Diana of Letter from Gotham expresses some of what I've been thinking. I am rather uninspired by what I perceive as the relative silence on the Left and the swarming hysterics on the Right.1 Though I tend to sympathize with the suspicion of Islam evinced by many on the Right, I have commented on the problems with a singular focus on reiteration of values in a vacuum of empirically driven analysis, and attempted to address the issue obliquely later in the form of a post. As for the silence of the Left, I am silent myself because the gut reaction is so inchoate and underwhelming.
Addendum: I don't read many blogs, but Ed Brayton seems to have stood firm for free speech without temporizing.
1 - Well, I've come close to being hysterical myself. See here. Boy does it feel good, but the end of the day there needs to be more than trite recitations of Truths we Hold True.
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Hitchens had good words on the subject.
A few things on this topic and the background piece you link to.
On the whole Mohammed fracas: What difference does it really make whether the left weighs in on this by now completely out-of-scale controversy? This isn't a discussion anymore, it's just a sideshow and an excuse for conservative Islam to flex it's muscles. There are places to intervene here to castigate those on the left who are tempted to apologize for the other no matter what. But that was all pretty well hashed out after 9/11.
As to your piece on social science, I can see your basic point: human experience is MUCH more susceptible to interpretation through intuition than say, particle physics, but the thing is that what the social sciences are called upon to explain and interpret is human experience. By urging us on to the brain so we can avoid fully accounting for the troublesome bits is intellectually dishonest.
And your discussion of social science doesn't seem to me to reflect any knowledge of it. Astrology is presented to us as social science? Astrology is presented to us as intuitive? I think not in both cases. It's a cultural tradition with an appeal that I'd say is NOT intuitive, but something else.
Are there things to complain about in social science? Sure. Is the drive toward making the brain some sort of universal reference point going to solve these problems any time soon? I doubt it: we simply don't understand enough about the brain, and scientists seem to have very little inclination to pay proper respect to the complexity of the phenomena--society, culture, human psychology--they would be explaining.
To jettison what you call intuition in favor of false certainty doesn't represent intellectual progress, it represents precisely the impulse satisfied by religious fundamentalists.
Our intuition that certainty, no matter how oversimplified, is superior to ambivalence is precisely what the forces of Enlightenment ought to be fighting against, not for.
Posted by: Oran Kelley | February 13, 2006 08:25 AM
And your discussion of social science doesn't seem to me to reflect any knowledge of it. Astrology is presented to us as social science? Astrology is presented to us as intuitive? I think not in both cases. It's a cultural tradition with an appeal that I'd say is NOT intuitive, but something else.
oran, i influenced by the work of dan sperber. when i say astrology is 'intuitive,' i believe it is a cultural tradition which we have a cognitive bias to generate given mundane inputs. in other words, we are 'canalized' toward astrology. the analogy here would be supernatural agents, it is a cultural tradition toward which we are canalized. just like the god hypothesis astrology is ubiquitous across many cultures, and i believe that this is not just a tradition nor is it functionally selected for, rather, it fills some basic cognitive needs.
Well, we might have an instinctive bent toward explanations that feature human or human-like intentionality as a basic cause for phenomena, but that's a long way from making the specific cultural traditions of astrology "intuitive"
If you asked someone who knew absolutely nothing about astrology whether they thought the shapes of star-patterns in the sky had a determining influence over people's character and destiny, I don't think the intuitive answer is "Yes."
Anyhow, I don't see what is gained by looking at things like astrology as somehow automatic. It's a cultural tradition that can be countered, like say the cultural tradition of hunting and burning witches, or scapegoating generally. There are plenty of near-universal traditions that science and enlightenment have managed to repress, redirect or transform.
Are these traditions responsive to underlying "intuitive" drives? Probably. But so what? These drives or tendencies are probably quite general (I don't think there is a structure in the brain specifically directed to look to the skies for life guidance) and science can probably fulfill these sorts of roles well enough.
As Fraser wrote, magic and science are epistemologically quite similar. Displacing superstition with science is relatively easy. Faith is the challenge.
But so what? These drives or tendencies are probably quite general (I don't think there is a structure in the brain specifically directed to look to the skies for life guidance) and science can probably fulfill these sorts of roles well enough.
As Fraser wrote, magic and science are epistemologically quite similar. Displacing superstition with science is relatively easy. Faith is the challenge.
i strongly disagree with this. please see the "science and religoin" chapter of Mind and Religion: Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religion.
Which chapter is that?
A quick look at Whitehouse's work shows a) it is far from uncontroversial; and b) it seems to focus mainly on how religion works rather than why it exists. The idea that science and superstition (roughly equivalent perhaps to Whitehouse's more intense religious experience) are epistemologically similar in Frazer's sense does not seem incompatible at first glance with this new line of thinking on religion.
my mistake, the precise chapter was in explanation and cognition. you can read it online here. the ideas about religion being derived from mundane and conventional cognitive processes are found in the work of researchers like scott atran and pascal boyer, as well as justin barrett and jason slone (as well as whitehouse, lawson and macualey). many of the papers are online on their websites. in regards science, robin dunbar's the trouble with science is an early exposition of the topic from a more behavioral ecological perspective. re: fraser, he had some good ideas, but the naturalistic model in anthropology didn't stop in 1900, so i don't take the analogy between science and magic/religion as alternative analogous explanatory models as plausible. an exploration of these ideas are offered in religion explained (boyer) and in gods we trust (atran). basically, the gist is that one needs to go behind intuitions of how the mind works (via folk psychology) to the scientific insights offered by cognitive science (one of which is that far less of our day to day cognition in involves 'online' reflective thought than we are aware of).
"...a cultural tradition which we have a cognitive bias to generate..."
or a parasite load. ;)
Thanks for the link to the McCauley chapter.
By my lights there is a fundamental problem with how McCauley works the comparison between religion and science: he keeps pushing a comparison of science as fully blown institutional science with religion as fundamental psychological impulse.
Of course the two things look different when they are compared at such different levels of cultural mediation. The proper analogue of institutional science is instituionalized theology, Abelard and Aquinas.
The proper analogue of the fundamental religious impulse is the fundamental impulse toward empiracal testing, verification and transmission of the knowledge gained.
So, the belief in the presence of the dead among us that need to be appeased with offerings of beer might be compared to traditional preparartion of cassava root (which is poisonous unless elaborately prepared). So which bit of knowledge/lore is the more unnatural?
Of course the two things look different when they are compared at such different levels of cultural mediation. The proper analogue of institutional science is instituionalized theology, Abelard and Aquinas.
The proper analogue of the fundamental religious impulse is the fundamental impulse toward empiracal testing, verification and transmission of the knowledge gained.
the second part is where the dispute arises. i don't have time to get into this now, so i will post my thoughts at a later date when time is less of a scarce commodity on my end.