, government or morals, but that is not how the world works. Ah, but of course, per James above, we can simply define every human thought that is not a scientific experiment as formal academic philosophy, and we are there! But the gods forbid Coyne, Myers or Moran should, with the same measure, define the empirical-inductive-experimental heuristics humans use in everyday life as science, oh no sir! Can't have that, that is scientism.

    And by the way, you seem to think that Occam's razor has always been applied in science, or that it always is even today across fields. But I know you have heard of epicycles, or of cladistic approaches that do not rely on parsimony, and the like.

    I think you are using too narrow a definition of parsimony here. Sure, I also use distance- or likelihood methods to infer relationships, but parsimony is indispensable in every scientific activity even where they have never heard of PAUP, see my examples above.

    I do not know about epicycles - WikiPedia tells me that this Ptolemaic. Is that what you refer to? If so, then I consider it interesting how you have suddenly expanded the definition of science waaaaaay beyond that 20th century modus operandi you insist on to tell me that science is oh-so-limited.

    Which shows that ideology can lead science astray for decades. And it took a more varied ideological mix to point out the absurdity of some of those claims... science is a human activity, and as such it is mixed to a deep degree with ideology and other human foibles.

    Okay, I understand now what you are going at, so sorry for some overreach here. Although I find it strange that you consider that even worth mentioning or discussing then. Scientists can make mistakes, and we need to take care to correct them - is there actually anybody who would disagree with that, and would any scientist, for that matter? That is why we have peer review, and why the best way to gain immortality is generally to decisively show that the currently accepted model is wrong.

    I beg to differ that I charge people with scientism on visceral grounds.

    Well, seeing how you, by your own admission, base your charges against people who continually stress both in writing and interviews that science isn't the alpha and omega on some joke they made at a conference...

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  46. The analogy with painting is just as bad as Coyne's analogy with plumbing. Seems to me a desperate ploy concocted to defend a degree of purity and hegemony of science that in the long run simply undermines the really good stuff that science is and represents.

    This would take a bit long to answer properly. In a nutshell: science (into which I include natural history) has complete and utter hegemony in telling us what things and processes exist and take place in this specific universe we are living in. There is simply no other human endeavor that reliably does the same, end of story.

    Nobody in their right mind would doubt the value of math and philosophy, but they are meta, they describe what would be true or false in every conceivable universe. That is both their strength and their weakness. Philosophy, for example, can at most tell us that certain things cannot exist because they are logically impossible, like the eponymous married bachelor, but it cannot tell us how the sun generates light or if there is a sunken city on the floor of the Atlantic ocean. Extend logically to other things whose existence is a matter of contention.

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  47. Alex - I would put science at the head of the class, but not give it utter hegemony and all that. It needs to handle the unknown better, for instance, needs to be more imaginative when it comes to explaining the strangeness of a dream.

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  48. @Alex:
    >Philosophy, for example, can at most tell us that certain things cannot exist because they are logically impossible, like the eponymous married bachelor, but it cannot tell us how the sun generates light or if there is a sunken city on the floor of the Atlantic ocean.

    I think you are reducing philosophy to formal logic, which would seem to be a mistake. Basically, philosophy is concerned with all those questions that are (1) important, (2) not entirely subjective, (3) not amenable to empirical testing.

    @Massimo:
    >And nobody is arguing that [principle of parsimony etc.] are not [part of science].

    Let me remind you that this running debate of ours is happening largely because we disagree about whether religious claims are in principle addressable by science. Doesn't the concession above mean that scientists can, within science, reject religious claims for being unparsimonious? (Hence eliminating the need for the awful special pleading of "methodological naturalism," which almost makes me feel bad for creationists.)

    I sometimes get the feeling that this whole debate is happening because we want to draw lines around the various aspects of human endeavour that are much too sharp. I think if every scientist, philosopher, engineer and artist were to stick rigidly to the theoretical ambit of those professions, they would all be pretty unproductive and boring. Scientists would have to endorse an infinity of different empirically indistinguishable models corresponding to every set of facts. Philosophers would have to lock themselves in cupboards to preserve the purity of their cogitations from horrid empirical encroachments. Engineers would be unable to design a bridge for fear of committing art.

    Can't we just agree that science, say, has a certain philosophical toolkit, and leave it at that? If I as an engineer design a bridge using aesthetic principles, I have not plausibly thereby ceased to do engineering; likewise, surely a scientist who uses parsimony to dismiss creationism is not undergoing a sudden career change.

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  49. Um. Sorry, I don't mean to break anyone's stride, or anything, but I don't know where else to put this (is there a section for this type of thing I'm not seeing?). So this has nothing AT ALL to do with the relevant topics here. I listen to the podcast regularly, but I'm relatively new to commenting about it, and I just really want to voice my vote for a topic of discussion that hasn't been addressed yet.

    It concerns rationality, science, and philosophy - a veritable triple threat! Ready? Artificial intelligence, now before you start moaning, not just artificial intelligence, particularly the process known as the singularity. (OK, its not really a triple threat)

    If you're not familiar with the concept of the singularity, (as I was not - somehow this was omitted from the undergraduate curriculum) the AI debate can seem tired and like there is not much to get excited about. But, to me at least, the rubber really hits the road when you bring in this idea. My introduction to it was a brief talk by David Chalmers.

    As described by Chalmers it is the prima facie case that at some point artificial intelligence will reach the intelligence level of humans (what we mean by intelligence a key issue here). When this happens, there will come a point that machines surpass the intelligence of humans, and intelligence will really take off. The thought is once a machine is smarter than a human, it will be better than a human at designing machines. It will create a machine more intelligent than the most intelligent machine a human could create, which will in turn create an even more intelligent machine, and so on, resulting in a rapid upward spiral towards super-intelligence. Spelling possibly the end of the human race, or perhaps the end to all disease and utopia, or something in between.

    Very tricky, but seemingly crucial, issues come into play here involving what kind of value systems could lead these machines to either of these outcomes (or something in between) and whether or not we can influence the "ethics" of super-intelligent machines. Would there not be a point in this process, regardless of what we imbue in them at the beginning, where they might just decide: we are going to employ a utilitarian-type calculus, because we're good at numbers and we can determine what will have the best outcome. And clearly, us super-smart AIs have higher value in this calculus than those not-so-valuable humans who dont have the rational capabilities or potential we do? Chalmers asserts this is an issue we need to think seriously about, thoughts?

    I would loooooooove to hear you guys discuss this. This is brain candy to me, and I want my fix. How can I make this happen? Do you take bribes? Do I just have to keep posting this until I get banned or something? (just kidding, don't ban me please, I mean no harm)

    If this really is inappropriate, will someone please direct me to the right place to offer general input to the podcast, if such a crazy thing is allowed.

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  50. cheesecritic, good topic, which we will probably revisit during a podcast. Meanwhile, as the following links show, I don't have a particularly high opinion of Chalmers and the singularitarians...

    http://goo.gl/WpQaQ
    http://goo.gl/rw32i
    http://goo.gl/68wjE

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  51. Alex,

    > Yes, in theory, although I would argue that in actual fact they first came from trial and error <

    Occam's razor was proposed by, uhm, Occam. Who was a philosopher active well before there was anything like science. Look this debate is somewhat sterile, we both agree that it is a combination of science and philosophy, and that the two fields are both distinct and somewhat overlapping. But I think it is important for scientists to agree (and not feel defensive) about the fact that science - understood as empirically based hypothesis testing - is not the beginning and end of all knowledge and wisdom. And I know you agree with that.

    > the gods forbid Coyne, Myers or Moran should, with the same measure, define the empirical-inductive-experimental heuristics humans use in everyday life as science, oh no sir! <

    If you want to play that game, we can do it the other way around and declare that any activity that is based on thinking is, by definition, philosophy. So science is philosophy, plumbing is philosophy, and when you decide what you are going to have for breakfast is philosophy. There. See how silly it is?

    > I consider it interesting how you have suddenly expanded the definition of science waaaaaay beyond that 20th century modus operandi <

    Seriously? So you get to define science in whatever convenient time-frame limited fashion happens to suit your model of it? Last I checked, people think of Ptolemaic astronomy as astronomy, not astrology.

    > your charges against people who continually stress both in writing and interviews that science isn't the alpha and omega on some joke they made at a conference... <

    That is not fair. I have read plenty of things by, and talked plenty of times with, the likes of Coyne, so my charge of scientism is rational. You may rationally disagree with it, but not dismiss it as based on a joke.

    > It would be nice to think that every major progress in the world came from some philosopher staring vacantly into the air for a few years <

    If that isn't a strawman I don't know what is.

    > science (into which I include natural history) has complete and utter hegemony in telling us what things and processes exist and take place in this specific universe we are living in. There is simply no other human endeavor that reliably does the same, end of story. <

    Seriously? So, again, you are doing science when you are making your breakfast? And what does science tell us about the aesthetic value of a Picasso? Or is that not part of the universe? Os are you going to argue that it's only a matter of neural pathways put in place by natural selection? You don't think that's a bit of an overreach? Dare I utter the scientism word again?

    > Nobody in their right mind would doubt the value of math and philosophy, but they are meta, they describe what would be true or false in every conceivable universe <

    As Ian pointed out, you have much too narrow an understanding of philosophy, it ain't just logic.

    > it cannot tell us how the sun generates light or if there is a sunken city on the floor of the Atlantic ocean. <

    And it doesn't pretend to. Do I smell strawman, again?

    Ian,

    > Doesn't the concession above mean that scientists can, within science, reject religious claims for being unparsimonious? <

    No, because science applies Occam's razor to empirically testable hypotheses. As I've argued endless times, the "god hypothesis" is no such thing.

    But I definitely agree with the rest of your post. The way I see it, science, philosophy, logic and mathematics are all intersecting parts of scientia, with partially distinct and partially overlapping methods of inquiry and types of questions. And it would be *very* nice if we could all get along by referring to scientia and giving up the idea that one particular subdiscipline within it has epistemic priority on pretty much everything.

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  52. Yeah, cheesecritic.... Have been thinking a lot about the singularity and animals and I think the combined punch of animal liberation (protecting the survival of those like humans) and computer 'intelligence' is potentially more threatening than a nuclear bomb. Because without an animal computer separator, a mixture of the two forces could produce wholly unexpected results.

    I used to futz with AI in the late 70s (just a kid reading about what they were doing at MIT w/speech, psychologists and robots, and the Japanese MITI(?) effort, a 5-year program that failed, and Sherry Turkle's stuff). Happy to see AI is back although the attitude today is more watchdog and less production-oriented (you know, let's code us up a Singularity).

    Have been thinking a lot about Chalmers, Dennett, and Hofstadter, and wonder if they would care to collaborate and produce a vision or road-map that could inform social policy. I guess they might, but only after the information/gods/science questions are settled, and just don't think its happening in the next couple of decades, so other players will need to step up.

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  53. Wow, I feel like an idiot for even mentioning Chalmers now (outside the context of how bad his haircut is). The Novemeber 2009 piece is fantastic, you, in one swoop, satisfied my thirst for discussion of this topic, and completely burst my bubble of excitement about it. Bravo.

    I admit, my intrigue was peaked almost entirely by extrapolation from the gains in complexity of computer software (take 1950 or so to say, the IBM Watson machine that played Jeopardy last month) to hypothetical predictions of what stage it could be at in x number of decades. Which, as you point out, is a poor MO when you dont understand the underlying causal phenomena and ignores possible constraints that will come into play.

    Perhaps setting aside details of the process of the Singularity, I still find deep interest in related questions. Maybe I'm simply not able to wrap my mind around it, because I don't have enough understanding of computer science. But for instance, the impact we may have on the "character" or tendencies of computer software as they become more complex and able to "think for themselves" in certain aspects.

    I would like to continue and have many more questions and interests Im sure you could disillusion me of. But I expect for those actually trying to have a debate here Im getting rather annoying. So I thank you for the links and keep up the good work.

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  54. cheesecritic, first of all, no need to feel like an idiot; second, glad you found the writings useful. But you are right, quite apart from the singularity stuff, there are plenty of hugely interesting questions about artificial intelligence, and certainly a hell of a lot more thinking (and research) to be done.

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  55. Occam's razor was proposed by, uhm, Occam. Who was a philosopher active well before there was anything like science.

    Yes, he formally, academically proposed it. But who used it first? Somebody called Ugh the Caveman or similar, when he decided to retrace his steps of the day to search for his missing stone axe instead of non-parsimoniously assuming that it had, say, grown wings and flown away.

    But I think it is important for scientists to agree (and not feel defensive) about the fact that science - understood as empirically based hypothesis testing - is not the beginning and end of all knowledge and wisdom. And I know you agree with that.

    Yup. And while I have not spoken with any of them personally, I have read enough of their books and blogs to know that all your usual suspects would also agree with that.

    If you want to play that game, we can do it the other way around and declare that any activity that is based on thinking is, by definition, philosophy. So science is philosophy, plumbing is philosophy, and when you decide what you are going to have for breakfast is philosophy. There. See how silly it is?

    I am rather confused about what you are aiming at here. I have just pointed out how silly it is myself.

    On the other hand, I would actually be fairly happy with a taxonomy that considers science as a sub-discipline of philosophy. What I am not happy with is you considering it scientism for a scientist to conclude that things can be assumed not to exist if there is zero evidence for their existence. Not because I want all philosophy departments to be closed and turned into biology labs or some such nonsense, but because your approach, if consistently applied, makes science impossible, and if restricted to religious questions only amounts to special pleading.

    And I am not saying that Coyne's plumbing or Myer's finding an engine part on his stroll is already science as we do it in academia - but it is a proto-science in the sense that science is nothing but a carefully formalized extension of the same principle that made Ugh formulate hypotheses of varying prior likelihood about what could have happened to his axe and then test them against evidence (of the "does my rival Oglok look more guilty or pleased than normal?" type, for example). The point being that science grew naturally out of everyday approaches we tried out to understand the world around us. Some did not work (e.g., asking oracles), but all those that did made it into the toolbox of science. Thus, by definition, science is the only approach that works to understand the specific world around us - because the moment anything is discovered that works, it is simply added to science.

    Seriously? So you get to define science in whatever convenient time-frame limited fashion happens to suit your model of it? Last I checked, people think of Ptolemaic astronomy as astronomy, not astrology.

    Once again I must express a great deal of confusion. It is me who charges you with defining science in whatever way happens to suit your current stance in the discussion. When you want to show that science is a very restricted form of activity or that Occam invented parsimony, you write, and I cite literally, that he did it "well before there was anything like science". And then you turn around and make another point by insisting that something is science that was done by somebody who, last I looked, died approximately 1120 years before Occam was born. Do you not see any self-contradiction here? Is it me, with my consistently wide definition of science, who is twisting things?

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  56. Seriously? So, again, you are doing science when you are making your breakfast? And what does science tell us about the aesthetic value of a Picasso? Or is that not part of the universe?

    Well, science as I understand it could probably help me to find more time-efficient ways to make my breakfast, or inform me about the most healthy food I could chose. Aesthetic values, in the sense that they are part of the universe, are indeed something that is partly (!) subject to neurology and suchlike. We could also do a poll asking people whether they like a Picasso better than a da Vinci, and I would surely consider that activity scientific. You will know, however, that I have twice previously argued against a truly scientistic commentor on your blog by insisting that while science applies (in some way) to everything that physically exists, it cannot necessarily say everything that we might want to say about something - I tend to use scholarly interpretation of Shakespeare's dramas as the counterexample.

    As Ian pointed out, you have much too narrow an understanding of philosophy, it ain't just logic.

    And science isn't just a lab experiment.

    Philosphy cannot tell us how the sun generates light or if there is a sunken city on the floor of the Atlantic ocean. - And it doesn't pretend to. Do I smell strawman, again?

    Please extend logically to other items whose existence is controversial.

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  57. Oh, Massimo, one thing: I really appreciate the attribution below the RS logo, but there's no need to continue using it, especially since I am no longer doing any web design (I'll probably kill that site soon). Feel free to use the logo unattributed. :)

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  58. One question re artificial intelligence I haven't seen addressed yet concerns the proposal that intelligence in biological organisms evolved with the aid of cultural learning mechanisms. See the "Culture evolves" discussion here: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1567.toc
    Suggesting that the artificial brains might need to experience their environments as a group to learn how to adaptively reprogram themselves.
    How likely is that to happen unless Kurzwell and the like have considered how to wean them from their initial reliance on the teachings of human culture, where competitive strategies are the norm, and to program them to trust their fellow robots to help them evolve as a group of non-competitors? Where presumably they will be too smart to keep any secrets from each other.
    Too smart to see the value of learning to outsmart each other that evolution to date seems to have relied on.

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  59. >On the other hand, I would actually be fairly happy with a taxonomy that considers science as a sub-discipline of philosophy. What I am not happy with is you considering it scientism for a scientist to conclude that things can be assumed not to exist if there is zero evidence for their existence. Not because I want all philosophy departments to be closed and turned into biology labs or some such nonsense, but because your approach, if consistently applied, makes science impossible, and if restricted to religious questions only amounts to special pleading.

    Beautifully put. Massimo, please meditate on this paragraph until you attain enlightenment.

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  60. "What I am not happy with is you considering it scientism for a scientist to conclude that things can be assumed not to exist if there is zero evidence for their existence. Not because I want all philosophy departments to be closed and turned into biology labs or some such nonsense, but because your approach, if consistently applied, makes science impossible ..." - Alex SL

    I think you've gotten this exactly backward. I can understand science rejecting the claim that something exists when there is no evidence, but claiming that something is impossible because there is no evidence? Science would be impossible if it were to adopted this approach. Toward what end would anyone gather evidence if everything without evidence is already known to be impossible?

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  61. The Savvy Timesaver published a post today called, "Just Like Riding a Bike". It gives a perspective, involving the concept of artificial intelligence, designed to change a person's paradigm in such a way that enables them to get more out of life.

    Since the topic has shifted to AI, I figured it might be of interest.

    When taken out of context, it creates an interesting perspective for the creationist side of the evolution debate (Not that the topic needs debating, I would hate to find myself on the creationist side against Professor Pigliucci, to whom I regard as an expert on the topic. The fact is I've been contemplating a post that would illustrate the contradiction between the main-stream Christian stance on abortion and their anti-evolutionism).

    Here is the, "out of context" portion of the post:

    > Today, we have the ability to make elaborate and entertaining video games. Characters come to life and live out a fantasy with graphics and imagery that is truly breathtaking. Meanwhile, scientists diligently work on the development of artificial intelligence. It is obvious that one day we will possess the programming knowledge to create a self learning computer as capable as our brain.

    Consider what happens when we insert an artificially intelligent character into a video game world. The character is instantly self aware and being programmed with a backstory, remembers his childhood, knows where he lives, who his friends are, etc. As he looks around his world, he notices rock formations and determines they would have taken millions of years to naturally form. Therefore he assumes that his world is millions of years old. In reality his world is only a few minutes old. It all sprang into existence moments ago at the push of a button. He devises a lens and stares up at the sky, not perceiving an end to the cosmos, he assumes his universe is infinite. In reality, his universe is not infinite, but rather a manifestation of a finite amount of programming code, being processed by a finite amount of circuit board. When he reasons his health and life expectancy, he determines that he has as many as 60 years left to live. The fact is that he does not have 60+ years. He has only the time allotted for the video game scenario he is assigned to complete. As soon as it is over, the score will be tallied and he along with his entire world will flash out of existence. Though he can observe the various physical properties of his world, such as gravity, and he can conduct experiments to confirm them and draw various conclusions based on those experiments; there isn't a single experiment he can conduct that would enable him to detect the box he is contained in. He would never know about the TV or the person watching him through it.< End of "out of context" quoted portion of the Savvy Timesaver's, "Just Like Riding a Bike" post.

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  62. Alex, I keep thinking that we are a hell of a lot closer than this discussion might induce people to think. Nonetheless:

    > I have twice previously argued against a truly scientistic commentor on your blog by insisting that while science applies (in some way) to everything that physically exists, it cannot necessarily say everything that we might want to say about something. <

    Correct, but I simply don't think that there is much (or at all) useful science that one can do about all sorts of physical things, even though surely everything physical comes under the purview of science.

    > Somebody called Ugh the Caveman or similar, when he decided to retrace his steps of the day to search for his missing stone axe instead of non-parsimoniously assuming that it had, say, grown wings and flown away. <

    See, this is were I do find that you tend to veer toward Coyne-style ridiculousness. Of course science is a systematized and much more sophisticated version of certain human abilities. But to say that Caveman was doing science because he was unconsciously applying Occam's razor (incidentally, how do you know this, exactly?) is preposterous. And as I mentioned before, by that definition everything becomes philosophy because whenever we think we philosophize.

    > because your approach, if consistently applied, makes science impossible, and if restricted to religious questions only amounts to special pleading. <

    No, my approach simply would lead to the realization that science is not self-sufficient (with which I'm sure you agree). Nothing is, not even logic. Ian, meditate about that for a moment.

    > by definition, science is the only approach that works to understand the specific world around us <

    By definition? Is this a case of a priori knowledge? Surely you mean "it empirically turned out to be the case that..."

    > And then you turn around and make another point by insisting that something is science that was done by somebody who, last I looked, died approximately 1120 years before Occam was born. <

    Fair point, I wrote that in a hurry. I tend to take a historical view of science: its roots go back to Aristotle and similar, but a lot of it was proto-science, with science as we understand it today beginning with the (properly name) scientific revolution of the 17th century, and finally really solidifying as a professional systematized enterprise between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

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  63. No, my approach simply would lead to the realization that science is not self-sufficient (with which I'm sure you agree). Nothing is, not even logic. Ian, meditate about that for a moment.

    I still do not think you have quite realized what problems a few of us have with your stance. Granted that science is not self-sufficient, what is again your argument against a sentence like the following?

    "Because there is no evidence for the existence of a creator god, even after we have looked very, very carefully, we should provisionally, as always in science, conclude that it probably does not exist"

    If you say, as you seem to do, that a scientist cannot say this because that would be using Occam and Occam is philosophy, you must logically forbid a scientist to conclude that the ancient Egyptians probably built the pyramids, as it could just as well have been undetectable aliens. Their undetectability is fully equivalent to a creator god that has created the universe to look like it doesn't exist. If, however, you say that the scientist is okay with the pyramids but not with the god, because... well, because. See, this is where it breaks down: special pleading. In principle, the problem would still be there even if it could be demonstrated decisively that science is all bollocks, because it has nothing to do with self-sufficiency or scientism, but all with consistency.

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  64. Whats that? The topic has shifted to AI, you say? How did that happen? What a coincidence, I just happen to have some thoughts on this very topic that could use some insight.

    My unsettled interest, I think, seems to boil down to (science fiction aside) what I have come to discover is properly called the logic of action and the so-called frame problem. However, I am far from well-versed in these areas, so Ill just describe the issues tumbling around my head (science fiction front and center), and someone else can tell me why they aren't really issues worth thinking about.

    In the Chalmers discussion of the singularity (before you start throwing fruit, Im only using it as a setup), he was asked about what may be determinate in one outcome of the singularity over the other. The singularity is not what interests me here (any more), rather he seemed to contend that it is very important that we, as pre-singularity programmers, instill a type of value system into these exceedingly complex computer systems. That we could somehow, through subtle tendencies in programming protocols or something like that, influence the way software "behaves" in a way that is desirable to humans, is... well, it may be science fiction, but it raises a lot of questions, and is utterly fascinating to me.

    There is an issue here to start. The frame problem. In rudimentary terms, the difficulty in setting an AI to do common-sense tasks (like, I would think, making value judgments on-the-fly) because you would seemingly have to define all the effects and, more problematically, all the non-effects of a particular action. That is, it seems one could always think of another (pre)condition that should be incorporated so that the AI would always be able to follow the correct procedure. Not to mention, having the AI sort out what is relevant for the particular situation. I recognize there are suggested solutions to this, and if I understood them, they may well solve the problems I think I have, but I dont so I move on.

    I kind of like thinking however, about the decidedly less scientific (at best superfluous, at worst a waste of time aside from science fiction fans) question of what, assuming we could figure out how to do so and the outcome was meaningful, values would we want to ascribe to the body of AI? Consequentialist? Its leveled against consequentialist ethics that it is too demanding of the person, that one would never be able to discern what some tangential consequences might be. Is this where a super smart computer steps in? Or would we the find that the computers decided to cut the global population to 1 billion because that will have greater net effects over the centuries, or some such undesirable scenario? Kantian? would we want computers going around acting according to the maxim by which they would will universal? In that case should we make the computers think theyre humans so they share our interests? How might they account for pain and suffering if they themselves have no experience of it?

    And how, even if we could come up with a way to imbue the right values in their programming, could we be sure the programs always work how they're supposed to? Given the enormous amount of nefarious computer programs (programmers) even today (the executive divisions of the US are subject to cyber attack 10000 times a minute or something outrageous like that) how can we ensure our amicable machines would stay that way or be able to overpower alternate (evil) software proliferation?

    Given the feeble ground on which a singularity-type situation, in which computers become more intelligent than humans, and are making value decisions, rests, these questions dont have much meaning, and I realize posting such questions to a forum exploring the borderlands of reason and nonsense probably puts me squarely in the nonsense camp. But ill be damned if it doesnt tickle my nonsensical fancy. Maybe I should just go read a good science fiction book and move on.

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  65. Alex, only you could go from a post on values in science to yet another discussion about god. Okay, I'll bite:

    > If you say, as you seem to do, that a scientist cannot say this because that would be using Occam and Occam is philosophy, you must logically forbid a scientist to conclude that the ancient Egyptians probably built the pyramids <

    You must be joking. Aside from the fact that my main objection to the god thing is that "god" is a barely coherent concept that simply does not qualify as a hypothesis in any meaningful sense of the term, the first situation you are referring to has zero empirical content (which is why it ain't science), while the second one does. We have plenty of historical evidence that the Egyptians built the pyramids (they told us so, their neighbors left documents about it, there are artifacts showing them in the process of doing so).

    Oh, and of course for me history ain't science either...

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  66. Yes, you are right, I should drop it. If we did not achieve any agreement in the previous discussions, we won't find it here. And I should certainly have chosen an example from evolutionary history, or perhaps the formation of the solar system, where nobody can tell us they did it.

    Still, although I am not one myself, I imagine that astro- and particle physicists would be surprised to hear that the origin of the universe has "zero empirical content" and is not a scientific question. Sorry to say, but it makes you sound a bit like those creationists who insists that we cannot know anything about evolution because "we weren't there when it happened".

    From the other direction, I am once again rather confused how you can stress the totally empirical nature of the pyramid question, meaning that is why science can have an opinion, and then turn around and say it isn't science... because?

    Finally, in general, please consider again the nuances between (1) a goal-post-moving god non-concept as an obvious non-hypothesis, (2) a clearer concept like "god is our placeholder for the mysterious force in nature that demonstrably answers prayers for miraculous regrowth of lost limbs, but only if Catholics do the praying (p<0.00001, see also the following 215 references that have found the same)", (3) the scientific conclusion that because there is no evidence for the inference of any creative superior intelligences in the history of the universe, there likely aren't any, just like there ain't no phlogiston, and (4) the right and even duty of a scientist to reject non-coherent concepts even without having first been granted a degree in philosophy.

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  67. Alex,

    > I imagine that astro- and particle physicists would be surprised to hear that the origin of the universe has "zero empirical content" and is not a scientific question <

    I really don't think I wrote that.

    > Sorry to say, but it makes you sound a bit like those creationists who insists that we cannot know anything about evolution because "we weren't there when it happened". <

    Oh please, give me a bit more credit than that, yes?

    > I am once again rather confused how you can stress the totally empirical nature of the pyramid question, meaning that is why science can have an opinion, and then turn around and say it isn't science... because? <

    Because unlike you I don't see "science" as including any and all sorts of empirical claims. Archeology (pyramids) is a science, albeit of a different nature from physics, but history (largely) is not. So claims about ancient Egyptians and pyramids are at the borderline of science, but well within the scope of a combination of archeology and history.

    > a goal-post-moving god non-concept as an obvious non-hypothesis <

    You keep writing like any other god hypothesis was also not a goal-post-moving kind of entity. They all are, which is why science has little to say about them. And once again, I certainly don't intend this as either a criticism of science or even less a defense of religious nonsense.

    > a clearer concept like "god is our placeholder for the mysterious force in nature that demonstrably answers prayers for miraculous regrowth of lost limbs, but only if Catholics do the praying <

    Except of course that god works in mysterious ways, and no Catholic is going to budge a single inch after your much vaunted scientific demonstration of the lack of efficacy of prayer. And they are not moving precisely because all god "hypotheses" are constantly goal-post-moving.

    > the scientific conclusion that because there is no evidence for the inference of any creative superior intelligences in the history of the universe, there likely aren't any, just like there ain't no phlogiston <

    The phlogiston was a scientific hypothesis that could be tested, was tested, and was rejected. To even talk about evidence for an incoherent concept is, well, incoherent.

    > the right and even duty of a scientist to reject non-coherent concepts even without having first been granted a degree in philosophy <

    Again, please no straw men. They don't have to get a degree in philosophy, they just need to agree that what they are doing is a basic exercise of reason, which needs not to be over-glorified with the appellative of "science."

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  68. "...Religious nonsense" - that which is not sensed. To use the word nonsense is to objectify something that involves two entities (1) the combined sources of the 'religious' information (2) the receiver, who does not process the info to the point of feeling it, making it his/her/its own, and calls it claptrap, nonsense, what have you.

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  69. > I really don't think I wrote that.

    That you cannot see this obvious implication is part of the problem right there - the conclusion that there is no creator is simply the flip side of the demonstration that non-directed processes suffice as an explanation of the existence of the object in question. You say the createdness of the universe is a question with zero empirical content. Science, to do its job in any field of research whatsoever, is forced to say that if there is no empirical evidence for something (in this case, the creator who would be evidenced by signs of createdness found in the universe), then we must tentatively conclude that this something does not exist.

    Also to do its job in any field whatsoever, it has to disregard incoherent claims. Once again you play the definition of science card and say that this is all well, but the conclusions of applying Occam and rejecting incoherence are not based on science per se but on more general reason or philosophy. Okay, but nobody really cares what they are based on - this is what I tried to point out with my painting example and with the "bollocks" sentence above:

    Yes, Occam and rejection of incoherence are not tools produced by science. BUT if we want to do science, it needs a toolbox that contains these tools, or it cannot draw any conclusions at all. In that sense, it is hard not to consider them part of science, no matter where the justification comes from, just like a v-belt is a crucial part of a car although it was not produced by a car. Then, once we have agreed that science may proceed with its work and use these tools (and we have to, otherwise it could not conclude anything ever), it becomes simply a question of consistency.

    That in itself does not in any way include even just the claim that our confidence in the usefulness and epistemic value of doing science is justified, and much less that science is the only way to generate knowledge. It could well be that the best way to find out things about the world is to read the vedas, or imagine them (because really one of us is the only sentient being and everything else is their dream). Science could be completely misguided. But once you assume that it is the best way to find out how things work and what there is*, it makes no sense to randomly attach the sticker "religious - science no go there" to some things.

    Obviously the Catholic would not budge and instead move goalposts (but be honest: would they suddenly concede if you do philosophy to them? Ha.). The point is being allowed to say, without getting angry accusations of scientism hurled at you: "science shows your claim to be false or ridiculously improbable. If you believe scientific conclusions re homeopathy, age of the earth and existence of unicorns, why do make an arbitrary exception for prayer? That is inconsistent."

    *) As I said, in my definition it is, and I find it hard to see how it could be otherwise. You insist at the same time that my claim philosophy does not apply to specific patterns, processes and objects in the universe would overly limit it (to pure logic) and that it it is a straw man that it would claim to be able to demonstrate the existence of a sunken city in the Atlantic. Quite, but that is the point, isn't it? The only way to demonstrate what things exist or how things work is science (including natural history and experimental engineering). If that is too wide a definition of science for you, fine. But yours is too wide a definition of philosophy for others. And if we realize that this is all just about definitions, then we could perhaps stop accusing each other of isms and naivite.

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  70. Alex, I don't know exactly how you sucked me into this discussion again. But here we go:

    > the conclusion that there is no creator is simply the flip side of the demonstration that non-directed processes suffice as an explanation of the existence of the object in question. <

    Oh no it isn't! First, how on earth can you empirically test the claim that "processes" are not directed? Second, of course the savvy theologian would simply reply that god created the laws of nature themselves, knowing exactly what that would do. Such a claim is entirely un-empirical, and hence not approachable by science. But of course it raises the (philosophical) issue of natural evil.

    > Science, to do its job in any field of research whatsoever, is forced to say that if there is no empirical evidence for something then we must tentatively conclude that this something does not exist. <

    Be careful my friend. String theory says there are 11 dimensions of space-time. No empirical evidence. By your reckoning, no 11 dimensions, yes?

    > the conclusions of applying Occam and rejecting incoherence are not based on science per se but on more general reason or philosophy. Okay, but nobody really cares what they are based on <

    Apparently you do, since you continue to acknowledging this and immediately add "but..."

    > Occam and rejection of incoherence are not tools produced by science. BUT if we want to do science, it needs a toolbox that contains these tools, or it cannot draw any conclusions at all. In that sense, it is hard not to consider them part of science, no matter where the justification comes from <

    Agreed and never denied, except that it *does* matter where the justification comes from, because it makes my point that science is not self-sufficient and is not the only and final arbiter of things rational (an attitude otherwise known as... scientism!).

    > That in itself does not in any way include even just the claim that our confidence in the usefulness and epistemic value of doing science is justified, and much less that science is the only way to generate knowledge. <

    Ah, when I read this sort of thing I'm reassured that the two of us are indeed much closer than our discussions might indicate.

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  71. What would an alter ego, providing intellectually isometric opposition, look like?

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  72. Yes we are - I just do not know where you get the idea that anybody you accuse of scientism would actually claim that science is the final arbiter of all things rational. My (and I understand their) point is simply that religious claims* are of the same nature as those that science is normally allowed to pronounce on, and that conversely, the same goal post moving and not presenting coherent theories is possible for all non-religious issues too.

    First, how on earth can you empirically test the claim that "processes" are not directed?

    Yes, that is where Occam's Razor comes in. Otherwise, intelligent falling. The joke works precisely because there is no qualitative difference between that and intelligent design, or an undetectable god creating the laws of physics. You allow scientists to reject intelligent falling, you gotta allow them to reject the creator; you forbid them to reject the creator (scientism!) and they are logically forbidden to laugh at intelligent falling.

    Be careful my friend. String theory says there are 11 dimensions of space-time. No empirical evidence. By your reckoning, no 11 dimensions, yes?

    I do not know enough about physics to comment very intelligently, but by my reckoning, science does not consist merely of a string of theoretically unrelated hypothesis tests, but also of finding the best/simplest/most predictive model to describe something. If, after taking all the observed structure of the universe into account, somebody suggests these 11 dimensions as the best model to describe it, then the empirical evidence has entered at the beginning of this very sentence, even if there was no testing.

    That being said, and again, my knowledge is really limited to Wikipedia level here, there seems to be another side to the controversy which argues that their model without those 11 dimensions is better. And as long as there is no test to differentiate between the two, it behooves me to remain agnostic simply because I lack the capability to assess which of the two is the more parsimonious one.

    I would also say that there is a qualitative difference between postulating a certain structure for something that is undoubtedly observed and postulating the existence of an entity or object that is entirely unobserved.

    *) Except those that are really moral philosophy, of course, but if you reduce religion to that, I would not call it religion any more, and neither would 99% of the religious.

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  73. Massimo Pigliucci,
    you said:
    "No, but the argument is that ethnic and gender diversity is the best a human community can do to keep ideological biases in check, on the simple ground that if we are all white males we may have a bit more trouble spotting our own ideological idiosyncrasies. It seems to me hard to argue against it, but I'm sure someone will find a way."

    Weren't you yourself arguing against it just a month ago in your conversation with Jonathan Haidt with regards to the lack of political diversity within modern acadamia?

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  74. Bryan, my beef with Haidt is that he claims there is a structural bias, not just lack of diversity, in academia. I welcome more variety f ideological positions, but I think it is ridiculous to argue that conservatives are somehow left out of the academy by entrenched liberals - especially on the grounds of the extremely flimsy evidence that Haidt brings up.

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  75. In your reference of the other 9/11, are you arguing that the US should never engage in covert operations either unless the situation meets the requirements? I'm not making a case for or against it but, the US did not intervene militarily in Chile.

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  76. Benny, I think you wanted to post this under another thread, but since it's here: correct, I don't think we should *ever* engage in operations against another democracy, covert or otherwise.

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  77. I enjoyed the topic for this pocast, and I find that my opinions are quite similar to Julia's utilitarian reasons, but with very different results - I am more like the flexible Dr. Pigliucci in practise!

    As a child and younger teenager I spent my summers (before having a job) on various family farms where I helped with (no choice!) the chores like feeding and mucking out the pens. Because of this I feel I am reasonably familiar with the differences between big agribiz "factory farming" and small to medium-sized "normal" (i.e not ones that go for the "organic" label) farms, and in my opinion the animals on such farms are well treated and raised in a humane manner.

    The result of these experiences is that I buy my meat at farmers markets where I can be reasonably sure that the animals were raised in a manner which I would consider ethical, rather than meat which at a grocery store which might be from a factory farm.

    While I do not doubt Julia's diligence, I was surprised to hear her say that she has only been able to find one source for meat which meets her standards for being raised ethically. I would have thought it would have been easy to find meat at a market in NYC of a similar provenance to what I buy? (Though perhaps that is a naïve assumption as so large a city as NYC is outside my general experience. There may be practical or other considerations of which I am not aware.)

    One angle which I had hoped you would address, but did not, are the social justice issues.

    Smaller family farms simply cannot survive on the same small margins that large agribiz corporations can. Thus the meat that I buy is necessarily more expensive than what I could buy at a grocery store and is therefore out of reach for economically disadvantaged people.

    Further, a vegetarian diet requires a little more care in maintaining a proper balance as compared to an omnivorous diet and a lot of these lower-income people simply have not had the education or opportunity to develop the necessary skills. This was not something I knew until my Mom started providing volunteer child care for a program for low-income mothers. The skills they teach these women are the most basic of microwave and stove-top recipes and a simplified understanding of the the Canada Food Guide. From what I understand, the two-parent poor families are no better off in terms of meal-planning skills.

    Many out-spoken (to put it kindly) vegans do not seem to realize or understand that issue why they try to push veganism with how expensive meat is. It may be the single most expensive part of a grocery bill, but for these unfortunate people it is simply impractical (if not impossible) for them to just replace that meat with an equivalent dollar amount of fruit & vegetable products and thus have more to eat. The imbalances in their diet would increase increase the already detrimental health effects from buying the cheaper, lower quality canned and processed foods.

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  78. Listening to the podcast preview, one thing that sticks out in conversations I've read is that too many people focus on the animals suffering argument and not "the enjoyable remainder of an animal's life" element. If you already acknowledge that they can suffer, then you can reasonably assume that they (were they able to give you consent) would not give you consent to rob them of the potentially pleasurable remainders of their lives. It has also been said (and I don't have the statistics at hand) that going vegetarian saves roughly 99 animals' lives per year, which veganism is only 100 lives per years; the difference is apparently negligible.

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  79. Another approach to the "these animals wouldn't exist" argument (and many others) is to keep the focus on the issue of (lack of) consent. In this case, we could ask, "since you wouldn't exist without your parents, do they have a right to kill and/or eat you?" Obviously we have to make concessions for cognitive differences in some respects, but the principle is there.

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