…and this is a 
That persistent conflict
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: October 2, 2007 3:07 PM, by PZ Myers
I don't even know what Wilkins is complaining about anymore, but he's got some kind of objection (or agreement? I don't know) to things I've said before or didn't say. This is the danger of getting into discussions with philosophers — they're saying something with great erudition, but sometimes you don't quite see the point, except that they must say something.
Anyway, it's something about the conflict between science and religion this time. At least I can try to say what I mean. I'm not going to worry about whether it answers what he asks, whatever it is.
Obviously, there is nothing wrong on this account with stating that evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This might very well be true. But the claim that extends beyond this, that to be true to the science one must be an atheist (which some do make, although not, I think, Dawkins and PZ - this is more an inference from their rhetoric than a claim they have actually made) is unwarranted, to use philosophical legalese.
John is correct: I have several times said that I know some very good scientists who are also religious, so the white crow has already flown on that claim. But I do not simply regard the assertion as falsified.
In the comments there, Thony C. brings up a good point.
But the science is not the basis for that tack, and if it's bad to teach religious metaphysics as science, it's equally unacceptable to teach irreligious metaphysics as science, that's all.
The sentence quoted above, with which I am in total agreement, raise the very important question as to whether a metaphysically neutral or even metaphysically free science is possible?
Wilkins says that a "science without metaphysics is a contradiction in terms", and I'll shock him a little further by agreeing with him on that one, too. Of course we — scientists, atheists, and theists — all have our metaphysics. We are all swaddled in interesting assumptions that we either derive from our experience or hold because we would find an alternative difficult to reconcile with our ideas. We are people, not adding machines, so a metaphysic is unavoidable.
Unfortunately, I disagree with John when he claims that metaphysical interpretations of science "are neutral with respect to religion." Unless you're talking about religions like Gardner's fideism or some of the more abstract forms of Buddhism, most scientific metaphysics are definitely not neutral about religion at all. Religions that believe in a personal, caring creator-god are going to get smacked silly by any sensible scientific metaphysic anymore — we know too much about the nature of the universe and the history of life on earth to make such a being an easily accommodated presupposition. Atheist and scientific metaphysics do not run afoul of one another, but most religious metaphysics do have conflicts with the metaphysics of science.
If I were to have a sincere conversation with a student on this topic (outside of class—it's too far off-track for my subjects), I would most definitely not tell her that she must give up church to succeed in science; that wouldn't be true. I would be honest, though, and tell her that the farther she gets into science, the more deeply her assumptions about how the universe works are going to be challenged, and her ideas are going to change. She'd get the same story from a professor in the humanities or social sciences, too, about getting deeper into literature or psychology or philosophy or art; that's the nature of our business, we change people's minds as a professional obligation. However, she's going to have to pick up certain metaphysical notions in her pursuit of science in particular that are not going to blend well with religion, and certain conclusions from religious thinking are going to be ruthlessly disparaged by her fellow scientists — the only way to persist with religious belief is to maintain multiple mutually inconsistent metaphysical views.
People do that all the time so it is certainly not an insuperable obstacle. But people also prefer the low-strain tactic of avoiding inconsistencies, so remaining true to science is going to make it difficult to remain true to any but the most general of religions.
It really doesn't matter whether you want to claim that it is poor "framing" to tell people that religion and science conflict: it is operationally true. Going into science, and getting educated in general, tends to strip away the silly extremes of religion and weaken faith — at the very least, it wrecks simple obedience and encourages thinking. It does promote (but does not require) atheism, without even trying, because most religious metaphysics are going to shrivel and crumble to ash when exposed to the harsh actinic light of science unfettered. Or they should, anyway. Some people are pretty good about clamping their eyes shut and hiding in the shadows.
Comments
Wilkins:
True. However, there is a great deal about accepting the validity of science that speaks against a deity. Many deities are logically impossible - those that remain are abolished by the standards of evidence required in science.
Wilkins has taken Nisbet's position and restated it in a context of philosophy.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 3:16 PM
Oh yes, before I forget:
That's utter garbage. There is no 'meta'physics, there's just physics. Possessing metaphysical claims isn't necessary for either science or the existence of thought.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 3:19 PM
On the inescapability of metaphysics: Wilkins and PZ are correct, and Caledonian is not. The claim that, for instance, only the entitites, properties, states, etc. described by physics exist is itself a metaphysical claim (whether true or not).
A friend of mine once remarked that people who claim to have no metaphysical views reminded him of his great-aunt, who claimed to have no political views. She thought that hanging and flogging should be brought back, and that immigrants of darker hues should be 'sent home' but completely failed to see that these were political views. They were just common sense, or 'what everyone thinks'.
Posted by: iain | October 2, 2007 3:29 PM
Caledonian, Wilkins restated or re-framed Nisbet's position?
Nisbet has a position?
"All positions are amenable to re-framing," therefore...
Strategic re-positioning?
In the words of the immortal lawyer and Senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy;
"There is nobody who is beyond investigation and re-framing."
Posted by: gerald spezio | October 2, 2007 3:31 PM
You're confusing our theories about the nature of physics and physics itself - understandably, because we call them both 'physics'. But they're very different things.
It's not a metaphysical claim, it's merely a physical one.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 3:35 PM
Caledonian:
While "physics" may be all that actually exists, we need metaphysical commitments in order to examine what exists. And we have plenty of them, such as induction.Posted by: Tulse | October 2, 2007 3:39 PM
1) Induction is just a claim about probabilities.
2) It's all done with physics, dear.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 3:41 PM
At risk of being guilty of academic pandering, I dare to suggest that a philosopher, A. N. Whitehead, is somewhat famous for the following position.
Anybody who claims or writes that there is no purpose to human life or existence, presents a glaring contradiction.
Posted by: gerald spezio | October 2, 2007 3:42 PM
"there's just physics"
What about the idea that we, as observers, are part of a single consistent universe? This is a very useful working assumption, e.g., to get past solipsism. It helps us to compare our observations with each other. It helps us to assert that we are making repeatable observations that do not depend on the individual observer. We couldn't do much practical science without it.
But it really is an untestable hypothesis. Metaphysics, if you will.
Posted by: Voting Present | October 2, 2007 3:43 PM
That science relies on metaphysics is something that virtually only analytic philosophers say (well, Foucault and a few others who think science is just power politics might agree as well, but they're full of it), and not all of them do either.
You do not need to go beyond physics, psychology, and cognitive science to find adequate means of addressing reason and perception in which to base biology and the rest of science. Kant demonstrated that amply, and he despised metaphysics (sure, he sort of recapitulated metaphysics in his "practical reason," but he tended to get the details wrong even in his "pure reason" so I hardly care much about his hypocrisy in that area). Metaphysics is merely speculation, unless of course you redefine the term from what it traditionally meant. And science has no business be founded upon speculation.
Furthermore, PZ, you don't have to believe philosophy "authorities", no matter how often you make that mistake. Just because you don't know much about philosophy, and some insufficiently educated analytic philosophers get to your ear, isn't sufficient reason for you to believe their claptrap about how science is based in metaphysics. You might as well believe Dembski as Wilkins if you really accept that metaphysics founds science, for metaphysics has as much soundness in Wilkins' philosophy as it does in Dembski's theism. It's an entirely self-serving doctrine of some analytical philosophers that science relies upon philosophy (to the same characters philosophy means metaphysics), when in fact it is more properly understood the other way around, that any honest philosophy is based in empiricism and traditionally came from the formalizations of that empiricism coming out of science and the judiciary.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 2, 2007 3:44 PM
Actually, it follows directly from the definitions of 'universe' and 'are'.
It's untestable because it's tautologically true.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 3:46 PM
Hmm... So (in Buffy terms): theistic scientists are vampires in hoodies and shades, venturing only briefly out from their dank sewers into well-lit laboratories; merely taking what they want before scuttling back into the darkness where they feel at home.
There doesn't appear to be a scale of vampirism. But if there were, the most traditional and fundamentalist of religions would be represented by the most ancient vampires with the highest risk of shrivelling and burning. Whereas, the milder and vaguer religions would be young street-wise vampires who know how to use sun-block and merely smoulder gently when exposed.
Posted by: SEF | October 2, 2007 3:48 PM
What I've found is that you who believe in the essential nature of metaphysics is that you have exactly as much evidence in favor of it as the IDists do for their "science". Indeed, it's for the same reasons, for it is actually true that atheistic metaphysics is only an atheist prejudice, while theistic metaphysics is only a theistic prejudice, and neither one has any more validity or evidence than the other does. In that sense the IDists are actually correct, that it's merely a matter of dueling prejudices.
When one gives up the traditional lies and idiocies of the metaphysicians, then science, and useful philosophy, begin. We are not actually committed to anything if we're either honest scientists or honest philosophers, least of all to something as unprovable as induction. The fact that induction is only statistically reliable, and even then only in our apparent constructed world, remains an inescapable and unforgettable caveat to doing science, and it thereby keeps (or ought to keep) skepticism about our perceptions and constructions alive.
Anyone who doesn't maintain an underlying skepticism beneath the working assumptions of science and of philosophy really differs little in "essence" from the belief in unwarranted assertions of the theists. Indeed, these believers in metaphysics are likely part of what keeps theism as healthy as it is in the Anglo-American world, for metaphysics has no basis except in speculation, thus in the religions which are produced in order to pretend that metaphysics isn't just speculation.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 2, 2007 3:56 PM
Philosophy is just different from science, and most of the real hard-edged criticism of religion comes from scientists, who feel justified in ridiculing harshly any claim to knowledge for which there is insufficient evidence.
Philosophers deal with what is logically possible and explore ways in which something might be true if this and this and this are true. Scientists probably tend to be more rigid when it comes to that sort of thing; they don't feel constrained to uncover anything that is possibly true but are chiefly concerned with what is probably factual.
They're just coming from different places. I think many theologians represent a third approach, which is to comb both philosophy and science in an effort to find whatever can be construed as consonant with a prior theological commitment. I'm sure this is upsetting to some philosophers, but it is pure anathema to scientists, whose method officially abhors such methods (although many scientists have been guilty of it themselves--Lysenko always comes to mind).
Possibly my favorite part of the "framing" discussion at the Bell last Friday was what Greg Laden said about the cleric getting up in the morning wondering how he could keep his flock believing what they already believe, and the scientist waking up wondering how he could challenge existing assumptions. That alone demonstrates just how oily and vinegary religion (the unctious one)and science (the actinic one) really are.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | October 2, 2007 3:56 PM
It is very difficult (perhaps impossible) to completely divorce science from metaphysics, since many of the working assumptions scientists use to study and describe the world (such as directly unobservable theoretical entities or that old bugbear, causation) require some metaphysical underpinning for their validity. This says nothing about how defensible that metaphysics may be, or whether it is true.
As iain said, even the claim that the only "real" entities are those described as most fundamental by physics (and the laws that somehow tie them together) is a metaphysical view that cannot be defended by empirical science alone. My understanding is that this is one of the major issues modern philosophers of science grapple with since the logical empiricist attempts to banish metaphysics from science failed in the last century.
Posted by: Fareed Qureshi | October 2, 2007 3:57 PM
"untestable because it's tautologically true"
Caledonian, you are playing wordgames. I am sorry I wasted my time talking to you. I should have recognized that you have no interest in anything ouside your own ego. Look at what other observers are telling you. No, you don't want to look.
Here's a word for you to ponder: WRONG.
Posted by: Voting Present | October 2, 2007 4:01 PM
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 4:03 PM
A little surprised by PZ's metaphysical remark. Science, humans great advancing endeavor, when subjected to the dispassionate and impersonal environment of refereed and peer-reviewed journals, while imperfect, can been stripped of all metaphysical personal baggage and arrive at approximate truths.
Posted by: caynazzo | October 2, 2007 4:04 PM
No, I'm applying logic - they frequently look similar to the ignorant and thoughtless.
Postulating any kind of interaction presupposes that the interacting things are part of the same, consistent universe. This is obviously after a little reflection - so clearly you haven't given it any.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 4:08 PM
"But people also prefer the low-strain tactic of avoiding inconsistencies..."
If this were true, no one would be religious in the first place. Indeed, one of the great insights of the anthropology of religion is that "minimally counterintuitive entities"*, to use Pascal Boyer's phrase, are more likely to persist in the mind than either ordinary entities or highly counterintuitive ones.
Per Boyer: "People's explicitly held, consciously accessible beliefs, as in other domains of cognition, only represent a fragment of the relevant processes. Indeed, experimental tests show that people's actual religious concepts often diverge from what they believe they believe."**
Religious people are, by definition, people who put down Occam's Razor in at least part of their lives, so an appeal to any kind of 'natural' desire to avoid inconsistencies isn't going to find much purchase in studies of believers or belief.
*Why Is Religion Natural?
** Ibid, scroll down to "A Limited Catalogue of Concepts"
Posted by: Clay Shirky | October 2, 2007 4:09 PM
Yes, but those of us in the continental tradition don't believe in "real entities", in the claim that the only "real entities" are those described as most fundamental by physics, or that laws somehow tie them together. We understand these to be constructions coming out of our perceptions and cognitive capacities for dealing with perceptions, and that it is ludicrous to believe that "real" or "fundamental" have some ultimate meaning in either science or in philosophy (which doesn't mean that we deny the relatively value-free meaning that most physicists give to "fundamental" when they're using that term).
IOW, I don't know why so many people think that they have free rein to pontificate about matters they have not studied out, and for which they only have a smattering of pro-metaphysics analytic philosophy claims to "inform" them.
I rather suspect that the quantum theorists could never have come up with the science they did if they accepted the view of "reality" that too many scientists and some analytic philosophers believe are the foundations of science. The foundation of science is skepticism, and questioning the traditional meanings of the terms that metaphysicians use. One gets to quantum descriptions of physics by questioning "reality", not by accepting traditional beliefs in "matter", dimension, strict causation (even if it were to turn out that hidden strict causality is somehow maintained, belief in same was not useful in working out QM, as Einstein demonstrates), and absolute space. QM crushed traditional metaphysics underfoot, coming up with mathematical descriptions in which even the fiction of "reality" has little meaning.
It is probably no accident that continental philosophy with its disdain for metaphysics was what largely informed the quantum theorists. The kind of beliefs in metaphysics being espoused on this forum are adequate to a number of rather traditional classical science, but not at all adequate to the radical questioning needed in physics.
I should note that "non-realism" is definitely a position espoused by many physicists. Phenomenology has also been held by a number of physicists, and phenomenology commonly doesn't bother with metaphysical terms like "realism" except to criticize it. They might speak of "reality", but not to indicate any sort of belief that "reality" is a meaningful term, just a vernacular term for the constructions that many mistake (or so they contend) as constituting "reality".
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 2, 2007 4:17 PM
Posted by: Tulse | October 2, 2007 4:18 PM
Although scientific methodology is not necessarily atheistic, scientific results to date certainly have been.
This is because all the popular major religions make specific truth claims that have turned out to be false.
Many have dealt with this by escaping into a God-in-principle, an entity so vague and subtle that he(?) sits in the highest heaven, far above the towering cliffs of falsifiability.
The curious thing is that, more often than not, after taking such a position to argue the possibility of a God-in-principle, the individual maintains his Baptist/Pentacostal/Sunni beliefs that Have been completely falsified.
I suppose the God-in-principle serves no purpose for comfort, for a sense of reason, for promising a particular paradise, or promoting a particular set of political opinions. In short, no one believes in that God; It's just an argument that lets the believer keep on believing falsified particulars.
Finally, if any Earthbound religion were true, science would point straight to it. Truth claims would be accurate, specifically stated prophecies fulfilled, predictions about the natural world born out.
Since this is not the case, the believer has three choices: stop believing entirely, believe in the vague and unsatisfying God-in-principle, or maintain your beliefs and make up bizarre scientific conspiracy theories.
Of course, the last one never happens. See you all at the opening of "Expelled"...
Posted by: Jason Failes | October 2, 2007 4:19 PM
It's all language games, chumps. Study up!
Posted by: ludwig | October 2, 2007 4:23 PM
Is philosophy the queen or the handmaiden of science?
I've seen this argument somewhere before...
What I would tell a young, science-aspiring, theistic student is that science is not, neccessarilly, atheistic but is, neccessarilly, irrelligious. That is, science can not rule out a god - especially a deistic one - but it can and does show a vast amount of dogma to be utterly without merit.
Posted by: Harry Tuttle | October 2, 2007 4:25 PM
It is somewhat amusing to observe the 'science is based on a metaphysics' vs 'no it isn't' argument. I would one's position is probably predicted fairly well by how much analytic philosophy they were exposed to before and during their nihilistic crisis.
Those of us who worked through a smattering of said philosophy recognized the fundamental assumptions (such as assuming logic is true and our perceptions are actually of a single objective reality) as the assumptions they are... while others never got quite that 'deep' for whatever reason.
Yeah, it is almost mental-masturbation territory, but science is based on metaphysics even if that metaphysics is that there is nothing beyond physics. We can conceptualize (even if we can't imagine) things outside of physics, so for any sort of decent philosophy we have to deal with them.
One nitpick to the OP... 'scientific metaphysics' and/or 'metaphysics of science' are not great terms. There are numerous metaphysical frameworks consistent with scientific methodology and philosophy. Hell, I actually am not an atheist (I'm a 'Spinoza's God' sort of deist).
Posted by: travc | October 2, 2007 4:26 PM
caynazzo said:
But who does science like that? Scientists look at data and dream. Hypotheses are works of fiction - they are redeemed by the fact that they are testable, but they are still dreams.You can't do science if you strip away all the baggage. Without dreams and imagination there are no theories. There are no models. When you look at a scatterplot of data, you see shapes and patterns - if you reject the "metaphysics" then you should throw an infinite number of functional relationships at the data and pick the one with the best fit. Not to mention, if you never dreamed about your data, if you felt no joy in your science...how would you ever drag yourself out of bed and into the lab or out to the field?
Posted by: IanR | October 2, 2007 4:35 PM
Do you have a beetle in your box, ludwig? ;)
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | October 2, 2007 4:45 PM
As in many similar situations in the past Caledonian is rabbiting on about logic, there is only one problem, as he has demonstrated on many previous occasions, he doesn't actually know what logic is.
Wrong, modal logic deal with possibilities, formal/mathematical or to give it its full name 1st order predicate logic (which is what one assumes he his referring to) deals with the formation of valid conclusions from logically formed prepositions.
No you are as usual being an ignorant, boorish, arrogant fool who is incapable of understanding the arguments of others because he is so full of himself.
Posted by: Thony C. | October 2, 2007 4:49 PM
I should add that in continental philosophy, instead of any metaphysical beliefs being understood as being used in science, it is "intersubjectivity" that gives us the basis for doing science. The point thereby is not that some sort of "reality" that we cannot experience at first hand grounds our conclusions, but that since we all see the same things (or so it seems from the reports given by the apparent "others"), and that we can agree with each other about, say, evolutionary explanations as making the most sense to us while these guide research productively (across religions and cultures, unlike ID), means that we have come up with explanations that satisfy our minds (continental philosophy tends to look down on pragmatism as the criterion for science, even though many think well of analytic philosopher Peirce and his "pragmaticism").
"Intersubjectivity" gets around the "mere subjectivity" of the ancients, who tended to treat dreams and waking experience in similar ways. If we can agree on the manner of interpretation of common perceptions, thereby we escape the solipsistic view of the single individual, and we can collaborate satisfyingly in experiences which we apparently share with others (no, we can't show that others exist, but apparent others do have a powerful effect upon ourselves).
Metaphysics is believed to be a distortion by Pythagoreans like Plato of intersubjective agreement, for the Pythagoreans sought for certainty beyond what human perceptions are able to provide. Plato insisted that a kind of revelatory "certainty" was provided by "the Good" (which others interpreted as one or more sky gods, such as Yahweh), so that we could be certain of the "axioms" upon which geometry and metaphysical philosophy were built.
But the axioms and postulates are neither certain nor even reliable for doing science. Euclid's fifth postulate turned out not to have any certainty in this universe, for it continues to fail in the presence of gravity even though through empiricism we again believe the universe to be "flat". Likewise, the "material" cause that ancient philosophers like Aristotle and atavistic morons like Dembski believed, and believe, in, is only a question in modern physics, with a tentative answer partially residing in the Higgs' boson (not that this itself can ever be known to be a final answer, like ancient physics considered "matter" to be). We don't know what comprises so-called "reality" in anything but a contingent and sensory organ (plus cognitive faculties)-limited manner.
So of course we don't know that evolutionary theory is "true" with any Platonic certainty at all, which is the case for more reasons than that we can't rule out a much better explanation coming along at some point (even the much better explanation has to be contingent on any number of factors, including those I've mentioned). What we do know is that we have sufficient overlap with apparently existing (I flag the word "existing", but then leave it) and communicating "others" in both our cognitive abilities and our perceptions that we can come to agreement about evolutionary theory despite pre-existing prejudices.
Something like ID, meanwhile, requires pre-existing metaphysical prejudices for it to even begin to make sense to anybody, considering that nothing in non-engineered and unmanipulated biology agrees with our "intersubjective" standards for what "design" is.
Whether or not anybody agrees with this sort of viewpoint, it is undeniable that many are able to operate within it, and to do science using its very minimal, if still philosophically contingent, assumptions (we tend to assume that others exist in practice, without presupposing that we know this to be beyond the interfering medium of our perceptions and constructions). And the science done without metaphysics doesn't actually differ from that done with a belief in metaphysical claims, at least not in classical science (I contend that not only in QM, but in consciousness studies as well, proper science cannot be done with traditional metaphysical assumptions, as "reality" itself is in question in these areas), hence it appears to a continentalist such as myself that metaphysics is a superfluous add-on, like Francis Collins' God whenever he's doing real science.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 2, 2007 4:56 PM
That's the inverse of the issue at hand. Yes, many people blithely accept religious foolishness and never test it, and are happy. I'm saying that people who go into science are going to be encouraged to wield Occam's Razor freely…and the religious metaphysics are going to get slashed, no matter how careful you are.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 2, 2007 4:57 PM
But IanR, isn't science a cumulative effort and not about one PI's dreams? Leave the muse out of it. That genomics works isn't predicated on, reflected in, or determined upon Venter's or Collins' metaphysics.
PS. Currently in lab and should get back to work*
Posted by: caynazzo | October 2, 2007 5:01 PM
It's really sad to see quantum mechanics dragged out again in the service of a weak argument. Nope, QM did not "crush[ed] traditional metaphysics underfoot, coming up with mathematical descriptions in which even the fiction of "reality" has little meaning." Instead, Newtonian billiard balls just got replaced by the wave function. Meet the new underlying reality, same as the old underlying reality.
Sure, I'd probably agree that das Ding an Sich isn't central to the scientific process. You can test a hypothesis without spending a lot of time worrying about what untestable thing may lie beyond your observations. But I have no patience with people who tell me that I am some kind of moron if I choose to work on the assumption that there is a single consistent reality beyond observation. Quantum mechanics was reached by phone and has no comment on the subject.
Posted by: Voting Present | October 2, 2007 5:29 PM
On this whole "who needs metaphysics" thing.
What I'd find enlightening on this point is an example of an interesting live conflict among materialist philosophers on metaphysics.
Posted by: Paul Crowley | October 2, 2007 5:32 PM
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 2, 2007 5:33 PM
Jason Failes' "vague and unsatisfying God-in-principle" is even more vague and unsatisfying when you recognize that science's bottom-up approach to understanding the origin of human mind, morals, and meaning virtually leaves a God in-whose-image-we-are-made without any mind, morals, or meaning. It's not only that God doesn't have much left to do other than "hold up" nature in some way. It's that the characteristics of God which make it similar to ourselves become more and more unlikely to have "always been there" as we discover how they grew out of simpler things that weren't anything like them to begin with.
"We get life from a Life Force. We get morals from a Moral Force. We get meaning from a Meaning Force. We get Mind from a Mind Force. We get Goodness from a Goodness Force. We get reason from a Reason Force. We get love from a Love Force. We get logic from a Logic Force. We get creation from a Creation Force. We get consciousness from a Consciousness Force. We get intention from an Intention Force. We get values from a Value Force." And on and on and on -- that's God. That's God stripped down into what matters to us.
Sure, you can have both God and science -- but only in those areas where you're not looking too hard. Science kills God-in-principle indirectly, by rejecting the Skyhook Force, and asking serious questions instead.
Posted by: Sastra | October 2, 2007 5:43 PM
Oh what the hell, I'll finish up with the dolts who wrote while I was writing (maybe any while I was writing this):
Deal with the argument if it's so weak, ignorant one. I made an entire argument about it, while you seem unable to do anything but the Dembski denial.
God, you're an incompetent bozo. The QM reality is hardly a mere replacement of billiard balls with the wave function, it is irreducible randomness itself, so far as we know at the present. I mentioned that, but like any denialist you merely bring up your pathetic "argument" and ignore what I actually discussed.
Apparently you also lack the patience to study these matters before spouting your ignorance, as well. Plus you pull the usual pseudoscientific practice of making shit up. I didn't say anyone was a moron if they choose to work on the assumption that there is a consistent reality beyond observation, I said that it wasn't necessary for science. That's why you're a moron, you can't read, or otherwise you're willing to simply lie about what I wrote (in which case the familiar dishonesty of pseudoscientists is in evidence).
Shoot your strawman.
Well, you dealt with none of the issues, other than through denialism and the equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?". Typical for believers in metaphysics.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 2, 2007 5:46 PM
Occam's razor is not a logical method of inquiry, it is a useful tool. It tells us nothing about what really is, it just helps make possibilities more manageable. Please stop treating it like a law of the universe.
Posted by: coathangrrr | October 2, 2007 5:52 PM
I'd be interested in seeing some definitions of "metaphysics." I wonder if everyone is working from the same page here.
Posted by: Sastra | October 2, 2007 5:52 PM
Glen D writes:
David Deutsch would point out that the Schrödinger wave equation is 100% deterministic. Things just look random because the universe branches, ourselves included. ;-)
Posted by: Russell | October 2, 2007 5:58 PM
Here is the output for the definition of "Metaphysics" from Wikipedia put through the now popular English Korean, then back to English, Babelfish translation process:
The crane above the elder brother what kind of is the basin of the philosophy which investigates the principal of the actuality which surpasses them of the science which is special.
I think that about sums it up.
Posted by: Fernando Magyar | October 2, 2007 6:02 PM
Glen Davidson: Don't leave! Your comments are great!
Besides, someone has to elucidate on Quantum Mechanics and I don't know enough big words. :)
Posted by: RamblinDude | October 2, 2007 6:03 PM
Posted by: Thanny | October 2, 2007 6:08 PM
What I'd find enlightening on this point is an example of an interesting live conflict among materialist philosophers on metaphysics.
What is a person and what entities get to be considered for personhood. This is extremely important in terms of ethics and political theory. Also issues of existence through time, which are a bit thick to go through in this short a space.
Really, I think you need a metaphysics of some sort before you can have any system of ethics or morals, or any political philosophy. Or, at the very least, a position *on* metaphysics, i.e. there is none.
And most of the non-philosophers who claim to not have a metaphysics really mean they don't have a coherent metaphysics.
Posted by: coathangrrr | October 2, 2007 6:13 PM
What is a person and what entities get to be considered for personhood."
I find Peter Zinkernagel views to be quite concise.
2000 YEARS OF FALLACIES
http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/DISCUSSIONS/EXCHANGES/PZ_N55_EXCH.html
Posted by: Fernando Magyar | October 2, 2007 6:31 PM
Except that this position cannot even be formulated without referring to basic concepts tied together by rules (specifically, linguistic).
What does it say that you espouse a position that negates its own claims?
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 7:20 PM
Glen Davidson, you seem very certain of your opinion.
According to Wikipedia (since I'm not a scientist),
* Science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method.
* Reproducibility is one of the main principles of the scientific method.
So, if science relies on reproducibility, isn't that a metaphysical assumption?
I ask because, if you think not, you must have a different concept of such than many posters here.
Posted by: John Morales | October 2, 2007 7:21 PM
No. Science (and all knowledge) is ultimately based on experience. Experiences precede theories, hypotheses, and ideas - infants do not perform 'philosophy' at all, yet they acquire methods for understanding and interacting with the universe by living in it.
That's stupid. I can imagine things outside of physics just fine. They're necessarily not real. From their perspective, *I* wouldn't be real.Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 7:24 PM
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 7:28 PM
John Morales:
It seems to me more of an epistemological restriction, that we can only know about the past those events that have some continuity in physical law with the present. If the laws of physics really did change last Thursday, changed in some substantive fashion that can't be investigated by reasonable projection from physical law we can figure out now and the evidence available now, then we'll never know it.
Posted by: Russell | October 2, 2007 7:30 PM
Wrong. QM is utterly deterministic, as a previous poster mentioned. The key difference is that it deterministically describes how probabilities change over time, not presumed certainties as previous physical theories did. Instead of predicting outcomes, quantum mechanics predicts the probability of outcomes.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 7:33 PM
Except that this position cannot even be formulated without referring to basic concepts tied together by rules (specifically, linguistic).
What does it say that you espouse a position that negates its own claims?
You clearly have no clue what he is talking about.
No. Science (and all knowledge) is ultimately based on experience. Experiences precede theories, hypotheses, and ideas - infants do not perform 'philosophy' at all, yet they acquire methods for understanding and interacting with the universe by living in it.
You really like to pretend to commit to things without actually committing. If science is based on experience then science talks about what exists and how it fits together and therefore necessarily includes metaphysical claims.
No.
You lack of ability to explain your answer inspires tremendously. How many times must you be told, saying no does not make something false. Nor does saying that a definition proves something about the world.
Posted by: coathangrrr | October 2, 2007 7:36 PM
"Religions that believe in a personal, caring creator-god are going to get smacked silly by any sensible scientific metaphysic anymore -- we know too much about the nature of the universe and the history of life on earth to make such a being an easily accommodated presupposition." There seems to be a problem here- what's smacking the caring creator-god isn't the metaphysics but rather the simple physics. Furthermore, that smacking isn't occurring within science, but is occurring a philosophical or theological level based on what information science has procured.
Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky | October 2, 2007 7:37 PM
"The crane above the elder brother what kind of is the basin of the philosophy which investigates the principal of the actuality which surpasses them of the science which is special."
Ah, but is it no true that truth that will obtain is also a costume abutting the possibility that makes the bankruptcy of the situation manifest, that it composes with the equipment, all real things by escape and all circumstances of a resulting material interaction? Well?
Posted by: Drake | October 2, 2007 7:38 PM
Hm, batting 0/2 so far.
To make it clear, I consider this to be metaphysics.
(I'm not saying those claims are my position, merely illustrative)
Posted by: John Morales | October 2, 2007 7:44 PM
Umm... no. Science talks about physics. That's as 'meta' as it gets. The validity of any claim is determined not by a mysterious metaphysics, but through reference to the behavior of the universe.
Establishing definitions determines how words can be used to describe the world, and what uses are incorrect. I don't find it surprising that you don't seem concerned about these goals.Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 7:58 PM
I am reminded of the Bene Gesserit Axiom, "There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments." Hence, the "meta" in our exploration of science. Makes sense, and still jives with religious supposition's impossibility.
Posted by: Charles Soto | October 2, 2007 8:00 PM
4 and 5 are epistemology claims and 6 is an ethical claim, but the first three definitely contain metaphysical claims.
Posted by: coathangrrr | October 2, 2007 8:01 PM
I don't understand that. Please explain.
Of course Lysenko was a pseudoscientist :-) -- he made up hypotheses but didn't test them and made Stalin send everyone to Siberia who threatened to test them.
Why? Induction is not scientific. Science is not inductive but hypothetico-deductive: it makes up hypotheses, deduces predictions from them, and then tests these predictions by observation. You can use induction to make up hypotheses, but for that you can use absolutely anything, dreams and aesthetic/religious considerations included.
Oh, that's what you mean.
The presumption that the observable universe is generally stable, not perturbed all the time by miracles, is itself a testable hypothesis (fortunately), and it is tested in every single experiment or other observation.
What prevents us from believing that the universe will stop being stable tomorrow is not induction, it's Ockham's Razor.
Well said! But why do you call that metaphysics?
The same holds for present and past, according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relation.
And? It's still real. It's even observable.
Because it happens to be ungrammatical in your particular dialect. :-)
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 2, 2007 8:06 PM
There is nothing about accepting the validity of evolution or natural selection that speaks for or against a deity.
It speaks against the "system of thought" that creates a deity.
It speaks against the claims people make for the deity in the dumb books that describe him/her/it.
Come on.
There is nothing about accepting the validity of evolution or natural selection that speaks for or against peanut butter.
So what! Be more specific.
Posted by: CalGeorge | October 2, 2007 8:07 PM
OK, Caledonian. Please disprove solipsism.
Posted by: David Marjanović | October 2, 2007 8:13 PM
Solipsism is incoherent, and is neither true nor false because it is part of the nonsense part of the sense-nonsense division. Any claim that solipsism is true, is therefore invalid and false.
Don't waste my time.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 8:17 PM
coathangrrr (#58), yes, though I think the point stands.
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