…and this is a 
Nicholas Wade has a very peculiar review of Richard Dawkins' book, The Greatest Show on Earth, in the NY Times Review of Books. It's strange because it is a positive review which strongly agrees with Dawkins' position on the central importance of the theory of evolution in biology in the first half…but the second half is a jaw-droppingly stupid attack on a small point in the book. Wade has a very absolutist and wrong view of the definitions of some terms, and he goes on and on, whining about a topic that he doesn't understand himself.
There is one point on which I believe Dawkins gets tripped up by his zeal. To refute the creationists, who like to dismiss evolution as "just a theory," he keeps insisting that evolution is an undeniable fact. A moment's reflection reveals the problem: we don't speak of Darwin's fact of evolution. So is evolution a fact or a theory? On this question, Dawkins, to use an English expression, gets his knickers in a twist.
Oh, man. Wade has really waded into it. This is a subject that has been amply discussed and explained and expounded upon, and I'm surprised that Wade is not only unfamiliar with it, but has thrown away half of his review in a misbegotten error of his own devising. Take it away, Stephen J. Gould:
In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"—part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."
Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.
If he'd just written that one little paragraph, it would have been mildly embarrassing for him…but he just keeps stuffing his foot down his throat. It's a good thing he keeps his pants on to hide the spectacle of his shoe poking out of his butt.
He [Dawkins] seems to have little appreciation for the cognitive structure of science. Philosophers of science, who are the arbiters of such issues, say science consists largely of facts, laws and theories. The facts are the facts, the laws summarize the regularities in the facts, and the theories explain the laws. Evolution can fall into only of of these categories, and it's a theory.
Whoa. Scientists everywhere are doing a spit-take at those words. Philosophers, sweet as they may be, are most definitely not the "arbiters" of the cognitive structure of science. They are more like interested spectators, running alongside the locomotive of science, playing catch-up in order to figure out what it is doing, and occasionally shouting words of advice to the engineer, who might sometimes nod in interested agreement but is more likely to shrug and ignore the wacky academics with all the longwinded discourses. Personally, I think the philosophy of science is interesting stuff, and can surprise me with insights, but science is a much more pragmatic operation that doesn't do a lot of self-reflection.
As for his definitions…sorry, but these ideas simply do not fit into the tidy pigeonholes Mr Wade wants to make for them. Evolution is both a fact and a theory. Trying to cram it into one category does violence to both evolution and his cognitive roll-top desk.
And Wade goes on with more! Here's where we really need philosophers; they could have much more fun shredding the blithe assumptions Wade flings about.
Other systems of thought, like religion, are founded on immutable dogma, whereas science changes to accommodate new knowledge. So what part of science is it that changes during intellectual revolutions? Not the facts, one hopes, or the laws. It's the highest level elements in the cognitive structure—the theories—that are sacrificed when fundamental change is needed. Ptolemaic theory yielded when astronomers found that Copernicus's better explained the observations; Newton's theory of gravitation turned out to be a special case of Einstein's.
If a theory by nature is liable to change, it cannot be considered absolutely true. A theory, however strongly you believe in it, inherently holds a small question mark. The minute you erase the question mark, you've got yourself a dogma.
I don't even like his dig at religion. There's a funny thing about religious dogma: it evolves. It changes slowly, usually, and it's not on the basis of reason or evidence, but more often to bend to popular expediency — I'd agree that it isn't knowledge that changes it, but the utility of accommodating a human institution to popular perception.
I kind of agree with the general statement that facts won't change (but as I'll say below, the facts do shift as they are argued over), but it is possible to change the conceptual framework, the theories, we use to integrate a collection of facts into a useful model in our brains. It is entirely possible for a new model to emerge that does a better job of explaining the history of life on earth someday. After all, it's already happened, and look, Darwin's theory still remained a fact!
Darwin's theory was expanded and replace roughly 70-75 years ago, with the incorporation of the science of genetics into that framework. Darwin was working with a seriously flawed idea of heredity, and all his ideas about the transmission of traits were wrong. Pangenesis was completely scrapped and replaced with Mendelian and population genetics. I can't imagine a more radical change than that happening any time in the future — we have a solid grip on the rules of heredity now, and what we expect is refinement and the addition of details.
But notice that what happened was a reversal of Wade's claim. A massive bolus of 'facts' were inserted into the theory, but the core of the theory itself, the idea that species changed over time driven by forces of selection, remained. Why? BECAUSE THAT IS ALSO A FACT. We have piled evidence high that shows the earth is old, there have been a succession of forms, that the properties of populations change from generation to generation, that all the diverse forms of life on earth are linked by molecular relationships that fit nicely into a tree of descent. A subsidiary assumption that generations changed by the transmission of acquired characters was discarded, but the big picture was unchanged…and was actually made sharper and stronger.
Any future hypothetical theory that is a better model must incorporate these facts of evolution. It's one of the reasons creationists aren't doing science, because they are compelled by ideology to reject the evidence. There will be no theory that denies that human beings are apes and the children of apes, no matter how objectionable creationists find that, because that is a fact. We'll argue over the mechanisms, whether it was selection-driven or mostly chance divergence, whether group selection played a role, over which fossil fits most closely to the main path of the population that led to us, etc., etc., etc., but the fact of our ape ancestry and nature is established.
One more quibble: Wade insists that every theory must retain that little question mark of doubt, and that is true. However, it also holds true for the facts of science; we can have a fair amount of confidence in the data, but no one considers a published result to be unquestionable. It happens all the time that different labs will wrestle over the data, and the interpretation of the data. It's one of the factors that drives science, that we work hard to confirm and disconfirm everything. What you'll actually find when you look at the daily routine of science is that the theories are generally stable and are not strongly questioned — it takes such a massive amount of contradicting data to overthrow a theory that it's hardly likely that your average individual or research group can demolish a major theory like evolution, or cell theory — and most of the haggling and conflict is over the day-to-day details. You know, that stuff that Wade would try to stuff in his pigeon hole labeled "facts".
Wade concludes his little diversion into fantasy philosophy with a strange dig at Dawkins that suggests he doesn't like his book much after all.
He [Dawkins] has become the Savonarola of science, condemning the doubters of evolution as "history-deniers" who are "worse than ignorant" and "deluded to the point of perversity. This is not the language of science, or civility. Creationists insist evolution is only a theory, Dawkins that it is only a fact. Neither claim is correct.
True, neither is crorrect…but then, I guarantee you that Dawkins does not consider evolution to be "only a fact." Only someone who had not read his books with comprehension could come away with this freakish idea that Dawkins is unaware of the "cognitive structure of science."
I agree that Dawkins' words are relatively uncivil, but I'd argue that they're too civil, and that we need more incivility. Wade does not seem to agree that creationists deny the depth of human history (I don't understand how he could find fault with the FACT that believing the world is 6000 years old requires blindness to 13 billion years worth of time), or that by promoting false beliefs about our origins they are not merely passively unaware, but are malevolently ignorant, or that using Gould's definition of a fact, they are in denial "to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." Those are the facts that Mr Wade claims to be able to recognize, but ignores in this case.
I also will not accept sad tut-tutting over a lack of civility when Wade so obliviously compares Richard Dawkins to Savonarola. Savonarola? Really? You compare a gentlemanly scholar who writes books to oppose the rising tide of lunacy in the world to a book-burning puritanical fanatic who opposed the Renaissance and sought the death of homosexuals??
Hypocrite.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Aquaria
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October 9, 2009 1:54 AM
Hypocrite?
PZ, you are far too civil. I would call him a pus-filled douchebag.
Posted by: raikoala
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October 9, 2009 2:10 AM
I love it when people use magazines and newspapers to virtually flail their arms and shout: "LOOK PEOPLE, I'M TOO DUMB TO READ!" It's what Mooney and Rosenau did recently and what reviewer of Dawkins' books seem especially prone to. They wear their badge so proudly, not realizing how it makes them look.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 9, 2009 2:12 AM
Actually, as a physicist, I prefer to use “fact,” “law,” and “theory” much as Wade says. But of course, we physicists do not have to deal with the equivalent of creationists, even in areas such as relativity or quantum mechanics (we have our kooks in QM, but their problem is that they take QM *too* seriously!).
Because the popular sense of “theory” seems to be ineradicable, the only practical cure does seem to be to refer to the “fact” of evolution, to emphasize that it is about as well established as anything can ever be in science.
I’ve always thought Nick Wade was a good guy: perhaps he thought this double review was a form of journalistic “balance.”
Dave Miller in Sacramento
Posted by: dannystevens.myopenid.com
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October 9, 2009 2:12 AM
Is there some kind of rule out there that when reviewing one of the Professor's works you must make some stupid remark or religious apologetics that dominates your review?
Posted by: Nick
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October 9, 2009 2:13 AM
Oh dear, a journalist and pop-science writer just can't resist the urge to dance a little with the big boys.
'Fail' is misspelt in the title.
Posted by: Feynmaniac
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October 9, 2009 2:14 AM
Mooney's Law:
When someone criticizes an opponent for incivility it is almost certain that during the process they will be even more uncivil.
Now if only it were a fact that we had a theory to explain this law....
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 9, 2009 2:15 AM
I'm only ~350 pages into the book so I might not come up to it yet, but where does Dawkins insist it is "only a fact"?Jerry Coyne in his wonderful book said it best: "Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth"
Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus
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October 9, 2009 2:20 AM
Reviews of this sort by Nick Wade,
Should be grouped under “frenzied tirade”,
Of minds hypocritical,
With intent, Jesuitical,
To argue a spade’s not a spade.
Posted by: mrcreosote
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October 9, 2009 2:23 AM
I think the real problem is that people use 'theory of evolution' as shorthand when they really mean 'theory of evolution by natural selection'. If we had competing theories of evolution, as we had before the modern synthesis was accepted, then it might not be such a problem, because people would need to say which theory of evolution they were talking about.
Posted by: arrakis
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October 9, 2009 2:25 AM
Did he even read the book?
I just finished it (and it was awesome, as expected), and Dawkins spends the early part explaining the difference between a scientific theory (evolution) and an ordinary theory (Nicholas Wade is a moron). One is supported by loads and loads of evidence, the other, well...forget my example.
Dawkins even substitutes the word "theorem" for "theory". This is because about the only things that can be completely proven as facts are mathematical (according to Dawkins and many others).
If you're going to write a review, actually read the book.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 9, 2009 2:26 AM
dannystevens.myopenid.com wrote
>Is there some kind of rule out there that when reviewing one of the Professor's works you must make some stupid remark or religious apologetics that dominates your review?
Yeah, I think there sort of is.
I wrote a review some years ago of one of Dawkins’ books on amazon, and of course I praised it, but I went out of my way to disagree with his saying that he would never debate creationists: that seemed to me arrogant and counter-productive.
And, then I started debating atheists myself in various Web fora, and I suddenly saw his point.
I did post a comment to the review admitting that he was right and I had been wrong.
Dawkins writes with such certainty and self-assurance that there is a temptation to prove that you are not just “sucked in” by him by finding some point of disagreement.
At some level, that’s fair – surely, no two human beings agree on everything, and pointing out differences of opinion are fair game.
But, Wade does seem to have gone overboard on what is essentially an issue of word usage.
Of course, maybe Wade is cleverer than we think. Suppose the general public take on the new book ends up being: “Well, sure, Dawkins is right that evolution really did occur, but, boy, he sure messed up on how he used the word ‘fact,’ now didn’t he?”
I think Dawkins can swallow some criticism on word usage, if everyone would agree that he is right on the substance!
Dave
Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay
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October 9, 2009 2:28 AM
Feynmaniac, you deserve a Molly for that.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 9, 2009 2:34 AM
This talking point reminded me of an episode of Dilbert where the exchange goes along the lines of:
Dogbert: "pfft, evolution. What a crock."
Dilbert: "evolution is a fact"
Dogbert: "then why is it called a theory?"
Dilbert: "there are scientific reasons, it's very complicated"
There's good enough reason to shy away from the scientific use of the word when communicating it to the public. Bring on theorum, though I think that's going to go down as well as the term bright.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 9, 2009 2:36 AM
Feynmaniac deserves a molly for a lot more than that.Posted by: Diane G.
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October 9, 2009 2:38 AM
Also:
“It is now actually misleading to refer to evolution as a theory,
considering the massive evidence that has been discovered over the last 140
years documenting its existence. Evolution is no longer a theory, it is
simply a fact (p. 275).”
From:
What Evolution Is
by Ernst Mayr
r=Ernst%20Mayr/103-6382184-4931001>
Basic Books (October, 2001)
I'm getting so fucking sick of philosophy/-phers asserting their superiority to science & scientists. Philosophy is opinion--sometimes, pretty stupid, pretentious opinion.
Posted by: Itspiningforthefjords
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October 9, 2009 2:39 AM
I'm hoping that (so far) ALL of these lukewarm reviews are just envy of Dawkins' wonderful prose and the polite-but-relentless strength with which he presents his convictions. I rather think that this is what has been happening.
Whatever, such reviews do allow me to - until the reviewer admits having misread this book (or just been a "dick" as a reviewer of it) - immediately dismiss any future comments made by such people.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 9, 2009 2:43 AM
I like to put it: 20% insight, 30% common sense, 50% mental masturbation :PPosted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay
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October 9, 2009 2:48 AM
@Kel:
Likely so, I just couldn't help marveling at that brilliant formulation!
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 9, 2009 2:49 AM
Also:
"Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection caused quite a stir when it appeared in 1859. Evidence to support evolution and natural selection, of course, has accumulated over time, and now science accepts that evolution is a fact and that natural selection explains very well how adaptive evolution takes place."
--Douglas Futuyma, http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/futuyma.html
And:
"Yet biologists, particularly those statured by the peer review and publication of substantial personal research on the subject in leading journals of science, are unanimous in concluding that evolution is a fact."
E. O. Wilson, http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/11/intelligent-evolution.html
So, let's see; Dawkins, Gould, Mayr, Futuyma, & E. O. Wilson state that evolution is a fact...but Nicholas Wade disagrees...Is that hubris or what?
Posted by: Michael X
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October 9, 2009 3:08 AM
Dawkins begins his answer of this silly and all too common misunderstanding (if we're to be generous) on PAGE 9 of his book. It's as if the NYT will let any toddler with a crayon write for them sometimes.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 9, 2009 3:20 AM
Itspiningforthefjords referred to:
>polite-but-relentless strength with which he [Dawkins] presents his convictions.
One of the things that does perplex me about the reaction to Dawkins is the claim that he is “uncivil.” Chris Hitchens can be uncivil. Limbaugh, Coulter, and, to choose the opposite side of the aisle, Franken can certainly be uncivil.
But Dawkins does not seem to me to rise even to being arch, sarcastic, etc.
He seems to me the very model of civility.
But he is also sincere: he really cares about science and he really cares about truth.
Maybe the accusation of “incivility” is simply his critics’ discomfort at the fact that he is simply honest, that he is not playing the kinds of status games they are so used to.
Perhaps a sincere, honest man is really too much for them to take.
Dave
Posted by: SEF
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October 9, 2009 3:46 AM
Nicholas Wade is repeatedly wrong about gravity too. There never has been a decent *theory* of gravity (people have yet to detect the proposed gravitons or gravity waves). It was Newton's mere *law* of gravity (a mathematical description covering the collected observations) which was overturned by Einstein's *law*. Ditto motion (where Newton's laws were already replacing a previous version). Newton had a law of cooling too - without having a decent theory as to why the law (roughly) held.
In science, theory is greater than law1. Though they both have important roles.
1 NB this assumes one is sticking to the convention that a law is a mathematical description whereas a theory is a detailed explanation. Unfortunately, there are some historical examples where people happen to have used the other ("wrong") name - rather like the inconsistency in naming toads and frogs (where frogs are usually the wetter ones and toads the dryer ones but not always).
Posted by: migration.wordpress.com
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October 9, 2009 4:05 AM
You'd think that Nicholas Wade, a science journalist by all accounts, would know better. But then again, most science journalists understand science about as well as I can play piano (very, very badly). The difference is I don't call myself a pianist.
Posted by: ryk
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October 9, 2009 4:09 AM
Feynmaniac @6
Hahaha... I can't count the number of times I have encountered this personally...
both:
Not saying 'good morning' to someone
and
failing to respond to a stranger's 'Hello'
Have been responded with someone (literally) yelling and/or swearing about how rude and/or impolite I am.
I'm just unresponsive and generally quiet, and don't much care to talk to people I don't know (especially meaningless crap like 'hello' and 'good morning' to strangers...)
people just suck
Posted by: bad Jim
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October 9, 2009 4:10 AM
I've always thought that the fact of common descent ought to be credited to Linnaeus, who classed humans as primates in the 1740's. Darwin gave us the theory that explained the obvious facts. Perhaps we could say that he gave us the law of natural selection, which is pretty damned important but not the whole story, explicitly leaving room for Mendel &c.
Facts are the bricks from which we construct the edifice of science. Laws are provisional plans - an arch here, a dome there - and a theory is the resulting structure.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 9, 2009 4:17 AM
I think the real problem is that people use 'theory of evolution' as shorthand when they really mean 'theory of evolution by natural selection'. If we had competing theories of evolution, as we had before the modern synthesis was accepted, then it might not be such a problem, because people would need to say which theory of evolution they were talking about.
...but, that's wrong, at least if you're talking about how scientists use it.
The Theory of Evolution is NOT shorthand for 'evolution by natural selection'. Rather it is inclusive of all mechanisms of evolution, including but not limited to selection and drift.
People so often get this wrong.
there are the many sources of heritable variability, like mutations, horizontal transfer, and sex (about 29 documented by my last count), and then there are the mechanisms that act on those variabilities to produce changes in phenotypes within populations, like selection and drift.
two different parts of the same theory.
Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus
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October 9, 2009 4:17 AM
I am gob-smacked. I cannot believe that Feynmaniac doesn't have a Molly. How did this not happen? I will have to pray for him (which should fuck up his chances forever)
Posted by: vanharris
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October 9, 2009 4:32 AM
PZ, I've just one quibble with your wholly justified diatribe: occasionally shouting words of advice to the engineer, who might sometimes nod in interested agreement but is more likely to shrug and ignore the wacky academics with all the longwinded discourses.
As an engineer, i do find it frustrating that even men of science debase the meaning of the word engineer, even confusing it with, in this case, locomotive driver. This history of misuse does have repercussions, especially for those of us who sell engineering services to the public, & as a consequence, even for those who educate engineers in universities, & even for the economic prosperity of whole (English speaking) nations.
Posted by: 386sx
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October 9, 2009 4:46 AM
He [Dawkins] has become the Savonarola of science, condemning the doubters of evolution as "history-deniers" who are "worse than ignorant" and "deluded to the point of perversity.
Dawkins was referring to young earth creationists wasn't he? Shrug. Anyway, yeah Wade definitely could have picked a better comparison than the looney Savonarola!
Posted by: Daniel de Rauglaudre
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October 9, 2009 4:55 AM
A scientific theory is the best explanation we have with the data we have.
Posted by: Cowcakes
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October 9, 2009 5:23 AM
I'm about half way through The Greatest Shoe on Earth, andn Totally agree with and can confirm comments from arrakis | October 9, 2009 2:25 AM #10
How you could possibly read TGSON and overlook the preamble that clearly sets out the framework and language of the arguments to follow is exceedingly bemusing. Unless of course your either a raving idiot or didn't read the book.
If only more books on science were written in such a clear and entertaining fashion. sigh
Posted by: Grant N
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October 9, 2009 5:34 AM
I think I said it before...
Dogma's a bitch. It breeds and bares canines too.
Posted by: Susan
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October 9, 2009 5:36 AM
Dawkins is uncivil now? Just earlier today, he was an accommodationist! I sure wish he'd make up his mind.
Posted by: SEF
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October 9, 2009 5:50 AM
@ Cowcakes #31:
Are you heading from the toe to the heel or vice versa? ;-)
Posted by: Prof. Henry Armitage
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October 9, 2009 5:52 AM
Off topic, but someone over at the Something Awful forum has given the Jesus with the Constitution painting a Lovecraftian twist.
Truly epic.
Posted by: Prof. Henry Armitage
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October 9, 2009 6:00 AM
I should have probably given a link to the original post too.
Amusingly, someone over at Reddit found a way of injecting it into the official McNaughton Fine Art web page: link
Posted by: Cowcakes
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October 9, 2009 6:00 AM
@ SEF #34
"Are you heading from the toe to the heel or vice versa?" ;-)
Definitely heel and toeing, get through the gear changes quicker that way :-)
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 9, 2009 6:05 AM
I've always thought that the fact of common descent ought to be credited to Linnaeus, who classed humans as primates in the 1740's. - bad Jim
Do you have any evidence that Linnaeus actually thought humans and other apes had common ancestors? Pre-Darwinians mostly thought of biological classification of taxa, and the homologies they were based on, as reflecting the design decisions of the creator.
Posted by: Tumara Baap
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October 9, 2009 6:06 AM
A scientific theory has nothing to do with the size of the question mark it holds. That is not a theory's inherent feature. Indeed a theory may be so robust that for all practical purposes there is no chance it will ever be shown to be wrong.
A scientific theory by definition is at the apex of a discipline as it ties together all known established facts. Centuries from now, as our knowledge would have exponentially multiplied, there will still be theories that aim to lay congruence to that knowledge. To confuse a scientific theory for some spectrum of certitude is to advertise one's stupidity.
It so happens that a theory can be very very strong. It may get tweaked and refined but will never be wrong. In the realm of science it arbitrarily should still be defined as a theory but in lay parlance is for all intents and purposes a fact. The theory of quantum electrodynamics or the theory of evolution are just such uber-robust theories. They hold no question mark WHATSOEVER.
Posted by: Cowcakes
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October 9, 2009 6:06 AM
@ Prof. Henry Armitage #35
A remarkable improvement over the original. Truly disturbing depiction of the ancient one.
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 9, 2009 6:28 AM
Yep, and about time someone said it like that.Let's all join in the chorus !
I'm trying to find that quote in the book, no luck so far.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe
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October 9, 2009 6:44 AM
Wade should absolutely know better. He is being disingenuous or willfully stupid. I was waiting his review to be taken to task by PZ and PZ did quite well - as have the comments herein.
What is up with capable people like Wade that should be defending reason and truth. They actually disgust me more than the people of faith who (1) may not have the knoweledge to know better and/or (2) have some mental block that protects their delusions and narrow views.
"Scientists" get some backbone. Creationists (professional ones) are dangerous; they are liars and charlatans. Attack them not truth-seeking scholars and gentlepeople like Dawkins. Honest critique is one thing - stupid babbling to play both sides is disgusting.
Posted by: Cowcakes
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October 9, 2009 7:01 AM
OT
Can't wait to see the exploding heads on FOX not the News
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/
Posted by: Ray Moscow
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October 9, 2009 7:12 AM
Cowcakes @43:
Oh, man. I was hoping Dubya would win this time!
Seriously, this is cool.
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 9, 2009 7:14 AM
Ehm, what??
Obama wins Nobel peace prize :
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/nobel.peace.prize/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Posted by: nodzou
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October 9, 2009 7:16 AM
Sorry PZ, but there is a flaw in your reasoning. while I am a dedicated reader and an avid student of science, I also study philosophy seriously and see great purpose in doing so.
Religion is an irrational abduction - it is 'seizing' a moment dogmatically, a claim that some momentary 'minding' of some exact situation has 'revealed' some exact 'truth' or fact about the world. It doesn't work very well as a way of understanding but does remain implicit in practically all cognitions about the world. It functions as the drawing of a mental map. (to be clear, in the popular lexicon 'religious' usually means an aggressive refusal to check one's mental map, either internally or externally)
Philosophy is an internal study of one's mapping, checking for internal consistency of signage. your map won't work very well if in one portion it uses bright yellow lines to indicate a cowpath, while elsewhere using the same marker to signify a interstate.
Science is an external study of one's mapping, checking to see if the map in your mind actually fits the terrain you inhabit. A map of Morris won't be much use if you are trying to find your way around Cleveland. A map of Mordor will be of even less use.
Philosophers who chase after engineers shouting advice are absurd, but mentation doesn't run on tracks. The guy yelling at the driver to stop, slow down, or turn because his map indicates that the autobahn down which both are speeding will quickly become a jagged cowpath clinging to the edge of a deep ravine, is not superfluous. Neither is he a useless egghead; if, that is, he is right. This study requires as much honest work as science.
No one can do philosophy well without paying close attention to those who do science well, but neither can science function without an internally consistent set of map. In other words, scientists also need philosophers to do philosophy well. The added value of science is that it is relentlessly pragmatic - you don't get away with bullshit for very long. But this does not put it 'higher' than philosophy, rather, this is merely indicative of its differing function.
While the review in question is clearly bad, and based in absurd argumentation that should have been left aside back in the 19th century when Charles Peirce and Chancey Wright first began making the same argument recycled by Gould, this does not mean that philosophers should sit quietly at the feet of the 'real' thinkers (scientists).
Checks and Balances have their place in all endeavors, not merely in the american national mythos.
Cheers from Charles University in Prague.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 9, 2009 7:22 AM
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is absurdly premature at best. However, given some of the past recipients, I'd say this particular Nobel has already lost all credibility.
Posted by: Ray Moscow
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October 9, 2009 7:24 AM
Regarding Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: I've seen "conversative" posters complain that the Nobel committee chooses recepients to "promote a liberal agenda".
To which one might reply, "That's certainly better than promoting an illiberal one."
Perhaps the conservatives would get more peace prizes if they weren't such warmongering, lying bastards? Or science prizes if they weren't overrun with creoidiots?
Posted by: Strangest brew
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October 9, 2009 7:25 AM
# 42
'Honest critique is one thing - stupid babbling to play both sides is disgusting.'
Methinks that in the majority of these so-called reviews of literature where the style seems to reflect a certain distaste of the religious and religion that the reviewer tends to think first of all about his job...then about popularity of his rag then tries to play the even handed fool to placate the more vociferous of the retards that might, or might not, have connections either with the editor the owner or the publication itself in some shadowy way.
It is just plain old fashioned cowardice of integrity and fawning to a significant proportion of an audience that has absolutely little idea or care what the content actually carries but get righteous and pompous about any thing that questions or dismisses their faith in woo in any way!
Tis the grand old intolerance that Christianity whines piteously about constantly but which they themselves practice on anything or anyone not on their particular delusional wavelength.
Including clowns like Wade that obviously had to scrape barrel bottoms just looking for something to depict as a negative in order to deflect possible flak for endorsing a book overtly Darwinian in flavour and a Dawkins production in particular...honestly if that criticism is the best Wade could manage that kindda suggests that the book is a wonderful read...he seems to have not found...or at least resisted... the creationist trait of actually distorting and twisting the thrust of the content...maybe because he is not quite as deranged as he pretends he is!
Adaptation in action...maybe a fine example of survival of the pay check !
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 9, 2009 7:25 AM
It would seem pretty much everyone on this planet would agree. It is a bizarre decision.
Still to come on CNN : NASA bombs the moon !! Stay with us !
Posted by: Ray Moscow
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October 9, 2009 7:36 AM
Well, Obama's peace prize might seem more credible if he weren't actually escalating a war (or two) that are well within his power to end immediately.
OTOH, after 8 years of Dubya/Dick, almost any other leader is going to seem like a combination of Einstein and Gandhi.
Posted by: Cowcakes
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October 9, 2009 7:40 AM
@ Rorschach #50
"Still to come on CNN : NASA bombs the moon !! Stay with us !"
Those Moonies deserve everything we can throw at them. What with their floating around up there looking down on us and hogging all the cheese. ;-)
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 9, 2009 7:42 AM
OTOH, after 8 years of Dubya/Dick, almost any other leader is going to seem like a combination of Einstein and Gandhi.
Yeah well, but giving Nobel peace prizes out just for the fact that someone manages to talk to other people in a civil fashion instead of threatening them with war and destruction does seem to kind of be lowering the standards a wee bit.It's not that he has achieved anything in any of the world's hotspots yet.(Well duh how could he have, he's only been in office for 9 months).Just seems awfully premature.
Posted by: Carlie
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October 9, 2009 7:43 AM
There's also sexual selection and frequency-dependent selection, just to name two. Natural selection isn't the end-all; if you talk to some scientists, like Futuyma, it isn't even the most prominent. Perhaps it would be more clear if we talked about "evolutionary theory" than "the theory of evolution"; having a different version of the word might indicate better that it's two different things.
And yeah, I saw that headline about the peace price and went "whaaa?" Talk about a completely political statement. But it's not like everyone on that list deserved it.
Posted by: tommorris
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October 9, 2009 7:46 AM
Wade is introducing a distinction without a difference. The words don't really matter here. Dawkins doesn't use the term 'fact' univocally. Anyone who is particularly bothered about philosophy of science will be able to tell from context whether Dawkins is using 'fact' to mean theory or to mean fact, just as anyone with any philosophical training is able to decipher in what sense people use terms like 'good' or 'ought' or 'true'. I've studied some of the philosophical literature around 'facts', some which deny that facts exist - not because anyone wants an epistemic freefall, but simply because you can get all the things which facts are supposed to get you in ontology with some leaner, less mental constructions (namely states of affairs). But I don't go around insisting that when anyone uses the word 'fact' they are talking nonsense. They aren't. They are using fact in a perfectly reasonable way. This is a problem with some people who read philosophy: they get very excited about it and then decide that the rest of the world needs to have philosophical language inflicted upon it at every opportunity. When someone describes a concrete car park as 'utilitarian', I don't suddenly shout back "Oh, what, as opposed to the Kantian car park?"
Wade says "If a theory is by nature liable to change, it cannot be considered absolutely true." Of course it can! Let's say I think I have good reason to believe there is a biro on my desk at the moment - I can see a biro on my desk. That may be liable to change - I can pick the biro up and walk off with it. But until that happens, I think I am pretty justified in believing it to be absolutely true.
There's some other stuff in the review I find rather clumsy: the bit about Dawkins' insults to creationists not being in the "language of science, or civility". I think that saying creationists are dumb is a perfectly fine use of the language of science (and truth is a defense to all but the most egregious bits of incivility), but even if it wasn't a valid scientific expression, does the fact that a scientist uses a non-scientific expression merit condemnation? This is a really easy and utterly dumb trick that quite a lot of anti-scientific people pull - they find someone who claims that they have an overriding preference for science or that the scientific method is the best thing going, and then find something they say and say "well, that's not very scientific, is it?" or demand breathlessly that they produce scientific evidence for that assertion. This is a failure of the principle of charity and a very cheap point-scoring tactic.
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 9, 2009 7:51 AM
I've gotta tell you Carlie, I'm plowing through that evolutionary psychology book like an ice breaker through the frozen Atlantic atm, it's hard going...:-)Interesting though
Posted by: Jud
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October 9, 2009 8:07 AM
SEF @ 22 writes:
I believe that should be drier ones - forgive me the momentary mental image of toads spinning in windows in laundromats. :-)
Posted by: The Science Pundit
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October 9, 2009 8:15 AM
Perhaps, but as I understand it, until Kepler, Ptolemaic theory still made the best predictions.
Posted by: Eidolon
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October 9, 2009 8:24 AM
When I came across this review, my first thought was "What a prime example of weak science education."
The whole business of data, observations, fact, uncertainty, hypothesis, theory gets really short shrift in about any science class, if any mention at all. After all, we've got all this content to cover lest we be thought slackers. I'm retired now, but if I were back in the classroom, I'd put a lot more emphasis on the relationships between these words and keep it up throughout the year.
Perhaps too many teachers have no clear idea themselves, lack general knowledge in the subject they are teaching, or are afraid of appearing pedantic by drawing distinctions between words. Hell, I've run into that on this site. Journalists only make the situation worse when they know jack about that which they write. And I thought Newsweak was bad. *grumble*
Posted by: bobxxxx
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October 9, 2009 9:41 AM
I agree that Dawkins' words are relatively uncivil, but I'd argue that they're too civil, and that we need more incivility.
For the professional liars (Answers in Stupidity, The Christian Dishonesty Institute, and other magical creation organizations) what we need is relentless ridicule, preferably from the scientists who are now just ignoring the problem.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 9, 2009 9:52 AM
Nicholas Wade is an inveterate tosspot, and I agree with the spirit of PZ's post. Nevertheless, I think PZ is confusing himself a little.
The main issue, as Dawkins makes clear in his book, is that the word "theory" has both a colloquial meaning and a technical meaning. "Just a theory" constitutes a fallacious conflation of the two disparate meanings. To circumvent this difficulty, Dawkins proposes using his coining "theroum" instead of the technical sense of "theory".
Dawkins also appears to be confused, because there are all sorts of theories in science which are reasonably well established, although not enough for us to compare them with mathematical theorems. For instance, we talk about the meteorite-impact theory of the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction. It's a highly convincing theory, yet not nearly as surefooted or precisely stated as a mathematical theorem.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne
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October 9, 2009 10:00 AM
There is no viable definition of "fact" under which descent with modification (to stick just to the hardest of the hard core of evolution)is not a fact. Indeed, few facts in science are quite so massively and overabundantly supported by evidence.
Also, it can never be pointed out too often that Wade has always been a tool.
Posted by: Tulse
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October 9, 2009 10:01 AM
The whole discussion of fact and theory seems rather unreflective to me, as facts are always embedded in theories, even if those theories are implicit. This is not some sort of po-mo statement, as the universe's ontology doesn't change depending on how we view it or describe it, but even the basic epistemic issue of observation is not simple.
For example, it is a "fact" that if I let go of an object above the surface of the earth it will fall? Not really, at least not in all circumstances -- I could, for instance, attempt to drop a piece of iron beneath a powerful magnetic field, and it will "fall" up. I could attempt to drop a helium-filled balloon, and it would float up. "Facts" always depend on the "all things being equal" conditions, and in many cases, we may not even know what those conditions are (e.g., I doubt that Newton would have encountered lighter-than-air balloons). "Facts" are abstractions, and we have to understand what is being abstracted to understand the fact. And what counts as a relevant abstraction and what doesn't depends ultimately on one's theory, even if implicit, about the relevant conditions.
Posted by: nanu-nanu.myopenid.com
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October 9, 2009 10:04 AM
RE: Obama Peace prize
That monster "Mother" Teresa won a Nobel Peace prize. The thing is worthless.
Also in the sign in I'm missing options (type pad is gone) and it wont let me sign in with movable type. Practically everything I do gets an error message. I signed up for 4 different sites trying to sign in.
Posted by: kopd
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October 9, 2009 10:05 AM
THAT evolution happens = fact.
HOW evolution happens = theory.
Seems simple, but for some reason it just doesn't sink in.
Posted by: Discombob
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October 9, 2009 10:08 AM
That guy you quoted in the past is right- atheists are a bore. I need a nap.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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October 9, 2009 10:08 AM
Because some people don't want to understand it. It makes building strawmen much harder.
Posted by: se-rat-o-SAWR-us
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October 9, 2009 10:17 AM
Stephen Weinberg, “Against Philosophy”, from Dreams of a Final Theory:
Posted by: strange gods before me
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October 9, 2009 10:19 AM
Somebody should have told Nicholas Wade to read http://notjustatheory.com/
It would have saved him a lot of embarrassment.
Posted by: se-rat-o-SAWR-us
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October 9, 2009 10:19 AM
Whoops, Weinberg is a Steven.
Posted by: scotth
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October 9, 2009 10:27 AM
I was looking for the original review by Nicholas Wade. I assumed it would be somewhere on the NYT site. So far, no luck. Anyone else find it?
Posted by: Darrell E
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October 9, 2009 10:36 AM
I think you have hit on a truly Universal Truth. Who would have thought that Mooney would be good for anything?
In addition to Mooney's Law, how is it that so many people think that as long as they don't use profanity that they are being civil? Are they really that stupid or do they believe that everybody else is that stupid? It is just as easy to be grievously insulting without the use of profanity as with. It also seems that people with this comprehension problem are very often the ones accusing others of incivility.
Perhaps you could add to Mooney's law "and when called on their own incivility will often protest that they did not use any profanity."
Posted by: raven
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October 9, 2009 10:44 AM
As PZ noted, evolution is both a fact and a theory.
The definition and data.
Evolution the fact. Life changing through time. This was noted long before Darwin.
Evolution the theory. How life changes through time. The current leading theory is derived from Darwin, RM + NS.
There are mountains of data and detail but the basics are simple.
Posted by: Ray Moscow
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October 9, 2009 10:48 AM
Somebody posted the Wade article over at RD.net: http://c0122981.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/091006NYT.pdf
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 9, 2009 10:53 AM
# 15: "I'm getting so fucking sick of philosophy/-phers asserting their superiority to science & scientists. Philosophy is opinion--sometimes, pretty stupid, pretentious opinion."
Nothing unique about that to philosophers. Every academic specialty has a guild mentality, one component of which is sneering at the folks in other guilds. (For a good example of a scientist doing this to philosophers, see the quotation from Steven Weinberg above.) I think that some of Paul R. Gross's habitual snark at everyone stupid enough to be a Humanities major springs from the same well.
As a thorough-going Humanities nerd myself (degrees in Classics and History), I've been struck more than once by a fairly widespread assumption among philosophers that there's something a little bit simple-minded about history and historians. Brian Leiter, a top-notch philosopher but more than a bit of a snob, seems to exhibit this attitude more than once.
On the issue of the value of philosophy to another discipline, I'd urge that what Myers says about scientists applies just as well to historians: most of them don't spend much time exploring the philosophical implications of what they do--they mostly just do it (practicing historians would laugh out loud at any suggestion that philosophers are "arbiters" of what they do). But those (like me) who are interested in reflection on what exactly history is have found much of value in some philosophers of history, like R.G. Collingwood.
(Collingwood, btw, resonates more with historians than many other writers because he was that rarity: someone who'd attained a high degree of competence as both a historian and a philosopher).
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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October 9, 2009 11:15 AM
Great input.
Posted by: Sastra
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October 9, 2009 11:43 AM
Ironically, I think that Dawkins mentioned in his talk at the AAI that one of the original titles for his new book was Only a Theory. I wonder if Wade would still have accused Dawkins of claiming that evolution was "only a fact" if the title hadn't been changed.
Why, that's the kind of thing Hitler would have said!
Posted by: Feynmaniac
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October 9, 2009 11:53 AM
I'll call it Darrell E's lemma.
@Everyone with kind words for me,
Thank you, and I can now rest easy knowing I'm in Smoggy's prayers.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler
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October 9, 2009 12:11 PM
... the language of science, or civility.
A friend of mine, working on a doctoral thesis on the westernizing of Chinese medicine before the Revolution, tells me that the greatest obstacle to participation in science there was the specific issue of civility.
It was, for educated Chinese, the grossest vulgarity to tell others, especially in public, that they were wrong. Learning and applying the techniques of science were comparatively easy, but the incivility inherent in science caused endless distress and resistance.
Posted by: CatBallou
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October 9, 2009 1:15 PM
Since I have nothing to add to the criticism of this vapid review, I'll just mention that I heard Prof. Dawkins speak at the University of Washington last night, and he was marvelous. I believe that he's sometimes called "uncivil" only because he's so calm and controlled. That really pisses people off! What could be more frustrating to a shouting, arm-waving fraud than an opponent who speaks frankly, in measured tones, and chooses his words carefully?
Also, of course, he's hot. Prof. Dawkins, if you're reading this, I was the redhead who had two books signed! I think we had a moment there...
Maybe not.
Posted by: Ryan F Stello
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October 9, 2009 1:36 PM
You know, when Dawkins put in a section of the dictionary definitions of 'theory' in what seemed like a HUGE font that took up 33% of a page, I thought: "this is a bit much."
Apparently, it tweren't.
Posted by: Mg
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October 9, 2009 1:39 PM
Hey guys, philosophy student checking in.
You need to understand the actual empiricist philosophy (so straight from the bat this is philosophy by guys who like have a hell of a lot of time for science) and the terms used behind claiming that "evolution is not a fact" before dismissing it. I'm not a teacher, but I'll have a stab at explaining it. And please, understand that this philosophy was NOT devised so that philosophers could look down on scientists. Most philosophers signing up to this kind of theory have a lot more time for scientists than they have for others within their field. It was also NOT devised so that theories are worse than facts, theories have a major role to play in this philosophy of science, it's just that they're more provisional.
Because this is an empiricist idea, we take as "facts" our direct experimental results or experiences. We take as a "theory" an explanation of our current observations which makes predictions about future observations. We assert a theory, use it to make predictions, then if we find facts that are not in line with those predictions then then the theory dies. The facts however carry over - they don't die.
So, take two facts - "I've seen a white swan in England" and "I've seen a white swan in Wales". We devise a theory - "all swans are white", which will make the prediction "I won't see a black swan". If I see a black swan, then I ditch the theory. But I obviously can't ditch my white swan observations and suddenly assert the theory "all swans are black".
Now there are a couple of things to say here, which I think relate well to what PZ is saying.
You might want to object by saying that if I say "all swans are white" I am making a factual claim - that there are x swans in the universe and they are all white - and so should be assessed according to whether or not it is a fact, rather than (or not just on) whether it's an adequate theory. But "all swans are white" evidently is not a fact in the sense used earlier (even if we'd never seen a black swan) - because there's no way that "all swans are white" can be reduced to direct experiment or observation, as you'll know if you've heard of the problem of induction.
I hope it's clear how this plays into what PZ is talking about. We want to say "evolution by natural selection" is a fact, for the same reason we wanted to say "all swans are white" is a fact, but we find that neither statement can be called a "fact" in the sense used earlier.
So why don't we just say "evolution by natural selection" is not a "fact" in the weird phi-sci sense of a fact used earlier, but we have good reason to believe that it is a fact in the sense that it is true of the world?
Unfortunately, you now have to give a rigorous account of what "we have good reason to believe that it is a fact in the sense that it is true of the world" means without using the above (falsificationist) account, which is a very difficult enterprise.
This kind of questioning was not made with the intention of denigrating science.
Rather it was made (at least by Popper) with the intention of showing science as being capable of continuing revision and change - and our need to remember that we should always work as agents of that changing, and not to prop up orthodoxies. The jist was that if I say evolution is true of this world then I may end up rejecting all statements that imply evolution is not true as contradictory, and so I need an account of why this would bad reasoning.
As a final note, these sort of tarring with a brush "all philosophers think that scientists are beneath them" statements can be kinda frustrating. There is a very substantial Humean tradition with many philosopher adherents that has continually elevated science at the expense of the more flowery aspects of philosophy for quite a while now - in fact it is a common approach amongst philosophers to argue that nearly everything legitimate that can be said about reality is scientific or (more apparently) logical, that overtly philosophical statements should be kept to a minimum if not completely removed, that comforting or intuitive philosophical statements can be reduced or deflated to statements more in line with a scientific viewpoint, and that most philosophical attempts to give an alternative to the scientific viewpoint or an extra-scientific view (flowery metaphysics for example) are either dead-ends or pure bullshit.
I'm not sure if I stand entirely in line with those guys, but it's certainly the case for me that the successes of modern science sooner inspire respect, and fear for the legitimacy of my own subject, than they inspire contempt. What inspires contempt is scientists screaming at all philosophers simply because one of us bungled the job.
There is a consensus that philosophy is broadly speaking a second-order subject while science is first-order, but I find it amazing that scientists see that as denigrating.
Posted by: Mg
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October 9, 2009 1:55 PM
I thought I'd add a little more, in anticipation of an obvious criticism.
Scientists can clearly do their job perfectly well without reading a word of what I just wrote. If they like they can do as Dawkins and just use a dictionary for their understanding of fact and theory, and then do their research according to peer-suggestions, existing conventions and their own common sense. I'm confident that they would be just as successful.
So, why Philosophy of Science? I'll let Bertrand Russell speak. (From "William James's Conception of Truth")
"We can imagine some person long engaged in a comparative study of libraries, and having, in the process, naturally lost all tase for reading, declaring that the catalogue is the only important thing - as for the books they are useless lumber; no on ever wants them, and the principle of economy should lead us to be content with the catalogue. Indeed, if you consider the matter with an open mind, you will see that the catalogue IS the library, for it tells you everything you can possibly wish to know about the library. Let us, then, save the taxpayers' money by destroying the books: allow free access to the catalogue, but condemn the desire to read as involving an exploded dogmatism."
Posted by: Steve LaBonne
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October 9, 2009 2:11 PM
Mg, if you really think that anybody at all, no matter how thoroughgoing an empiricist, really believes that "fact" equates merely to "singular observation statement" and nothing more, then you clearly haven't progressed very far at all in your studies. (Not to mention that you evidently don't understand the dense network of background assumptions that necessarily stand behind even such an apparently simple statement as "I saw a white swan in England".)
Posted by: richardrob.pip.verisignlabs.com
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October 9, 2009 2:13 PM
I can take courses in music theory. Let us therefore engage in a heated debate over the existence of music.
I prefer this example because it illuminates the difference between fact and theory even more concretely than the gravity example. There are still some cooks who deny gravity. I've never heard of anyone denying the existence of music.
Posted by: Discombob
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October 9, 2009 2:23 PM
Thanks, I do my best to be boorish.
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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October 9, 2009 2:35 PM
So I wonder how they explain pound cake then.
(I know, I know. But it's Friday. Feeling a little batty.)
Posted by: Mg
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October 9, 2009 2:53 PM
#84
Thanks for not paying attention Steve. I know the post was a bit long, but I evidently did not claim that fact outright meant "singular observation statement". I meant that when empiricist (and I'm here referring to anything pre-1950s, because that's the kind that comes up amongst non-philosophers) phi-sciers talk about fact/theory within science, facts tend to be singular observation statements, with theories playing an explanative/predictive role rather than being usbject to factual assessment.
And yes, I know that there are theoretical assumptions behind the simplistic facts of early empiricism, but I wasn't exactly planning on writing an essay long critique, more an exposition so that the general comprehension of what philosophers of science do and what some believe is of a level higher than "their opinions" or "bullshit". Unfortunately there is a tendency for bullying boors to analyse blog posts as if they had just arrived in their pigeon hole for a thorough marking, rather than as if they were semi-casual contributions.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne
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October 9, 2009 3:03 PM
You're just digging your hole deeper, by now claiming that you were merely referring to outmoded naive-empiricist philosophies and then stupidly insulting your scientist interlocutors (some of whom are more philosophically sophisticated than you appear to be, by a wide margin)by assuming they've never heard of any other kind of philosophy of science. Really, I don't know what you imagine you're accomplishing here. I suggest you get back to your studies.
Posted by: Mg
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October 9, 2009 3:20 PM
I'm not only claiming it now. With one exception (a typo) I referred to the idea solely in the past tense. Furthermore I haven't said that nobody knows what they're talking about. I've said that some belive that phi-sci is just opinions. I've said that many do have a naive view of phi-sci. These are both undeniably true.
Really, I do wonder what being an insufferable bore, desperately trying to infer from the intentionally simple statements of youngsters what is not now believed by (well-studied, presumably) old men has ever accomplished. But hey, it's not like I ever came calling for a name calling scrap, especially not with such a well-known outdated and bloated loser as yourself.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne
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October 9, 2009 3:23 PM
Well, now that you've chosen to convict yourself out of your own mouth as an utter buffoon, there's nothing I need to add. Have a nice day.
Posted by: Darrell E
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October 9, 2009 3:24 PM
I think there is some confusion on this topic. Some few people do seem to be making the claim that "the theory of evolution by natural selection" is a "fact" because of all the evidence to support it and the lack of evidence against it. Your swan analogy seems to be a good fit for this claim and I understand and agree with your point regarding this claim.
However, and I could of course be wrong in this, but my understanding of the claim that "Evolution is both a fact and a theory" made by many notable biologists, and described by several other posters above, is a creative phrase that actually refers to two quite different things. The "fact" of Evolution is that evolution can be clearly seen to have occured, not The Theory of Evolution, but that organisms have changed / do change over time. This is an observation in the same category as observing the color of a swan. The "theory" of Evolution is just that, the scientific theory, initially put forward by Darwin and since built upon and modified by many others, that attempts to explain and to make predictions about how evolution, the fact, works. This claim is quite different from the one that you argue against and I don't understand how or why you would assume at the start that someone like Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers would be claiming what you argued against when they state something like "evolution is both a fact and a theory."
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 9, 2009 3:55 PM
Go take statistics.
WTF? Why don't you deign to read the thread before coming up with outrageous strawmen?
Talk about hubris. Science teaches the rest of the disciplines this.
Mg, thanks for the laughs...& proving my point.
se-rat-o-SAWR-us, sincere thanks for the Steven Weinberg quote. One of my heroes & someone whose writings deserve far more attention!
scotth, thanks for asking a question I was too embarrassed to ask, and Ray Moscow, thanks for answering it. Anyone else wonder why there was no link to the review in PZ's post? It's one thing to be first to post on a subject, but the material posted about should at least be available to the post-readers...
Posted by: vanharris
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October 9, 2009 4:17 PM
CatBallou # 80 "I was the redhead who had two books signed!"
Erhhhh, that set off some temporary cognitive dissonance!
Posted by: Zetetic
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October 9, 2009 4:55 PM
discombob @ #66:
Not nearly as boring as the religious, at least.
Mission accomplished.discombob @ #86:
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@ Prof. Henry Armitage #35:
Nice find, very funny. I especially like how the scientist that was holding "On the Origin of Species" in the original is now holding the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead Series! ;-)
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I'll also have to agree that the reviewer clearly either didn't read try to the book fully, or is being deliberately dishonest to play the role of accommodationist.
Posted by: BlindWatcher
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October 9, 2009 4:58 PM
Not only does Dawkins begin his discussion of the "theory vs fact" topic with a large, bold font heading that takes up 33% of the page... But starting from page 9 of "The Greatest Show on Earth", he doesn't stop until page 18 (that's about 9 pages by my calculation).
That Wade can write a review and then claim Dawkins says it's "only a fact" is scandalous.
Don't you have to read a book to review it these days?
Can't someone be held responsible for this dishonesty?
Posted by: Charles Kuntz
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October 9, 2009 5:10 PM
Did Nicholas Wade even read the book? In chapter 1 - CHAPTER ONE - as in, the very first chapter, Dawkins distinguishes between the two definitions of theory. The first chapter is dedicated to making this distinction, and he even posits a new word: theorum (akin to theorem from mathematics) that serves as a word for a scientific theory that is accepted as a truthful explanation for a large body of facts that has not been falsified.
READ THE BOOK IF YOU ARE GOING TO REVIEW IT, ASSHOLE!
Posted by: BlindWatcher
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October 9, 2009 5:14 PM
mg said: (#82) >> Hey guys, philosophy student checking in. You need to understand the actual empiricist philosophy
Nothing personal mg, but comment #82, in it's entirety, was the most boring, useless, tedious, waffling load of tosspot I've ever almost-finished reading.
Is that the sort of stuff they teach in philosophy?
I was going to ask a hot philosophy student out on a date next week - but if she's going to talk like that, I'll call her and cancel right now.
Posted by: martin-z
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October 9, 2009 5:43 PM
Infrequent poster here.
There are a couple of people on this comment thread who make it likely I'll post infrequently in future.
I personally thought that the original posts by Mg (#82 and #83) were interesting, and at least attempted to explain what is clearly not a straightforward point. He admitted he was not a teacher, and he also made it quite clear he has no time for the "philosophy is superior to science" attitude. But he was, not to put too fine a point on it, shot down in flames with the sort of patronizing put-downs which I thought were reserved on this site purely for religious nutcases and creationists. Frankly, if that had happened to me, I'm not sure I'd have returned for more.
Steve LaBonne (#91) - Mg was NOT by any means an utter buffoon. He may be wrong about a few things, or got hold of the wrong end of the stick somewhere - I don't know enough about philosophy - but he at least put forward a reasonable discussion.
Diane G. (#93) - presumably when you talk about "proving your point", you're referring to your original statement in #15 that "Philosophy is Opinion". That's about as useful a statement (and as accurate) as saying "History is bunk". I'm not about to debate with you, but I'd love to hear Daniel Dennett on the subject.
All I'm trying to say is - you can disagree with people without being rude. (Unless, like closed-minded creationists, they deserve it.)
Posted by: Steve LaBonne
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October 9, 2009 5:58 PM
Uh, he did no such thing. Aside from the juvenile outburst @90 which was the antecedent of my remark about buffoonery, he completely confused the claim that descent with modification is a fact (true for any defensible definition of "fact") with a claim, made by nobody, that the entire structure of contemporary evolutionary theory is a "fact". He compounded this error by smugly insulting everyone who disagreed with his misreading, pretending they're empiricists of the most naive and simplistic kind (apparently in contrast to the vast knowledge he obtained in Philosophy 101.)
Feel free to go away.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 9, 2009 6:01 PM
Oh no, another tone troll for us to be rude to...Posted by: martin-z
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October 9, 2009 6:07 PM
#101 - "Oh no, another tone troll for us to be rude to..."
Blimey, I can't win. If I don't demonstrate Mooney's law, I'm a tone troll.
Isn't there a middle path?
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 9, 2009 6:14 PM
You hit the nail on the head there. They're being unfair on you, and it is definitely out of order for them to tell you to "return to your studies", as if you would realize the error of your ways if only you had enough training in philosophy.That being said, your first two posts are, all the same, and to put it quite succinctly, nothing other than, in a matter of speaking, as it were, unadulterated dogshite. (This sentence is, in structure, rather similar to your opening post.)
The essence of your argument appears to be that evolution is technically not a fact, because in principle confounding evidence ("fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian") could be brought to light. For some weird reason you spend the entirety of a jumbo-sized post trying to get here.
We've already acknowledged this trifling objection. We considered it inconsequential from a pragmatic perspective. To do this we don't need to be philosophical sophisticates in dinner jackets. We don't even need to be slightly educated in philosophy.
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 9, 2009 6:19 PM
Most of the Humanities is opinions. Some more valuable than others.
Actually I agree with Dennett in his slight disagreement with Dawkins, to wit that you can't excise religion w/o worrying about what will fill the "vacuum." But that's another subject. When he gets as off-base as Mg, though, I'll let him know. :)
Steve LaBonne said it well--why waste time on someone who hasn't even followed the primary argument in the comment thread thus far, but presumes to lecture us based on his own presumptions?
Posted by: Zetetic
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October 9, 2009 6:25 PM
@ martin-z:
Regarding Diane G.'s comments, IMO (I don't want to put words in Diane G.'s mouth) it wasn't that philosophy was worthless, just that it's not superior to science, as some would claim, since it lacks an external "benchmark" (through experimentation) to test it against. Therefore, science can be checked against reality, unlike philosophy which can be endlessly debated without resolution. That seems to be the point of contention.
Don't be afraid to post here, just get a thicker skin when it comes to what people say to you (and others). This is a blog where things can get heated, especially if you aren't careful about what you say and how you say it.One of the things that tends to tick people off around here though, is complaining about the "tone". Since it fails the address the substance of a dispute, instead it comes off as an emotional appeal. Another reason why it annoys people is that such appeals are frequently made by the religious to try and control the debate by keeping it "inoffensive". This of course means that appeals to be inoffensive tend to be met with scorn. Asking for more politeness is the exactly wrong why to go about it.
If you want to score points around here you need to focus on the substance of the debate, not the "tone". Focusing on the "tone" is the reason why apologists inevitably end up undermining science and logic since any attempts to accurately describe reality will inevitably offend someone, somewhere. As long as society is always obsessing over not offending someone's feelings, there will never be any progress.
Posted by: martin-z
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October 9, 2009 6:27 PM
#100
"...he completely confused the claim that descent with modification is a fact (true for any defensible definition of "fact") with a claim, made by nobody, that the entire structure of contemporary evolutionary theory is a "fact"...."
Well, not in so many words - but yes, you're right. Looking back at his post, he did appear to get that confused.
But it's a shame you waited till now to point that out clearly. Had you done so right at the start, instead of making patronizing comments about him "clearly not having progressed very far in [his] studies", you might have been able to put him right, and helped me and others understand the error he was making.
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 9, 2009 6:40 PM
Wow, Zetetic, I'd be much better off if you'd just speak for me ALL the time--absolutely no satire intended! In other words, you said it much better. Also, someone further up who commented on how one or the other academic discipline is always triangulating to declare itself superior to all others. Philosophy just so often seems to be the most blatant...
martin-z, at other times I've shared your empathy for what seems to be a well-intentioned (if benighted) newbie taking it in the gut...I, too, prefer more "civil" (heh) discussions, but there's always that one that just gets one's goat, usually the umpteenth iteration of the same condescension...here I go again. Please hang around and get a feel for the give & take here...as well explicated by Zetetic...Believe it or not, I'm usually just a lurker too...
Posted by: martin-z
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October 9, 2009 6:45 PM
Zetetic - I'm not sure I'm in the business of "scoring points", as you put it. But I take your point about the tone, and I rather regret my original post. But hey, that's how you learn.
I still think that rudeness should be reserved for creationists and religious nutcases; it would be nice if the working assumption were that people on here don't mind being told - politely - that they're wrong, and why they're wrong.
But then, I'm a Brit. Politeness is in our genes.
Posted by: Roger Scott
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October 9, 2009 7:00 PM
"Creationists insist evolution is only a theory, Dawkins that it’s only a fact."
Oh dear. Half right at best. One suspects that Mr Wade has delusions of grandeur. He just couldn't resist the opportunity to take a swipe at someone much more learned, much classier than himself. Or just couldn't think of anything sensible to fill his allotted review space.
Posted by: Zetetic
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October 9, 2009 7:15 PM
@ Diane G.:
LOL! No problem, I'm just glad that I didn't accidentally misrepresent your views on the subject.
@ martin-z:
Please understand that much of the reaction against Mg was the inaccurate representation of science behind evolution to make his point. While Mg may not have fully understood that at the time, it was a type of misrepresentation (perhaps inadvertently) that is also used by creationists to attempt to discredit evolution. It also didn't help that Mg's reaction sort of threw fuel on the embers of the fire that his post started. This blog has posters from a rather wide range of expertise across many fields, and assuming that the others objecting to Mg's post didn't know what they were talking about was a mistake on Mg's part.
While I can understand your sentiment, I find it more constructive to try and clarify things further and address the subject of the debate, rather than raising objections to the "tone". That was the reason I was trying to clarify Diane G.'s earlier comments.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 9, 2009 7:17 PM
Much, but not all, of philosophy is pure bullshit. Witness the postmoderns. That's thinking straight from the bull's rectum. Recently we had a discussion about an article on evolution by Alvin Plantinga. There were a couple of philsophicalists telling us non-philosophical types how Plantinga was just so fucking cool and neato spiffy keen in his thinking. The rest of us were pointing out various logical flaws in Plantinga's article. Ol' Alvin is supposed to be one of the lights of present-day philosophication. As far as I'm concerned, he couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag.
There are useful and occasionally interesting things that philosophers can tell the rest of us. Occum's Razor is an excellent example. But all too much philosophy is bovine feces.
Posted by: Zetetic
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October 9, 2009 7:26 PM
@ Tis:
Ugh! Yes, I remember that Plantinga drivel. I still have trouble understanding how anyone besides the religious can take him seriously.
Shorter Plantinga:
Postmodernism/Solipsism = The Christian God is true.
::facepalm::
Posted by: spaninquis.wordpress.com
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October 9, 2009 8:49 PM
I read that earlier and thought it was strange. I thought Wade was a Science writer/editor for the Times. No?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 9, 2009 9:03 PM
Zetetic wrote:
"If you want to score points around here you need to focus on the substance of the debate, not the 'tone'."
That's an optimistic view: you can be attacked here, and pretty viciously, on matters of substance, too. But the best way to deal with that, I think, is to revise your position where it's weak--and where it's strong, come back just as hard as the person giving you grief. If Mg returns, but on a stronger footing, he (she?) will probably be the better for it.
Posted by: Peter G.
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October 9, 2009 9:24 PM
Haven't read all the comments so I don't know if anyone has posted this but the real difference between a philosopher and a scientist is quite simple. A scientist is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing while a philosopher is someone who knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. The clash of cultures when these two anti-personalities collide (in say, a college grad student pub) is usually quite interesting to observe.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 9, 2009 9:57 PM
Evolution. Theory, fact, or both? I don't think answering these questions is as simple as PZ or Wade make it seem. It involves more than science and philosophy, and forces us to deconstruct notions of a pure science uncontaminated by politics, culture, industry, and the happenstance of history.
"Fact" comes from the Latin, "facere," meaning "to do," or "to make." In this sense, technoscientific facts are constructed not only by what scientific heroes do in the laboratory, but by the larger socioeconomic context determining which questions are worth asking and which research programs provide the best opportunity for investment returns to shareholders. The production and protection of facts costs money. If someone wishes to contest a fact, it also costs money to set up a counter-laboratory. Take a look at Bruno Latour's book, "Science in Action" if you're interested in how scientists and their networks of human and nonhuman allies construct facts.
As for theory, it is difficult to know where to start. Perhaps with PZ's statement that theories "integrate a collection of facts into a useful model in our brains." It is difficult to articulate how mysterious the work of theory is precisely because we must already have assumed a theoretical background to say anything at all about the world. Contrary to PZ's assumption that facts pre-exist theories, I'd argue that the theory (or paradigm) within which one operates determines what counts as a fact. This is only partially true of course, because scientists inevitably begin to notice after a while the unexplained "noise" which builds up around a once favored theory. Given enough world-class scientific experimentation, the history of science clearly shows that revolutions occur and theories collapse, leading to gestalt shifts in the way scientists perceive the world (see Kuhn, 1962). What was once the highest and most authoritative scientific fact can come to seem in a single generation to be the silliest sort of pseudoscientific superstition. Theories change everything, even facts.
This is not a metaphysical claim about reality. I'm not saying human theoretical frameworks literally create nature. I am making phenomenological claim by saying that in every attempt to know the world, the world changes us as we change it. Knowing is not passive observation, but active participation.
So... evolution. Fact, theory, or both? I'd say both. But there is a history behind the word "evolution" which makes it a problematic choice in this context. As much as I'd like to get into the various reasons Darwin refused to use the word anywhere in "Origin of Species" (until he entered it once in the 6th edition), for lack of time I'll just sum up: There are many evolutionary facts (like the genetic unity of all life), just as there are many evolutionary paradigms (neo-Darwinian, DST, Teilhard, Aurobindo, etc).
Posted by: DS
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October 9, 2009 10:13 PM
'Tis @111
What the fuck are you talking about?
Which 'postmoderns'? Every single one? And how do you define 'postmodern'? It amazes me that you think this anti-intellectual shit passes for argument. What if I said 'all quantum mechanics is bullshit.' You'd probably expect a little supporting evidence/argument, right? Or else you might suspect I simply didn't understand quantum mechanics...
Alvin Plantinga is in no way, shape, or form a 'light' of current philosophy. He may had had some success in the past, but nowadays he's totally irrelevant, not to say crazy. You've knocked the shit out of that straw man, though.
Well, I guess you're smarter than Darwin, then, who relied greatly on William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences and John Herschel's Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy to structure the logic and argument of Origin. And Ernst Mayr, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Stephen Jay Gould, Francisco Ayala, and every other major evolutionary biologist who has acknowledged the importance of and even contributed to biology (and I'm leaving out all the physicists, chemists, mathematicians, etc. who've done same).
And it's 'Ockham,' jackass.
Posted by: DS
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October 9, 2009 10:16 PM
Whoops--meant to say "contributed to philosophy" above.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 9, 2009 10:20 PM
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html#episode7
Link to physicist Arthur Zajonc speaking about Goethe's way of doing science. He speaks wonderfully on how cognizant the scientist must be of his/her own projections and assumptions when it comes to making facts and constructing theories.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 9, 2009 10:21 PM
Matthew:
I think you misrepresent the distinction between fact and theory, by equivocating on the semantics of 'fact'. Changing a theory doesn't change the facts upon which that theory is based; rather (potentially) their interpretation.
Changing the state of nature doesn't change the nature of nature (excuse me for employing your technique of natural language obfuscation, though I do it jocularly).
Specifically, I submit that knowing is interpretation of observation based on inference — or, as commonly understood, holding justified true belief.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 9, 2009 10:25 PM
That's not what his fanbois say.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 9, 2009 10:43 PM
John,
A theory isn't only an interpretation of facts, but a way of focusing the lens in order to foreground certain facts while backgrounding others. A good theory highlights an especially important relationship between certain facts, but in so doing conceals apparently non-essential elements (which may later re-emerge after further experimentation causing a paradigm shift). What ultimately ends up counting as an important fact depends on a whole host of contingencies, many of which extend far beyond what goes on within the lab (like who is funding it).
What counts as natural is highly contested, especially in biology, because the naturalization of, say, race or intelligence, can end up justifying sociopolitical oppression and denying the legitimacy of the many ongoing struggles for justice of oppressed peoples around the world.
The nature of nature is not fixed and already determined. This is one of the central insights I take from evolution (interpreted more widely than Darwin), that nature is not created, but an ongoing creative unfolding. Just look at the Faustian bargain called the Human Genome Project that has emerged out of the activities of our species at the beginning of the 21st Christian Millennium (as Haraway calls it). Are you telling me that the nature of nature is not already being remade by many corporate-employed biotechnoscientific engineers all across the globe?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 9, 2009 10:48 PM
Another philosopher pretending that he's actually got something interesting, important, possibly even vital to say. Why is it that philosophers spend all their time commenting on how their shit doesn't stink? But of course that's the great advantage of philosophy over all other fields of study, it's totally made up of opinions. Facts rarely if ever raise their ugly heads in philosophy, and when they do philosophers are quick to push them out the back door while admiring the rose-like odors emanating from the outhouse.
Plantnga is noot some bum sitting by the railroad tracks drinking methylated spirits. He's the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. According to wikipedia:
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 9, 2009 10:52 PM
Don't sugarcoat it, DS, tell us what you really think!
I was going to jump on 'Tis Himself myself for his wonderful mix of confident opining and misspelling; but I'm glad you beat me to the punch. I haven't felt this much Schadenfreude since . . . God, when I learned Jim Bakker was being tried by a Federal judge with the nickname "Maximum Bob."
Posted by: DS
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October 9, 2009 10:52 PM
That's all you can come up with to defend yourself--the fact that some putative internet commenters supposedly said nice things about Plantinga? Ergo, most philosophy is bullshit. Brilliant!
Posted by: SC OM
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October 9, 2009 10:55 PM
Oh, FFS. More pomo pantheist teleology woo? Citing "How to Think about Science" now? I listened to seven or eight of those and wanted to jam a pen in my ear.
Haven't we done with this already?
Take a look at this:
http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 9, 2009 10:55 PM
the fact that some putative internet commenters supposedly said nice things about Plantinga?
you mean, the several professors of philosophy who recently logged in to defend Plantinga on a thread about him on this very site? you might try searching on his name here; it should pop up.
frankly, I don't believe for a second you speak for the world of philosophy as a whole.
well, not that I even care.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 9, 2009 10:58 PM
Matthew:
I disagree.
If it conceals (or even ignores) any elements, it's definitionally not a 'good theory'. A theory has to account for all observations.
Indeed I am, for those are part of nature, not outside of it; self-change is not change of one's nature.
You of all people should accept there's no separation between actors and stage, in this, and that their actions are part of the 'unfolding'.
Like I said, natural (heh) language obfuscation.
If the nature of nature changes, it is no longer 'nature', but 'nature prime', and a different entity. Think ontologically... ;)
Posted by: DS
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October 9, 2009 11:05 PM
I was actually feeling a little bad that I jumped on you so hard, but now I see that you're just an arrogant numbskull.
Huh? Who the fuck said I was a philosopher? You don't need to be a philosopher to object to some internet dipshit making wild, uninformed generalizations about the foundational approach to knowledge in the western tradition. Have you ever even met a philosopher, by the way?
That's seriously stupider than things I hear my 18 year-old freshmen say. Define 'opinion.' Define 'fact.' Observe braincells sizzle as realization sets in that you're doing 'philosophy.'
Once again, you seem to feel no need to present any substantive evidence--say, a discussion of one or more of the philosophers/scientists I mentioned in my earlier post--to defend your ignorant prejudice. Dude, philosophers suck, man, they're like so... philosophical.
Fucking Wikipedia?! Seriously? Oh, well I guess nothing more need be said, then. I'm sure the anonymous contributors to Wikipedia speak for the professional philosophical community. I'm also sure that Notre Dame would never employ someone who let bat-shit crazy religious ideas interfere with his philosophy.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 9, 2009 11:10 PM
John,
I agree there is no separation between actors and stage, culture and nature. The HGP is nature changing its own nature--that is, evolving.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 9, 2009 11:12 PM
DS:
Oh? Is that quote factually wrong?
Surely such a defender of philosophy as you wouldn't employ the genetic fallacy... ;)
Posted by: Zetetic
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October 9, 2009 11:15 PM
Buddhacious@ #116
Unfortunately, this is one of those things that causes many scientists to disregard Postmodernism. With all due respect Buddhacious you seem to be conflating "theory", "hypothesis", and even "opinion with the term "fact" as used by scientists. Maybe it come down to a difference in definitions/usage?You are of course quite correct that whet is investigated is dependent on monetary and social factors (in fact most scientists would probably adamantly agree that such is true), but none of that changes the nature of a "fact" as used by scientists.
It doesn't matter how much money and time you use to set up a "counter-lab" you'll never be able to provide a credible scientific case that the Earth is flat, or the Sun goes around the Earth, or the mutations can't happen. That the Earth is round(ish) is a fact, and no amount of counter research will prove otherwise. The same goes for the other examples I've mentioned.
Dawkins' point is that evolution is happening around us right now, this is evidenced by speciation and the development of new traits within a species. That part is a fact, as is the evidence that shows the genetic and biochemical relatedness between all known species on Earth, those facts will not be overturned by a "counter-lab". If it could by overturned, the creationists would probably actually be spending time and money on actual research. That humans and all current life got here by means of evolution is the theory, which is supported by the facts.
So yes, I agree with you (and Dawkins) that evolution is both a theory (a very well established one) and a fact, the difference is one of context.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron Baker @ #114:
LOL! Nothing optimistic about it, I think you read more into my post than was intended. I've never said that you would be successful for focusing on substance. That would be like saying that if you walked onto a sports-field/court that you'll be a good athlete.All I said was that if he wants to make a point in a debate around here that it would be better to focus on the substance of the argument and not complain about the "tone" of the discussion. Obviously this because talking about the tone doesn't advance a position, and tends to generate derision since it's also a tactic used by the religious to control the debate.
Posted by: DS
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October 9, 2009 11:23 PM
Ichthyic @127
Thanks for the tip. I only made it through about half of the 1100+ comment thread, but I didn't see a single 'professor of philosophy' step forward to defend Plantinga. What I did see, however, was a whole bunch of people who identified as philosophers or who cited other philosophers who specifically pointed out that Plantinga is full of shit. So that's exactly the opposite of what you said I'd find.
Never said I did.
He/she says, typing furiously.
Posted by: Discombob
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October 9, 2009 11:34 PM
zzzzzzzz
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 9, 2009 11:36 PM
DS,
Okay, show us that philosophy isn't bullshit. Give us some non-bullshit philosophy. Ready, set, go....
While you're scratching for some kind of halfway decent philosophizing, why don't you show how the facts I quoted from wikipedia are wrong. What's that? You can't? But you ripped into me for using wiki. Here's what Cambridge University says about Plantinga:
Stick that up your rosy red rectum, philosophy boy.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 12:15 AM
Zetetic wrote:
"I've never said that you would be successful for focusing on substance. That would be like saying that if you walked onto a sports-field/court that you'll be a good athlete."
Maybe I'm reading this metaphor as more patronizing than you meant it to be--but it seems to contain this presumption: if one's attacked on this site, it's from complaining about tone--or focusing on substance, but not doing a very good job of it. I'll put this as bluntly as I can: I've been attacked on this site, and pretty viciously, for making substantive points, AND being right. (Or, to borrow your metaphor, I've done just fine on the field--but others didn't care for how the game was going.)
Don't misunderstand me: this is a place where you can (at times) have stimulatingly robust discussions--but I'm very disinclined to idealize what goes on here. Most who hang out on this site are just as averse as anyone else to being disagreed with--quite independently of the merit or demerit of the disagreement--and some belch out an amazing flood of verbal abuse when they encounter that disagreement--again, the merits of the discussion being quite irrelevant. Moreover, I think the ones most prone to verbal abuse are also most likely to call "tone troll." In other words, I'm not an asshole; you are for objecting when I insult you. So, again: some robust discussion, a lot of lamebrained logorrhea--a decidedly mixed bag.
Posted by: Zetetic
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October 10, 2009 12:50 AM
@ Aaron Baker:
Actually I had interpreted your previous post as being rather patronizing, although I kept in mind that it may not have been intentional on your part, so I didn't bring it up before.As I said before... I'm agreeing with you that you can be attacked for making a substantive argument. In fact I've never said anything otherwise, you just seem to have read far more into my prior posts than was warranted.
The entire point of my sports analogy was that you seem to have been misinterpreting my statement as meaning something other than what I actually said. All that I've said to martin-z was that complaining about the tone tends to only be met with derision, and that if you want to make a point on the subject, that you can only do so by sticking to the substance. I also advised martin-z that if someone wants to post here that they need a "think skin", something with which I would have thought you would have agreed. Yet you seem to have missed that point, while fixating on a misinterpretation of my other point.
Can you show me where in any thing I've said in this thread, where I've indicated otherwise?
With all due respect, your own problems with the others here seem to be leading you to read more into what I've actually said than was ever intended.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 1:01 AM
Maybe I did read much more into what you said than I should have. If so, I apologize.
I certainly agree about needing a thick skin here. Some days my skin is thicker than on others--not so much today, it seems.
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 10, 2009 1:05 AM
'Tis Himself, I couldn't agree with you more.
Notice how philosophy is always about definitions, more precisely their definitions (despite the scientific definitions offered in abundance upthread)? And their favorite riposte is always demanding "Define ____ !" "Define ____ !"
DS: more commonly it's "Occam," but I'm not going to call you a jackass for using the less common spelling.
Posted by: Zetetic
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October 10, 2009 1:05 AM
@ Aaron Baker:
It's cool... We all have days were we read into something, a position that was never really there to begin with.
I'm just glad that we could get that cleared up.
:-)
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 1:14 AM
'Tis himself:
We get it: you don't like philosophy; you think most of it's bullshit! Bullshit! Rectum! Fuck! Fuck!
You want non-bullshit philosophy?
Here, from Protagoras, On the Gods:
"Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be. Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life."
And here's Xenophanes:
"The Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, while the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own."
Rinse and repeat to get the taste of Plantinga out of your mouth.
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 1:38 AM
'Tis,
You really are a fucking moron. You keep making posts entirely devoid of content or evidence, and demand that I refute your brilliant argumentum ad wikiam.
I'm not going to try to make up for what was obviously a pretty poor education--somehow you strike me as someone who isn't worth the trouble. On the off chance I'm wrong, though, why don't you start with Aristotle. If that's too esoteric for you, try (and I'm just thinking of philosophy of biology here) David Hull, or Elliott Sober, or Philip Kitcher, or John Beatty, or Kim Sterelny, or Bill Wimsatt, or Ron Amundson, or Ken Waters, or Lisa Lloyd, or... I could go on and on.
There. Now I expect an informed, rational reply indicating how each and every one of those philosophers is 'bullshit.' Because you wouldn't make claims about things you didn't know the first thing about, would you? I guess if you already know it's bullshit, you don't need to bother reading any. Gee, who does that remind me of...? Oh yeah, I know, CREATIONISTS!
And get it through your thick skull that I'm not a philosopher. You don't even know that I'm a 'boy'--not that it should deter you from fantasizing about anal rape. You really meet the most cultured people on this blog...
Oh, and Diane, actually the most common spelling is 'Ockham,' but 'Occam' is an accepted variant.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 1:49 AM
DS,
This seems like too much fun, hope you don't mind me joining in. I'm even willing to self-identify as a philosopher, and not just to make it more fun for 'Tis Himself.
To add to your list of philosophers of biology (or those who have written extensively on biology) that 'Tis might want to take a thorough whiff of (and get back to us about): Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Hans Jonas, Donna Haraway, and Etienne Gilson (I especially recommend Gilson's "From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species, and Evolution").
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 2:01 AM
DS:
Names aren't philosophy.
Google shows otherwise. Can you go beyond nomenclature?
--
Buddhacious:
And quite a philosopher... exempli gratia:
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 10, 2009 2:03 AM
Not in science, when coupled with "Razor." At least here in the U.S. ...
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 2:07 AM
John,
Perhaps I should be paying you for all the advertising. You've quoted a piece more poetic than philosophical, though. A more appropriate example of my philosophical approach would be found here: http://karmabuster.gaia.com/blog/2008/8/enactivism_integral_theory_and_21st_century_spirituality
Posted by: martin-z
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October 10, 2009 2:18 AM
Diane G.; John Morales; DS; Tis' Himself;
It may well be arguable that it's either Occam or Ockham. But Tis' Himself first actually used Occum....
(I know I said I wasn't into point-scoring, but I couldn't resist this one.)
But seriously, William of Occam/Ockham lived in England in the 14th Century. Spelling was purely a matter of opinion then, and there was no consistency. Given that, it's reasonable to say that both - arguably all three - are correct. Or, at least, not wrong.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 2:24 AM
martin-z, DS said "the most common spelling".
--
Buddhacious @146, you're welcome. :)
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 2:28 AM
From my position - it seems that the problem is not that philosophy is a useless discipline, rather as a mode of understanding nature it is overreached. i.e. people trying to solve problems like consciousness by sitting down and thinking about the issue, trying to derive thought experiments to solve the problem, when really they should be in the neuroscience classrooms looking at how the mind works. It's assertion without evidence or even with evidence to the contrary.No harm to say that thinking about thinking can help with the matter, but there's an overreach in the same way that economists talk about climate change ;)
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 10, 2009 2:41 AM
Very well said, Kel.
Though I would go further and suggest that once one looks at the science, the sort of philosophy you're describing (which is NOT that of Dennett, Pennock, etc.) does indeed become not just unnecessary but also pointless. A hypothesis we do not need...
As far as philosophy of science, I get plenty from scientists themselves: Sagan, Lewis Thomas, Weinberg, E. O. Wilson, Gould, Dawkins, Lewontin, Sokal, Einstein, Hawking, Feynman, Diamond, ad infinitum. It's always struck me as pompous to propose that scientists are unaware of the broader import of their endeavors, or of the cultural milieu they're embedded in...
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 2:51 AM
And on that comment about thought experiments in consciousness, that was taken from a philosopher on the Philosophy Bites podcast (a very good podcast, well worth listening to) where a philosopher talking on consciousness decried that only philosophy has the power to solve the problem of consciousness. It's not me just having a blind jab at the discipline.
I remember reading an article talking about x-phi (short for extreme philosophy) where a new wave of philosophers are mixing traditional ways of doing philosophy with evidence. After reading the article, I was left wondering: isn't that just doing science?
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 10, 2009 3:14 AM
Literally lol!
Extreme philosophy...well, it might be more interesting if they were also flipping snowboards...
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 3:17 AM
Kel,
What is it about neuroscience classrooms that gives them direct access to "the mind"? The fluorescent lights? Understanding consciousness isn't only an empirical endeavor, though certainly neuroscience is going to be an intimate component in any robust theory of consciousness; nor can consciousness be understood solely with private, inner contemplation. The mystery of consciousness is also the mystery of ourselves and our relationships to others, of our own being-toward-death and the meaning (if any) of our individual and collective lives. Philosophy is one way into this more existential (rather than scientific) conversation. It isn't about evidence proving facts about that mythical place called "Nature" supposed to exist independent of human subjectivity. Philosophy allows us to question whether such dualisms as that between "mind" and "nature" should be constructed in the first place. Science isn't immune to deficient ways of thinking that might get in the way of its view of "Nature." Objectivity is a philosophical achievement. The accumulation of scientific facts is its effect.
Scientists usually don't make the best philosophers of science, at least if you're at all interested in the possibility that science may be in need of some healthy criticism. Scientists tend to self-congratulate, and so they should. That's how culture's sustain themselves. But to see what sorts of institutionalized assumptions they may be making, it pays to have cross-cultural observation (ie, anthropology of science, STS studies, literary, etc.).
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM
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October 10, 2009 3:40 AM
Er, how do you know? Right now you're doing just what the creationists have done all along - demand that, because we don't fully understand something via science (yet), we must automatically assume that the answer is something supernatural or mystical.
You may be right, but to assume so simply because of a gap in the current knowledge is a fallacy.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 3:46 AM
Thank you for completely missing my point, and my problem with the philosophical matters. The fluorescent lights? lol. No. But come up with any theory of consciousness that maps to our brains without actually looking at our brains and I'll give you all my possessions. You just can't do it, instead you have to work with what we have. You need to understand how the mind works, how the neurons fire in the brain, how signal is processed, how memory is stored, etc. Yes it goes beyond the empirical, but it needs an empirical grounding - which is my entire point!What is it about neuroscience classrooms that give them access to the mind? The information collected in the discipline is directly related to the concept they are trying to explain!
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 3:49 AM
Wowbagger,
I assume understanding consciousness will involve more than just empirical investigation because empiricism is itself only a particular shade of the total spectrum of consciousness.
Perhaps the testimony of a philosopher is appropriate here... William James from "Varieties of Religious Experience":
"...our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite discarded. How to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness."
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 3:55 AM
Kel,
I don't think consciousness will be understood by attempting to map it to the brain. Consciousness isn't in the head. Check out Alva Noe's book "Out of Our Heads: Why you are not your brain and other lessons from the biology of consciousness." Or just read my review of it: http://karmabuster.gaia.com/blog/2009/9/out-of-our-heads-by-alva-no
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 3:59 AM
What? What exactly do you mean by this?Posted by: Wowbagger, OM
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October 10, 2009 4:06 AM
But you have no reason to believe that other than there is currently no neuroscientific finding to refute it. It's woo of the gaps, nothing more. A thousand quotes from a hundred authors isn't going to change that fact.
Show me that consciousness can exist independent of a brain and then maybe you'll have something.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 4:15 AM
Kel,
I mean that the brain, while necessary, is not sufficient for consciousness. This means, first of all, that the brain is embodied, and second, that it is embedded in a dynamic field of activity called the world. All three--brain, body, and world are necessary for consciousness.
Color perception, for example, cannot be understood solely by reference to neural patterns. No matter how hard you look, you won't find my experience of blue, nor an explanation for it, by looking in my brain. To understand blueness, you'd also need to consider the actual lighting situation around me--the earth upon which and atmosphere within which I am able to look up and see blue. In this way, consciousness of whatever sort is a non-local event forcing us to call into question the theoretical separation between organisms and their environment.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 4:25 AM
Wowbagger,
I don't need to wait for the neuroscientific jury to return their decision as to whether there are other forms of consciousness than the empirical sort. I am going to sleep in a few minutes and will personally experience varying degrees of hypnagogic consciousness, followed by dream states of various sorts, and only return to a sort of consciousness capable of careful empirical observation of the sensory world upon awakening again tomorrow. I (and no doubt all of us) know from personal experience that consciousness is quite malleable and can be altered by the slightest emotional provocation, pharmacological supplement, or spiritual epiphany.
Posted by: shatfat
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October 10, 2009 4:32 AM
vanharris, you first:
The term is locomotive operator. You're welcome.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM
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October 10, 2009 4:33 AM
I (and no doubt all of us) know from personal experience that consciousness is quite malleable and can be altered by the slightest emotional provocation, pharmacological supplement, or spiritual epiphany.
This indicates there's very little point bothering to engage you on this issue any further. You're too deep in the woo to think clearly.
Posted by: shatfat
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October 10, 2009 4:41 AM
@68
post "against philosophy"
*standing ovation*
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 4:51 AM
Oh boy. Now you're playing around with the definition of 'consciousness'.
You're just playing with words, but only making platitudes.
The world is, so its necessity is moot.
Everything physical is definitionally "embodied", and "embedded in a dynamic field of activity called the world".
Your response doesn't address your earlier quoted claim.
Mysterianism.
I can't in practice, but that doesn't establish I can't even in principle. IOW, you're just guessing.
You're making an analogy between consciousness and a quale (which is defined as a property of consciousness)? Weird. That's like making an analogy between an organism and one of its organs.
Playing with words again.
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 10, 2009 5:09 AM
We could waste less time if we just defined a new class of troll: philosophy troll.
There.
Don't feed the trolls.
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 5:26 AM
Philosophers: purveyors of word salad - huge mounds of pretentiously arranged but largely indigestible stuff, which leaves behind a bad taste and has no nutritional value or other redeeming feature.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 5:42 AM
Okay, it feels like you are playing with definitions here. So just to be clear on this, you agree that all is brain activity - rather that it's the combination of brain activity acting in an environment through the external agent that combines to make consciousness. Still this doesn't actually take away from my point - that ultimately you're going to have to understand the brain in order to understand the nature of consciousness. See, to me you're making a lot of empirical claims here - and this is exactly my point. Is my red the same as your red? I don't know, but surely such a question warrants empirical investigation. One experiment recently that comes to note is giving colour-blind monkeys the ability to see colour. Such experiments as this directly relate to the problem that you're saying is beyond the empirical. And surely this experiment has to be taken into account when talking on the nature of consciousness.Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 10, 2009 5:50 AM
Philosophers: purveyors of word salad - huge mounds of pretentiously arranged but largely indigestible stuff, which leaves behind a bad taste and has no nutritional value or other redeeming feature. - SEF
SEF: ignorant idiot.
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 6:06 AM
Knockgoats: habitually dishonest poster.
Posted by: Matt Penfold
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October 10, 2009 6:45 AM
SEF seems to have confused philosophy for theology.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 10, 2009 6:53 AM
OK SEF, identify one instance of my alleged dishonesty. Your ludicrous dismissal of the entirety of philosophy is a clear instance of your ignorant idiocy.
Posted by: rolanlegargeac
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October 10, 2009 7:48 AM
Nick #5
Well fluck me ! So ilt isn't ! How elmbarassing ! Plop science indeed !
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 7:50 AM
You are very clearly dishonest in your last two posts - #169 and #172. I can cite my earlier post in this thread, #22, as trivial evidence of your untruthfulness in #169 but the rest of my posts are also credible evidence of it.
I have observed you to behave in that dishonest manner whenever you don't have a valid argument to make (and particularly when part of your personal "religion" is threatened). You were the same way in your previous incarnation here (eg when falsely accusing me of the thing you yourself had actually done!) and you still are now. It does seem to be habitual with you.
Of course, many other people here may be too ignorant (eg poor in memory) or idiotic/foolish (eg bothering to think things out properly) or dishonest (eg through the vice of loyalty) to see it or admit it. That would certainly be my expectation of the majority of humans.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 7:54 AM
Gadzooks, I's iggerant 'bout philosophicizing 'cause I misspelled the name of a small village in Surrey.
As John Morales pointed out, giving a list of names is not giving non-bullshit examples of philosophy. In response, I give (in John's honor), the following: Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh, Mark Taylor, David Boon, Greg Chappell, Sir Don Bradman, RN Harvey, KD Walters, Ian Chappell, Michael Slater, WM Lawry, and Ricky Ponting. This list* is as meaningful as the one you gave.
As for how meaningless postmodern philosophialing is, I offer the Sokal Hoax. A postmodernist journal published a paper that was utterly nonsensical yet filled with jargon. The paper was published not on the basis of whether it was correct or made sense, but simply because of who wrote it and how it sounded. If it's easy to get something like that published, then the rigor of philosophicalization cannot even pretend to be high.
*It is, of course, Australian batsmen who have scored over 5000 test runs.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 8:09 AM
'Tis Himself,
I agree that philosophy is generally worthless (at least academic philosophy -- philosophizing in the broad sense is something we do all the time, but it requires no academic training). To insist, however, that it is all worthless, without any exception, is just an incredible testament to nothing but your own abject ignorance. Of course, idiotic statements are fine and dandy as long as you're a "respected" member of the community.Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 8:13 AM
If you look at my original post, #111, you will discover that I didn't make that claim.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM
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October 10, 2009 8:18 AM
'Tis Himself wrote:
At this point, 'Tis, I love you about as much as a straight man can love another man.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 8:25 AM
Hey, Knockgoats, you chronically disingenuous, little sanctimonious fuck. Does it not occur to you that 'Tis Himself has advocated essentially the same position regarding philosophy as SEF? Funny how for SEF, his "ludicrous dismissal of the entirety of philosophy is a clear instance of [his] ignorant idiocy", but not so for 'Tis Himself.
The constant double standards on this blog never cease to amaze me.
Posted by: Mr T
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October 10, 2009 8:31 AM
First I have to note this amusing bit:
That amounts to an insult of poetry. If it is supposed to be poetic, then I'd criticize your ineffective use of form and sound, distinct lack of imagery, and overwhemingly prosaic and dialectic language. Muddle-headed, sentimental analogies about love do not a poem make. For that matter, I'd also criticize whatever philosophy of art generates such meaningless dribble. In other words, I haven't yet become a very big fan of your "poetry".Buddhacious #146:
Otherwise, Buddhacious, I will provisionally infer, after a cursory examination of your copious piles of bullshittery, that your brand of philosophizing gives True Philosophizing a bad name.
Still, I have to wonder: do you fall into an abyss of solipsism every time you contemplate the external "myths" of gravity or the existence of your parents? No doubt philosophical "rigor" requires it; or so you might assume, if the entire edifice of philosophy were not also apparently a mythical construct of the "mind" that isn't in your head, or perhaps of that most perfect of disembodied minds, [insert favorite deity/transcendental-something-or-other here]. Of course it's also just plain obvious that some kind of supernatural stuff follows from the "hard problem", which is not at all a mix of hand-waving and arguments from ignorance.
Yep. Philosophy sure can ask whether mind-body-dualism should be constructed. Somebody wake me up if philosophy without evidence ever gets around to the part about finding the answer.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 8:37 AM
I agree that neuroscience doesn't (yet) have a monopoly on the mind. Neuroscientists already have piles and piles of data, and yet with few exceptions don't seem all that interested in working out theories to tie the data together. (It's always "we need to do more experiments".) I'm not sure, though, what makes you think philosophy will do any better. Philosophers have been debating the mind and the mind-body problem since at least Descartes, and they don't seem to have made the slightest inch of progress. (Maybe with the exception of someone like Daniel Dennett, who's arguably as much a scientist as a philosopher.)Some workers in cognitive science, such as Jeff Hawkins, believe it's mathematicians, engineers and physicists that provide the best theoretical alternative to neuroscientists. I wouldn't be surprised. The power of mathematics has been established time and time again. "The power of academic philosophy" -- not so much.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 10, 2009 8:40 AM
Hyperon,
'Tis himself said:
"Much, but not all, of philosophy is pure bullshit."
He is, in my view, correct. He is not, unlike SEF, an ignorant idiot, so he knows better than to make the sort of universal and unqualified dismissal of philosophy which SEF did, and which you falsely attribute to him. Of couse, SEF himself is just nowhere in the ignorant idiot stakes compared to you - you needn't feel threatened!
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 8:46 AM
Look at #135, where 'Tis challenges DS to furnish "some non-bullshit philosophy". As if it's a reasonable demand. His position is clearly not much different from that of SEF.
Posted by: rolanlegargeac
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October 10, 2009 8:55 AM
Steve LaBonne #84
Yay Steve ! I wanted to hit the bg with a tpt !
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 9:00 AM
And thus far Knockgoats has been notably unable to provide a valid argument to support his quasi-religious faith in philosophy - hence his flailing around and flinging untruths instead. It's quite revealing to those paying proper attention (unfortunately always the minority).
Posted by: rolanlegargeac
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October 10, 2009 9:04 AM
BlindWatcher #98
She will and you won't because she might. And since you're already blind I infer you have disappointment well in hand.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 9:20 AM
It's as reasonable as DS's original comment to me:
You might notice (or might not, after your lame attempts to justify your racism, I'm not impressed by your intelligence) that DS was a bit short on specifics of how great philosophy is but heavy on insults. It's hard to refute an argument when nothing but derision is offered.
Posted by: rolanlegargeac
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October 10, 2009 9:31 AM
DS #142
You forgot "Mwah hahahaha".
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 10:21 AM
'Tis,
I guess as long as you keep moving the goalposts, you'll never have to admit you were wrong or at least hasty in your generalization. You pretty clearly asked me to "Give us some non-bullshit philosophy." So I provided you with the names of a bunch of philosophers who are, in my opinion, decidedly 'non-bullshit.'
At that point, you could have conceded that you aren't all that familiar with philosophy of science, and even said 'maybe I'll check some of that out--I might learn something.' But no: now you insist that the challenge was for me to actually spell out the individual philosophical positions those philosophers represent. Because you're too intellectually lazy to do it yourself. And other commenters here think that's just dandy.
Do you really not see that you're doing exactly what creationists do when challenged to read about evolution? The irony--and your anti-intellectualism--is just stunning. David Hull, for example, has written on the subject of units of selection in a way that has pretty universally been acknowledged as useful to biologists. You might really and genuinely learn something if you read him. But I guess it feels much better to claim superiority, especially when you've got an echo chamber to listen to yourself in.
I'd just ask you this: what is it that you do with your days that is so superior to the allegedly bullshit philosophizing that 'most philosophers' are up to? Discovering the secrets of the universe?
Oh, and the Sokal hoax is another total straw man. Social Text was indeed a crap journal that published things without peer review. The hoax exposed that. The paper itself, though, wasn't even presented as 'philosophy,' so I have no idea how you think it supports your point.
Posted by: rolanlegargeac
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October 10, 2009 10:27 AM
DS #189
No wait ! There it is !
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 10:30 AM
'Tis Himself:
"Okay, show us that philosophy isn't bullshit. Give us some non-bullshit philosophy. Ready, set, go...."
Everybody else aside, I gave you two examples, and did I get even one insult in response? I think you're off your game.
Why, I wonder, are so many people on this site so hostile to philosophy? Not that it needs a practical value, but it seems to me actually to have one, which ought to make it attractive here: it's very good (especially in its recent, Anglo-American, analytic guise) at defining problems quite precisely. It lets us know, about as precisely as possible, just what we don't know. That's a negative practical value, but a value.
Just an aside: I haven't read a lot on the philosophy of consciousness; but it seems to me from my cursory view that philosophers writing on the subject these days take neuroscience very seriously. Again, I certainly don't think philosophy will ever solve the problems of consciousness; but it does some good in defining those problems with precision--which might be helpful to neuroscientists.
Posted by: John Phillips, FCD
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October 10, 2009 10:49 AM
Aaron Baker said
Possibly because many (note: I said many, not all) of the self acknowledged philosophers wanking on this site are so very bad at it. Like you, I think philosophy has a role to play, however limited I personally think that role to be, with regard to science that is. But, one would be hard placed to think even that limited role to have any value if we were to go by so many of the examples seen on this site.
Posted by: Neil Bee
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October 10, 2009 10:52 AM
Much of the theory/fact confusion is unnecessary and just causes headaches. "Evolution" is the variation in traits of successive generations over time. It's something that "happened" because we can find the fossils etc., and have get the dating well enough to see a progression in which new groups are added and others die off. Yes, that's interpreted and not raw data, but still is a picture of "what" happened in advance of the "why and how."
But "the theory of evolution" is the explanatory scheme geared to tell us why and how that change happened. Such theories, in distinction to the observed evolution itself, can of course be inadequate or wrong. Indeed, Darwin's original theories have been superseded, and I suppose modern synthesis still indulges debate over things like punctuated equilibria (BTW, PE are an "observation" themselves, not a theory!) On another blog, someone made the cogent observation that calling modern evolutionists "Darwinians" is a bit like calling modern physicists "Newtonians" - as if we didn't have QM and SRT.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 10:54 AM
I can sum up my "hostility" in the phrase, philosophy without evidence is sophistry. Plus those philosophers who show up either have poor new age arguments, or try to pretend they can prove god. And neither will provide any evidence for their arguments, just obfuscating talk.Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 10:56 AM
John,
But why would you judge a discipline based on the inept ramblings of anonymous internet comments when there's a whole literature of very good, serious, professional scholarship out there for you to read? That's been my point all along: if you admit your knowledge of a subject is limited, it seems like a reasonable request that you actually gain some familiarity with it before making judgments and generalizations. It seems like the worst kind of narrow solipsism to refuse to acknowledge a world of ideas that exists beyond this blog.
Posted by: Neil Bee
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October 10, 2009 10:57 AM
JP: You are so wrong. We need philosophy just to frame the issues and make the points about what is/should be science, etc. Maybe you don't realize that is "philosophy", and the doing is independent of who does it and what their core profession is. I don't know re the quality seen here, but that's a separate issue.
Posted by: Neil Bee
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October 10, 2009 10:59 AM
One way to look at it:
~ philosophers:science :: grammarians:novelists
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 11:05 AM
Nerd,
I'd say the same thing to you: those people aren't representative of the field. That is absolutely not a fair characterization of philosophy of science. Real philosophy, in fact, is all about providing evidence for arguments.
Posted by: Matt Penfold
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October 10, 2009 11:09 AM
In the UK it is a term used to indicate that the person thinks natural selection is the most important evolutionary mechanism.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 11:11 AM
"I can sum up my 'hostility in the phrase, philosophy without evidence is sophistry."
Okay, so some philosophy somewhere deserves your ire. Whence the hostility to philosophy as a whole? The reference to "new age" arguments puzzles me. There's nothing "new age" about academic philosophy; nor (to bring up another hobbyhorse) has "postmodernism" had much effect on philosophy departments, as Brian Leiter has pugnaciously and accurately pointed out. People who say philosophy "is mostly bullshit" tend, it seems to me, to have a VERY capacious definition of philosophy. If they were similarly generous in defining science, they'd include Intelligent Design and a lot of other crackpot stuff.
Which leads me to suspect (not for the first time) that arguments of this kind are probably pretty sterile (probably, we're mostly quibbling about definitions).
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 11:16 AM
For anyone here who's really interested in seeing what real philosophers of biology are saying these days, let me recommend the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology, which was published just last year and has a bunch of essays on a variety of different subjects in biology/evolution. You can even get a preview of it on Google books, and your university library may subscribe to the digital version of the entire thing. Yes, it's edited by Michael Ruse, who I'm aware isn't very popular on this blog, but you don't have to read his essay.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 11:16 AM
Aaron, we had a couple of Ken Wilber fanbois here for a while. I call that new age.
Posted by: Matt Penfold
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October 10, 2009 11:25 AM
Nerd (and others) are not alone in questioning the usefulness of certain aspects of philosophy.
There are philosophers who think some of their colleagues spend to much time ignoring reality. AC Grayling is one such philosopher. Not surprisingly he is a philosopher who is admired around these parts. Bertrand Russell gets a good hearing as well. What these philosophers have in common is that they adapt their philosophy to fit reality. There are some philosophers who seem to think reality should change to fit their philosophy.
Posted by: raven
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October 10, 2009 11:25 AM
Some of us do exactly that. As well as entending human life spans with better health and creating a 21st century that looks a lot different from the 11th century. This is obvious, so what is the point of bringing it up?
Bit of a strawman. Most of us have read a fair amount of philosophy, especially when younger and trying to figure out the world. I was an Objectivist for 3 months as a teen ager until someone pointed out how simple minded it was.
Philosophy is good at asking questions but not very good at answering them. And a lot of modern philosophy is nonsense. Various philosophers have been able to "prove" that I have no conscious mind, objective reality doesn't exist, and free will doesn't exist either. At some point, it becomes too disconnected from the real world to even bother paying attention.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 11:28 AM
"Possibly because many (note: I said many, not all) of the self acknowledged philosophers wanking on this site are so very bad at it."
Well, John, like DS above, I don't want to use wankers on this site as my criterion of the value, or lack of it, of philosophy.
A further thought on that subject: a very common phenomenon here is some New Age naif wandering in and spouting all sorts of fluff, to be savaged and ridiculed by just about everybody. Such unfortunates do often use words like "philosophy" or "metaphysics" to describe what they're up to. I can understand the exasperation, but again, I'm not in the habit of defining a discipline by what the craziest people who apply the word to themselves do. If, as I've said before, we extend that principle to "science," we find ourselves in some pretty ridiculous company.
Posted by: John Phillips, FCD
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October 10, 2009 11:32 AM
DS & Neil Bee, when answering Aaron question re: hostility, I was referring to so much of the philosophical wanking we see on this site, rather than philosophy in general, I should have made that clearer. As I said, I do believe it has a role to play in science, though I still think it a relatively limited role and no, I am not totally ignorant of 'good', so to speak, philosophy. Sadly we see so little of it on here.
For instance, much of what started the kerfuffle on here began with the failure, both by the author PZ was criticising as well as some of the apparent philosophers that chimed in, to understand how PZ and RD use fact and theory with regards to evolution. I.e. evolution is a fact that has been and continues to be observed while evolution is also the theory (in the scientific sense) that is the explanatory framework for the observed facts. From there it just went down hill with, in some cases, digressions into POMO woo, among other things, about what constitutes facts.
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 11:35 AM
Raven,
Speaking of strawmen, Ayn Rand is to real academic philosophy as Bill Dembski is to information theory. That's why it appealed to you when you were a kid. I'm sorry that your interest in philosophy ended there. I'm not sure whom you're referring to when you say "a lot of modern philosophy is nonsense," but again, I've provided a bunch of suggestions if you want to see what real philosophy of science is all about.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 12:00 PM
Yes, it's amusing. Why would they assume that only they can hold forth about the nature of science? Since philosophers aren't really bringing any special knowledge to the table when talking about e.g. the meaning of theory, shouldn't we expect scientists to be generally better qualified in such discussions? Scientists are after all the ones who actually learn about theories and specifically how they relate to fact.The tacit assumption of philosophers seems to be that their training makes them all-around better thinkers, and as such better qualified at doing any kind of thinking that doesn't require specialist jargon.
Posted by: Coturnix
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October 10, 2009 12:03 PM
DS: "Ayn Rand is to real academic philosophy as Bill Dembski is to information theory. That's why it appealed to you when you were a kid." Just love that quote. May remix it and use it on the next person who mentions Raynd with a serious face.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 12:06 PM
I tend to avoid discussions of philosophy here (unless someone calls Sartre a neurotic whiner, of course :)). Some of the hostility is due to the fact that philosophers and theologians have said things in the media - which philosophiles have shown up here to agree with - about atheists being philosophically ignorant and not appreciating the power of their arguments. The Courtier's Reply is tiresome.
I like philosophy. I've linked to/recopmmended philosophers here and already at my blog. But I will say that the record of people who cite philosophers here is pretty dismal. Names are tossed about, substantive points evaded, and no specific arguments relevant to the topic at hand are made. If the philosophers people admire have something important to say on the scientific matters discussed here, I wish people would quote the relevant portions of their work or put these insights into their own words (with a citation), and then stick around to discuss them. Why should that be so difficult? nothing's sacred did it in the case of Dennett and design just a few days ago.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 12:25 PM
Raven wrote:
"Bit of a strawman."
That's not really my impression after the anti-philosophy stylings of 'Tis himself (and not just him).
"Various philosophers have been able to 'prove' that I have no conscious mind, objective reality doesn't exist, and free will doesn't exist either."
I've conceded all along that philosophy is lousy at proving things; but that's not where its value lies. I am interested, however, in your choice of examples--in particular the last one, free will. I think (on the basis of the philosophers I've read) that free will, in the contra-causal sense that people ordinarily understand it, doesn't make a lot of sense in view of what else we have reason to believe about the physical world. I.e. if we have free will in the sense that we are not predetermined to choose X or Y in any given situation, but actually can choose either one, then mind really is pretty damned mysterious. I've slowly (and reluctantly) moved toward the conclusion that, rather than there being any great mystery, free will probably belongs in the "highly unlikely" column, with other metaphysically ambitious notions, like God and the afterlife. I think shedding such metaphysical baggage is a very valuable (though negative) benefit of the best available philosophy.
Posted by: Thomas Winwood
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October 10, 2009 12:30 PM
Could someone provide the ISBN number of the Cliff's Notes version of this argument? I tried to follow it but got so tangled in verbiage and intrigue that my brain melted and dribbled out of my ears.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 12:42 PM
Yep, quite a bit going on, not all of it comprehensible. It start with PZ pointing out that a reviewer of Dawkins GSOE was confusing the fact that evolution has occurred with the theory of evolution itself. Some philosophers stepped in to try to clarify things, but actually muddied the issue. A couple of our group got in a snit fit. One of us pretty much dismissed all of philosophy, which brought in even more philosophers to defend their profession. And our ignorant racist troll joined the thread, so side shots were made in his direction. Right now, some less vocal folks on both sides are trying to calm the lightening bolts and thunder down a little.Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 12:50 PM
SC wrote:
"But I will say that the record of people who cite philosophers here is pretty dismal. Names are tossed about, substantive points evaded, and no specific arguments relevant to the topic at hand are made. If the philosophers people admire have something important to say on the scientific matters discussed here, I wish people would quote the relevant portions of their work or put these insights into their own words (with a citation)."
Well, I'm at a disadvantage here because I haven't read a lot of philosophy of science; but this has some bearing on the subject: a recent set of posts by Brian Leiter on the very dubious quality of arguments for the scientific status of economics. The posts include of course a discussion of what science is. (Most important: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2004/10/is_economics_a_.html)
Here are some of the more pertinent paragraphs:
........................................................
"Philosophers, too, have recently launched a devastating attack on the scientific and cognitive credentials of economics, starting from the observation that, "[E]conomic theory [is] one of the more dismal empirical failures in the history of science" (John Dupre). This is widely conceded about the laughably unsuccessful predictions of macroeconomics, but it is only somewhat less true of microeconomics, which "has made no advances in the management of economic processes since its current formalism was first elaborated in the nineteenth century" (Alexander Rosenberg, "If Economics Isn't Science, What Is It?" reprinted in D. Hausman (ed.), The Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 377. Cited hereafter in the text by page number only as Rosenberg II. See also, Wassily Leontief, "Input-Output Economics," Scientific American 185 (1951), pp. 15-21.) This last point bears elaboration.
"Like Newtonian mechanics and Darwinian evolution, microeconomics pursues what philosophers of science call an "extremal strategy" of explanation. Such an approach views the phenomena to be explained "as reflecting forces which always move towards stable equilibria that maximize or minimize some theoretically crucial variable. In the case of microeconomics this crucial variable is utility (or its latter day surrogates). . ." (Rosenberg II, p. 378). Such a strategy entails that the theory be preserved in the face of any putatively falsifying data by revising the auxiliary hypotheses that inform any empirical test of the theory. This, of course, permits economic theory to persist in the face of a dismal record of empirical failure. But if Newtonian mechanics or Darwinian evolution is none the worse for pursuing such a strategy, why should we worry about economics? Because, as Alexander Rosenberg notes, economics can not,
“boast even a small part of the startling successes that other extremal research programs have achieved. . .[T]wo hundred years of work in the same direction have produced nothing comparable to the physicists' discovery of new planets, or of new technologies by which to control the mechanical phenomena that Newton's laws systemized. Economists have attained no independently substantiated insight into their domain to rival the biologists' understanding of macroevolution and its underlying mechanism of adaptation and heredity. There has been no signal success of economic theory akin to these advances of extremal theory.” (Rosenberg II, 380)"
.........................................................
Now, I'm not a biologist, so I'm not qualified to assert whether "extremal strategy" is the best description of what evolutionary biologists do. If it's a worthless description, there are plenty here who can tell me as much. To my layman's eye, though, the emphasis on "empirical success," which seems to mean its consistent predictive power, appears to me a good measure of what separates science most strikingly from economics (or for that matter history).
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 1:26 PM
Well, I have suggested a fairly readable and easily available introduction to philosophy of biology people could consult. And I did mention Hull's work on levels of selection as a particular problem illuminated by philosophical discussion.
But isn't it kind of unreasonable to make a blanket dismissal of an entire discipline (as several posters here have done) and then sit back and demand that other posters take the time to distill an entire discipline? Shouldn't the 'burden of proof' fall on those who originally described that discipline as 'bullshit'? I'm not sure what 'substantive points' are being evaded here: categorically labeling something 'bullshit' is about as unsubstantive as I can imagine. If anyone would care to offer criticism of, say, particular arguments in contemporary philosophy of biology, I'd be interested in discussing. But that hasn't happened.
Again, I've seen many of you react to creationists who come here and demand to be educated about biology without bothering to learn any themselves by telling them to come back when they've done some reading. I fail to see why that argument isn't valid in this case, also.
I should also point out that a great many philosophers of science--and particularly biology--have advanced degrees (even doctorates) in science, work in labs, and even publish in scientific journals. A mistake is being made here in reifying a false distinction between 'science' and 'philosophy' that was rather arbitrarily introduced some time in the 19th century. A 'philosopher' isn't, by definition, someone who looks down at science and scientists from on high and makes pronouncements. But again, you'd know that if you had even the most elementary familiarity with current scholarship in the field.
At a certain point, arguing about a subject with people who steadfastly defend their ignorance of that subject as some kind of virtue is futile. I think we passed that point some time ago.
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 1:34 PM
By the way, I'm not a philosopher. I'm a historian of science, and most of the time I read and study what scientists have written. But I do have a healthy respect for good philosophy, and have found it useful over the years. Since this anonymous bickering gets pretty tiresome, you can click on this link to see who I am and what I work on. I'm not saying that gives my opinions any special authority, but it does shed light perhaps on why I feel the way I do.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 2:12 PM
Ah yes, Nerd of Redhead's Theorem: Anything a Molly winner says three times must be true. This has an immediate corollary: Anything a Molly winner says three thousand times must be super-duper-mega cyclopean true.Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 2:22 PM
I'm afraid I don't see how.
What I'm saying is that if a general introduction to the philosophy of X illuminates something about a particular topic under discussion, then describe what specifically that is and how.
A couple, I think. And 'Tis's original post did not do that. And Knockgoats had the right response to those who do, I think - "ignorant idiot." The way to demonstrate the value of philosophy, I believe, is to offer and defend substantive examples of it in action.
This is why I tend to avoid these discussions. "Philosophy - useful or no?" is just far to broad to be debated reasonably.
People make stupid and ignorant claims about my discipline (sociology, though in practice I'm probably more of a historian) all the time. I usually ignore them, on rare occasions call them out on their ignorance, and generally take the long-term approach of showing people through concrete examples what good sociology is and its worth.
You need to understand that you're entering an ongoing discussion. I specifically referred to "the record" of people's commenting about specific questions (as on the Plantinga thread), which should have been a hint that I was talking about the history of exchanges and not this particular discussion.
Why would you expect people to offer criticisms of particular arguments that haven't been offered and aren't relevant to the discussion? That's what I'm saying: when a subject is being discussed and you think philosophers have insights to offer, you should bring them in.
First, that isn't really so - most of the time people are given information (over and over and over) or directed to the appropriate resources and encouraged to ask genuine questions. But this isn't a philosophy blog.
Well, you don't have to point that out for me. Condescending jerk.
Um,
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/michael_ruse_probably_wont_be.php
[Incidentally, I found Ian Hacking's The Social Construction of What? quite interesting (it's been a while since I read it), but that may have been because it was more historical/sociological than philosophical per se.]
Who the fuck is "you"?
No, you simply chose to involve yourself in a discussion that is inherently futile due to the extreme breadth of the subject. I'm merely recommending that you make the case for philosophy primarily through offering specific examples. Take it or leave it, but I haven't seen this broad defense of philosophy as a whole or these attempts to tell others what philosophy of science "really" is having much success.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 2:54 PM
DS,
I think most of us here know quite well that much of academic philosophy is plainly nonsense. One just has to pick up, for example, Intellectual Impostures by Sokal and Bricmont, which shows beyond reasonable doubt that many distinguished philosophers weren't only somewhat muddled, weren't only moderately obscurantist, but were in fact outright con-artists who in their lectures and writings sunk to the lowest depths of shameless charlatanism.
To see this we don't need to turn to Sokal and Bricmont; I'm sure most of us have our own personal examples of stinking horseshit whose intellectually disgraceful trickle-trail leads unmistakably to the Department of Philosophy. To further our suspicions, there is the subject of philosophers' rather perverse fascination with original works in opposition to essential concepts. Whenever debating philosophy, one is almost invariably referred to A Treatise on Human Nature or Critique of Pure Reason or one of the other holy scriptures. This is curious, because debates about scientific topics almost never consist of references to the works of original pioneers. Why is it that infallibly in science we're never instructed to wade through the original texts, but in philosophy this is seen as an essential prerequisite?
I'm afraid your comparison with quantum mechanics just doesn't cut the mustard. First of all, there's a clear-cut reason why quantum mechanics is complicated: it's highly mathematical. To anybody lacking the mathematical toolkit, it is simply inaccessible. Philosophy, conversely, is a mostly verbal subject, and does not seem to require any special learning beyond acquaintance with a few (often unnecessary) jargon terms. Second, quantum mechanics actually has experiments and technological applications that prove it is worth taking seriously. Sadly most philosophers appear utterly unable to provide any similar proof that their work is better than obscurantism. Some philosophers can do this, I know, but more often than not they work on applied philosophy instead of traditional, "pure" philosophy.
Posted by: Steven Sullivan
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October 10, 2009 3:10 PM
'Tis Himself wrote: "But you ripped into me for using wiki. Here's what Cambridge University says about Plantinga..."
Having a book published and *blurbed* by the Cambridge University Press (not to mention "edited by Deane-Peter Baker University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa") doesn't mean *Cambridge University* 'says' it, for jebus' sake. It's not a position statement on philosophical ranking from CU. It's academic press advertising copy. Sheesh.
That there is currently just one volume dedicated to Plantinga's work -- as noted in the blurb itself -- rather works against the claim of him being a *major* figure in contemporary philosophy.
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 3:11 PM
In which you contradict yourself from one sentence to the next - and hence demonstrate the sort of dishonesty to be expected from those suffering from the vice of loyalty (to people and to beliefs).
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 3:23 PM
I didn't contradict myself at all. I said above that I occasionally call people who make such sweeping dismissals of my discipline out on their ignorance and stupidity, while generally seeking to educate over the long term. Sometimes I can't be bothered, but generally want to find the most effective method. Where was I dishonest? Sometimes, SEF, your comments become rather strange; this seems to be one of those times, and I think I'd prefer not to interact with you right now.
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 10, 2009 3:24 PM
Nice to meet you, David. :-) Reading your paper on S. J. Gould, J. Sepkoski, & the "quantitative revolution" in paleobiology really brought back an era for me...(uh, 'era' in colloquial sense of course. :D)
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 3:29 PM
Hyperon's therom. If I pretend I'm not a racist, everybody will think I'm not a racist. Until you do the soul searching and mea culpa, both private and public, necessary for proper change in thinking, that won't change. When are you going to start that process?
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 3:39 PM
Yes you did! It's symptomatic of your dishonesty that you can't keep your story straight - and that you're carefully blinding yourself to that fact.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 3:40 PM
If anyone reads my original post #111, they'll notice that I made a slighting remark about postmodernism and said some rude things about Alvin Plantinga. I ended the post with the following paragraph:
In post #117 DS came roaring in:
The point about Darwin is well taken. But the rest of DS's rant is just an unsubstantiated list saying "and these guys also were also influenced by philosophy, not that I'm giving the slightest evidence to support this allegation." Oh yes, he sneers at me for misspelling Occam and then manages to use an uncommon spelling himself.
DS was in full ranting, foaming at the mouth mode. So I decided to have some fun at this guy's expense. I didn't repeat my previous statements that philosophy could show some useful results. Instead I exaggerated my previous statements. He went hermitile. So I continued to play with him. DS jumped on his high horse and went riding off in all directions.
Then Hyperon sneered at me. Hyperon is annoyed at me because (a) I'm underwhelmed by the boy's acumen and (b) I'm one of the people who pointed out his racism. Now DS has intelligence while Hyperon is a racist dumbfuck. DS knows something about philosophy. Hyperon is a racist dumbfuck. DS is a worthy opponent. Hyperon is a racist dumbfuck. So I sneered right back at Hyperon.
Sorry, Aaron Baker, but you were trying to bring some light into the debate. That's why I ignored you. If you had initially responded instead of DS, the conversation would have gone in an entirely different direction.
Anyway, folks, just to put it quite simply, I agree that philosophy does have important things that should be considered. On the other hand, many philosophers have an overinflated opinion of themselves and their philosophical meanderings. I am particularly unimpressed by postmoderns like Martin Heidegger (not just because he was a Nazi), Jacques Derrida (I agree with John Searle that Derrida indulges in dadaist sophistry) and Richard Rorty (whose disdain for social justice and dislike of science annoys the fuck out of me).*
Postmodernism is intellectually diverse, yet it promotes a quite reactionary obscurantism. I really dislike its anti-rationalist "critiques" (aka attacks) on science. It also has a fascination with authoritarianism, particularly fascism. I do think that Sokal's Hoax showed postmodernism is more involved in sophistry and anti-rationalism than trying to advance social organization and understanding.
So to go back to my original statement, a whole lot of what passes for philosophy these days is nothing but bullshit.
*See, DS, I can drop philosophers' names too.
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 3:40 PM
Thanks, Diane! And I think we can agree that SJG wasn't averse to some philosophising now and again... ;)
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 3:53 PM
What the hell are you talking about?
Never mind. Time to come clean. Knockgoats and I are blindly loyal religious ideologues (of...something), and we've managed to conceal our deep dishonesty from the ignorant rubes here for years. Ha ha! Suckers!
And this goes deeper - far deeper - than you can even imagine...
Posted by: nodzou
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October 10, 2009 3:58 PM
hmm, first wowbagger quotes from elsewhere . . .
I (and no doubt all of us) know from personal experience that consciousness is quite malleable and can be altered by the slightest emotional provocation, pharmacological supplement, or spiritual epiphany.
then he adds . . .
This indicates there's very little point bothering to engage you on this issue any further. You're too deep in the woo to think clearly.
my comment: noticing that "spiritual epiphanies" do actually occur and in their occurence they "alter consciousness" does not at all imply that one accepts such phenomena at face value. I would generally prefer to classify such phenomena more clearly as "psychotic episodes" but be that as it may be, still the argument remains: accepting that woo has consequences which can be registered both experientially within consciousness and reductively as activity within neurons does not mean that one believes in woo.
really, get over it.
philosophy has its place - it is the study of the signage used in marking our mental maps . . . and plantinga is fucking terrible at it. philosophy has the weakness in that it is itself generated of/within the candy floss of ideation. still, doing it well (regularly checking for internal consistency of ideation) is and has always been important to science.
science also has its place - it is a comparative study, checking our mapping against the world we share. science has an enormous advantage in that consciousness is meat in a common world: we can use our bodies to manipulate this world and in so doing test our theories empirically. still, one only has to look at the history of science to see a hell of alot of woo . . . it took a long time to get our scientific knowing up to snuff.
and of course historical philosophy is absurd - but have you ever checked out ancient science? and do you really think modern science is immune to woo? really? - listen to any of ole doc watson's argumentation lately?
one doesn't have to be a professional philosopher (whatever that is) to realize that some trip got switched in there, allowing for no serious self reflection.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 3:58 PM
Everyone stop fighting. Our purpose here is to blindly follow what PZ says. So sayeth the concern troll
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 3:58 PM
The Nerd of Redhead Conjecture: If I pretend I'm not a big smelly doodoohead, everybody will think I don't leave presents in my underwear. Until you go through potty training and learn that Mister Poopy is not your friend, that won't change. When are you going to start this process?Posted by: raven
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October 10, 2009 4:09 PM
Thanks for lying. We now know that you are to a normal, rational human being what Bill Dembski is to information theory or Hovind is to religion. I never said the only thing I read was Ayn Rand. You said that. And bundled in an insulting personal attack as well. Which branch of philosophy is that from? Assholes "R" Us?
Some philosophy may be worthwhile. DS is a socially retarded and dishonest kook and wouldn't know one way or the other.
If this guy is the best modern philosophy can come up with, the whole field is dead forever.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 4:21 PM
Aaron Baker #214
I'm an economist. I have a graduate degree in economics from an Ivy League school. I've spent over 30 years as an economist in both government and business. While I agree that macroeconomics is not as good at predictions as most economists would like, it's not the absolute abyss that philosophers like Rosenberg say it is. I've read "If Economics Isn't Science, What Is It?" and I was remarkably unimpressed by Rosenberg's ignorance about basic economics. Yet this guy has the gall to tell economists like me that "the theory be preserved in the face of any putatively falsifying data." That, ladies, gentlemen, and Hyperon, is just so much bullshit!
There are economists who are so ideologically driven they ignore reality (this is a major reason for my hearty hostility to the Austrian School economists and the Chicago Boys). But most of us try to get our models to at least approach reality if not match it. So why does a bullshitting philosopher like Rosenberg make such damning accusations about us? Because he's a bullshitting philosopher who doesn't know jackshit about the field he's condemning. And that's another reason why I am not too impressed by many present day philosophers.
Now please, DS, Aaron, and
dumbfuckHyperon, explain to me why I should hold philosophers in high regard when some of them LIE about me and my field of endeavor.Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 4:39 PM
SC, OM #228
Does this mean that SC and Knockgoats are [gasp] actually moderate Democrats?
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 4:40 PM
'Tis, I'm done with this argument--anything you say now you'll just claim tomorrow was a joke.
Raven, what the hell are you talking about? You used objectivism as the only example of your familiarity with philosophy in your post, and I pointed out there's a very good reason you quickly dispensed with it--'cause Rand was a nut. And when I said I was sorry that put you off of philosophy, I meant it, because my whole point on this thread has been that contrary to popular opinion here philosophy can actually be pretty worthwhile for scientists.
How does that equal me lying about something? And how does it make me "a socially retarded and dishonest kook and wouldn't know one way or the other"? I think you're only displaying your own kookiness and social ineptitude by having such a bizarrely over-the-top reaction. Here's the entirety of my post to you, by the way:
By the way, as I've said several times already (and even offered tangible evidence for) I'm not a philosopher.
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 4:41 PM
Incidentally, Aaron Baker in #200 made one of the points I would have made myself back then, had anyone on the pro-philosophy side seemed remotely interested in coming up with a credible argument rather than simply resorting to lying and flinging insults in lieu of having one (as is Knockgoats' MO).
This is definitely part of it. The meaning of "philosophy" has changed over time (rather like "science" has), from including anything and everything even remotely resembling intelligent thought, as the worthwhile things acquired their own names and fruitful disciplines, eg mathematics and subsets of that. Science stopped being merely any old body of "knowledge" and started being only the stuff which could be shown to be real and had a working methodology.
I think philosophy still likes to pretend to own some things which don't belong to it - much as religion likes to claim morality. Eg logic - which is something that predated philosophy, is inherent and never needed to be pretentiously codified in order to work (for thinking people anyway!). Then there are large quantities of the blindingly obvious, dressed up to look clever (to the unthinking masses).
Philosophy does seem to be the dregs left behind in the big tent in the swamp once the only good ideas had made a name for themselves and set up home on solid ground. It tends to be the province of the lovers of sophistry. A sort of cargo cult breeding ground, where people imitate what looks like magic word use to them in the hope of being mistaken for saying something worthwhile - and typically get away with it among their own kind in a way that doesn't happen in science or maths.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 4:53 PM
If you weren't a mountainously imbecilic goofball of the most spectacularly transcendent stupidity, you might actually take a hint from my posts and realize that in general I undertake the exact opposite of holding philosophers in high regard. Obviously the noteworthy proviso there is "in general". Academic philosophy is so big and has been going for so long that it is inevitable that some of it will be intellectually respectable. By challenging philosophers to produce some examples of non-worthless philosophy, you ascend to such rarefied heights of block-headedness that even Glenn Beck can't hope to follow you.Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 4:58 PM
DS #235
Translation: I'm retrieving my spheroid and returning to my domicile.
Posted by: DS
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October 10, 2009 5:09 PM
No, translation: you said a bunch of stupid things, then transparently tried to take them back by claiming to have been cleverly manipulating the conversation, and now I'm bored with the argument.
Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 5:21 PM
@ 'Tis Himself
"I'm one of the people who pointed out his racism. Now DS has intelligence while Hyperon is a racist dumbfuck. DS knows something about philosophy. Hyperon is a racist dumbfuck. DS is a worthy opponent. Hyperon is a racist dumbfuck. So I sneered right back at Hyperon."
___________________________________________________________
As you have never yet replied to the three posts* I have made where I "pointed out" YOUR "racist dumbfuckery" I thought I might try again on this thread as you seem to be active here very recently.
In the thread about "Squid's Fist" wine ~ http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/ i_would_like_ten_bottles_pleas.phpN ~ you used the phrase "a bouquet like an aborigine's armpit". **
I didn't find this phrase amusing when I worked in the NT in the '70s, and I find it even less amusing now.
So you're a hypocritical "dumbfuck" for accusing others of racism while being one yourself? (Not that that suprises me, most racists are hypocrites too).
* 1) on your original post
2) when you were (shamefully IMHO) awarded your Molly
3) the current Molly thread
** And don't try to excuse it by telling me that it's a quote from Monty Python. I bet they're all thoroughly ashamed of having said that back in the early '70's. Most people, except you, know better than that now.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 5:25 PM
Okay, Ring Tailed Lemurian, what do you want me to say? This is obviously a hot issue with you, so what exactly do you want from me? Explain, in detail, what you want and I'll consider whether or not I should make you happy.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 5:32 PM
I left the party for a while; my daughter took me to see Zombieland. (Great fun by the way.)
SC: you wrote in response to me:
"Well, I'm at a disadvantage here because I haven't read a lot of philosophy of science; but this has some bearing on the subject:
I'm afraid I don't see how."
I thought one at least of the subjects raised by the posting here was what, if anything, of value the philosophers of science had to say ABOUT science. (Recall Myers's words above: "They are more like interested spectators, running alongside the locomotive of science, playing catch-up in order to figure out what it is doing . . . ")
So I quoted a discussion by some philosophers of just what it was that demarcated science from some other pursuit. Maybe they're wrong, but I don't see how what they wrote has no bearing on this subject. I realize that more than one subject has been raised; but that's the subject I was talking about.
You demanded relevant citations; I gave you what (I thought) you wanted.
Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 5:34 PM
#241
Excuse me, "dumbfuck"?! Somehow this is "my" problem?! NO. You made the statement, you make the explanations/excuses/apologies whatever. Why on earth am I required to make it easier for you?
Posted by: Diane G.
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October 10, 2009 5:34 PM
RE #239 & 240: LOL. I think 'Tis & DS could companionably shoot the shit over their favorite libations in another context...(ducks) We paint ourselves into such corners here...Both of you seem to have arrived at the common ground that some philosophers of science pass muster...
The latter part of 'Tis's post # 226 (beginning "Anyway, folks...") sums up my POV nicely. DS, you came into the discussion (if I remember correctly?) in defense of poor Mg, of "I-see-swans" fame..perhaps s/he did get dumped on but really, you don't go for that sort of BS either...Tho I don't think the swans business arose until after your initial defense.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 5:36 PM
DS #239
No, I made a statement and you flew off the handle. You overreacted and I played with you. You don't like the idea that someone whose intelligence you doubted turned out to be less stupid than you thought.
I notice that you didn't respond to my objections to postmodernism given in #226. I have actual criticisms of postmodernism and it would bruise your ego to admit it.
Instead of telling me, in some detail, why you're going to ignore me, the parsimonious method would be to just ignore me. If you want to have the last word it's yours, unless you continue to pout, in which case I'll give you more reason to.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 5:36 PM
Hmm. Are Hyperon and Ring Tailed Lemurian the same person? Inquiring minds want to know...
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 5:38 PM
Then I'll make it easy for you. Fuck off.
Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 5:46 PM
@ 'Tit Himself #247
I shall leave it to others to decide if they think that saying "Fuck off" is an adequate reply to a charge of what most reasonable people here (I hope) would regard as racism.
In the meantime I shall not be recommending this site (much as I love it) to my (non-white) children.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 5:52 PM
Look, asshole, I asked what you wanted and you either wouldn't or couldn't tell me. So fuck off is a reasonable response. If you want me to apologize, then say so. If you want me to admit that I'm a racist, then say so. If you want me to commit suicide then say so. Until then, you can fuck off.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 5:52 PM
You don't have a mind, or for that matter a brain. You have a scrap of paper inside of your skull saying "Space for rent".Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 5:53 PM
@ Nerd ofRedhead,OM #246
1) No, we are not the same person. I am not a sockpuppet, nor have I any connection with ANYONE else (AFAIK) who posts here.
2) Why would it matter anyway? As it happens, I tend to agree in the main with what the Great 'Tit has said here re philosophy. I'm extremely disappointed that no one else complained about his original post, and now you seem to wish to smear me by association? Tell me, what do YOU think of the acceptability of his OP?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 6:07 PM
'Tis Himself:
If the folks I cited are off-base about economics, my apologies. I'd read the discussion before and it seemed on its face pretty plausible to me (neither an economist nor a scientist)--thus my probably too ready assumption that they were right about economics.
Nonetheless, my main reason for citing the discussion from Leiter's blog was to illustrate what they had to say about science (quite independently of the status of economics). I thought: this is interesting. In contrast to Karl Popper, with his emphasis (over-emphasis?) on refutation, these guys are saying (and this seems to my layperson's ear very plausible indeed) that a science like evolutionary biology (and I suppose any science) is first and foremost about confirmation, not disconfirmation. An over-arching theory that explains most available evidence is posited, and if disconfirming data emerge, some of the hypotheses of the over-arching theory are changed to accommodate those data. (They leave unsaid what would cause the over-arching theory to be overthrown, rather than just tweaked.) And this process seems warranted by its predictive power and its frequent independent substantiation (e.g. discovery of a new planet as a confirmation of what was already postulated about gravity). That's what they seemed to me to be getting at; and that sounds (to my I-stress-this-again layman's ear) like a pretty good description of what makes science different (if not necessarily from econ).
Posted by: CatBallou
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October 10, 2009 6:08 PM
VanHarris @94--
OK, I'll bite. Why the cognitive dissonance? Was my grammar that bad? Did you think I was a blonde? That I don't read?
Hmm...
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 6:12 PM
Sockpuppetry and morphing are bannable offenses. Hyperon would be plonked if he engaged in them.I consider what you say to be a distraction from Hyperon's bigotry, which is why I asked indirectly about sockpuppetry and morphing. And I don't consider 'Tis a bigot. He has shown no tendancies in that direction, unlike Hyperon, who can't open his mouth without showing his bad behavior.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 6:22 PM
Look at that, another regular with pots and kettles disorder. This one dedicates about 99% of his posts to content-free insults, yet has the brazen effrontery to complain about other posters' "bad behaviour".Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 6:28 PM
@ 'Tit Himself #249
"Look, asshole, I asked what you wanted and you either wouldn't or couldn't tell me. So fuck off is a reasonable response. If you want me to apologize, then say so. If you want me to admit that I'm a racist, then say so. If you want me to commit suicide then say so. Until then, you can fuck off."
I quite evidently "wouldn't" tell you, not "couldn't". I said I didn't see why I should make it easier for you.
I don't "want" you to do anything except EXPLAIN why you thought using that phrase was "amusing" and acceptable. Got it? If you can't, say so. If you won't, well .....
@ Nerd of Redhead,OM #254
I meant "why would it matter to the point I'm making", I realise puppetry is a banning offense. As I posted in the original thread, and at the last Molly awards, it would take some remarkable foresight in order to suddenly pop up in this thread where Hyperon and 'Tit are arguing. (And I imagine Hyperon would have gleefully leapt in with this charge a lot earlier if he had known about the "Fist" thread)
You may consider my post a distraction, but, when I see someone who has posted a racist comment (even if it is a quote) trying to occupy the high moral ground by accusing someone else of racism, I consider it an appropriate place to point out his hypocrisy.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 6:30 PM
[OT]
Ring Tailed Lemurian, this is what's exercising you?
LOL.
Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 6:51 PM
@ John Morales #257
er, yes. That's why I posted the link (although when I tried it recently it was unavailable).
I presume from your "LOL" that you think a) it's amusing and not racist and b) you think I'm make a fuss about nothing. (My apologies if I am misreading you).
Both those opinions depress me, especially from you, whose contributions I have always enjoyed. Do I really need to go into a long (philosophical?) explanation why saying something like "smells like an Aborigine's armpit" is racist?
"Smells like a Jew's armpit" Ok by you?
"Smells like a N.....'s armpit"? Ok by you?
"Smells like a Paki's armpit" Is that ok?
No, of course none of them are acceptable. In fact I would have hoped that they would automatically debarred the poster fom being acknowledged with a Molly.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 6:59 PM
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 10, 2009 7:12 PM
'Tis Himself, I don't think you're a hater. I do find the joke offensive. I believe an apology would be welcomed.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 7:15 PM
See? Was that so hard? All you had to do was make a simple statement and I'll respond to it. Honestly, if you've got a complaint about somebody and want some kind of action taken, it's easiest on everyone if you simply explain what action you want. When one of your kids does something bad to someone else do you say "I'm very annoyed at you but I'm not going to tell you what recompense you need to perform...but you'd better perform it or I'll be even more annoyed"? Of course not. In a similar way, if I do something that annoys you so much that you're whining about it several months later, then you should let me know what I should do to make you shut up and stop whining.
Now to the case at hand. As you and everyone else realizes, I was quoting from a Monty Python skit. You claim, based on your indepth knowledge of the collective psyches of all the Monty Python people but particularly that of Eric Idle, that they are "thoroughly ashamed" of having made the "aborigine armpit" gag. Faced with such obvious concern on the part of Monty Python and Mr. Idle, I too am thoroughly ashamed that they (or more specifically Mr. Idle) made the joke.
It may come as some surprise to you that, as an American, I am not particularly conscious of discrimination or other forms of racism displayed towards Australian Aborigines. I've just had a look at a couple of websites that I googled and now I know that such discrimination exists. I wasn't personally aware of such discrimination when I did the cut and paste of the Australian Wine skit. If I had been so aware, I would have cut out the word Aborigine. Since I wasn't, I didn't. If I was to cut and paste the skit again, I would remove Aborigine.
There, are you happy now? Is your little Australian soul soothed? Because if it isn't, I don't know what else I can do. And no, I am not going to apologize for pointing out that you're a whiner.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 7:16 PM
We are still waiting for Hyperon's apology. Which I sincerely doubt would ever come. Prove me wrong Hyperon...Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 10, 2009 7:16 PM
nodzou,
Are you familiar with the recent Johns Hopkins U. study on mystical experiences produced by psilocybin (psychoactive ingredient in "magic mushrooms")? It turns out that not all "spiritual epiphanies" can be so easily reduced to "psychotic episodes."
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 7:20 PM
He did add, "Personally, I think the philosophy of science is interesting stuff, and can surprise me with insights." (In fact, he mentioned in his AAI talk that he thought more kids should take philosophy.) The question isn't "Do philosophers have anything to say about science?" but "Is what philosophers say (about science) of value?"
In addition to the blockquote snafu, that was not quite clear. I think PZ's point was a) philosophers aren't the arbiters of these matters and b) this one is wrong anyway. The discussion that later followed focused on the last question.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 10, 2009 7:25 PM
I'm confused about this point. First, ideas can't be facts unless we've renounced materialism, no?
Second, and I know this has been repeatedly mentioned before but I'm very late to this conversation it seems; Wade does not demonstrate an understanding of "fact" and "theory" relevant to Prof. Myers use of Gould above or the ill-considered snarky comments. What he is saying is, I think the following:
1) A fact is a material or effect on material empirically observed.
2) A theory is a idea that simultaneously explains and defines the set of applicable facts, while also making predictions about future observations.
3) There is no difference in truth-value between theories and facts, but there is a difference in kind.
The facts are that 1) species produce 2) surplus 3) partially-random 4) genetic 5) reproductions 6) in an environment where those copies do not have infinite resources. The theory of evolution (excuse my reductive model for a moment) is these facts are connected and should be isolated from the totality of possible observed effects, that they explain a certain set of all possible materials (animal bodies, populations) and effects on materials (historical change in bodies, populations), and that they can predict certain future effects.
Is there something inaccurate in that description?
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 7:31 PM
How does that study fit with your philosophy?
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 7:35 PM
Gah. Chilly, windy walk on the beach. I guess my brain is still warming up. I know he's not a philosopher.
Posted by: SEF
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October 10, 2009 7:37 PM
@ #265:
You've missed out the fact of evolution (ie species had been seen to have changed over time) as already observed in the fossil record. It was this pre-existing fact of evolution which the competing theories of evolution were being invented to try to explain. Although only the Darwin and Wallace idea of natural selection etc really made it out of the hypothesis or silly idea stage into credible theory-hood (and only Darwin did the necessary detailed background work to establish this).
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 7:39 PM
I'm still waiting for the page reference in TGSOE where Dawkins says evolution is no longer a theory (in the scientific sense)
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM
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October 10, 2009 7:53 PM
'Tis Himself wrote:
No, 'Tis, no. Don't go there! You should know how hypercompetitive we Australians are; I don't want to have to dig through my toolkit to find my soul measuring tape so I can compare.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 7:55 PM
I apologize for overstating a few claims and using ambiguous language in a few places. The rest of my alleged offenses are less of a comment on me and more of a comment on the intellectual limitations of certain posters.Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 8:07 PM
When I was a child, adults used to tell me I had an "old soul". How does that rate in thepenissoul size?Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 8:09 PM
@ Strange gods before me, OM #260
Thank you very much, sir (and congratulations on the Molly). I was beginning to get rather worried that nobody else here seemed to find it offensive. Only two other people (apart from the OP) have commented on my comments and both seemed more concerned with my reaction than the blatant racism.
@ 'Tis Himself #261
That's one of the least gracious, and least sincere, "apologies" I've read, although I'm glad to see you have learnt something about discrimination against Australian Aborigines. However, it should have been obvious to anyone in 2009 that using any ethnic group as shorthand for "smelly" is offensive. Why should I have had to explain that to you, or to detail what type of response you might wish to make?
You pad out your oh-so-grudging apology with all sorts of obfuscating waffle.
EG 1 ~ A long bit of sarcasm about my "indepth knowledge of the collective psyches of all the Monty Python people but particularly that of Eric Idle" I think it is a fairly safe assumption that MP are ashamed of that line, and would not defend it now. Do you disagree?
EG 2 ~ "There, are you happy now? Is your little Australian soul soothed?" (btw, I'm not, nor have I ever been, an Australian. I spent six months there working and I haven't even been back there since 1974. Nor, ofc, do I have a "soul", little or otherwise).
You also feel it appropriate to call me a "whiner" a couple of times. Ok, as I have lost all respect for you anyway I think I can live with that, but you still think that pointing out a racist comment is "whining"? Interesting, and illuminating.
BTW I never asked for an apology for me personally, I merely thought that, if you actually regretted saying it, you needed to apologise to everyone here (and maybe Aborigines in general).
I'll drop the subject now (to everyone's evident relief ~ embarrassing when their golden boy is revealed as a casual racist), unless you choose to continue the thing futher ofc. If I were you I'd stop calling other people "racist" for a bit, though.
Posted by: Neil Bee
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October 10, 2009 8:10 PM
A lot of people like to quote eg. Karl Popper about falsifiability etc. Well, Karl was a "philosopher" and so was (ironically? Medieval scholastic) William of Occam, of the "razor." Both arguments are favorites of skeptics and people talking about science. No lab experiment proves either one, we need philosophy to "frame the issues." BTW an irony is, how do you falsify KP's own dictum, etc? Do you accept from "logical insight" the first principles that you use to prove everything else, etc? It's not so glib.
As for supposed lack of quality of philosophy done here, well: just putting aside whether you like it being used in attempted arguments for God or not, much of what gets made fun of around here (like ;-) "modal realism") is logically very hard to argue against. We need almost a mystical distinction to explain the difference in kind being substantive "worlds" like this is presume to be, and "possible worlds" that never got actualized. Really, it can't be done with purely logical distinctions, that is one of the ironies about "materialism." Top thinkers like physicist Max Tegmark agree.
Posted by: Neil Bee
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October 10, 2009 8:17 PM
Oh, is economics really a science? Hard to say, but see Brad DeLong's various posts at http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/ etc. and find out re "fresh-water economists" etc. Lots of it really is phony baloney, and rigged to help rich people etc.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 8:36 PM
'Tis,
That was offensive. Doesn't make any other point by RTL interesting or valid. Just sayin'.
Oh, don't be ridiculous.
This is Neil Bee, btw:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/coyne_on_the_compatibility_of.php
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 8:39 PM
This is a tough one. It's not taboo to make a joke about Jews' supposed tight-fistedness, even though they have been perhaps the most persecuted minority in history. Therefore it's hard to justify why everybody is so offended whenever a similar joke is made about a less historically persecuted minority with black skin.
I suppose you could argue that smelliness is more offensive than stinginess. If somebody were to attempt a joke about Jews having pointy noses, that would be much more offensive than something from the class of Jew jokes that are accepted and presided over.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 8:43 PM
Hyperon's examples of what's "accepted" are always most telling.
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 10, 2009 8:49 PM
I think the throwing around of the "racist" tag on this blog based on random quotes, or even citations as in this case, needs to stop.
Seems pretty irrelevant to your claim that 'Tis is a racist, unless you feel this claim is so weak that it needs popular support.And it is unprovable of course.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 8:56 PM
I think you need to make an actual argument. The case that Hyperon is racist has been made clearly based on his comments on more than one thread. The accusation about 'Tis is a different matter entirely. Try nuanced thinking for once. You might like it.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 8:57 PM
I didn't say I condone it. What I mean is that society in most quarters accepts it. For instance, there was a whole episode of Family Guy ("When You Wish Upon A Weinstein") which was dead nearly 20 minutes of non-stop Jew jokes. It did get into some legal trouble, but it has aired on Cartoon Network and Fox, and is one of the most well-liked episodes.Posted by: Rorschach
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October 10, 2009 9:03 PM
SC,
I was referring to RTL's posts and his inability to seperate the man from the message(or quote).
We have enough posts from Hyperon to conclude that he holds racist views, we also have a million posts from 'Tis to conclude that he does not.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 9:04 PM
The case that SC likes to microwave corgi puppies has been made clearly based on her comments on more than one thread.How could you do that, SC? What kind of a sick maniac are you!
Posted by: Feynmaniac
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October 10, 2009 9:08 PM
Well Occam's razor can be shown using mathematics. As has been discussed in the comments here before the minimum description length principle is (loosely speaking) an information theoretic version of Occam's razor. It basically states that "the best hypothesis for a given set of data is the one that leads to the largest compression of the data".
As for falsification, it may be too rigid, limiting, or not the best general method to do science. However, it is logically sound.
Personally, a probabilistic/Bayesian approach of assigning a degree of certainty one has in a theory seems like the best approach for science to me. The criteria you use: how well the theory fits the data, principle of parsimony, and whether it actually makes predictions.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 9:09 PM
Hyperon, when are you going to realize that your behavior is independent of everybody else? If you don't want to be called racist, stop behaving like one, which you are still doing. Try just shutting up for a while. That works wonders. A couple of years might suffice, while you reprogram your mind to stop saying unacceptable things.
Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 9:09 PM
@ SC,OM #276
I should have said "some people's" not "everyone". Apologies for that.
I should also have said "I'll drop the subject now .... unless you, or anyone else, chooses to continue the thing futher ofc." but if you're also going to take a pop at me, I think I'm entitled to reply.
What exactly are the "any other point"s I made that are neither "interesting or valid"? I agree with your logic there, but you meant a little more than simply that, or you wouln't have felt the need to say it. I don't think I'm being too fanciful in saying that you meant to imply that everything else I said was uninteresting and invalid. Such as? I thought I was only making two points anyway. (1~Racist comment spotted, and 2~racists get OMs here?)
Then you say my comment that people find this matter embarrassing "ridiculous". Are you saying that if 'Tis Himself had been an unknown, unOM'd, first time poster his comment would have been treated exactly the same (ie ignored by all but me)? I doubt that, but am willing to reconsider. It seems to me that because of his status here he got an easy ride and the first impulse of anyone commenting was to question my motives or laugh at my "sensitivity". The alternative explanation is that nobody could see the racism and/or felt comfortable with it.
Posted by: The Science Pundit
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October 10, 2009 9:09 PM
@Neil Bee
And don't forget that KP's falsifiability was contrived in order to avoid Hume's problem of induction (Popper didn't believe that science was inductive). I personally tend to see science more as an exercise in making and modifying theories--and yes, I believe that science is inductive. ;-)
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 10, 2009 9:10 PM
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 9:12 PM
That is true. Especially the six year old part on Ring Tailed Lemurian.Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 9:15 PM
What I mean is that you travel in some...interesting quarters of "society."
You mean this episode, which aired three years after it was made?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_You_Wish_Upon_a_Weinstein
You might also note that several of the people most involved with the show are Jewish. It becomes more complicated when jokes about Jewish people are being made for a primarily non-Jewish audience. In any event, that jokes about Jewish people can be made - far from uncontroversially - on a show that makes jokes about numerous groups is far different from "the class of Jew jokes that are accepted and presided over." Jokes about Jewish people are always problematic and never straightforwardly acceptable.
Should we add anti-Semite to racist and misogynist in your case?
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 9:18 PM
[meta]
RTL, if you want to pursue the issue of Himself's purported racism, why not take it to the open thread? It's derailing this one.
--
Hyperon @283, that was malicious, stupid and despicable. Have you no shame?
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 9:22 PM
Oh, go fuck yourself. What's your fucking point? As I said, it got into some legal trouble. There's no chance an episode devotes to making fun of aboriginal Australians or Arabs or African-Americans would even be conceived, let alone air on two international channels. I did not say I liked them or accepted them. What I mean is that society accepts them, at least to a much greater extent than jokes about other ethnic groups. Since I'm half-Jewish and someone who's constantly singing the praises of Jewish culture, that wouldn't be such a good idea. You're a judgmental imbecile. Go fuck yourself.Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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October 10, 2009 9:25 PM
@ John Morales #291
I'm newish here and didn't know anything about any "open thread". I just read some of PZ's posts and then the comments, sometimes.
Thank you, I'll go and look for it.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 9:29 PM
Your post seemed broader. Ah, I guess we agree.
*shudder*
No, I didn't. I was addressing it to 'Tis, in case he felt that acknowledging it would be acceding to any other arguments you might have made in an earlier discussion and was avoiding it on that basis.
Well, you are. I have no idea what else you've said.
You didn't establish by any stretch of the imagination that he's a racist, and in fact those of us who've followed his comments over years/months know better, and wouldn't judge him by one ill-advised comment.
Possibly. It was a MP quote. I have no idea.
No, the first impulse was to give someone we "know" the benefit of the doubt and think (in this case, because I didn't follow the earlier discussion) that you had an axe to grind with 'Tis, since I (for one) haven't heard you pointing out other racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-Semitic comments.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 10, 2009 9:31 PM
I remember a bit over a year ago here, a theist came by (by the name of John Knight for those interested) who kept hammering on that science is self-defeating because of the problem of induction. And how did he solve the problem of induction? By C.S. Lewis' means of course, a good god could be relied upon to keep the laws of physics as they are and we could make reliable inductive claims about the laws of physics themselves.Of course I prefer the Lawrence Krauss* approach, that is measuring physics in different parts of the universe to see whether they are the same - turns out that they are. But still, it could be that any moment this laptop will spontaneously turn into a chicken. You can't say that it won't, problem of induction ;)
*It's not him who came up with it, but he's the one I heard it off
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 9:38 PM
Ignorant idiot.
Ignorant idiot. Again, the society you live in is peculiar. And you never seem to question what you believe is acceptable in it.
I knew that was coming. Whatever the hell that is.
See my most recent blog post, especially the portion about David Romero.
Here you go:
http://saltycurrent.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduras-update-10-9-09-continuing.html
Posted by: Feynmaniac
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October 10, 2009 9:38 PM
That scientists (and people in general) use induction may be psychologically interesting, but it doesn't make induction a valid form of reasoning. Induction is a good way to make hypotheses, but it's not a logically sound way to decide whether those hypotheses are true.
It's also worth making the distinction between the scientific method and science as a human enterprise. Even if we had a valid method to gauge the truth (or falsity or probability of truth) of a theory humans are still imperfect. Many will cling to an old theory even after a better one has been developed or be swayed more by a person's reputation than their arguments.
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 10, 2009 9:40 PM
ad 1 : racist today ? no doubt.perceived as racist in Britain in the 70s, which is the context it was made in? Maybe,maybe not.And again, you make a mistake by confusing the quote with the person making the quote and attributing racism to that person.
ad 2 : Should someone "newish here" make such a claim you think, without first looking into the issue and thereby demonstrating to the regulars that he is talking out of his ass? I dont think so.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 9:46 PM
Let me put it this way: In Pharyngulan society, jokes or comments at the expense of racial or ethnic groups, women, or GLBT people are not acceptable. None are more acceptable than others. That's the subculture. It's a good one.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 10, 2009 9:47 PM
@268
Your statements represent a falsification of definitions in reaction to a vulgar definition of "theory". It is not true that Evolution can be observed in the fossil record, it can only be theorized as a result of observing the fossil record. One cannot observe a materially existing process, only incidents or points within a chain; processes themselves necessitate theoretical activity and evolution is no exception.
That said, what Dawkins and Myers seem to be attempting to say is that theories that are testable, tested, unfalsified, and predictive should be raised beyond empirical skepticism to the level of facts. The problem with this is twofold: first, in what way can "The Theory of Evolution" be used that is similar to the way we use a material fact like a fossil? Second, this sets the Theory of Evolution as a final truth instead of an effective conceptual frame. Can it be said that not only does Evolution have the same use as material objects, but that it also have the same resistance to skepticism? I think this is really the argument and one I find unconvincing in the end. There is no absolute ground to a theory, only to facts and matter itself.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 10, 2009 9:51 PM
Ignorant OF WHAT? If you don't back up this claim it is an unsubstantiated assertion. Peculiar? I already gave a precise example of how Jew jokes are accepted on American national television. Here's another one. A while ago I was watching a round-table discussion (called "What it means to be human" -- available to watch on Google video) mediated by Charlie Rose. It was in New York, and the audience was presumably chiefly liberal and well-educated. One of the panelists, Marvin Minsky (a highly respected scientist), told a Jew joke. ("According to the Jewish tradition, the fetus only becomes human when it is accepted for medical school".) There was excessive laughter. Are we to believe the audience consisted entirely of oddballs?Seems to me that you're simply deluding yourself if you can't accept that there's a class of Jew jokes that are generally accepted by society. (That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying I think they're justified, so I do not know how this could POSSIBLY constitute anti-Semitism.)
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 9:52 PM
RTL @293, Sorry, I should've linked to the open thread. Here: The Horror Express.
Posted by: Jadehawk, OM
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October 10, 2009 9:56 PM
interesting...
1)person1 quotes something that has a racist joke in it; person1 has this pointed out to them vehemently by person2*, and finally accepts that they should have removed it (and would do so in the future)
2)person3 makes repeated statements (not quotes) that are racist; has this pointed out by persons4-24 repeatedly; refuses to see their error and continues to lash out at persons pointing out the racism
I know which situation I find more likely to contain an actual racist as supposed to someone who fucked up
can we finally end this fucking stupid conversation?
---
*who feels its necessary to insult person1 with a sexist label? unless person1 was referring to this kind of Tit
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 10:08 PM
Ignorant of the mass media in the US. There have been numerous books and articles written about the demeaning portrayal of black people and Arabs on US television. Would you like some citations?
But the fucking point is that even if the racist/sexist/homophobic US media consider some jokes acceptable, that doesn't make it a "tough one" here. These comments and jokes are unacceptable. All of them.
That fucking show aired three years after it was made. It's hardly an example of that. Again, even if it were...
No. Minsky is Jewish; many in the audience were presumably Jewish (New York has the largest Jewish population outside Israel). As I said, problems arise when jokes about one's own group are told in audiences that include people from outside that group. This has fuck-all to do with the acceptability of bigoted comments against any group here.
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space
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October 10, 2009 10:08 PM
illllllllllllli,
Evolution is a fact in the sense that we have seen it occur both in nature and in the lab. It is an observed, verified, peer-reviewed, published fact.
That the mechanism of evolution by natural selection can account for the diversity of speciation we observe is a theory--one strongly supported by every one of many strands of evidence pertinent to biology.
Thus, evolution is Both a fact and a theory.
Posted by: CatBallou
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October 10, 2009 10:20 PM
illllli @300, I think your confusion might stem from the fact that "Theory of Evolution" is shorthand for "Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection."
I'm having trouble understanding the way you call a fossil a "fact." In my mind, objects and facts aren't precisely the same. I'm not a philosopher, however. That evolution occurs was considered a fact even in Darwin's day, and today a substantial portion of creationists will concede that it occurs, although they argue about the magnitude of change.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 10:25 PM
SC wrote:
"So I didn't think your example was relevant to PZ's post or the fact/law/theory issue ("what, if anything, of value the philosophers of science had to say ABOUT science" is just too broad), and choosing an example in which a philosopher was attacking another discipline was perhaps unwise. I do appreciate that it's of interest to you, though."
No, it wasn't relevant to fact/law/theory; but that has seemed to me all along one of the least interesting issues raised in this discussion. Pretty obviously Wade made some very muddled statements about "theory" and "fact," and I thought Myers straightened him out pretty plainly and cleanly. Not much more to see there.
What caught my (perhaps idiosyncratic) interest was Myers's offhand comment about philosophers of science trying to figure out what scientists are doing; combined with a suggestion that science is not self-reflective. These remarks strongly resemble comments frequently made in discussions about history and the philosophy of history--historians typically being too busy to write history to spend lots of time pondering what it is they're doing (for a recent good book touching on these issues among others, see Richard J. Evans, IN DEFENSE OF HISTORY). (I once was a historian, but then had to re-join the middle class--so this really had my feelers twitching.)
The example I cited (maybe it was ill-chosen, though only for a reason irrelevant to my main point) doesn't just say something ABOUT science (I shouldn't have used such vague language); it tries to give an idea of what, specifically, science IS that distinguishes it from everything else. Words like "suggestive" and "plausible" came to my mind immediately upon reading it--and the emphasis on confirmation struck me as about right (I was vaguely aware that philosophers of science had moved away from Karl Popper on this subject; this discussion seemed to give a very good reason why). Philosophy in the analytic tradition is pretty good at definition; and these writers I thought might be doing what the scientists who post here would recognize as a good job. (Very oddly, I'm not sure I've seen any comment yet on that issue: how accurate a picture these writers present.)
Re-reading the post that started all this, I'm still convinced I latched onto the most interesting part of it; but . . . de gustibus.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 10:25 PM
illllllllllllli:
Not at all. You are misreading them.
In the sense that, as you put it, it is "testable, tested, unfalsified, and predictive".
Did you read the post? PZ wrote (my emphasis):
I kind of agree with the general statement that facts won't change (but as I'll say below, the facts do shift as they are argued over), but it is possible to change the conceptual framework, the theories, we use to integrate a collection of facts into a useful model in our brains. It is entirely possible for a new model to emerge that does a better job of explaining the history of life on earth someday.
How you read that as claiming it's "a final truth" is beyond me.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 10, 2009 10:29 PM
@305
You are confusing "fact" with "true" and presuming that theoretical objects exist outside of the operation of human heads. This isa non-materialist notion that has no place in science. I will insist on this point; facts are effects on material (these objects are in motion) or material itself (here are object). They are nothing else.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 10:30 PM
CatBallou,
Neither am I, but you're quite right.
A 'fact' is merely a proposition whose truth can be established empirically (i.e. by observation).
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 10:34 PM
I had seen a talk about this (Reel Bad Arabs)several months back - didn't know it was available online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewaox9UA6NE
Watching it now.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 10, 2009 10:35 PM
Instead of "historians typically being too busy to write history to spend lots of time pondering what it is they're doing,"
I should have written: "historians typically being too busy WRITING history to spend lots of time pondering what it is they're doing."
Hope that's clearer now.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 10, 2009 10:39 PM
@308 I'm not claiming that Myers or Dawkins might be attempting to reify evolution. I'm claiming that in conflating "true explanation" with "fact", this specter is raised. You would agree that it is stupidity to look for "a new model to emerge that does a better job of" being a bone, yes? It's because "bones that exist" are facts. Facts are not interrogated in these other ways, they are the foundations for empirical questioning and are pre-theoretical (by definition).
@306 You have a point, if we're going to be absolutely rigorous, objects aren't facts, they "are" and that they "are" is a fact. But ontology and epistemology aren't really the point here, an accurate appraisal of the words "theory" and "fact" are. Instead of saying that "evolution occurs", it is more accurate to say that the theoretical apparatus of natural selection continues to be a "testable, tested, unfalsified, and predictive" mechanism for empirical observation of the reproduction of biological traits and their change over time.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 10:58 PM
illllllllllllli, again, you seem to be conflating 'evolution the fact' (life on Earth has changed over time¹, and it's all made from the same building blocks²) with 'evolution the theory' (how 'evolution the fact' is explained).
I suspect it's the word's polysemy that you find problematic.
--
¹ Unless you disbelieve the reliability of the numerous methods of dating fossils.
² Unless you disbelieve the reliability of molecular biology.
(There are, of course, other factors that establish 'evolution the fact')
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 10, 2009 11:34 PM
Evolution can mean "life on earth has changed over time and is made from the same building blocks", but are you asserting this is what is meant above, either by Myers or Dawkins. This is pretty clear in sentences like "Evolution is both a fact and a theory" which is bizarre, schizophrenic or meaningless if we accept your bifurcated definition.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 10, 2009 11:41 PM
Yawn, we have a troll who doesn't want to get it. Yesterday's news.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 11:42 PM
Doc - not half bad.
'Kay.
Uh, OK, but neither you nor your reference seemed to address this.
Oh, whatever. I'm a historical scholar.
Was my point.
Who knows? My point was that it didn't seem directly relevant to anything under discussion. Too general.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 10, 2009 11:46 PM
illllllllllllli:
NB: This shall be my last comment on this point.
Same word, more than one sense: Polysemy.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 10, 2009 11:51 PM
Clearly, you've had no philosophical training in the US.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/61320/saturday-night-live-shimmer-floor-wax
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 11, 2009 12:03 AM
Remember kids: gravity - only a theory ;)Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 1:08 AM
I am not insisting that "Evolution" does not have multiple meanings. This is obvious. I am suggesting that in the Wade piece and in Myers himself do not use Evolution in these multiplied meanings.
For my part, let me try to demonstrate that it isn't made clear above and I'll see where I go. In the first instance, Myers uses Gould's attack on the uses of "theory" and "fact" as if they were relevant to Wade's argument. They are not. Wade does not discuss "theory" as "imperfect fact" but instead appears to come from a Latourian constructivist position that sees theories as the controlling epistemologies in which science occurs and which are serve as the last points of falsification (or grounding, depending on your modalities). It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with being less true than another thing.
Second, Gould's, then Myers, then several of your assertions that "facts" are not absolutes is correct, to a point. Facts are absolutely provisional, in a certain way. But let's all go back to the first day of logic class and remember that just because Facts are things which are "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent" does not mean that all things "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent" are facts. They are simply confirmed, and often according to their own epistemological criteria separate from those that confirm other types of facts. It could be, and in this case is, that the "Theory of Evolution" is operating in a different space than the fact of Evolution, a hypothetical embedded in the by the theory that the theory corresponds with reality, the facts of evolution, the material, relational and effect processes that are deemed relevant by the "Theory of Evolution", and finally the truth of evolution, its correspondence with a coherent, effective, pragmatic, self-aware and predictive experience of well-trained subjects.
Now, Myers point that Wade has excessively simplified the philosophy of science and made a three-tiered system is correct. There is no Fact -> Law -> Theory pendulum, each independent ball impacting the other. Wade is exemplifying the romanticism of American postmoderns to challenge Science by calling it a dogma for not being as flexible as the Nietzschean free-play of signifiers. Science in practice is a very different beast and the hard definitions of the postmodernists are incorrect and themselves excessively reified (though so that I might not be unfair, so are the rationalists, the Popperians, the supposed neo-platonists, the phenomenologists, as well as polemicists or popularizers of any tradition that engages with or in science).
A problem arises when Myers asserts that while the Theory of Evolution via natural selection as proposed by Darwin was supplanted by a variation that included the discoveries of genetics, there was something called "the Theory of Evolution" that remained intact. Here, there are supposedly two forms of evolution, 1) the broad notion that there is a limited amount of plausible material for biological production and that biological products changed over time and 2) the explanation for these "facts". Myers says, that
Here is where I begin to get very uncomfortable. The notion that "the idea that species changed over time driven by forces of selection" is a fact other than of its existence as occurring in minds appears to be incorrect. "Ideas" by definition cannot really occur in materialist science. They must be epiphenomenal to material stimuli, and phenomenal only to their own processes, which is to say more concretely, they are real only on their own terms. They are not facts, because facts are material phenomena that occur at all modes, affecting thoughts (by being their subjects) as well as other materials (by knocking about on them), thus the robustness of materialism.
I think much of the confusion stems from the way the following section is phrased:
While I am reasonably confident that Mr. Morales' claim of polysemousness is possible, I don't think it's obvious from the context. If I take it absolutely seriously, then Myers preceding and succeeding sentences have to be ignored, because both of them appear to me to talk about Evolution as a singularity, a theory but a theory that corresponds with a real truth in such a way as to contradict one is to contradict, to some degree the other. Having read Myers for a long time, I don't think that he holds quite the same flexibility or constructivism in his position that Mr. Gould is expressing above, but instead subscribes more or less to this correspondence theory of theoretical scientific truth, at least as it relates to evolutionary theory. And I don't blame him in this at all, it's among the most reasonable position. It just isn't mine. What concerned me more was the swift rejection of the question on the part of Wade, a question that falters at points but does not seem to me to be entirely imprudent to return to now and again.A last point; I am relatively contented after having explored this that the idealism that seemed apparent in the first reading and the subsequent scavenge for the right quote is not there in the form I originally thought. Yet there was no effort on the part of the commenters here to explore the issue. Maybe its because Myers sets the tone for his comment section, that seems plausible, or maybe its a historical effect of dealing with evolution-denial, but whatever the cause, the effect is an intellectually incurious and adamant position that responds with glibness and "Remember kids: gravity - only a theory ;)" This position is indefensible as far as I'm concerned. If your contribution to a discussion is to assume the bad faith of others, is riven by your attempt to "win" an exercise not a race, or is otherwise so sure of your own position that discussion and re-evaluation becomes impossible, I have nothing to say to you. Have fun with your bumper sticker brain, I'll have none of it.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 11, 2009 1:22 AM
illllllllllllli @321:
Once again, you seem to have problems with the terminology, rather than the semantics; in particular, I think you misinterpret what it is that is denoted by the term facts, and therefore make a category error.
(In a way, I find you complementary to the woo-meister Buddhacious.) :)
Posted by: MAJeff, OM
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October 11, 2009 1:25 AM
I had seen a talk about this (Reel Bad Arabs)several months back - didn't know it was available online:
I've been using Shaheen's readings in my classes for a few years now. ;-)
Posted by: PZ Myers
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October 11, 2009 1:30 AM
All I can say to illllllllllllli is…dear god. That's not philosophy, that's a pathology.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 11, 2009 1:41 AM
The ;) should be a dead giveaway I was being sarcastic. The discussion reminded me of this. But no matter, if you want to just dismiss me because of a smart-arse one liner then so be it.Back in post #7 I quoted Jerry Coyne - "Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth." I have no problems with statements like this, however you want to put it evolution is pretty damn solid. It seems immensely unhelpful to play semantic games when you're trying to communicate the veracity of the evidence to a general audience.
What is wrong with saying evolution is a fact? Are we honestly still questioning that evolution took place any more than the earth is orbiting the sun? Or that objects of mass have a gravitational attraction?
My contribution to the discussion is that all this arguing over the use of the word theory is mental masturbation. This is the year 2009, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Yet we're stuck on a term that people use to mean everyday conjecture and we are decrying the use of a word that better suits the status of the evidence in relation to the English language.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 1:48 AM
@PZ Myers: Having come to agree mostly with your position, calling it a pathology seems a dick move. I thought it through, wrote it down and came to a different position as a result.
@John Morales: I agree that there exists a case of "fact" being defined other than the way I defined it. I don't agree with that definition. Think of my position as a materialist inverse of Idealism; I am skeptical of minds and thoughts, not of objects.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 2:22 AM
@Kel: Didn't mean to single you out, you just happened to be the last comment and one whose form, if not your intent, exemplified the glibness of much of the dismissal of Wade's point here on this thread.
I think my divergence with your much more expansive comment comes when you begin to turn toward "a general audience". I'm unconvinced that efforts in their direction are well-spent. The much-ballyhooed debate over the meaning of "strident" (Semantics matters enough to Dawkins to mention it over and over again in his press tour, so it must not be totally invalid, eh?) centers on this very point: the American population is set in a pretty rigid position rooted mainly in their economic position and religion's corollary short-term benefit as the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of a spiritless situation. They will not be moved by popularizations of scientific principles, because they haven't been moved by the popularization of scientific principles. People aren't hurting for information, they're hurting for reasons to trust that information. You can see in the continued evolutionary illiteracy among those who (even intelligently) support it (think the Robert Wright book for the contemporary moment's type specimen of this phenomena), evidence that accurate knowledge of evolutionary theory and acceptance of said theory might be other than causally related.
On the other hand, for some of us who are sweet enough to indulge in philosophies of science, these types of conflations are infuriating. The brilliance of Darwin for me, for some of us, is not in the specificity of natural selection, but natural selection as among the most radical materialist and anti-teleological positions. The brilliance of genetics is in the anti-individual positions that it allows to exist (Dawkins certainly appreciates that argument). However, the distinction between "fact" theory and the radical empiricism that insists that evolution, gravity and even matter itself be provisional (however safe the provision) is too great for me to assent to such a statement. So no, I don't think we should dilute the very precise and valuable constructions that have been worked out through scientific inquiry, those of theory, fact, etc. We should instead battle their misuse and focus on the real skirmish, as Dawkins himself seems to be doing, which is the positive assertion of true theories. Skeptics of evolution aren't reasonable; it's the main contributing factor to them not being being skeptics of evolution. Time is better spent 1) making the conditions of acceptable rationality and 2) not dumbing down Valhalla while we wait for them to arrive.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 11, 2009 2:32 AM
illllllllllllli.wordpress.com wrote:
>Wade does not discuss "theory" as "imperfect fact" but instead appears to come from a Latourian constructivist position that sees theories as the controlling epistemologies in which science occurs and which are serve as the last points of falsification (or grounding, depending on your modalities). It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with being less true than another thing.
Okay, I’m just guessing here – but this is all a spoof, right? Like the online pomo generator?
But, just in case you are really serious, why don’t you e-mail Nick Wade and ask him if he is really coming from “a Latourian constructivist position that sees theories as the controlling epistemologies in which science occurs”?
Nick’s answer should be entertaining.
(No, I won’t do it myself – someday I may want a favor from Nick! And I don't think he will appreciate your characterization of him.)
Dave
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 11, 2009 2:40 AM
illllllllllllli.wordpress.com,
Just to show that I can get into the spirit of the game:
In order to fully elucidate the fundamental implications of the essential matter under discussion, don’t you think it is critical to consider not only Latour’s contribution but also the broader conceptual connections which tie all of this into Feyerabendian epistemological anarchism, Lakatos’ Kuhnian-influenced modifications of Popperian falsificationism, and of course, ultimately, the metaphysical analysis that follows from Heidegger’s cogitations on Dasein and its ultimate roots in the Hegelian dialectic?
Please respond in 100 words or less.
(No, I did not use the pomo generator – every word I wrote is meaningful.)
Dave
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 2:58 AM
Sorry if I was unclear, Dave, but I'm trying to be precise. What part of my above point was unclear exactly, if you're as familiar with Latour and Constructivism in science as you appear to be?
Anyway, as to your second comment, Feyerabend is foremost in my mind when dealing with these issues, though he dramatically undervalues what he describes as science, which is too flat and uniform to resemble the real thing. John Law's "After Method" is a better re-writing of "Against Method" and takes into account Latour's great works on science as an ideology among others, but probably the best one going. Don't know anything about Lakatos, sorry. Dasien is not rooted in the dialectic, that's a facile reading but one often held by those who haven't read Hegel or Heidegger.
That's 97 words, and I think it goes pretty far to demonstrating that I'm not repeating jargon, which was your real question, right? Actually, my original comments should do that, as the quote you pulled wasn't that outrageous if you know how to use Wikipedia to look up Latour and Constructivism and a dictionary for all those medium-sized words. Anyway, do you want to have a real dialogue, critique my actual claims and my actual thoughts or just see who can quote and name-check faster?
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 3:08 AM
Btws, the relevant essay for those who insist on portraying everyone who is not a positivist as a postmodern "woo-woo" is Latour's "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern". Speaking of Hegel, just because I disagree with a piece of an argument doesn't mean that I become its mediating inversion.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 11, 2009 3:11 AM
Neil Bee wrote:
>We need almost a mystical distinction to explain the difference in kind being substantive "worlds" like this is presume to be, and "possible worlds" that never got actualized. Really, it can't be done with purely logical distinctions, that is one of the ironies about "materialism." Top thinkers like physicist Max Tegmark agree.
I’m a theoretical physicist; Max Tegamrk is a theoretical physicist.
For the life of me, I cannot think of a single significant contribution by Max to theoretical physics.
I can think of some really goofy things Max has said.
Max a “significant thinker”?
Uh, no.
Note: I’ve got nothing against Max, I’m just challenging your claim that he is a “significant thinker.” If you claimed I were a “significant thinker,” that too could be batted down (though, perhaps, I have said fewer goofier things than Max).
As to your supposed almost “mystical distinction” between real worlds and imaginary worlds, I am afraid you are on the wrong blog: the technical term for people who deal with folks who have trouble drawing that distinction is “psychiatrists.”
Dave
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 11, 2009 3:12 AM
On that I do agree with you, I don't think it will make much of a difference. But surely you can recognise on the same token that completely excluding the way people communicate is doing to be disastrous. While I'm a non-scientist (scientifically-inclined layman) I can appreciate the distinction that is trying to be made here. Though I still think the distinction Wade is trying to make is taking it too far.What I mean by this is that when someone says "evolution is a fact" they aren't talking about making neo-darwinism into dogma - rather that it's pretty incontrovertible that life evolves, it has been observed (both directly and indirectly to do this). How it happened, however, is more provisional
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 11, 2009 3:23 AM
illllllllllllli.wordpress.com wrote to me:
> That's 97 words, and I think it goes pretty far to demonstrating that I'm not repeating jargon, which was your real question, right?
No, it does not demonstrate that at all. And my “real question” was the one I posted.
And the correct answer to the question I posted was “No,” which is indeed less than 100 words.
Sorry, dear boy, you get an “F.”
Dave
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 3:29 AM
@Kel: I think when somebody like Dawkins or Myers says that Evolution is a fact, or as Gould puts it so perfectly above, no, it isn't dogmatic. The problem is when it is put that way precisely to appeal to those who don't have any desire to be anything but "right". Dogmatists are rarely the theorists who provide the tools, they're the laymen those theorists appeal to.
@Dave: Thanks for the conversation. Nice to see good faith dialogue still exists, asshole.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 11, 2009 3:31 AM
[sorry, accidentally hit post halfway through a post]
To clarify, I'm not advocating turning evolution into dogma, rather trying to distinguish evolution from other theories that don't have quite the empirical backing. Fast forward a few hundred years, I'm betting that while there may be new mechanisms involved, the fact that we evolved will still be there. Yes this is tentative knowledge, but it's knowledge that has been validated time and time again by direct and indirect observation in many separate fields of evidence to the point where there really can be no other explanation beyond an omphalos explanation.
My comment about gravity did convey something more, and while it was tongue-in-cheek there was a point to it. This again is where I'm having a problem with making such distinctions in language. That objects with mass attract is not something that is going to be overturned, so while the mechanisms behind gravity may / will change, the fact that gravity exists remains beyond all reasonable doubt.
On that note I can sympathise with Dawkins' attempt to introduce the word theorum to distinguish between the different degrees of certainty associated with different scientific theories. Just as I can appreciate Michael Shermer for introducing fuzzy logic (where all hypothesises ranged between 0.1 and 0.9) to show the different levels of certainties associated with the provisional nature of scientific inquiry.
I guess in my case it comes down to my personal preference. And my opinion in the end means fuck-all considering I'm a programmer and not a philosopher of science, but when something is so overwhelmingly supported by the evidence that to me is a fact. It's provisional, it's subject to change as further evidence comes to light, but it makes no sense to shy away from the word when the evidence that life evolved is as much true as archaeopteryx had feathers. I can't personally live my life whereby the word knowledge has no set definition, that I'm going to wonder how do I "know" I have a hand. I can safely say I do have one (two actually) - yet would be willing to change my mind if the evidence dictates I do. The philosophical questions are interesting, they give cause to think, but in the end what does it achieve? Just as in this case, yes I understand that all scientific knowledge is provisional and it can never be proved, but in that framework surely there is cause to distinguish between levels of evidential support.
(apologies for the long and slightly confusing reply, I'm not trying to pick a fight here - on the contrary this is making me think about my position)
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 3:52 AM
@Kel: No fights here, only constantly rethought positions all around. Much more interesting, and valued.
I appreciate your point that masses will always attract, but the question is whether that is the only way they can be or need to be conceptualized. We're all, mostly, empiricists today but Newton wasn't. His conceptions of science were alien to ours today, woo-woo as all get out (homeopathy, shit, try alchemy.) But from what was the previous paradigm's heights, he had an openness to him regarding possible change in systems that allowed him to pose a theory that continue(d)s through into empirical science. I am skeptical that a position that asserts a conceptual frame as fact will be able to keep enough of an open mind to discover new methods of conception that might be more effective toward an unseen end or from an unexpected position (as an example, when our brains are all loaded into robots, empiricism and experience is going to mean something very different). And if we can keep a radically empiricist point of view, then I don't really care what it's called. I only care that those asking questions or posing new frames are encouraged and responded to. There is a point in the Gould piece that I think I need to disagree more vocally about; that anything is "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." Maybe provisional consent isn't needed, but patient explanation should be the rule. Stupid, backward, confrontational, all of them should be engaged to and instructed as long as the form from which their instruction comes remains undiluted with populist demands. It's this that I'm always worried about in the black and white demands of polemical science. Science invented shades of gray, indeterminacy, thoughtful and introspective reassessment, goddammit, I'm not giving that up because other folks like to get loud and retarded.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 11, 2009 3:54 AM
I'm one of those laymen, but I'm not looking for dogma. I understand that what I believe in and why is provisional - at least I think I do. I may be talking out of my arse and not know it (Dunning-Kruger)In any case, I've had this conversation in atheist circles about the use of the word know as opposed to the word believe. I maintain that knowledge shouldn't be about certainty, rather an expression of well-established beliefs. For instance, I know that homoeopathy is bunk because it violates the laws of physics. I know that 2+2=4. etc. I separate this from saying "I believe that there is intelligent life on other planets" where there is a plausibility of this being the case (given the size of the universe and that intelligent life evolved here) but I don't really know. This is not to say I'm infallible or that I have absolute knowledge, rather it is to distinguish between what is more likely to be true compared to an absence of better information.
To form this into some sort of point, I'm trying to get at the need for a distinction between what is strongly supported and more tentatively supported. This isn't about producing absolute dogma, rather it's about having a means to distinguish between different ideas with different levels of evidential support. I hope I'm making sense.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 11, 2009 4:23 AM
illllllllllllli.wordpress.com wrote to me:
> @Dave: Thanks for the conversation. Nice to see good faith dialogue still exists, asshole.
Ah, but it was indeed good faith dialogue.
My question was perfectly meaningful and it had a perfectly meaningful answer.
My question was also of course a rather silly waste of time, *except* as a mean of pointing out that everything you have posted here was a waste of time.
You are playing pointless games with words, and you cannot see it.
I was trying, in quite good faith, I assure you, to illustrate that fact to you: it was all so easy for me to construct a question off the top of my head that was quite pointless (albeit technically “meaningful”) but that you took seriously (and I even knew that Heidegger did not consider himself to be relying on Hegel – alas, I know enough philosophy to get such things right).
I’m just a bit more polite than PZ when he said to you “All I can say to illllllllllllli is…dear god. That's not philosophy, that's a pathology.”
I thought perhaps my more gentle expository approach might get the point across to you.
Or not.
Guys like you are simply banned from my blog. But PZ is a Very Tolerant Man. He seems willing to let you stay as long as you amuse Kel.
Kel, is he still amusing?
Dave
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 11, 2009 4:25 AM
I think where we are differing is a semantic issue, about the implications of the word fact. Maybe you're right, that people will take it with absolute incontrovertible certainty - and maybe I'm overestimating the population to take into account the provisional nature of knowledge. And my need for the use of language is in general communication, I'm in a position where I need to distinguish between theory in the sense of evolution, big bang, string theory, atomic theory, etc. I remember a couple of years ago I had to explain what theory meant in terms of evolution when theoretical physics was brought up - he was looking for any qualifier he could to use the term theory to downplay the evidence for evolution.Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 11, 2009 6:17 AM
Don't think ultimately my opinion should matter. I'm still just trying to figure things out for myself, trying to understand what this whole argument is about. But really, I said my part and there's not really much more I can add without repeating myself.Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 11, 2009 6:34 AM
The notion that "the idea that species changed over time driven by forces of selection" is a fact other than of its existence as occurring in minds appears to be incorrect. "Ideas" by definition cannot really occur in materialist science. They must be epiphenomenal to material stimuli, and phenomenal only to their own processes, which is to say more concretely, they are real only on their own terms. They are not facts, because facts are material phenomena that occur at all modes, affecting thoughts (by being their subjects) as well as other materials (by knocking about on them), thus the robustness of materialism. - illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
You are using "fact" in a highly unusual (and I would say, incorrect) way. Material objects such as bones are not facts: facts are, as someone has already said, propositions that can be empirically confirmed. The attempt to expel all abstract (non-material) entities from science is fundamentally mistaken. Psychology and the social sciences have ideas among their objects of enquiry: ideas have effects. Of course they only have such effects because they are physically instantiated; but we can observe and theorise about those effects without knowing (as of course we don't), exactly how they are instantiated.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 11, 2009 7:26 AM
People were castigating me for saying "most of philosophy is bullshit." I present illllllllllllli as Exhibit A.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 11, 2009 7:43 AM
Yep, keeps picking at nits that are irrelevant and really don't advance anything but their own egos.Posted by: The Science Pundit
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October 11, 2009 8:03 AM
PhysicistDave @ #329 wins the thread!
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 8:57 AM
I sincerely doubt you will be able to point to an entire episode of a fairly recent show as popular as Family Guy, oriented exclusively around mocking a non-white ethnic group. My point was merely that the level of taboo of jokes about brown-skinned ethnic groups is hard to justify GIVEN that jokes about Jews are nowhere near taboo in most places. If you think they all should be taboo, that is a completely different point.
That is irrelevant. The show was eventually deemed acceptable for broadcast on Cartoon Network and Fox. That's the point.A famous British actor, David Jason, told the following joke on radio: "What do you call an Indian cloakroom attendent? Mahatma Coat". This ignited a huge firestorm, despite that it is clearly not even slightly racist. A few years earlier, a much more extreme and quite possibly racist "joke" about Israeli Jews was told by football personality Alan Hansen -- on television and on the BBC, no less -- to a much wider audience. Nothing happened.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 11, 2009 9:37 AM
Most of comedy shows in the In Living Color variety, including several shows on BET as well as stand-up acts on Comedy Central and elsewhere, do that on a daily basis, you twit. But they do it from the perspective of people in that group. Jokes and comments Jon Stewart makes about Jews would not be seen as acceptable from a non-Jewish person. It's particularly complex in the case of Jewish humor since the history of comedy in the US is largely the history of Jewish comedy in the US, which makes cultural readings here more complex than it appears you imagine.
Again, none of this has anything to do with whether racist comments like yours are acceptable in the context of this blog. People who've made anti-Semitic comments here have been called out on it.
You're such a fucking moron. If in any country television shows containing anti-Semitic jokes are allowed to be aired, then whether it's acceptable to make racist comments/jokes here becomes a tricky matter. Right. Moron. Stop trying to scare up defenses for your racist remarks. It's pathetic.
Any response to the film?
***
BTW, Axis of Evil comedy tour:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A667763EC786AD5F&search_query=axis+of+evil+comedy+tour
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 10:19 AM
Then surely it won't be hard for you to point to something specific. I'm not talking about the occasional "edgy" joke by a stand-up comedian. I'm talking about an entire episode of a popular show devoted to jokes about an ethnic group, being broadcast on two major family channels. If you can't do this, your claims can't be supported, and there's nothing for you to do apart from:(1) GTFO.
You're in desperate need of IMMEDIATE psychiatric treatment. Anybody who isn't insane would easily get it into their heads by now that I was not trying to condone anything. The "tricky" matter was merely that I felt a disproportionate amount of fuss was being made given the relatively low level of fuss usually engendered by jokes about Jews. That was my sole point. If you're going to hallucinate racism in my posts, there's nothing for me to do but recommend that you get help.(2) STFU.
Posted by: Rorschach
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October 11, 2009 10:28 AM
Got one for Hyperon :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReJWp3xstsg&feature=related
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 11, 2009 10:46 AM
The bigot keeps digging his hole deeper and deeper. And he seems unable to grasp the concept of when in over your head, stop digging. Not the type of behavior that shows him to be the intelligent person he claims to be, but rather an ignorant fool.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 11, 2009 10:58 AM
Sure: Chappelle's Show and Mind of Mencia consist almost entirely of racial/ethnic humor. This is of course completely fucking irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Look, asshole, unless you can show a "low level of fuss" about anti-Semitic jokes on this blog then you have no point.
It's been established beyond any doubt. Your comments on those other threads have not disappeared. I recommend that you stop digging.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 11:24 AM
I don't know about the second one, but Chapelle is black; Seth McFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, isn't Jewish, and neither is most of its staff. In that case it's hard to see why I haven't been banned. It's hard to see why you can't produce quotes that unambiguously prove me a racist. All you can do is allude to ever off-stage "common knowledge". If I were using my real name, and if this were on a bigger scale, I would sue you for libel, and probably be successful.Posted by: SC OM
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October 11, 2009 11:26 AM
I'm still amused at how Hyperon's example of a "low level of fuss" is an episode of a show (written by a Jewish guy, incidentally) that wasn't aired for three years due to concerns that it would be seen as anti-Semitic.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 11:29 AM
At least the show actually aired. If it were about any non-white ethnic group I don't think it would stand a chance.Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 11, 2009 11:30 AM
Yep, poor Hyperon just can't get it. Some flaw in his thinking perhaps? Hyperon, if you meet the following conditions, you can say bigoted things without being called on it:
*crickets chirring*
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 11, 2009 11:34 AM
SC OM #347
It had never struck me before, SC, but I think you're right. Wikipedia has a list of 195 Jewish comedians, most of them Americans. I was mildly surprised at a couple of them, like Victor Borge (né Børge Rosenbaum) and Jon Stewart (né Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz). Jews are a major, if not dominant, factor in American comedy.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 11:39 AM
American Jewish humour is possibly my favourite kind of humour (for instance I adore Curb Your Enthusiasm). Never got what's funny about Jon Stewart though. Seems to be that he goes "Yay, I'm liberal!", and people like SC feel they're "supposed" to laugh, so they do. Would be interesting to see if he's so popular with people who can think for themselves.Posted by: SC OM
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October 11, 2009 11:41 AM
Yes, and Mencia is Hispanic. They make fun of their own and other racial/ethnic groups. Sarah Silverman, whom Rorschach pointed to above, often does as well.
Several of the staff, including producers, voice actors, and the writer of that episode, are in fact Jewish.
Again, none of this has anything to do with the acceptability of racism on this blog.
If there were another round of Survivor, you'd likely get my vote.
sgbm has done so numerous times.
You're a loon. I'm done with you.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 11:52 AM
Several out of dozens. The creator of the show, who also does most of the voice acting, is not Jewish. He hasn't. He likes to spam links to long posts of mine, presumably on the cynical assumption that nobody will be bothered to read. If you actually do properly check out his links, you will invariably find that they completely fail to substantiate charges of racism. The fact that he likes to post links, and seldom posts quotes, is rather revealing. Thank fuck for that.Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 12:14 PM
@Knockgoats
Well, as I said earlier, a bone isn't a fact, it is, that it is is a fact. I was using a shorthand to avoid the ontological status of bones, a topic far too complicated to deal with here and beyond my reach, frankly.
I agree, again, that ideas can be a valid but only in their own sphere, as with psychology. I think you tar the social sciences, however, with outdated conceptions. Good social science knows that ideas are irrelevant, practices matter. Which is where I turn to @Kel's point of a disagreement between atheists as to what to do about truth and belief.
At bottom, my position might be that these distinctions don't matter, nor is it what the person thinks about their behavior but is only their material actions and the effects of their material actions. Practices are what matter, both in realms like religious belief and in those of scientific belief. It why you don't criticize well-formed, well-placed but perhaps crazy hypotheses and instead focus on methods. Karen Armstrong has taken a position, were it less dismissive of religious practice's total failure, that I find interesting in this regard. If we need to use the world "fact' to communicate those practices not in question at a given point, fine, or those practices which are necessary to have accepted in order to accept the findings of a given study. @Kel brings up physics, which is perfect for this. If I'm determining trajectories of richocheting objects, it is a fact that if one object hits another, the second object will change course. I don't need to get into the repulsive interatomic forces because that doesn't effect the practices I'm executing.
@Dave: Notice I didn't answer your question, I responded honestly, that Feyerabend was influential on my thinking on the issue and that your Heidegger premise was incorrect. You insisted it was meaningful, I didn't get your meaning and moved on. I apologize for not understanding each reference and for answering in a way as glib as you posed it.
But, wait, I should be banned from this forum for ... what? Having a different point of view? You assume bad faith because ... you exemplify it? That you would suggest you were "in quite good faith" by assuming that I was incoherent by constructing a false question and asking me to answer it is evidence that you don't know what good faith means.
Sorry if my questions offend some folks as bullshit. You can dismiss it, I guess, if its not important to you. I don't understand why you would need to intrude on a conversation between people who are finding it meaningful enough to continue their conversation.
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 12:14 PM
What a remarkably dishonest evasion. We've already been over this, and you know better.
No, if racism automatically got people banned, Piltdown Man wouldn't be here. PZ already said it was his opinion that you are a racist, Hyperon, and yet he didn't ban you for it.
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 12:32 PM
I post links precisely because they allow the reader to take your words in context and come to a decision independently of my summary. If I posted quotes you would try to evade criticism by complaining about quotes out of context.
But if you want quotes:
"African-American culture IS singularly primitive and violent."
"Most Pakistanis and Bangladeshis speak their own language at home and aren't familiar with British culture. They come across as rather insular and shy. Other things being equal, there's no reason to employ them."
"maybe they [black people] commit drug crimes at a rate that's six times higher."
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 11, 2009 12:36 PM
"bones that exist" are facts. illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
Since "bones that exist" are simply "bones", you were saying that bones are facts. If that's not what you meant, you should try to express yourself more clearly. The correct way of stating what I now think you were trying to say is: "That certain bones exist, is a fact.", or "The existence of certain bones is a fact.".
I think you tar the social sciences, however, with outdated conceptions. Good social science knows that ideas are irrelevant, practices matter. Which is where I turn to @Kel's point of a disagreement between atheists as to what to do about truth and belief.
The notion of a "practice" is not a purely material one: bones and elementary particles do not have "practices" - nor indeed to non-human animals. People can have "practices" because they can have standards for how things ought to be done. Practices, therefore, necessarily involve ideas.
At bottom, my position might be that these distinctions don't matter
Pretentious waffle. Either this is your position, or it isn't. If it is, why have you spent so long quibbling about these distinctions?
nor is it what the person thinks about their behavior but is only their material actions and the effects of their material actions.
Wrong, of course, since what people think affects what they do.
You really are determined to make the strongest possible case for the uselessness of philosophy, aren't you?
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 12:50 PM
Observing now that SGBM in #362 has done the best he can do to implicate me, let's take into account the following:
The first quotation is out of context. I made that statement only after I had talked at length about "culture in African-American ghettos" and "gangsta rap culture". Clearly it was in that context when I said "African-American culture". I repeatedly clarified this point, yet SGBM refuses to listen.
After I made the second statement, I immediately clarified that I was talking specifically about Pakistanis and Bangladeshis that I knew. The ones I know mostly come across as very shy and insular, and other things being equal, there's no reason to employ them. Nothing racist about this. When I was an undergrad I encountered a lot of difficulty getting summer jobs because I came across as shy and insular. Other things being equal there was no reason to employ me.
The third quotation can hardly be maintained as racist. I know little about drugs, and even less about the distribution of drugs in America. I withdrew the speculation immediately when evidence of the contrary was brought to my attention.
Posted by: Walton
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October 11, 2009 12:55 PM
strange gods, a reply awaits you. (And I'm getting better and better at this HTML business; I'm quite proud of myself for having learnt to embed links...)
Posted by: Walton
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October 11, 2009 1:01 PM
Speaking for myself, I've never found Stewart as funny as Colbert. (Yes, I know this is heresy in some circles...)
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 1:05 PM
@Knockgoats: Yes, I did say that "bones that exist" are facts (by the way, I included the "that exist" to distinguish them from fictional or hypothetical bones which do not exist. It isn't a meaningless distinction when talking about what constitutes a fact.) but I was challenged on it and decided that was inaccurate. After that comment, I revised my position:
Yes, I know, I changed my position based on criticism of sloppiness, while having a discussion on the internet. Don't worry, it's happened before.
Practice is entirely material. It is the movements, recorded instances, vocalized stories and routinized relations of human beings. Bones don't have these things, not because they're purely material, but because they're inert. Animals have practices. Practices have sub and super-practices that as non-human actors they engage with. Humans experience these phenomena and respond as to stimuli and the patterns of stimulus response that have been embedded over time, not out of their own brilliance or forethought. Think of emotions; they're not real, there is no "anger", there is only a nervous system's recognition of physical reactions like elevated blood pressure, adrenaline, etc.
It isn't pretentious waffle. If I'm going to take a position with regard to facts that calls for a radical empiricism, then it follows that all my statements are provisional. I am willing to revise them given certain stimuli from certain actors. If you think I'm wrong, why insist that I be both wrong and adamant that I'm wrong? I've spent this time because it interests me, and because I think through ideas by writing them out. Other writing is a great prompt so sometimes I write in places where other people write. What is your point here? That your practice is different than mine?
Philosophy is not some universally useful activity, it's useful to those who use it to think through their world. If you don't like it, don't use it, how hard is that?
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space
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October 11, 2009 1:30 PM
Il...li,
You are ignoring the obvious:
Evolution the fact: We have seen evolution both change genetic frequency AND produce speciation in the lab and in nature repeatedly.
Evolution the theory: That said mechanism is responsible for the diversity of species we find on Earth.
The theory is strongly supported because we know the mechanism is operant and because the theory is the most parsimonious explanation.
As to philosophy of science, it's alwasy struck me as being a bit like philosophy of sex: you really understand it a lot better if you've done it.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 11, 2009 1:49 PM
Look, SC, our little boy is becoming a grownup. Next he'll learn there are other economists besides Milton Friedman.
Posted by: Dania
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October 11, 2009 1:57 PM
OK, that does it for me. a_ray_in_dilbert_space must be awarded a Molly soon.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 11, 2009 2:07 PM
illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
Yes, I know, I changed my position based on criticism of sloppiness, while having a discussion on the internet. Don't worry, it's happened before.
I missed your correction. Apologies.
Practice is entirely material. It is the movements, recorded instances, vocalized stories and routinized relations of human beings.
Even here, you show that you are wrong. Nothing can possibly be a "story" without including ideas: without those, these "stories" are just noise. Note that you can have the same story told in entirely different words, voices, languages, media...
Humans experience these phenomena and respond as to stimuli and the patterns of stimulus response that have been embedded over time, not out of their own brilliance or forethought.
Nothing can be regarded as either a "stimulus" or a "response" without taking intentionality (hence ideas) into account. This is the fundamental flaw in behaviourism.
Think of emotions; they're not real, there is no "anger", there is only a nervous system's recognition of physical reactions like elevated blood pressure, adrenaline, etc.
Tosh. Of course emotions are real. People recognised them, thought about them, theorised about them long before anyone knew about blood pressure, adrenaline, etc.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 2:11 PM
@Ray: I might be ignoring the obvious, that's possible. But my position is nearly identical to yours, so I wonder what our problem is. I've put it along almost exactly the same lines as you just did. My only difference would be to not call the first category "Evolution the Fact" but call it "Collection of Facts Deemed Relevant by Evolution the Theory", in order to hedge against neo-platonic idealism. If that's not something you feel needs hedging, don't use it.
As for philosophy of science, it's always struck me a bit like philosophy; you understand it a lot better if you've done it.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 2:36 PM
@Knockgoats: You're right, emotions are real if we define them as the effects on consciousness from incoming physical stimuli. But just because people didn't understand the physical causes doesn't mean that their analysis were right; they were just ignorant of the physical causes. See Spinoza's "On Human Bondage" for the high-point in these "emotion" discourses.
Let me be more clear about "stories". I mean only the physical expressions of sounds, the practices for interpreting those stories, and the effects of those stories. You and I disagree on the existence of intentionality, so in my telling, intentionality is just an internal fiction designed to make stimulus response (modified by cultural technologies that take advantage of biological dispositions, not some simple behaviorism) appear to be self-caused. There is no self-causation, to my view, and therefore no intentionality. My emotion analogy was to say that while we have the experience of emotions or of intentionality, and that might be considered real at that level, but if this fiction was removed, I'm not sure how great the difference in human reactions would be. Perhaps I'm giving short shrift to consciousness or intentionality itself as a cultural technology causing effects, and if I am then I'm very very close to your position, but I remain at this point unconvinced.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 11, 2009 2:58 PM
Let me be more clear about "stories". I mean only the physical expressions of sounds, the practices for interpreting those stories, and the effects of those stories. - iI (I can't be bothered copying your stupid nym any more)
You can't be clear, because you are utterly confused. Without taking into account meaning, hence intentionality, you can't even identify something as a story; let alone two stories told by different people, or in speech and writing, as the same story. You really are talking complete nonsense.
As for philosophy of science, it's always struck me a bit like philosophy; you understand it a lot better if you've done it.
From which I deduce that you have never done any.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 3:21 PM
Of course it's possible. It's not possible if you insist that meaning recognition and intentionality are the same thing, but that's not clear at all. If we hold that human consciousness is a fiction, but is instead a collection of techniques evolved to the contours of human behavior, it's perfectly coherent to claim that my language-technique allows me to receive sound stimuli that is much more information dense than before. Now, you seem to be insinuating that there must be a formalized rational scheme that precedes this movement, that there must be a language designer who creates the story identification elements, which allows for information transfer beyond it's "formal" elements like the exact words used to speak it. This just isn't how communication, or language formation works. It also isn't true that your "two stories" remain identical. These stories are collections of effective miscommunications, not intersubjective practices that cater to an immediate and true foundation.
Unless I'm wrong. I'm interested in how you think meaning and intentionality are both necessarily and empirical identical. If you just want to prick on about how I'm nonsense or confused, fine, but remedy my poor argument with one of your own. Self-congratulating assertions aren't cutting it anymore, though it seems to happen pretty often here in Pharyngula town.
Posted by: Steven Sullivan
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October 11, 2009 3:29 PM
SEF writes: "Incidentally, Aaron Baker in #200 made one of the points I would have made myself back then, had anyone on the pro-philosophy side seemed remotely interested in coming up with a credible argument"
Part of the lack of scholarly engagement with you there may be simple incredulity that there is an 'anti philosophy' side here. Really, people? REALLY? You want to associate yourselves with statements like "philosophy is bullshit"? (And the punchline there from Tis Himself was basically "I was trolling. And btw, I'm an economist." Facepalm)
Richard Dawkins doesn't spend much time debating with those who start from the premise that evolutionary biology is a sham, because he doesn't want to accord such ignorance any merit. Why should historians of science and philosophers engage with you?
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 3:45 PM
This is not the first time you've tried this lie. I'm focusing on one or two issues because it's what I have time for. I assume most readers are already familiar with the dozens of racist comments you've made.
Of course you whine about context, even after you whined about links that provide context. The result is that no one is allowed to criticize your racist ass. No links, no quotes, nothing is permissible.
Everything you said about "culture in African-American ghettos" was disgustingly, virulently, hatefully racist.
This is what you said, Hyperon:
Those were extremely racist and false observations, given that you refused to discuss white ghettos, and ignored MAJeff's point that you are transforming black folks from people who face problems into "problem people."
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 11, 2009 3:49 PM
Observing now that SGBM in #362 has done the best he can do to implicate me, let's take into account the following:
...
The first quotation is out of context.
LOL.
said SGBM in the the very same 362:
I post links precisely because they allow the reader to take your words in context and come to a decision independently of my summary. If I posted quotes you would try to evade criticism by complaining about quotes out of context.
conclusion:
SGBM is teh psychic!!
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 3:51 PM
Yes, it is incredibly racist. You imagined some bullshit about some people you claim to know (if they have to spend time around a racist like yourself, they probably would prefer not to talk to you, but this isn't shyness). And then you used that bullshit as a reason to generalize about all Pakistani and Bangladeshi people in Britain. Then based on your mindless, racist generalization, you said there was nothing racist about a widespread pattern of discrimination against Pakistani and Bangladeshi people.
Because you are a racist.
And you keep on trashing the culture of Pakistani and Bangladeshi people, insisting that it's not good enough for Britain.
You were given the complete evidence well ahead of time, a day before you came to your racist conclusion. You ignored the evidence, like the racist crank you are, and insisted on having it spoonfed to you. Some alternative hypotheses are not reasonable. It was racist to assume that "maybe they commit drug crimes at a rate that's six times higher. Maybe there are more African-American drug dealers. Maybe hard drugs are more popular in African-American communities" were reasonable responses, and it was crankish to offer them instead of just reading the literature.
All the evidence we have is that you are a racist.
We know that you are the kind of person who tries to deny and ignore real and current racism, in order to defend and uphold that racism, for instance by saying that it's not racist to discriminate against immigrants and the children of immigrants.
We know that you are the kind of person who finds it easy to casually say "African-American culture IS singularly primitive and violent."
We know that you are the kind of person who finds it easy to imagine that "reverse discrimination and affirmative action" are hurting white people and actually putting us at a disadvantage.
We know that you are the kind of person who finds it easy to imagine that the 13% of the US population who have black skin sell most of the drugs in America.
We know that you are the kind of person who gets very defensive when these behaviors are noted to be racist.
We know that you are the kind of person who refuses to admit that there is anything wrong with making these racist statements.
What else are we to conclude?
If you were interested in not being a racist anymore, you would admit that you've said some racist shit, and try to take responsibility for yourself. Instead, you have demonstrated that you would rather remain a racist than admit that there was anything wrong with making racist comments. In the choice between preserving your ego and trying to be a decent person, you have chosen your ego every single time.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 11, 2009 3:53 PM
The point that I'm an economist was to show that why I have objections to philosophers trashing economics. It was made after I was out of trolling mode.
Posted by: Steven Sullivan
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October 11, 2009 3:54 PM
(the 'you' in that last sentence not being directed at SEF personally, but at any here who dismiss most or all philosophy)
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 11, 2009 3:55 PM
iI,
"Intentionality" and "meaning" are indeed necessarily related: intentionality can be otherwise expressed as "aboutness". Something has meaning if and only if it is about something.
If we hold that human consciousness is a fiction, but is instead a collection of techniques evolved to the contours of human behavior
Your confusion is evident in the way you keep talking nonsense even at sentence level. This sentence isn't even grammatical, but assuming you meant:
"If we hold that human consciousness is not real, but is instead a collection of techniques evolved to the contours of human behavior",
then it still doesn't make sense: if something is not real, then it can't be a collection of techniques; and what on earth is "evolved to the contours of human behavior" supposed to mean? I guess you mean "adapted" when you say "evolved", but what are "the contours of human behavior"?
Now, you seem to be insinuating that there must be a formalized rational scheme that precedes this movement, that there must be a language designer who creates the story identification elements, which allows for information transfer beyond it's "formal" elements like the exact words used to speak it.
No. Where did you get that from?
This just isn't how communication, or language formation works. It also isn't true that your "two stories" remain identical.
I didn't say they were: I said they were the same story. You do understand ordinary English words, I hope? Because if you don't know what "the same story" means, we have a lot of tedious spadework ahead of us.
These stories are collections of effective miscommunications,
"Effective miscommunications"? WTF is this supposed to mean?
not intersubjective practices that cater to an immediate and true foundation.
English translation, please.
Unless I'm wrong.
I'd say "not even wrong": you're not making enough sense to be wrong. I'm not going to bother replying further unless you come up with a comment that actually rises to the level of being wrong.
Posted by: Steven Sullivan
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October 11, 2009 4:00 PM
Yes, Tis, I know you were just out of anti-philosophy trolling mode when you defended economics...that's the juxtaposition that makes it particularly facepalmworthy.
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 4:35 PM
Funny. After a single post in which he produced two out-of-context quotations and one quotation which has no racist implications whatsoever, he lapses back into his habit of posting unsubstantiated assertions and spamming stupid links that nobody is ever going to bother to chase.
Lots of people I know agree with me that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis often come across as very insular people, who aren't outgoing at all in interacting with people outside their own group. The well-known phenomenon of Asian "cliques" in universities lends this idea ample support. It could be the perfectly understandable result of greater comfort with their native language. Whatever the reason, it is a phenomenon that seems fairly well-known, and is certainly not a "racist" observation. I can't find any academic studies confirming it, but that doesn't mean it is "bullshit". No two ways about it, this is a lie. I didn't "ignore" the evidence; I either didn't deem it sufficient, or I didn't check out the links you presented, not having adequate respect for you. You post so many links that have not the slightest relevance to the ongoing discussion that it would be very strange if I did follow all your links.You poured onto the table the worst dirt you could find. Lo and behold, it turns out that a perfectly plausible, non-racist alternative is easily at hand in all three cases. You gave me your best shot, but ultimately failed to validate your extreme charges of racism. You swung and missed. Played and lost. Now crawl back into your hole and shut the fuck up.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 11, 2009 4:49 PM
Lots of people I know agree with me that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis often come across as very insular people, who aren't outgoing at all in interacting with people outside their own group.
argumentum ad populum. Moreover, I would imagine your racism actually stems from peer groups to begin with. It's exactly why you refuse to identify it AS racism.
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 4:49 PM
It is vile and racist to use this bullshit generalization as an excuse for systematic racist discrimination against Bangladeshi and Pakistani people in Britain, which is what you did.
It is a fact. You said that because of their culture, it was acceptable to racially discriminate against them.
That is to say, you ignored the evidence.
No. Everyone has read your dozens and dozens of racist comments. I do not have the time to dig through them all.
Your assumptions could only come from a racist mind.
Some alternative hypotheses are not reasonable. It was racist to assume that "maybe they commit drug crimes at a rate that's six times higher. Maybe there are more African-American drug dealers. Maybe hard drugs are more popular in African-American communities" were reasonable responses, and it was crankish to offer them instead of just reading the literature.
Only a racist person could have thought that plausible.
There is no plausible explanation for you making so many racist assumptions and racist generalizations except that you are a racist.
Every time you try to pretend that you are a racist, I will bring these facts to your attention.
If you were interested in not being a racist anymore, you would admit that you've said some racist shit, and try to take responsibility for yourself.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 11, 2009 4:51 PM
It could be the perfectly understandable result of greater comfort with their native language.
...and yet you reject the "perfectly understandable" in favor of derisive commentary.
seriously, you ARE a racist.
stop being so defensive about it, and start opening your fucking eyes already.
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 4:52 PM
Typo:
If you actually start admitting that you are a racist, and that this is a problem with you, and that you want to fix the problem, then I might start treating you as something other than trash.
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 4:54 PM
I am a serf in Rev BDC's kingdom of typos.
Posted by: eddie
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October 11, 2009 4:55 PM
Greg Proops on racial politics;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2WCc-yFDbs&feature=PlayList&p=CEB511E820835C71&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=40
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 11, 2009 4:56 PM
We all are. Hail to the King...Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 11, 2009 5:00 PM
Lo and behold, it turns out that a perfectly plausible, non-racist alternative is easily at hand in all three cases.
translation:
"Lo and behold: I am able to rationalize away any accusation!"
That might work if there hasn't been a consistent pattern with you.
You remind me of my pop, who denied emphatically he was a racist, but would inevitably decry how many black people there were in professional basketball, or defend the actions of the government in interning Japanese Americans in WWII, even though his own neighbors were interned, or defend the actions of Joseph McCarthy as being "justified for the times", etc, etc.
The label "racist" doesn't come from single statements, it comes from an overwhelming pattern of response.
a pattern of response I rather think SGBM and others have documented quite well enough for you for many of the rest of us to make a reasonable conclusion that you are indeed, a racist.
PZ, having read the exchanges, concluded the same, as just another example.
YOU may not consider yourself to be a classic, "Archie Bunker" style racist, but at this point, rather than spinning endless rationalizations as defense mechanisms, you might want to sit down and take a close look at the influences you've grown up with, and the conclusions you have incorporated from them.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 11, 2009 5:01 PM
'Tis Himself:
My question now would be: how are we to know with complete certainty when you're in trolling mode and when you're out? I've heard that enthusiasts of erotic asphyxia have cues to keep them from really strangling each other; maybe you could adopt something along those lines.
Also: given a demonstrated tendency for you and DS to insult first and ask questions later: have you two considered marriage?
Posted by: SC OM
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October 11, 2009 5:02 PM
Oh, do so be hard on yourself! You not are!
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 5:06 PM
From now on I'll confine myself to your outright lies, since your other nonsense is transparent enough to anyone who isn't insane.
Naturally I didn't do that. The point I made is that it is understandable and not necessarily racist if employers have a tendency to prefer candidates with the best chances of being raised in "mainstream" culture, as opposed to, for example, Bangladeshi culture. I did not say I condone their doing so. In fact I don't, and am in favour of "diversity quotas" provided they're flexible. A lie, for the foregoing reason.Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 11, 2009 5:09 PM
Deeper and deeper...
Posted by: Hyperon
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October 11, 2009 5:11 PM
The fact that you would treat someone as "trash", even if they do have racist tendencies, does nothing but mark you as a misanthropic, hate-filled creature. Most people in the world and most people throughout human history are and have been far more racist than me (for example, in Muslim countries it is common to deny the Holocaust and compare Jews with mice). Presumably, according to your twisted worldview, most people alive and most people who've ever lived are all "trash".Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 11, 2009 5:16 PM
Deeper and deeper. Time to stop digging...
Posted by: Jadehawk, OM
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October 11, 2009 5:18 PM
self-pwned in two adjacent paragraphs. epic.
Posted by: Feynmaniac
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October 11, 2009 5:23 PM
I didn't know we had a king... I thought we were an autonomous collective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 11, 2009 5:45 PM
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
You're just fooling yourself.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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October 11, 2009 5:56 PM
Aaron Baker #393
When I'm making obviously silly statements then I'm in trolling mode (unless I'm completely and utterly wrong about something and don't know it).
Let me take the question up with my wife. I'll get back to you.
Now that I've answered your questions, do you have any comments about the last part of my post #226 starting "Anyway, folks"? That's the bit where I pointed out some of my criticisms of postmodern philosophers.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 11, 2009 6:49 PM
@Knockgoats: Apologies for my typo, but if you're going to give my words a close read and pick out a word you don't like, make sure it's one I wrote and not your own rewritten version of my statement. After all, as you say, "Il, thanks for making an argument, I'll try to be intellectually honest in my reply".
The statement you quibble with should read "If we hold that human consciousness is a fiction and is instead a collection of techniques evolved to the contours of human behavior". A fiction is not un-real, it is a different type of real. To say "Hamlet" doesn't exist is empirically not true, his existence is just not in the same way I exist or you exist. Therefore I'm making no claims about the existence of a reality of consciousness, which would be absurd, but instead a claim about the type of reality given to it. My claim is that it is a series of practices that have shown themselves to be effective, transmittable, and operating in the gaps between biological response, (I pull my hand away from the hot pan) and the existing responses (I wear a pot-holder and grab the hot pan). I say contours because human biology creates the bounds and idiosyncratic results of cultural technologies. We have a huge collection of irrational behaviors or errors built into our hunter-gatherer brains that define how we can combat a certain problem, and why simply rational responses don't cut it. However, let me be clear that these processes cause biological changes both through the natural selection of those who can better create effective reproduction strategies that are nonetheless not purely biological (i.e. the evolution of douche-bags and the mystifying persistence of gelled hairdos), and that biological changes effect the cultural techniques in turn. I hope i haven't insinuated that these two systems are in anyway closed to each other.
If this isn't your argument, we can dispense with my critique of it. However, when I say "identical" story, I mean at a level above that of the formal level. The "identical" story is the collection of the essential points of a story, the essential qualities of these points, and their sufficient communication. My point is that communication takes place most often with preconceived mechanisms and that the filter that I pass your story through means that it isn't the same story; often there is misunderstanding based on the attachments we have to certain words and logics. If we're not an example of that, I don't know what is.As far a my points on effective miscommunications and intersubjective practices, it doesn't seem relevant as I misunderstood your assertion. I can elaborate them if you want, but I'm guessing you don't.
You know, the analytic principle that thoughts must be well-formed to be wrong is a good one, but it only works if you can demonstrate that you understand the other person, and further that their thoughts do no follow from their assumptions. Without these two points, it becomes a question of semantics and subjective experiences, without you being able to verify that you aren't just lazily employing other people's thoughts as a cheap out. So, tell me where I'm malforming my argument instead of just asserting that I am. Otherwise, keep making arguments from assertion and I'll respond with attempts to think through problems.Posted by: SEF
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October 11, 2009 7:18 PM
@ Steven Sullivan #376:
No, you fail to recognise your true role in this case. I'm still the atheist scientist, with evidence and reason on my side. Whereas the philosophists and their faithful followers are playing the part of the creationists: claiming to have a better way of knowing, to have specialist knowledge, to have the ultimate proof of philosophistry etc but, unsurprisingly, being completely unable to come up with the goods as to what it is. Note the continuing absence of a decent argument and evidence from your side.
You've (collectively, remember) merely been indoctrinated with the idea that philosophistry is a good thing - the same as your early indoctrination with the false idea that loyalty is a virtue, not the vice it actually is. It's not a well-founded opinion of yours. Which is why you're all so tellingly unable to defend it. On matters of biology etc, there's no such lack. A clear difference which shows the role you fill on this.
Philosophistry doesn't own productive thinking or logic (nor even the concept that it's a good idea to define stuff carefully so you know what you're talking about!). Just as religion doesn't own morals. The analogy is really quite exact in many respects. Most of the philosophist camp repeatedly demonstrate, just like the religious do, that they are actually rather bad at these things they claim to own.
Giving pretentious names to things, eg logical fallacies, quite possibly in an age-old attempt to sound learned (again, unsurprisingly, the same as in medicine!), doesn't grant ownership nor even guarantee knowledge and proficiency at using it. Rather, it's cargo cult thinking: going through the ritualised motions and mouthing the magic words like parrots, the same as the creation "scientists" do, while missing the real deal - hence generally not being able to distinguish good from bad or right from wrong among yourselves. In contrast, science's arbiter is the real world (and maths has its self-constructed virtual ones).
Whereas science can make some use of trained monkeys in labs to do the donkey-work (I'm running out of animal metaphors to mix!), as long as they are very closely supervised so they don't start trying to pray at experiments or whatever instead of performing the tasks correctly, philosophistry doesn't even have a proper basis for self-policing. It's mostly just rats running around in a maze of their own making, each individual or group admiring its own imaginary piece of cheese as a win.
Some genuine thinkers, working from reality and other subject knowledge instead, may have been fooled into regarding themselves as philosophers. But that doesn't mean they really owe anything to philosophistry. A philosophist can even accidentally be right once in a while - without having got there the right way. Again this parallels religion, especially when holy books are chock full of self-contradictions so it's just a matter of picking the correct part after the fact - "running alongside the locomotive", chasing the engine.
{ Tongue only slightly in cheek - as before. What? You people think you're the only ones allowed to claim nuance?! Especially when, like SC, you are only doing it in retrospect and are, simultaneously and hypocritically, pretending no-one else could possibly have had a nuanced position behind their pithy post. }
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 11, 2009 7:43 PM
Sure.
As to postmodernism, I'd largely agree with you. There is, I'm certain, a great deal I don't know about the subject; but most of what I've encountered seems to be logically a mess (e.g. it makes no sense to assert an extreme skepticism of the kind that some Greeks like Sextus Empiricus argued for, and then make an exception for discourse, as we have no better reason to believe in discourse than in anything else); in addition, it's often uttered with a kind of oracular pretentiousness that makes me want to hit the person speaking. Here the book I mentioned by Richard J. Evans, IN DEFENSE OF HISTORY, is very on-point: he thinks that some recent works of history have benefited from postmodernism (he instances CITIZENS, by Simon Schama and A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY, by Orlando Figes), but tactfully suggests that postmodernism itself is a self-contradictory shambles.
Also, I'd agree that (despite the avowed leftiness of a lot of its practitioners) postmodernism seems to have no trouble at all snuggling up to the authoritarian right. And why should it? Say what else you like about them, the Nazis had real flair in the discourse department.
I mentioned earlier that Brian Leiter indignantly rejected the idea that postmodernism had exercised a significant effect on academic philosophy in America. I don't know enough to be entirely sure he's right, though I think there's something to the suggestion that literature departments first and foremost have succumbed to its influence.
Posted by: strange gods before me, OM
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October 11, 2009 9:44 PM
But you very explicitly did, and are continuing to do so right now. You excused the systematic discrimination by denying that it was racist. You gave what you believed were "good reasons" for such discrimination:
Racist. And stupid. Why aren't the children of Bangladeshi immigrants "British enough" for you?
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 2:41 AM
Aaron Baker wrote:
>Here the book I mentioned by Richard J. Evans, IN DEFENSE OF HISTORY, is very on-point: he thinks that some recent works of history have benefited from postmodernism (he instances CITIZENS, by Simon Schama and A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY, by Orlando Figes), but tactfully suggests that postmodernism itself is a self-contradictory shambles.
And, I’ll put in a kind word for the pomo poli-scientist Anne Norton, who is actually readable (!) and who is able to sympathetically understand people she disagrees with (I don’t agree with her political views, but I would enjoy having a conversation with her). Her “Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire” is a hilariously informative deconstruction of some of the neo-cons (and I praised it highly in an amazon review).
But then, political discourse often does function the way post-modernists think everything functions, so perhaps poli-sci is its natural home.
There are enough folks in the post-modernist milieu that of course some of them are perfectly decent, thoughtful people who are able to find the tiny bit of sense in post-modernist thought and run with it.
However, Alan Sokal did show with the “Social Text” hoax that there is a very big problem in post-modernism taken as a whole.
When someone comes on here and starts spouting pomo gibberish, especially when they show an utter ignorance of science, I do think they are utterly fair game.
Dave
Posted by: Steven Sullivan
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October 12, 2009 2:46 AM
SEF,
Philosophers, as far as I know (and I, like you am biologist and an atheist), do not claim that no one else knows how to apply logic or reason. Nor does coining sophomoric names like 'philosophistry' and describing philosophy in cartoon terms constitute a critique.
Again, as per Dawkins, I don't really think a philosopher or historian of ideas, much less an amateur like myself, owes it to someone as convinced as you seem to be of the field's intellectual poverty, to try to convince you otherwise. I'll merely recommend a book I found informative and enriching re: 20th C philosophical threads -- Roger Scruton's 'Modern Philosophy'. (If it's any enticement, he hasn't much patience with postmodernists either)
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 3:30 AM
The problem with championing something called "science" over and against something called "philosophy" is that (I oversimplify for the sake of blogospheric rhetorical expediency) we run the risk of mistaking the part for the whole. What is "science," exactly? Really, it is an ever-growing array of specialized technical disciplines and individually experimentally established paradigms. Science is quite diverse, and to speak of "science" in general is meaningless. Every field has its own standards of truth, its own ways of producing valid knowledge. Scientists work within specific fields, and cannot possibly be fully up to date on every other field. Philosophy is an attempt to learn a little about a lot, to see the various sciences from a systemic perspective. Good philosophy also situates this system of accumulated knowledge within the actual world we live in with each other. Philosophy still exists in our technophilic age only where it has become existential and political--that is, where it has become applicable to life. So to repeat, philosophy adds to science both systematicity and humanity. The sciences are a fragmented and morally sterile pile of meaningless facts without a philosophical background to tie them together.
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 3:45 AM
I've already told you how bad your "poetry" is, Buddhacious. I've already become fully-enraged by a bigot on the Equality thread, so perhaps I'm being too harsh here... I don't hate philosophy at all, in fact it is important in some arenas, but let's just flip this semi-reasonable quote around so you'll understand:Your version of philosophy is a fragmented and intellectually sterile pile of meaningless fiction without a scientific background to tie it to reality.
I hope you can understand why this is a problem. If not, ignorance is bliss, so enjoy it while it lasts.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 3:49 AM
Mr T,
What is my version of philosophy, exactly? Is your understanding of my version of philosophy based on the two lines John Morales quoted from my blog?
Posted by: John Morales
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October 12, 2009 3:58 AM
Buddhacious:
Not so. Science is that which employs the Scientific method.
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 4:00 AM
Do you realize that I am capable of noticing and clicking on the link to your blog? After reading various pages on it, I came to the conclusion that you're full of shit. I don't care to spend the effort refuting every page of it. If you think there's something particularly reasonable and noteworthy on it, or if perhaps your blog isn't representative of your actual philosophy, then please let me know how I'm mistaken.
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 4:05 AM
Blast, my first double-post ever. Sorry, I know it's annoying.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 4:14 AM
And still the damning failure to come up with concrete (or even concretist) examples of something worthwhile which is actually owned by philosophy (rather than falsely claimed by philosophy).
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 4:15 AM
Double-Blast!! No double-post! I must've been seeing things. Damn. That proves it, folks. Consciousness must not be fully materialistic and amenable to scientific investigation. Sophistry wins again!
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 4:24 AM
John,
Oh, yes. That whole "scientific method" thing... I have to point again (see #116) to the history of science. The distinction between superstitious dogma and scientifically established truth changes as one paradigm replaces the next. I'll grant that there is a vaguely coherent sense of a "scientific method," which involves hypothesis formation and empirical testing, followed by peer review. But even with such epistemological vigilance, revolutions continually occur that totally shift the conceptual terrain and turn formerly respectable science into woo. The scientific method is self-critical enough to remain in constant development. Any attempt to define it's exact procedures is foolish and only restricts the progress of scientific understanding.
Mr T,
I didn't realize you'd taken the time to familiarize yourself with some of my ideas. Perhaps, if you'd like to continue our discussion, you might present a few specific grievances you have with my thought... Or not. I'm always up for philosophical dialogue.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 4:48 AM
PS @ Steven Sullivan #408:
You're effectively, in my analogy, telling me to go read AiG. Why is it (other than the real reason which I already know!) that you are so unable to justify yourself and your philosophy in your own words.
Scientists can and do here all the time (it's just that the YECs etc generally refuse to listen and run away, while a few others). Your failure to do so looks a lot more like you're unable than unwilling to defend your position. It's so very religious of you that I would be surprised you (and others) don't see it - except of course that I know the conditioning is strong in you all, even though many of you think you did so well to break away from the theology subset of philosophy.
Appealing to Richard Dawkins is just dishonest of you (another revealing trait for the ill-foundedness of your position). The position of his which you're trying to abuse and press into service here is on public debate - where typically the creationist has a sympathetic host and audience, can lie more rapidly than be refuted and where lookup facilities aren't readily available. He has no issues with explaining the science in other places where these oppressive conditions don't apply.
So, are you seriously suggesting PZ would prevent pro-philosophy arguments from having screen space (eg by deleting posts, disemvowelling them or cutting them off mid-sentence) and somehow lock readers away from being able to double-check anything that was claimed?!
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 4:54 AM
Oops, part of a sentence did get cut off there! It wasn't PZ doing it though. :-D
Try: "while a few others [stay, think and learn something]". Inserted completion part in square brackets.
Note that it's generally considered to be worth posting the science on the off-chance that there's an interested lurkership, even if the apparent addressee is a la-la-la one.
How come that suddenly doesn't apply in the case of philosophy? It looks remarkably like an excuse (or a weasel) to me.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 12, 2009 5:01 AM
Buddhacious:
The history of science is one of triumph upon triumph at its endeavour; an ever-increasing cornucopia of knowledge.
Well said! You've stated one salient difference between science and religion.
Science constantly tests its theories, and strives to falsify them; religion does not.
Of course, philosophy too is self-critical, but since it's not grounded in empiricism (that branch of philosophy (natural philosopy) is the predecessor of modern science and split off in the 19th Century), it provides only ideas rather than knowledge¹.
--
¹ Logic and mathematics do provide knowledge in abstract (axiomatic) domains, but they split off even earlier.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 5:30 AM
Buddhacious wrote:
> Science is quite diverse, and to speak of "science" in general is meaningless.
You know, I think you actually believe that.
But, then, I know Creationists who actually believe in Creationism.
Ah, those poor fools who abandoned physics for biology (e.g., Max Delbruck) at the dawn of molecular biology thinking that biology and physics were both “science.” See what a mess they got us into!
And then there were those poor fools who thought that quantum mechanics could be applied to chemical bonding, or nuclear physics to stellar structure theory, or…
Yeah, this unity of science nonsense is just a pile of horse droppings!
Right, BU?
To be blunt, as a physicist I find the idea that “to speak of ‘science’ in general is meaningless” to be, shall we say, rather “unfruitful.”
BU also wrote:
> The distinction between superstitious dogma and scientifically established truth changes as one paradigm replaces the next.
[snip]
>But even with such epistemological vigilance, revolutions continually occur that totally shift the conceptual terrain and turn formerly respectable science into woo.
And, I think you actually believe that too.
It is amazing how pompous people can be who know so little about science but who speak with such certainty about science!
To all those here who defend philosophy as a discipline, I offer Exhibit A: the brilliant, the peerless Buddhacious!
Dave
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 5:42 AM
Buddhacious: That wasn't exactly my offer, but I'll play along. Here are a few grievances:
1) You think consciousness either cannot be explained by the physical brain, or (as appears to be your position) that consciousness is not solely a product of the brains functions.
2) You complain about scientism and reductionistic naturalism, supposing some part of reality is beyond or not reducible to empirical verification.
3) In response to an earlier converstation with John Morales, you pull gems like this out of your ass:
I could go on, but really, to be brief, the whole thing is dripping with prime examples of batshit-insane. It's embarrassing for me to even give it this much respect by responding. Go cry about it to the Timecube guy. I'm sure he'll listen.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 12, 2009 5:50 AM
SEF,
Dennett's analyses of consciousness (in Consciousness Explained), which demolishes the ideas that consciousness is a unified phenomenon, and that there is a sharp line between what we are and are not conscious of,
and of the compatibility of free will and determinism (in Elbow Room) are clear examples of recent worthwhile philosophy. I would add the work of Aaron Sloman on aritifical intelligence (The Computer Revolution in Philosophy) and Andy Clark on the extended mind (Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension). Sloman's main point is that science is far wider than the Popperians admit: that demonstrating that (and how) specific phenomena are possible is a key part of it. Clark argues that the external world plays vital roles in cognitive faculties such as memory and problem-solving. All these works are closely related to the relevant science, and perform an integrative function: they "bring it all together". It is indeed hard, if not impossible, to find useful modern philosophy that is not linked to science in this way; but all these are works of philosophy, by philosophically-trained academics; Dennett and Clark hold philosophy chairs, although Sloman now holds a chair in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 5:53 AM
Come on, philosophists. Why are you letting Buddhacious represent you and your supposedly "greatest thing ever" beliefs? If you actually had something good and real to defend, that would be a bit like scientists letting Behe represent science when, in reality, he keeps fluffing it and wants to relax the rules/definitions and open it up so widely (in order to sneak in his religion) that he would have to include astrology too.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 6:02 AM
Since our old slimeball Matt Segall has re-packaged himself as “Buddhacious,” I think it is worth reiterating some points I made about him in an earlier thread.
Nerd of Redhead had written:
>I think he [Matthew Segall] wants to revolutionize science, but hasn't learned enough history of science to realize that any changes are going to have to come from within the discipline, and not imposed from the outside by woo-infested philosopher.
I have a bit different take on young Matthew.
Remember when he commented that he guessed he’d have to learn some real physics/biology before scientists would take his philosophical nonsense seriously (of course he hasn’t yet)?
I don’t think he really expects to make any discoveries in science.
I think his real purpose is simply to “de-fang” science, to domesticate science and make it comfortable for people like him.
Have you read his live-rock essay ( http://karmabuster.gaia.com/blog/2008/12/on_the_matter_of_life_biology_mental_and_integral_consciousness )?
He makes it quite clear in that essay that he is truly terrified by a universe which lacks a pre-constructed “meaning,” “purpose,” “feelings,” etc.
Now, of course, a lot of us who are scientists like science, and went into science, precisely because we really *love* a universe devoid of gooey, messy things such as pre-constructed, universal “meaning,” “purpose,” “feelings,” etc.
But Matt’s probably right that more people feel as he does than as we do.
There are plenty of people out there (Deepak Chopra comes to mind) willing to produce swill for the general public that assures them that science is not as horribly inhuman as they all think.
But the problem is that any knowledge of science shows any moderately intelligent member of the public that Chopra et al. are lying.
So, Matthew has, I think, decided to take the battle to the “belly of the beast,” to try to convince us scientists that we are wrong in the scientific view we have of a universe devoid of “meaning,” “purpose,” “feelings,” etc.
Of course, he is finding out that all the tricks that worked so well in his humanities courses at Central Florida University in Orlando – the quoting of stupid, dead philosophers, the word play, the guilt trips, etc. – do not work so well with us scientists.
It will be interesting to see if Matthew eventually gives up on us scientists and tries to make himself just another Deepak Chopra: can he out-Chopra Chopra and all the other con artists already in the field? A quote from Chopra to show Matthew’s competition ( http://www.skepdic.com/chopra.html ) :
> Quantum healing is healing the bodymind from a quantum level. That means from a level which is not manifest at a sensory level. Our bodies ultimately are fields of information, intelligence and energy. Quantum healing involves a shift in the fields of energy information, so as to bring about a correction in an idea that has gone wrong. So quantum healing involves healing one mode of consciousness, mind, to bring about changes in another mode of consciousness, body.
Lying about science is certainly a highly competitive industry, nowadays.
In short, Matt is human slime: too dumb, lazy, or cowardly to learn real science but hoping that he can somehow benefit by parasitizing and distorting science to serve his own sordid purposes.
Human scum.
Dave
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 6:03 AM
@ Knockgoats #423:
In what way does anything they learned in Philosophy (ie as opposed to being inherent, blindingly obvious or really part of the relevant science) genuinely lead to what they had to say - and you're also going to have to be more specific on what you think the oh so clever and new part is. What makes you imagine/think they had to be Philosophers rather than merely having to be scientists?
NB One philosopher contradicting another philosopher (eg Popper vs Sloman) doesn't count - especially if the real thinkers in the field were capable of driving the locomotive the right way without either of them.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 12, 2009 6:10 AM
Dave,
This is unfair; "Buddhacious" has been his long-term handle in the Gaia site, and he used his own name when originally posting, only reverting to his nym now that typekey is required.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 6:12 AM
To summarise the key questions again:
What does Philosophy own which isn't inherent (eg logic), blindingly obvious even to the untrained smart person, or actually the property of someone else (eg a scientific discipline)?
What basis does Philosophy have for self-policing? Eg there are also egregious examples of modern "art" because of this lack of credible quality control. Science has reality as its arbiter.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 12, 2009 6:33 AM
SEF,
You are very obviously goalpost-shifting. These are philosophers doing useful philosophy: that's what you asked for examples of, which I provided. Of course, if I meet your new requirements, you'll simply shift them again, because you are not arguing in good faith. I'm not interested in chasing after you in that way.
Incidentally, the second Dennett reference should have been to Freedom Evolves; Elbow Room is an earlier work on the same theme.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 6:33 AM
If anyone is really foolish enough to actually want to re-read some of the lies and nonsense that Buddhacious/Matt Segall posted on one of the earlier threads, here’s a link: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/numbers_and_nelson_dislocate_s.php#comments
I’m not sure on how many threads altogether he managed to soil himself.
PZ is indeed a Very Tolerant Man to allow the likes of this scum into his domain!
Dave
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 6:48 AM
Dave,
I, too, am a fan of cross-fertilization in science. I just wish it happened more often and on a wider scope. A favorite example comes to mind: Stan Salthe's work applying thermodynamics to the evolution of biological systems.
http://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/salthe/
BTW, I've seldom come across anyone on the intertubes quite as charming as you. Vigorous debate is something I greatly enjoy, but even when I visit Pharyngula, I try to avoid blatant personal attacks and defamation. Calling me a liar? I mean c'mon, how petty can you be?
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 6:52 AM
@ Knockgoats #429:
There you are being untruthful again, as is your wont. I had stated my position earlier on what philosophy didn't own and why etc. In your initial instinctive resort to dishonesty you didn't even consider inquiring in detail where the goal-posts already were and why; and I've been very clear about that all along otherwise.
In order for Philosophy itself to be important and useful, someone has to have come up with something through Philosophy which they couldn't (and didn't!) actually come up with some other way, eg through science. Philosophy doesn't genuinely own thinking or logic.
You are still being exactly like the religious - claiming to be moral (and to know stuff) because of their religion when the morality (and any real rather than fake knowledge) actually came from elsewhere. That's what's so funny about all the people indoctrinated with the idea, from ancient times, that philosophy itself is a good thing (sometimes bordering on the bestest thing ever with its own special way of knowing). They are quite adamant about it but are completely unable to defend their position. So very, very creationist.
How come Philosophy doesn't genuinely give its supporters the ability even to read properly, let alone think things through carefully? As with morality and religion, if non-philosophers (with real talent and knowledge of worthwhile subjects such as science) do this at least as well as or even better than Philosophers™ ...
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 7:06 AM
Dave, I'm not sure he's really up to the task of out-Chopraing Chopra. The bar is indeed set high. I'm not sure if it's fair to expect so much.
Buddhacious, you could try addressing my grievances now. Yes, I ridiculed you, but do not let such trifles weigh so heavily. Let's have ourselves a real "vigorous debate" about the feelings hydrogen atoms have about gravitational gradients. Let's get all poetical and shit. Let's really get our hands dirty, and I mean really try to timecube this thread. We can do it.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 7:13 AM
I know you're all rather hard of thinking because of your quasi-religious indoctrination, but I'll try again anyway.
Why does someone have to be a Philosopher (capital letter significant) rather than merely a very smart and thoughtful person from babyhood who has studied some real subject material? If you have to widen the definition of philosophy to include non-philosophers (because they're just as good or better at thinking), then Philosophy has nothing - certainly nothing uniquely its own which it's bringing to the alleged collaboration.
Someone merely calling themselves a Philosopher (or being labelled by others that way and awarded a nice fat "chair", aka paid position) really is not good enough to determine that philosophy was instrumental in doing something. Being able to name-drop references to previous Philosophers™ and having your own set of abbreviations and terms doesn't mean you're saying anything unique, new, useful or clever. That's just cargo cult behaviour. It's what the creationists do.
If Philosophy meaningfully contributes something which no-one outside of Philosophy has, then it should be possible to state it. So far you all look to be failing at this. You're still looking like the religious: swearing that they got their morality from religion and that no-one could have morality without their religion (and all the while usually being rather bad at morality compared with the non-religious).
In contrast, it's possible to determine what is and isn't Science and even to what degree it's good and bad science (by how much it has taken into account and checked in multiple ways etc etc). And the whole of the modern world is testimony to the effectiveness of science (ie without judgement as to whether each thing is good or bad in itself).
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 7:18 AM
Mr T,
Correct. Materialism tends to fetishize the brain, in the sense that Marx wrote of commodity fetishism. One mistakenly removes a product (in this case, the brain) from the wider system of relationships that constitute it. Consciousness, similarly, is often falsely reified in this way. Consciousness, so far as I can tell, is not a "thing" and cannot be simply located inside the skull or anywhere else. Rather, consciousness emerges as organism-environment transaction reaches sufficient levels of complexity (for humans, this means our own consciousness is brought forth with others through speech and other forms of communication). Trying to reduce consciousness to the brain obscures more than it explains. Kel mentioned the cognitive scientist Andy Clark, whose extended mind theory is right in line with what I am suggesting here. Also see the work of Clark's colleague, Alva Noe (or see the review of his new book "Out of Our Heads" on my blog).
Correct. There is more to reality than meets the eye. Ours is a universe not only of things seen (objects), but of seers (subjects). I am not a substance dualist, but nor am I a naive reductionist who thinks mentality can be explained away by reference to matter alone. Such a project is not even scientifically feasible (empirically speaking, you can only ever correlate consciousness with neurology... a causal explanation will require a bit more theory and metaphysics) much less philosophically coherent. Much of contemporary materialist philosophy of mind might benefit from a thorough study of one of last century's geniuses, William James.
From SEP:
James's “radical empiricism” is distinct from his “pure experience” metaphysics. It is never precisely defined in the Essays, and is best explicated by a passage from The Meaning of Truth where James states that radical empiricism consists of a postulate, a statement of fact, and a conclusion. The postulate is that “the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience,” the fact is that relations are just as directly experienced as the things they relate, and the conclusion is that “the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience” (MT, 6–7).
James was still working on objections to his “pure experience” doctrine, replying to critics of Pragmatism, and writing an introduction to philosophical problems when he died in 1910. His legacy extends into psychology and the study of religion, and in philosophy not only throughout the pragmatist tradition that he founded (along with Charles Peirce), but into phenomenology and analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell's The Analysis of Mind is indebted to James's doctrine of “pure experience,” Ludwig Wittgenstein learned about “the absence of the will act” from James's Psychology (Goodman, Wittgenstein and William James, p. 81)), and the versions of “neopragmatism” set out by Nelson Goodman, Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam are saturated with James's ideas. James is one of the most attractive and endearing of philosophers: for his vision of a “wild,” “open” universe that is nevertheless shaped by our human powers and that answers to some of our deepest needs, but also, as Russell observed in his obituary, because of the “large tolerance and … humanity” with which he sets that vision out. (The Nation (3 September 1910: 793–4).
James' notion of a pure experiential ground prior to the conceptual dichotomy of mind v. matter is, in my opinion, a more appropriate response to dualism than simply lopping off half of reality (mind) because it isn't suited to one's favored methodology. Phenomenology (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Evan Thompson) takes a similar approach.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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October 12, 2009 7:18 AM
In order for Philosophy itself to be important and useful, someone has to have come up with something through Philosophy which they couldn't (and didn't!) actually come up with some other way, eg through science. - SEF
Total crap of course. You could use exactly the same "argument" to "prove" that bricks are completely useless, because anything you can build with them could also be built with other materials.
However, you could not possibly discover that free will and determinism are compatible through empirical study, because this is a conceptual question. Science is relevant to such questions, but cannot decide them. With regard to consciousness, the fact is that it is Dennett, using philosophical approaches, who has produced the best available analysis of how consciousness is compatible with a material world: no scientist has come anywhere close. You may have noticed that it is quite routine for religionists to raise both these topics here: philosophers have provided sound answers to them.
Your constant repetition of the absurd claim that there is anything religious about arguing that some philosophy is useful really is remarkably stupid, even for an ignorant idiot like you. You are in fact using exactly the same technique as whoisyourcreator on a current thread: insisting that complex arguments be laid out for you here when people refer you to original sources.
What does Philosophy own which isn't inherent (eg logic), blindingly obvious even to the untrained smart person, or actually the property of someone else (eg a scientific discipline)?
Conceptual analysis.
What basis does Philosophy have for self-policing? Eg there are also egregious examples of modern "art" because of this lack of credible quality control. Science has reality as its arbiter.
Useful philosophy has exactly the same. Both, of course, also require internal consistency.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 7:24 AM
@435
The blockquote ended too early. I was quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia until the last paragraph of the post, where I pick up again....
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 7:26 AM
Doesn't it worry you philosophists at all that you're apparently unable to come up with your killer evidence/proof in your own words?
The various scientists (and atheists) here, very much including myself, are always well able to support their position that way; almost never needing to simply name-drop as if that were a valid reply, nor being unable to explain something (eg any in-discipline abbreviations) and only having to resort to links for things like a picture of some fossil which they can't simply wave at people on the internet or necessarily expect everyone to already have seen.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 7:26 AM
No, John it is not unfair: I was merely making the point that Buddhacious is indeed that piece of human scum that calls itself Matthew Segall.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 7:27 AM
Ah, if Buddhacious is MS, that would explain the inane crap he spouts. Thanks PhysicistDave
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 7:38 AM
Wrong, Dave.
I'm just a collection of protons and electrons booming and buzzing the only way they "know" how. You get awfully worked up for someone who believes the universe is a bunch of meaningless subatomic pushing and pulling. Lighten up! We're all mostly empty space!
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 7:42 AM
Not the same thing at all. I refer you to the religion and morality analogy again. It's actually all the same inherent material which Philosophy is merely dishonestly claiming to own. Where's Philosophy's new "material" with which it builds anything?
For example, compare "this sky-scraper was built with steel and engineering know-how and magical pixie-dust" with "this theory was built on scientific evidence and scientific know-how and Philosophy". You'd get a different building or theory with different materials or area of science but the pixie-dust Philosophy doesn't really add anything to the mix which wasn't already there.
Prove it's wholly and uniquely owned by Philosophy (and show it doing something useful) rather than an appropriation by philosophy of an inherent behaviour which people have always needed to do and have done whenever they were good at stuff, without having Philosophy™ tell them. It's religion and morality all over again. People have always broken problems down to work on them. They don't need Philosophy.
If philosophy merely equals thinking well, then every such person's a philosopher without being a Philosopher and many Philosophers are not genuinely philosophers(= good thinkers).
Posted by: John Morales
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October 12, 2009 7:59 AM
David @439, ah.
I thought it was obvious (cf. #120), but I was familiar with both identifiers.
I repeat, I see no intent to deceive thereby.
--
SEF,
I agree with that, absurd as you may consider it to be, subject to the additional constraint that it be honest thinking. :)
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 7:59 AM
As an illustration of the absurdity of Knockgoats' "killer" example of conceptual analysis, even chimpanzees do the basis of it in breaking down a problem into component parts. Eg in experiments where food is made hard to get.
Are chimpanzees Philosophers? Or is that behaviour, falsely claimed by Philosophy, actually inherent and practised by lots of intelligent, thoughtful non-Philosophers (including from long before Philosophy claimed ownership of it)? Is Philosophy merely a pretentious appropriation of thinking (specifically of thinking clearly and well)? Knockgoats example suggests that it is (and perhaps that he even knows that it is but he's trying hard not to admit it).
If Philosophy isn't anything other than the sort of thinking people have long done, then why does it need a separate name? Other than perhaps to pretentiously label remedial training in rote methods, for those who are naturally hard of thinking, in order for students to then be able to pretend they're doing something clever - even if they don't habitually do it in real life, outside the led-by-the-nose exam room.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 8:07 AM
No, I don't regard it (nor your agreeing with it) as absurd at all. It's merely considerably more honest than the typical Philosopher!
I don't have a problem at all with the idea that Philosophy™ has pretentiously appropriated and fraudulently patented the rights to clear thinking, despite that being an inborn inherent talent which requires no formal study among the talented (whereas the untalented still suck at it despite any amount of formal or remedial training). That's rather my own position on the matter. The same as morality being falsely claimed by the religious.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 12, 2009 9:48 AM
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php#comment-981847
Read Wood's "What is Philosophy?" here:
http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/recentpapers.htm
Posted by: Stephen Wells
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October 12, 2009 9:57 AM
Is SEF also concerned that track athletics have pretentiously appropriated and fraudulently patented the rights to running very fast, despite that being an inborn inherent talent which requires no formal study among the talented (whereas the untalented still suck at it despite any amount of formal or remedial training)?
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 10:09 AM
Track athletics hasn't actually done that though. Instead it has invented running round pointlessly in circles very fast. Actually quite like Philosophy, now that you come to mention it ... :-D
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 10:33 AM
Previously, naturally fast runners used to be in danger of achieving something by it. Eg escaping from predators, catching prey or quarry, succeeding at cattle rustling or carrying urgent messages. But with Athletics' cunning invention of combining simple shapes on the ground with coloured lines and pieces of tape, fast runners are kept safely away from achieving anything real with their talent and cunningly restricted to merely showing off to each other for superficial trophies instead, by long-standing societal indoctrination that this is a worthwhile thing™.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 10:41 AM
Oh and I quite forgot the addition of guns to go bang (at the start but without hitting anything with a fast projectile despite still having to look like a gun for form's sake). UnSAnians do so like guns that someone out there must be seeing that as a major plus feature in organised Athletics.
Posted by: IlllllllllllllI
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October 12, 2009 10:45 AM
You know, reading these comments is interesting, and there are several beautiful points and counter-points going on here... but this is just toxic. You're all pricks. None of you is interested in learning anything, just demonstrating the other one is wrong by any means necessary. It's infuriating that disagreement needs to be treated in bad faith, assuming the other person gets onto comment boards to lie to other people, that they might spend hours intentionally being confused just to provoke you, that deviating from your standards, even if they are rigorous and complete, is a heresy that requires insults instead of education. What is the purpose of being so incurious? Never mind, have fun with yourselves. You all mentally masturbate more than any philosopher I've ever met, and with much meaner orgasms.
Posted by: Matt Penfold
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October 12, 2009 11:17 AM
Since you are commenting here as well, I assume you include yourself in that classification.
Did you have any other point, other than just whining ?
Posted by: PZ Myers
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October 12, 2009 12:18 PM
What were people calling this? Mooney's Law? That anyone accusing others of incivility will commit even greater incivilities than those he opposes?
Posted by: Lynna, OM
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October 12, 2009 12:30 PM
What is a "meaner orgasm"? Is it an orgasm that kills you? Or is it one that comes off okay but that then bites you in the ass? Or are we talking about the old-fashioned version of "mean" as in "inadequate"? Or perhaps a meaner orgasm is one that insists on lecturing you about philosophy when you're trying to enjoy a little post-orgasmic nap?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 12:31 PM
As if there was anything to learn from the whiner. All he had was a supercilious attitude.Posted by: Matt Penfold
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October 12, 2009 12:39 PM
I would bet a lot that not one of the regulars who comments here has not learned something from other commentators. And I do not mean the fact there are idiots like frankie loose in the world, but thinks like alternative insights in the causes of problems in society, or how such problems are handled in other parts of the world.
I know I have learnt loads.
Posted by: Lynna, OM
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October 12, 2009 12:48 PM
SC OM@446
Thanks for that link. The paper (which downloads as "Enlightenment.doc") was a good read. I especially liked the closing paragraph:
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution
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October 12, 2009 12:58 PM
Good of you to notice... I was enjoying the debate as well... oh wait... you've written more...
Wow... what an interesting way to follow up that first sentence. I didn't realize you were a sociopath.
Well, usually the only means necessary is simply showing the other person to be wrong and backing it up with reasoned logic and evidence. "ANY means necessary" just seems like a bit of irrational hyperbole from you. Not sure we'd consider torture... that's more of a right-wing conservative tactic.
It is rather infuriating, yet you seem to be doing it right here anyhow... seeing as you spend an entire paragraph frothing and spitting without ever once making a cogent, reasoned point about anything topical to the discussion. But don't worry... it happens all the time. We're used to it.
No, no... we hardly ever assume that... you hardly ever need to go on "assuming" such things after they've been clearly pointed out.
Well, in most cases, it's probably not intentional confusion, but I think it would be silly of you to read back over this thread and claim provocation isn't the goal in many cases. That would just be dishonest of you.
Again it seems that your totality of information is woefully incomplete. Anyone who spends any time reading through these threads will find that our most common and powerful means of argument is education... links to peer-reviewed research and citations to support assertions are regularly given, and more often then not we do not receive the same courtesy from opponents... and frankly many of us have little patience for it. If this bothers you, well then you should probably find another place to troll...
Why do you insist on confusing the word "curious" with the word "credulous"? Fact is, it's unlikely that you'll find more "curious" people in one place elsewhere on the interwebs... Curiosity is at the heart of scientific discovery. Credulity, however, is an enemy to science and the scientific method... stop confusing the two...
Clearly you haven't hung out with many "philosophers"...
Posted by: IlllllllllllllI
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October 12, 2009 1:04 PM
@Nerd of Redhead: I didn't say there was anything to be learned from me, I had by and large decent conversations earlier in this thread. It was your conversations with each other, the insistence on destroying the incorrect, the totally incurious attitude toward truth or inquiry, these things point to an environment of self-congratulatory sycophancy.
Yes, @PZ Myers, I did call them, and you, pricks. Does that have anything to do with my criticisms? Does it rise to the level of pathologizing difference? Yes, @Matt Penfold, you pedant, include me in the set of all commenters. This is not about the behavior of individuals but the environment of intolerance. I understand these forums get flooded with (equally) incurious creationists or whoever, and so an assumption is made that someone who disagrees with a point is doing so to engage in combat. But there are those who come to places like this to learn and be engaged and, most important, to be instructed. Here, that behavior is discouraged, lumped into with trolls in order to save yourselves the time of having to think about a person's comments. Normally this would be some sort of time-saving heuristic, but this is a blog comment forum; if you want to save time, posting here in the first place is a mistake. So what is it? What is the advantage to glib misquotations of better arguments? To insisting that other people are just here to lie about themselves, to put forth purposefully incorrect arguments?
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 1:11 PM
Would they spend their time arguing over the extent to which he was hanging out and trying to agree on a system of measurement, while simultaneously denying that measurement was even a real and meaningful concept anyway, instead of getting on with the orgasm thing?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 1:21 PM
We are a very curious bunch. Any day I learn something new is a good day. But, I find I don't learn anything from the philosophers who stop by here, compared to the regulars who use philosophy. The philosophers are either woo infested idjits like MS, sophistry spouting presuppositionalists, or just plain utterly inane god of gaps sophistry for their imaginary deity. Others try to pretend that only philosophers can judge other philosophers and philosophy. I also follow a three sentence rule. If after three sentences, I can't make head nor tail of what is being talked about, it isn't worth my time. So if you want to communicate effectively with us, make your arguments short and to the point. And, being a working scientist, I don't worry about the utter purity of an argument. Close can be good enough. I'm looking toward the end result.Posted by: Matt Penfold
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October 12, 2009 1:27 PM
Nerd,
I like your three sentence rule. I find myself increasingly less and less tolerant of waffle, verbosity and deliberate obscurity.
I am currently reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I am only on chapter 3, but I can recommend it. Russell knows how to convey what can be complex ideas with incredible clarity.
Posted by: IlllllllllllllI
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October 12, 2009 1:34 PM
@Celtic_evolution: You make a fair point, I have drawn broad criticisms from a very small set of behaviors. But let me give some examples of what I think are unhelpful behaviors.
"I didn't realize you were a sociopath."
That seems over the top. I was making a criticism of the tenor of the discussion and how it tends toward the ad hominem. I don't think that this is an entirely controversial point, in fact, there is a fair amount of pride at intemperance toward the incorrect. In many instances, I understand it, if don't find it to be a useful technique myself. Yet you called me a sociopath for writing a contrastive sentence.
"'ANY means necessary' just seems like a bit of irrational hyperbole from you. Not sure we'd consider torture... that's more of a right-wing conservative tactic."
Of course I meant torture, because I said any, any includes torture, I meant torture, QED. But of course I didn't, that is a distortion from the everyday meaning of what I expressed. Just like comments #452, #453, and #454, which focused on small to meaningless features of my comment rather than the point of the whole. I do note that you took apart my entire comment, an improvement in some ways over these.
"you spend an entire paragraph frothing and spitting without ever once making a cogent, reasoned point about anything topical to the discussion."
This too seems inaccurate to me. While I was overstating my case, clearly these things are not features of all commenters but are instead features of the environment in which all commenters are operating, I think my points make sense on a standard "Do you understand what I'm saying" level. You can say that they're not applicable here as you did, or that I'm wrong, but the attack was also their cogency and reasoning. This focus seems evident in many of the over-the-top comments above, that the commenter under discussion is not just incorrect, but their reasoning is faulty at some unexplained core and that they are therefore not to be heard.
"you should probably find another place to troll..."
This assumption is particularly common, that those who are here and disagree with Myers or another commenter are just looking to provoke, as you said. Again, maybe it's true that many are, but not all. I certainly wasn't and I was instantly attacked as an irrational idiot with a pathology, instead of someone who was wrong for reasons 1, 2, 3... I'm willing to be wrong, and almost certainly am. But I'm not an idiot and I'm not here to start fights. And if I am, I'm sure there are others who find these attitude equally unpleasant for the same reasons.
Now, your point on credulity is well taken, as is that of @Nerd of Redhead. There is certainly a level of curiousity here toward certain points of view. It could, and probably is, the case that what certain point of view have been characterized as is something that holds little interest for many of the commenters. I wouldn't expect you to be curious of the nuances of Creationism, for an easy example, or the defense of racism that occurred above. And I don't insist that you be curious toward philosophies of science either, I think my commenting past on this thread has obscured my point, especially in your last comment, @Nerd of Redhead. I'm not offended by your behavior toward me, or a pragmatic scientific practice unconcerned with the purity of arguments (in fact, it's what I've been arguing for). I'm irritated by the overall level of disrespect you demonstrate toward each other. Not in each instance. Not from each person. But too often, it seems to me, to have a healthy debating atmosphere.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution
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October 12, 2009 1:50 PM
@ IlllllllllllllI
It was meant to be... it was meant as a parody of the very thing you did... make a constructive comment followed by a visceral and useless insult... I'm glad you picked up on it.
And again, my response was quite intentionally over the top... I hope you are starting to understand why.
Well, implicit in my use of the word "troll", was an acceptance of the conditions I laid out... if a lack of patience for failure to accept reasoned argument and presented evidence is problematic for you, then you probably should find somewhere else to "troll"... I'm not stating explicitly that you fit that description, necessarily. It's your choice as to whether you do or not.
Now, if you had stated your case and argument as you did in your final paragraph instead of the hyperbolic fashion in which you did at #451, I would have responded entirely differently far less "over the top".
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 1:51 PM
IlllllllllllllI,
Stick around long enough and your skin will begin to thicken. I think everyone realizes (?) that an Internet message board such as this is not the best forum to approach serious metaphysical problems or to work out our sociocultural deficiencies. No, rather, this is the place to display repeated examples of such deficiencies in communication and philosophical shallowness, perhaps with the hopes that some team of anthropologists and/or sociologists is watching from afar and collecting valuable data that may one day help civilization get its act together. We are all being studied for the good of humanity's future. Or at least that is what I tell myself when I begin to reflect upon the late nights I've spent here sifting through the insults to find arguments worth responding to...
Posted by: SC OM
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October 12, 2009 1:53 PM
On the YAM scale
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/09/science_is_not_your_merkin.php#comment-1111997
I'm giving I-I a whopping 9 (deductions for relatively low-quality rhetoric of indignaton - and writing in general - and general insipidity).
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution
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October 12, 2009 2:00 PM
This is why your comments irk me so much... you don't like the tone that's been used with you and perhaps with some others on this thread, but making curt, unsupported generalizations like the one above really irritates me, because it shows how very limited your exposure to what really goes on in these threads is...
In other words, you're full of shit.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution
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October 12, 2009 2:12 PM
You're not the only one who feels that way, trust me... even amongst the regulars there is often contention over the approach used by some... it is the reason PZ has posted in the past about having a "3 posts" rule of thumb before jumping all over someone (not always followed by everyone, myself included, but I'm trying to be better about that)...
As for myself, I would characterize the debate that takes place in these threads as refreshing, as we put a premium on substance over tone. Often the interactions become quite acerbic, even between the regulars. However I see it as a way to keep the debate honest and focused. Too often the tactic of "being polite" and "not offending" obscures the message and taints the argument. Instead of worrying about who we're going to offend, we feel free to let fly with our assertions, naked and unfiltered, while understanding that we will be met with equal resistance if we can not support those assertions and arguments with solid reasoned logic and back them up with evidence.
For me, it's freeing... I don't have to wade through the non-offensive, polite bullshit to get to the point... and honestly, that's just not for everyone... I get that.
Posted by: Dania
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October 12, 2009 2:14 PM
Maybe I should also begin telling myself that when I reflect upon the late nights I spent sifting through your panexperimentalist woo to find sentences that actually made some sense and could be responded to... ;)
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 2:19 PM
Now you are just being what we call either a tone troll, or a concern troll. Someone who is more interested in how things are said rather than what is said. We are a rowdy bunch, and PZ likes it that way and encourages it. But many of us are scientists and/or academics, and we are used to challenging one another. Some posters tend toward more rudeness than others. If one of those calls me stupid, I don't take personally. I am merely one of many in his stupid pile. And, at times, I have been stupid, and needed to take corrective action.That being said, you really have two options. We aren't going to change how we argue here, as PZ sets that tone. So, you either develop a thicker skin, or you stop posting here. Your choice.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 12, 2009 2:30 PM
@Celtic Evolution: To your first comment, apologies that I couldn't hear the irony in your tone. It's difficult to distinguish from the real attitudes that have been displayed.
To your second point, you're misreading me. When I say that "behavior is discouraged, lumped into with trolls in order to save yourselves the time of having to think about a person's comments", I'm not making a broad statement but a specific one. It is a fact that some comments arrive here in good faith and are ignored or insulted because they are deemed to be trolls. I try to make no claims about any comment section other than this one, though in some instances there appears to be a vulgarization of Myers' attitude toward creationists and new agers, generalized to all disagreement. Again, I was overly broad myself in my first frustrated comment and have tried to be as precise as possible since being called out on it.
However, for you to say I'm full of shit because I have limited exposure to these comment threads...well, that's true, I do have limited exposure. But my points have been in evidence, on some level or other, for the entirety of my experience. Maybe more data will change my mind. But until that point, my perspective is what it is.
That said, to your and @Redhead's last point, I'm not particularly bothered by the sharp tones or the insults. If insulting a person is what needs to be done in order to continue a conversation with them, so be it. I'm bothered by a certain strain of arrogance that relies only on insults, only on glibness, only on dismissal. Most of all, the assumption that I've found irritating since I arrived, of "troll-hood" or bad-faith or secret provocative agendas. It begins to seem like avoiding questions rather than making quick work of a bad argument, and in those instances I will say that it smacks of incuriousness and self-righteous know-it-all-ism. This is of a different breed than rowdy.
Posted by: CJO
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October 12, 2009 2:31 PM
This is ad hominem. You haven't made an argument, you've just negatively characterized adherents of an opposing view.
One mistakenly fails to isolate salient phenomena within such a complex system in order to study it. I'll oppose your "greedy reductionism" (a term you didn't use here, but I read your blog post on Noe's book --ironically, Dennett's coinage, by the way) with "lazy holism." It's all well and good to point out that the forest is big and the (conceptual) undergrowth tangled. But, your so-called reductionists actually put on their boots, hike in, and take a closer look. Lazy holists just stand back and despair of ever isolating a tree from its root system and soil microorganisms and epiphytes, and etc. One can use a reductionist conceptual frame without losing sight of the fact that one is working on a small part of a greater whole. But lazy holists would rather sit around and talk shit on an imaginary “greedy reductionist” and his silly “reifications “than actually advance our knowledge about a subset of the problem.
Cognition, awareness, etc. are activities. Those properties of organisms that allow the activity are properties of those organisms’ nervous systems. Being unable to “locate” an activity is what passes for a trenchant critique of materialist accounts of the activity?
Great. Now that our vague characterization of the problem is out of the way, how about we get our hands dirty and study the related phenomena. Are you saying that our study shouldn’t start with properties of the human (or other animals’) nervous system?
Pretending that the “heavy lifting” doesn’t happen inside brains would seem to deny any possibility of an explanation. In general, there’s a bait and switch maneuver at the heart of this kind of critique. “Anti-reductionist” (or whatever) theorists who hold up “The Hard Problem” challenge the materialist to account for the fact of conscious experience, with reference to neurological function, or at least, to brain activity. The neurologists dutifully identify physiological substrates for various processes, the cognitive psychologists devise clever experiments using fMRI and other tools of empirical study of neurophysiology, materialist philosophers of mind try to clear the conceptual ground by integrating such work and pointing out that the gap between explanans and explanandum is not as great as it might appear since naïve folk models of conscious experience overstate the divide between the physical and the experiential, and all we get back is the complaint that the whole enterprise was a futile exercise in “trying to reduce consciousness to the brain.” Shit, man. I thought that’s what you asked for!
I’m interested to read Noe’s book. I thumbed through a copy in the bookstore when it first came out. Is it out in paperback? But as far as I can tell, Clark’s and Chalmers’s paper is an exercise in redefining the term “cognition” to include prosthetic use of object manipulation and recorded information. The thrust of it isn’t even really about the nature of conscious experience at all, which is, I thought, what we were having this Problem with.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution
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October 12, 2009 2:53 PM
That's a far cry from the sweeping generalization you made earlier. Yes, there is a good deal of "itchy trigger syndrome", but I'm sorry, in my experience, more often than not, even comments that come in that are clearly willfully ignorant are corrected with supporting links. Again, you may not like the tone, but generally at least some efforts are made to correct factually deficient assertions... especially from commenters we've not seen before. And if that fails to get through, "pointing and laughing" at overt, willful stupidity is one of the things we do here, and I believe it to be an entirely appropriate response at a certain point.
And perhaps that's part of your perception problem here. Look, if you are new here, it may appear as though some people are treated pretty harshly with the very first words that come off of their keyboards. I would say that in those cases it is often likely that the commenter in question is someone known, that has likely made the same stupid arguments before. For those people, there is little or no patience. Once you've established yourself as a crank, you're going to have to do real work to prove yourself a changed person... just ask Walton. ;)
Yes, well, keep in mind that your perspective is completely anecdotal and based on your personal experiences here, which have been (it seems) limited and contentious. I provided you with just one example of an entire thread of over 1000 posts devoted to the earnest education of a young woman with real questions. There are far more of those...
One of the things that you may have to come to grips with is the very real truth that many people come in here with conservative, anti-science or religious arguments and no interest in being educated whatsoever. It's a far greater percentage than those who are really interested in honest debate. And they are treated with derision... I think it's been earned in most cases.
And to be honest here, reading back through this thread, several people have taken quite a bit of valuable time in the very sincere attempt at trying to educate you...
Posted by: SC OM
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October 12, 2009 3:11 PM
That doesn't make sense. If they're ignored, how do you know why? Writing in good faith doesn't make a comment interesting, original, well-argued, or worthy of a response (or of an insulting response, for that matter).
You posts your comment and you takes your chance.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 3:12 PM
Well, Buddhacious (Matthew Segall) is a recurring troll, as Segall has been here several times with his shit. I've ignored him this round as he never listens, just preaches. And we aren't interested, since his preaching is antiscience, and he is a third rate thinker at best. There were a couple of philosophers with attitudes early in the thread, and we responded in kind. We had another idjit upthread who is a racist, but doesn't like being called on it. So we are very testy and nasty with him, hoping he will go away and get some help for his problem. And with any long thread, several side topics get going and discussed. Yep, looked fairly normal to me. As I said earlier, if you wish to stay, you need to develop a thick skin. If you can't stand our tone, leave.Posted by: SC OM
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October 12, 2009 3:16 PM
(or unworthy of an insulting response, for that matter)
Posted by: Dania
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October 12, 2009 4:03 PM
I wouldn't call Matthew a troll. He just seems interested in philosophical debate (nothing wrong with that) and he's very passionate about it, but I think he makes an honest effort to engage. Just because he has some wacky beliefs doesn't mean he is a troll.
Posted by: illllllllllllli.wordpress.com
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October 12, 2009 4:55 PM
@Redhead, @Celtic, thanks for the points. They're well taken.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 12, 2009 5:16 PM
Buddhacious is Matthew Segall? Damn, I always don't pick up on these things.Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 12, 2009 5:20 PM
Matthew Segall's argument in a nutshell for those who are interested:
MS: Materialism cannot account for X aspect of the mind
PC: But we don't have any evidence that the immaterial exists
MS: I'm not advocating that there is anything other than material. But the material can't account for X aspect of the mind.
PC: *head asplodes*
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 12, 2009 5:22 PM
PC standing for pharyngula commenters.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 5:37 PM
As I said, I think he comes here to preach the gospel according to Segall. His idea is the same as the previous times. While he responds, he never learns. Like presenting physical, not philosophical, evidence. For me, the lack of learning puts him into the troll category. He will be repeating the same nonsense ten years from now. But I see your point.Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 5:55 PM
Dania wrote:
>I wouldn't call Matthew a troll. He just seems interested in philosophical debate (nothing wrong with that) and he's very passionate about it, but I think he makes an honest effort to engage.
No, Dania, he really does not. Look back at his point upthread about there being no unity to science. We have pointed out that he is factually wrong on this.
No impact on the jerk.
And look back at the earlier thread that I linked to.
Or, better still, read his garbage on his Website and try to engage him on it (like his live-rock nonsense!).
He’s been here for months off and on (at least since July): no matter how carefully someone points out his scientific errors to him, he just keeps repeating them.
He does not care.
Truth just floats over the jerk like pond scum over a pond.
The guy is worse than a pathological liar. He just enjoys jerking around scientists.
A simulacrum of a human being.
I started out in July being polite to this scum, and I tried to converse politely with him longer than almost anyone else here. But I’ve had it with this jerk, if you don’t believe my characterization of him, check him out as I suggest above.
Dave
Posted by: Dania
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October 12, 2009 5:56 PM
Nerd, I see what you mean. I'm still annoyed by the fact that he admitted in a previous discussion that he needed to learn more about science* before being taken seriously around here, but he then came back several times repeating the same things...
I still don't think of him as troll, more or less for the same reasons I don't think of Walton as a troll. Although this might not be the best comparison... Walton has learned some things and changed his mind. Matthew, on the other hand...
* Remember the "bacteria feel 'yum' and 'yuck'" nonsense? Just an example...
Posted by: Dania
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October 12, 2009 6:16 PM
I know, I followed the discussion and I engaged him too. We argued somewhat extensively about his claim that bacteria are sentient and about self-organization in biological systems, if I remember correctly.
I understand your frustration, but I think his apparent refusal to learn and to correct his mistakes has more to do with his desperate desire to believe in some kind of woo that somehow gives "meaning" to his life than with him being dishonest or coming here just to troll.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 7:05 PM
The lying scum that calls itself Matthew Segall.Buddhacious wrote to me:
>Wrong, Dave.
>I'm just a collection of protons and electrons booming and buzzing the only way they "know" how. You get awfully worked up for someone who believes the universe is a bunch of meaningless subatomic pushing and pulling.
Wrong again, lying scum.
If you look back at the previous threads (or if you have any neurons left after the cannabis and LSD you list as “teachers” on your Website), you’ll find that I am not a materialist – early on in our initial discussion I made that clear. Oddly enough, that is one thing you and I agree on.
But nothing anyone says to you really gets through, does it, lying scum?
Dave
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 7:29 PM
CJO @ 472,
Noe's book is well worth the read, but a more in depth journey into the same paradigm (extended/embodied/enactive cognitive science) can be found in Evan Thompson's recent book "Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind." I think the reason my thoughts tend to be ridiculed around here is that my philosophical orientation is Continental, as opposed to analytical. This is an oversimplification of schools of thought... another way to break it down it would be to say I am influenced very heavily by phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleu-Ponty, William James, Francisco Varela, Thompson...), a form of philosophy not well respected (or understood) by popular American philosophers of mind like Dennett, McGinn, Chalmers, Pinker, etc. I use Dennett's own phrase--"greedy reductionist"-- agaist him because of his fundamental theoretical commitment: conscious experience is a complete illusion. Now, I agree with his deconstruction of the idea of a neatly unified Cartesian subject viewing the outside world from somewhere in the head as if watching a projector screen (Buddha also realized that there is no-self, but this is not the same as Dennett's claim, that experience itself is an illusion... I wrote a paper several years ago making extensive use of Dennett and Clark's ideas precisely about this issue: http://karmabuster.gaia.com/blog/2007/7/spellbound_magic_words_and_minds_without_self).
To say that experience itself is illusory ends up making truly empirical science impossible. We can doubt the accuracy of truthfulness of 1st person descriptions of experience, but not that such experience is phenomenologically real! Dennett's argument is self-defeating in this way. I don't have the time or space to flesh this out in more detail, but you can read Dennett's submission to volume 6 of the journal "Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences" and the several critical responses to it by Zahavi, Velmans, and others (there is also a lengthy critique of Dennett and Dawkins in Thompson's book mentioned above).
I agree that cognitive capacity and skill is intimately related to an organism's nervous system and embodiment. I also think that most if not all organic cognitive capacity (human or otherwise) is extrasomatically augmented. The sort of holist approach I'm taking to consciousness and cognition (which I don't want to conflate, more below) also applies to genetics. Donna Haraway has published a brilliant analysis (1997) of gene-fetishism, which again is a sort of mistaken concreteness that turns DNA into a master molecule supposedly containing within it all the information required to make a cell. This sort of fetishism obscures the embeddedness of the DNA and its complete dependence on the cellular matrix to do anything at all. As Richard Lewontin reminds us(http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2003/DNA-Era-Lewontin1jul03.htm), DNA is not self-replicating and does not make anything.
Call it lazy holism if you must. I'd rather call it systemic thinking (or as Lewontin calls his approach, dialectical biology). The dominant computationalist (mind=computer) paradigm in cognitive science gives us absolutely no insights into why such a biological computer should have feelings or be conscious (it would process data just as well if it were purely mechanical, if not better!). I'm actually on the side of the neurobiologists here, who remind the computationalists that the medium matters! Dennett thinks a sufficiently complex computer could be functionally equivalent (which for him means identical) to a living human being. Most neurobiologists are not comfortable with this idea, because they see organic structure as essential to the process of cognition and to the presence of consciousness (Varela's work is especially insightful in this area). Now, cognition can be abstractly conceived of as a purely algorithmic, logical process of computation. No conscious experience is required. That means finding a supposed solution to how the brain functions cognitively will probably tell us nothing whatsoever about where consciousness comes from.
I think the "hard problem" is a conceptual confusion. I don't think it is solved by simply taking it on faith that a material explanation for mind will be discovered eventually. Rather, I think we need to totally reconceive of the nature of matter. As a Whiteheadian panexperientialist, I see all matter as being in possession of some modicum of experience. Experience becomes more intense and dynamic as physiology evolves and complexifies, eventually becoming what we would call "conscious" in higher mammals. So rather than say that human consciousness is a bizarre aberration in an otherwise blind, dead, and stupid universe, I see it as the leading edge of an astoundingly creative evolutionary arc driven by matter's (or the universe's) own desire to more fully actualize itself.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 7:40 PM
Not a materialist, Dave? My mistake. I had not remembered you saying that (go ahead, blame the cannabis). I just read a few of your blog postings, including this one: http://homeschoolingphysicist.blogspot.com/2009/09/science-vs-religion-teaching.html
Jumped to conclusions... my apologies.
But for someone so interested in the mysteries of consciousness, I'm suprised you have such a demeaning attitude toward those who use psychedelics to study it.
By the way, cannabis has been shown in recent experiments to be neurogenic: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8155
Posted by: CJO
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October 12, 2009 7:54 PM
(it would process data just as well if it were purely mechanical, if not better!)
Well, there's a whole lot that is fuzzy, wrong, or downright risible in your latest, and I don't have time right now; perhaps later, though I have no time for the untestable wankery that is panexperientialism. I will just point out, as a starter, that the parenthetical I quote above is an unargued assertion. Perhaps it seems obvious to you; that should be a clue that you need to examine your assumptions more closely. Reflect that "as well" and "better" here should not be taken as "faster" or "more efficiently," it should take into account what the biological computer is for, and the sorts of problems it uses data processing to solve.
I use Dennett's own phrase--"greedy reductionist"-- agaist him because of his fundamental theoretical commitment: conscious experience is a complete illusion.
Quite simply, this is a sraw man, and one that Dennett explicitly repudiates, in Consciousness Explained and elsewhere. Rather, he considers certain properties of conscious experience, the ones that are most often marshalled in defense of the Hard Problem, to be illusory. Denying one's challengers' characterization of the phenomenon at issue is not denying its existence, and it's the height of intellectual dishonesty to maintain that it is.
Posted by: CJO
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October 12, 2009 7:58 PM
heh. "straw man."
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 8:04 PM
CJO,
You can read what Dennett wrote in the journal I referenced. I feel I'm characterizing the view he presented there (published more recently than Consciousnes Explained) quite fairly.
As for panexperientialism being untestable, you are correct. It is a metaphysical re-orientation, not a testable hypothesis. Keep in mind that redutionistic materialism is also untestable (at least until the moment of death). We are dealing with metaphysical presuppositions here, not scientific theories.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 8:10 PM
I say panexperientialism is untestable, which is true if we mean empirically/scientifically testable. But I should say that one's metaphysics can be tested in a more pragmatic and existential sense: how does it effect your day to day life? Does it increase your likelihood to behave compassionately toward other sentient beings? Does it provide you with a sense of adventure? Etc.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 8:22 PM
CJO,
Functionalism just doesn't do it for me. Yes, the "biological computer" has an evolutionary role to play. But this doesn't tell us anything about why any of its functions require consciousness. Data can be processed just as well regardless of whether sentience is present to be aware of it, wouldn't you agree? Unless you're willing to grant consciousness top-down influence on behavior, I find it difficult to imagine how it could ever have been selected for in the mechanical, Darwinian sense.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 12, 2009 8:28 PM
I went back and read the first thread I encountered him. Wow, just wow.Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 8:48 PM
Yawn, not one citation to the peer reviewed scientific literature. All MS has is words strung together to hide meaning and precision. No information or evidence. Not worth even responding to.
Dania, I don't consider Walton a troll either. He's young, and there's reasonable hope he will outgrow his l-word flirtation. Many radicals from my undergraduate days outgrew their flirtation with Mao.
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 9:01 PM
Buddhacious: You are not much more coherent than when I left.
Characterizing consciousness only as a "biological computer" and "purely mechanical" brushes under the table the fact that our brains have been adapted with an architecture and plasticity that enable conscious awareness and feelings. If you want to picture a purely mechanical biological computer (one that does have our sort of conscious experience), then obviously it will have to look and act at least reasonably like a brain, not something much simpler like a calculator or thermostat. It would be another strawman, or at least a sign of confusion.
Get ready to feel uncomfortable: like Dennett, I think a sufficiently complex computer (extremely complex, by today's standards) could have its own sort of conscious experience, and in principle even the equivalent of a human one. If this computer needs an organic substrate for part or all of its functions, then it makes little difference.
An analogy: in principle, I could write a book on paper, type it on my computer, write it out with finger paints on a pile of rocks, or if I was very patient I could use smoke signals or morse code -- the materials used to encode the information just depend on practical considerations like time and resources. However, I could not write a book without any physical substrate.
You say "I see all matter as being in possession of some modicum of experience", but that contradicts your claim that consciousness is not reducible to matter. You can't have it both ways. It is indeed "lazy holism" if you fail to see that the idea that all matter has experience (even that which is not a part of complex, organic nervous systems) is not only untestable, but would render a holistic or systemic model of the brain and its environment utterly meaningless. It seems you're aware of many different interpretations of consciousness, and for some reason you've decided on the most absurd possible combination of them. Apparently it appeals to you simply because you could avoid a "blind, dead, and stupid universe". Conscious experience is a property of our part of the universe, but that does not mean it's a property of the whole. This is a fallacy of composition, and it even smells of an appeal to emotion or consequences.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 9:15 PM
Dania wrote, speaking of Matthew Segall/Buddhacious:
> I understand your frustration, but I think his apparent refusal to learn and to correct his mistakes has more to do with his desperate desire to believe in some kind of woo that somehow gives "meaning" to his life than with him being dishonest or coming here just to troll.
I agree with you that he has a “desperate desire to believe in some kind of woo.” Hey, I myself think it would be cool if the universe actually cared about me!
But, if that were the whole of the story, Matthew could actually listen to people who know more about science than he does, acknowledge his profound ignorance of science (and philosophy!), etc.
But he won’t do that.
Also, the games with, to steal a phrase from SEF, “word salad,” the attempts on his part to pretend to superior knowledge compared to people who are much more intelligent and educated than he… well, I just cannot square this with Matt being an ignorant but sincere seeker after meaning. He is not some young thirteen year old – he is a college graduate.
He is trying hard to be a pompous, manipulative jerk, and he is indeed very good at it.
I do think one marginally mitigating circumstance may be his miseducation at Central Florida “University” in Orlando. I know that there are some honest and competent philosophers and humanities professors in the world. But there are also an awful lot who behave like Matthew. If he had had any honest professor at all at his “University,” that professor would have shot Matthew down for this sort of nonsense, and he might have learned something. That seems not to have happened, and Matt clearly has no intention at all of learning anything from anyone here.
Anyway, at some point he has to be treated as an adult and not have excuses made for him as if he were a child who has not yet been toilet trained.
Personally, I think he has publicly soiled himself quite enough and the only response to him that has any chance of helping him at all is for everyone to tell him so.
He is old enough to learn to stop being an incredible jerk and to stop soiling himself in public.
Dave
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 9:18 PM
Mr T,
A consequence of my panexperientialism is that even your desktop computer has some sort of experience. Because it is not organic (and so its mature form did not develop from a single cell, but was built piece-by-piece), I doubt that it has any experience of itself as a whole. But the atoms and electrons that make it up are "drops of experience" (to use William James' term).
Consciousness is not reducible to matter as most scientific materialists conceive of matter. As I tried to explain, I think we need to relate to matter from a revamped metaphysical perspective such that it no longer seems like a freak anomaly that life and consciousness have emerged on the rock we call home. Rather, such creativity was implicit in matter all along. I see matter not as a substance or stuff, but as a dynamic process striving toward greater intensity of experience. This seems to fit nicely with science's contemporary story of cosmic evolution.
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 12, 2009 9:22 PM
Dave,
I'm quite confident that the anthropologists studying the cultural exchanges taking place here (see # 465) will see quite clearly which one of us is the child.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 12, 2009 9:25 PM
Are you going to show that matter has inherit properties that are beyond what "scientific materialists" conceive of?Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 9:40 PM
Buddhacious:
A "consequence of [your] panexperientialism"? That is not an argument. It only seems like a freak anomaly that you could be so obtuse about the failings of your own childish, woo-addled nonsense.
Go ahead and provide some evidence that the reason a desktop computer doesn't have "experience of itself as a whole" is because it is inorganic. There is no such evidence. Do you, as an organism, have experience of yourself as a whole? No. Simply being organic isn't a sufficient explanation.
Go smoke a bowl, eat some shrooms or whatever, and come back with something better.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 12, 2009 9:45 PM
Yep, that is you Matthew.Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 12, 2009 9:46 PM
Hmm, the conversation seems to have gone downhill somewhat since I was last here (I'm NOT saying that's because of my absence).
A few comments:
I finally went back to see who "Matthew Segall" was, and though I'm not sure "scum" is warranted, I thought at the time and I still think: pretty fluffy stuff. And he doesn't seem to have changed much.
It was nice to go from there to your website, PhysicistDave, and see this posting: http://homeschoolingphysicist.blogspot.com/2009/09/science-vs-religion-teaching.html.
I think (with the teeniest-tiniest fraction of your knowledge of physics) that consciousness is pretty mysterious, too. I've tried to lessen the mystery by moving away from any notion of contra-causal free will; but of course that just demystifies one feature of the mind; not all of them. I've blocked off some time (next year) for reading interesting books on consciousness; I definitely want to include Colin McGinn's book now.
SEF gives me a renewed appreciation for 'Tis Himself. Others came up with substantive examples, and I know I labored (I thought with some success) to contribute some substance in defense of philosophy to the discussion. Beyond a certain point, though, that discussion seems to me to be rather pointless. As I suggested once before, a lot of the disagreement boils down to quibbling about definitions.
It doesn't follow, though, that every definition is equally good. One should cry foul at what someone once described as larceny by definition: i.e. preemptively moving to exclude something you like from the object of your contempt. E.g. I don't think philosophers have to sit passively by and accept the removal of logic from philosophy. (It seems to me that most significant contributions to logic have been by philosophers, from Aristotle to Russell and beyond.)
On the subject of concern-trolling, tone-trolling, and the like, since that keeps bubbling up here: I'd add only that these expressions seem to function BOTH as factual descriptions of certain kinds of posters, AND as a rather nasty, heads-I-win-tails-you-lose rhetorical strategy: using "concern troll" to insult someone who ventures to disagree with you, then heaping on further abuse ("you really are a troll") when he or she quite naturally takes it as an insult and responds in kind. I'd further add that it's not necessariy hypocritical for someone to complain about tone, be subjected to abuse, and then say: "Well, fuck you, too." I'm reminded of the French rhyme: "Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l'attaque il se défend." ("This animal is quite wicked; when you attack it, it defends itself.")
Anyway, it's been an interesting thread.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 10:15 PM
Rubbish. Giving pretentious names and by-rote rules to stuff which people already do, and can continue to do very well without all that flummery, does not legitimately grant ownership of thinking nor advance thinking at all. Philosophers do not actually think better, ie as a result of that couple of millennia of faffing around, than natural thinkers do without Philosophy. On the evidence, the remedial training doesn't even seem to do much to improve the inept thinkers who would have to be the only ones requiring it! (NB Recent analysis of the UK's remedial training for adults, in basic literacy and numeracy skills, showed the same failure.)
I think there's a parallel in the way the US is far too free in granting patents (and I do mean the real legal wotsits) for the blindingly obvious stuff already done by others. Something which rivals, in badness, the hypocritical and dishonestly selective misinterpretation of libel law by UK judges.
In contrast to Philosophy, maths and science have gone way beyond the blindingly obvious. They are more than merely a set of obscure symbols and specialised terms which serve to show who's a member of the secret society. They have made real advances which couldn't be achieved by one person on their own.
Philosophy has nothing but its pretentiousness. Which, from the athletics analogy unwittingly provided by another of the philosophists who was unable to think things through properly, might be regarded as being a cunning plan. One designed to actively prevent talented thinkers from getting on with anything dangerously useful by diverting them with fake prestige as a reward for going around pointlessly in circles instead.
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 10:31 PM
Philosophy only owns a bunch of pretentious names for the blindingly obvious and another bunch of names to drop when pretending to sound learned rather than actually being learned. And that doesn't make it a worthwhile subject.
It's just a cargo cult version of thinking - something to let the inept thinkers fool themselves and each other into believing they're doing something clever (hence all the word salad people). The real deal comes naturally and quite independently of Philosophy™. An individual with talent can do all the thinking which is worth doing. Philosophy is no substitute for intelligence.
You philosophists have all been conned into believing there's something worthwhile there when there isn't - in exactly the same way as religion has conned billions into believing that it owns morality. And many of them carried on doing so, and hence argued for its utility on those grounds, even after they themselves had stopped believing in the religion itself! It really is that powerful a con-trick which still has you in its grasp.
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 10:33 PM
Dania wrote:
> I don't think of Walton as a troll. Although this might not be the best comparison... Walton has learned some things and changed his mind. Matthew, on the other hand...
Yeah, there are lots of differences. I don’t recall Walton ever spouting off some idiocy about science and then refusing to listen when someone who actually knew the science pointed out the facts.
And, the main points on which I have seen Walton disagree with others here are “value” issues, such as politics. I find some (not all) of his positions in those areas bizarre, but one should normally expect more radical disconnects and disagreements on politics than on science.
Most importantly, I’ve never seen Walton play “mind games.” He does not try to deluge others under “word salad,” he’s not trying to manipulate others to assuage his own fear of a “meaningless” universe, etc.
Walton thinks what he thinks, but he is not trying to be a jerk.
Of course, all this would be consistent with there being a qualitative difference in the amount of recreational chemicals ingested by Walton vs. Matthew Segall (remembering that Matt lists cannabis and LSD as among his “Teachers” on his blog).
Dave
Posted by: SEF
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October 12, 2009 10:45 PM
Well, LSD is reputed to have a permanent brain-scrambling effect. The trouble is that some people are naturally that messed up in the head anyway. You'd have to have prior (and relatively detailed) knowledge of the person's mental state to know whether or not the LSD was to blame.
Posted by: Kel, OM
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October 12, 2009 10:47 PM
Maybe what needs to be said is Matthew really needs to stop with the drug use and Walton should start ;)But yeah, Walton is definitely not a troll. One who does show the capacity to learn and engage in conversation. Funniest thing about Matthew Segall is there was some other new age crank that came on a thread not long after him and tried to distance himself from that brand of crazy (substituting his own in of course - science is apparently literary criticism because no-one does an experiment again once it is written about)
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 12, 2009 11:04 PM
"Rubbish. Giving pretentious names and by-rote rules to stuff which people already do, and can continue to do very well without all that flummery, does not legitimately grant ownership of thinking nor advance thinking at all."
So people just naturally know the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning--or a validly constructed syllogism from an invalidly constructed one--or the principle of non-contradiction? I kinda doubt it.
Posted by: Mr T
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October 12, 2009 11:18 PM
Posted by: PhysicistDave
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October 12, 2009 11:39 PM
CJO wrote:
> I have no time for the untestable wankery that is panexperientialism.
If you want to see a rational, coherent case for panpsychism (not quite as crazy as Matthew’s version, of course), try David Chalmers’ “The Conscious Mind.” In my judgment, Chalmers proposal wildly violates Occam’s Razor – the problem is that you need a “consciousness” for nearly every conceivable combination of elementary objects, so that you end up with consciousnesses beyond imagination.
But Chalmers’ presentation is rational, unlike our little boy Matthew / Buddhacious.
Chalmers is not playing games, being manipulative, etc. He’s making a serious proposal, which one can (as I do) seriously disagree with.
Chalmers, by the way, is an example, of a contemporary philosopher who tries to avoid “word salad,” semantic games and all the rest, so he is an existence proof that decent, relatively sane human beings can be philosophers. Other living or recently deceased examples include Colin McGinn, John Searle, Ernest Gellner, and J. L. Mackie: they are not always right, but they are always trying to be honest.
Unfortunately, none of those type of philosophers ever seems to show up at Pharyngula (or on most of the Web).
And, as PZ has shown with Michael Ruse, I am doubtful that the sane variety are very widespread even as professors within university philosophy departments. (I knew of Ruse before PZ brought him up, and I was never tempted to view him as one of the honest, sane ones; same with Antony Flew.)
Dave
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 13, 2009 1:09 AM
SEF,
Brain-scrambling, eh? Curious to see the research on that...
Probably the last living research psychiatrist who studied LSD when it was still legal in the 60s, Stan Grof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF7bZ9I23n4
Posted by: Paul Murray
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October 13, 2009 3:24 AM
So close and yet so far! The problem, of course, is that the term "evolution" is equivocal - it is used to mean two different things.Posted by: John Morales
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October 13, 2009 3:35 AM
Buddhacious @488:
Um. Another reference to pop science, and the linked article does not support his claim! (my emphases):
PS Heh. Stoned rats...
Posted by: Buddhacious
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October 13, 2009 3:58 AM
John Morales,
It would be reasonable to assume in light of these experimental results that another cannabinoid aside from THC (65 others have been found in cannabis) found in cannabis either has a synergistic effect or is itself responsible for the neurogenesis found in the first study.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 13, 2009 4:24 AM
Buddhacious @515, interesting use of the subjunctive mood. Interesting also that you admit it was an assumption on your part. Interesting also that, for you, "A synthetic chemical similar to the active ingredient in marijuana" must be "another cannabinoid aside from THC (65 others have been found in cannabis) found in cannabis".
Rigor is not your strong suit, is it? ;)
PS, note this:
Posted by: Mr T
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October 13, 2009 4:50 AM
Whether or not natural cannabinoids encourage neurogenesis, is the implication supposed to be that neurogenesis is equivalent to philosophical insight? That seems like a big stretch.
But seriously, how important is it to be rigorous, when you can just vaguely insinuate a claim with irrelevant data or backpedal on your own sophistry by calling it "poetry"?
Personally, I think cannabis is great and for lots of things, but thinking clearly isn't one of them.
Posted by: Mr T
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October 13, 2009 4:58 AM
That "and" doesn't belong in my last sentence. It's probably because I smoked too much weed in college.
Next, we'll be talking about how alcohol makes philosophers and their dates look more attractive.
Posted by: SEF
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October 13, 2009 5:31 AM
@ Aaron Baker #509:
Unfortunately, part of the problem here is that you and the other philosophists don't have yourselves as a counter-example (and, like the creationists, you apparently can't imagine people beyond yourselves and your own limitations).
In the case of religion, very few of you would let it get away with its false claims to own morality. Firstly, because it's so demonstrably not true that the religious themselves have particularly good morals. But, secondly, because many of you have yourselves as immediate counter-examples to the claim - in being moral without being religious. It can take a bit longer (and possibly escaping to university) for the thoroughly religiously indoctrinated to encounter enough examples of evidently moral but non-religious people that they realise the religion was lying to them.
In the case of philosophy, you've been similarly indoctrinated with the falsehood that it owns logic - despite that being another inherent property (in the talented) just like morality. However, now suddenly the overwhelming evidence that the philosophy crowd are demonstrably not particularly good at logic isn't causing you to recognise the falsity of Philosophy's claim. So it must be the second type of evidence, having oneself as a counter-example, which was the truly important one all along. Other people's counter-examples (again as per the religion case) also haven't done it for you. You're stuck being believers because you yourselves weren't good enough.
I'm a mixture of appalled and disgusted. Appalled that it can really be the case that none of you were intelligent enough to think logically before you were formally instructed (whether at high school or college or ? - I genuinely don't know because this is another of those peculiarly UnSAnian things). Disgusted that there might yet be a counter-example somewhere among you who is too dishonest and/or cowardly to speak out against the pack - ie a closet thinker, rather than a closet atheist or closet homosexual (because it is more OK to be open about those other things than to admit to having been able to think for themselves).
Posted by: SEF
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October 13, 2009 5:56 AM
@ Buddhacious #512:
Modern research seems to be concentrating on the latest drugs of choice, eg "Ecstasy", but here's a paper (PDF) from back when LSD was the hip and happening thing (and hence generating sufficient broken people to be studied).
Posted by: Stephen Wells
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October 13, 2009 10:33 AM
SEF, would you consider at some point actually explaining _what you think you are talking about_? So far it seems that you were bitten by a philosopher at an early age and have trauma issues. The way you keep talking about Philosophy with a capital P is particularly strange. You seem to be having an argument with non-existent people who have, apparently, claimed that Philosophy has a monopoly on rational thought. I tried to hint to you that this is like claiming that athletics has a monopoly on running quickly, but you didn't seem to get it, instead folding it into your ongoing diatribe. Why not take a deep breath, wipe the spittle off your lips and explain calmly what you are complaining about.
Posted by: SEF
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October 13, 2009 11:08 AM
Untrue. Read the thread. They exist - and even (very rarely and sometimes inadvertently) admit that that's effectively what they do claim.
Oh but I did get it, far better than you, and demonstrated straight away how foolish you were! It was hilarious. :-D
Unfortunately, it seems nearly everyone here (apart from the lone honest, if unrepentant, admitter) is far too indoctrinated to be honest about this. You are all playing the role of creationist in this situation, which is how come you are all so utterly unable to defend your ill-founded position and yet trying very hard not to notice that.
I would find it all equally amusing except that, like the persistent existence of creationists, it's rather sad that humans are so feeble-minded. I did already mostly know it (from numerous previous examples) but it's still sad to have it consistently confirmed by further observations. It's why I can't be a humanist. I don't have the necessary unevidenced faith in humanity. I've seen too much of them in action to be delusional about them.
Posted by: Stephen Wells
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October 13, 2009 11:35 AM
SEF, since you now disagree with everyone else in the thread about what they've claimed... have you considered that you may have misunderstood?
Cite, please, where somebody other than you claimed that philosophy has a monopoly on rational thought.
Posted by: SEF
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October 13, 2009 11:54 AM
You haven't shown that to be true. It's almost certainly false since I haven't contradicted everyone about what they posted at all. You would require some of them to actually be other people and to state for themselves that I had misrepresented them.
Meanwhile, don't think I haven't noticed that you're sneakily changing my actual contention, which was specifically about logic, to your own version. However, all "rational thought" may be close enough as long as you don't start getting dishonest later over your switch there. I expect it will soon become apparent whether you're simply paraphrasing or being deliberately dishonest.
As for the citation, see John Morales in #443 (for the lone honest one) and Aaron Baker, from the other side, in #503. I'll quote the relevant bit of the latter since his post is rather long.
Posted by: Stephen Wells
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October 13, 2009 12:05 PM
SEF, as and when you can provide a quote which says what you claim was said, let us know. Until then, have fun in your parallel reality.
Posted by: SEF
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October 13, 2009 12:09 PM
I already just provided not merely one but two! How predictably dishonest of you.
Posted by: Stephen Wells
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October 13, 2009 12:14 PM
Giving quotes =/= giving relevant supportive quotes.
Still waiting for a quote that actually supports your claim. Toodles.
Posted by: SEF
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October 13, 2009 12:55 PM
No, we're actually still waiting for your reasoning for rejecting those ones. At the moment you're still just playing the typical creationist role - viz one of saying "that fossil doesn't count", without even going so far as to add "because it's not a crocoduck", let alone having a valid reason for ignoring the evidence presented. Even more true to form, you then follow it up with an effective "la-la-la, I'm not listening". Twice, you do this! It is, as I already mentioned, hysterically funny in one sense - including your evident obliviousness to the role you're playing.
Getting back to my previous point that much of this is really always aimed at the lurkership and not the dishonest person to whom it might superficially seem to be addressed...
You see, children, the way we can tell that SEF is the one who is almost certainly in the right here, with the well thought out position, is from comparing the types of responses. Whereas the philosophists, from their ill-founded position, bluster and mostly fail even to attempt to provide evidence and reasoning, let alone valid examples of those, and merely indulge in insults and bald assertions and denials; in contrast, SEF continues to be able to provide well-evidenced, rational explanations for things and even follows them up with revealing analogies. SEF also makes accurate predictions.
Those latter things are the hallmarks of the person who really does know what they are talking about, rather than being someone desperately flailing at trying to defend the indefensible in the way the philosophists and creationists are.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 13, 2009 11:30 PM
"Whereas the philosophists, from their ill-founded position, bluster and mostly fail even to attempt to provide evidence and reasoning."
You've got quite the pair, SEF. You accuse defenders of philosophy of dishonesty, stupidity, of being like fundamentalists, all in a protracted, barely coherent rant. You're blustering more than anybody else here.
I never once claimed that philosophy had a monopoly on rational thought--certainly not in the passage you quoted from me.
I think any further comment would be a waste of time; you're probably impervious to embarrassment.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 14, 2009 12:58 AM
A belated thank you. That made my day.
***
No way. Seriously? You're referring to yourself in the third person? That has to be one of the most arrogant and hilarious passages I've read on this blog.
I may not have a chance to return here till the day after tomorrow, but I'm curious as to whether you read the pieces by Allen Wood at the links I provided @ #446 and had any response.
Posted by: SEF
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October 14, 2009 4:59 AM
Only because you're selectively ignoring the arrogance and hilarious flailing of the philosophists, pretending to have a better way of knowing/thinking and being unable to demonstrate it in practice. So creationist. If you weren't one yourself, with your philosophy equivalent of Morton's demon blocking your view, you'd be able to see it.
I noted that once again, while claiming that philosophy was some wonderful and useful thing, you were quite unable to argue your case coherently in your own words. This much vaunted thing you espouse had provided you yourself with so little in the way of ability or knowledge that you had to resort to the equivalent of pointing at AiG instead. Very creationist.
You're one of the hilarious examples. I'm, sadly, not surprised you don't see it. If you were any good you would.
Posted by: SEF
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October 14, 2009 5:07 AM
PS Of course my referring to myself in the third person like that was funny. It was supposed to be funny. I was chortling away at the time. It's just that you're wilfully blinding yourself to the rest of the joke - because it's on you and your fellow philosophists. So it's not the sort of funny which you're going to admire in the way you otherwise might - ie if I was doing it about real creationists instead of the philosophist kind.
I suppose I could see if there's a baraminology analogy in there somewhere too ...
Posted by: SEF
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October 14, 2009 5:38 AM
PPS Since it's almost certain you won't get another piece of the funny for yourself; and it's apparently (ie on the current evidence) very unlikely that any lurker who does see the joke will be brave enough to post (ie against the combined wrath of the unjustifiably outraged philosophist pharyngulites) that they've spotted it:
What SC did in #530 was effectively complain about the tone of my message (calling it arrogant and trying to laugh it off) while being completely unable to address the substantive points in it. Another creationist trope fulfilled on the philosophist side.
It is all so, so funny and yet the majority of you, just like the creationists, are seemingly never going to be able to see (properly) why it's so funny. Unless you somehow, in the future, break free of the indoctrination which still has you in its grip.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 14, 2009 6:14 AM
SEF,
Since SC likely won't see this for a couple of days, I take the liberty of commenting on it.
1. Yes, though I'd characterise it as derision, rather than a complaint.
2. That she didn't address such substance as there was (it was basically a reiteration of your position and a taunt) doesn't necessarily mean she was unable to.
--
Is this your substantive point?
If so, can you clarify whether by 'philosophy' you mean the academic discipline, or the activity itself, or both?
Posted by: SEF
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October 14, 2009 6:51 AM
Not the ones (plural) in the post she was trying to dismiss, no. Just as ...
... you're carefully(?) missing them yourself.
I've been moderately careful to capitalise Philosophy (and even sometimes add a ™) when I'm referring to the (unnecessary) academic "discipline". I can't guarantee without checking the whole thread again that I haven't accidentally missed a few though. NB The uncapitalised version can have the alternative meaning illustrated by "in your philosophy".
By trying to claim there's an activity of "philosophy", you are either attempting to circumvent or are accidentally getting closer to my point about the capitalised wotsit claiming something it doesn't own and to which it hasn't genuinely added value (ie an individual can do the same without it). But of course you were one of the ones who'd got close to admitting the nub of it anyway - hence my citing your post #443. Are you now backing away from that?
The other significant point(s) people are still consistently ignoring is that putting fancy labels on things (eg parts of logic and fallacies), and rearranging them like play blocks on the floor, does not grant ownership over the things nor add value to them (eg advance things) when the next child doesn't need to have seen your work to do as much as the entirety of all the previous children in one go.
The difference with maths and science is that they've gone way beyond merely having in-group symbols and terminology. They've iteratively advanced things beyond the blindingly obvious stage (ie to the stage where they deserve their "patents" - although the name-dropping some people do in lieu of being able to state things themselves is still annoying). No new individual could get to the same level of knowledge (and ability and technique etc) all on their own.
Philosophy™ (ie that's the capitalised one, not just the start of a sentence) is just a cargo cult version of thinking in order to let the meritless pretend they are good at it. Much as religion is a cargo cult version of morals (and knowledge and anything else it claims), having only a fake and formulaic version of the real thing.
Posted by: SEF
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October 14, 2009 7:00 AM
@ Aaron Baker #529:
What distinction are you making between logic and rational thought? Otherwise it seems you're just foolishly falling for Stephen Wells' goal-post shifting and re-framing(?) exercise, having failed to read things properly (again! just like so many of the philosophists), and are dishonestly accusing me of the things the philosophists are actually doing (= projection?).
If philosophy has done you so much good, why aren't you capable of demonstrating it? Why are you all so bad despite it?
I am still the only one here being the atheist scientist, arguing coherently and from a well-evidenced position. You're all merely providing more evidence against yourselves and your position.
Posted by: SEF
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October 14, 2009 7:21 AM
PS to #535 about #534:
On double-checking, the uses you quote from my #236 were indeed a couple where I thought it wasn't necessary to capitalise the thing I thought we were talking about, since it wasn't apparent anyone was going to get confused!
Now might be a good time for you to give your definition of where Philosophy is different from philosophy, other than by having prestige and a salaried Chair and so forth. I'll assume pre-exclusion of the "in your philosophy" (ie world-view) version of "philosophy".
NB In case you're planning to retro-fit one, contrary to #443 (because honesty is demonstrably not a caveat or property belonging to the capital P version at all but to the individual!), you could also give (as I asked of Aaron Baker in #536) your distinction between logic and rational thought - if any.
For philosophists claiming this sort of thing to be important (and even an exclusive and meritworthy province of Philosophy, as per Knockgoats in #436), you've all been remarkably remiss in it thus far.
Note that, as the thread proceeded, I've had to be very careful to avoid bailing you all out on that too obviously; because it was part of both my original point and my ongoing demonstration (ie as provided by the philosophists in their continuing failures).
Posted by: John Morales
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October 14, 2009 7:55 AM
SEF @535, yes, @528 you wrote:
I take it that's the issue you think I skirted, but it presumably referred to disputation regarding your (shall we say) thesis which I quoted @534. I'd rather focus on that, not on how you see such disputation has gone.
(Incidentally, PhysicistDave made a similar, though more specific, claim here, and I certainly couldn't give him a good answer.)
I'm not knowledgeable enough to defend philosophy in specific terms, but I've certainly benefited from my (rather casual and amateur) exposure to it. I think it has merit, but find it very hard to be specific.
However, consider:
How do you know that you know? Epistemology.
How do you categorise what is knowable? Ontology.
How do you justify what is just? Ethics.
How do you develop and interpret law? Jurisprudence.
All these are aspects of philosophy, and I can't see how you don't consider them useful or justifiable.
In fact, I think your consideration of whether philosophy is useful is itself philosophy... :)
So, I disagree that "Philosophy™ [...] is just a cargo cult version of thinking in order to let the meritless pretend they are good at it."
PS Personally, I've been convinced of the justification for empiricism and skepticism, for example, by examining their philosophical basis as much as by pragmatism. I've considered such as idealism and existentialism, and borrowed concepts from them. My basis for morality is rooted in ethical principles.
And, not least of all, reading philosophy has sharpened by argumentative skills and my conceptualisation of others' positions.
Posted by: John Morales
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October 14, 2009 7:57 AM
[meta]
SEF @537, I'll respond (my) tomorrow, I'm just about to go to bed. Our posts crossed, I've only just seen that one.
Posted by: SC OM
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October 14, 2009 8:07 AM
They are written clearly and together take about a half an hour to read. Have you or not?
SC thinks SEF is cuckoo for Hegel Puffs.*
*to corrupt a funny post I remember by Brownian, OM, RBLD
Posted by: John Morales
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October 14, 2009 6:14 PM
SEF, I've had my morning cuppa, so here you go:
Sure.
As I previously said to Dave, my conception of small-p philosophy is "Fundamentally, philosophy is just rigorous thinking", in particular about subjective issues (that is, opinions and interpretations).
Big-p Philosophy I think is the formalisation of philosophy, presumably in a structured way, and incorporating study of previous philosophers.
IOW, I consider a philosopher is someone who honestly ruminates about issues, whilst a Philosopher is a philosopher that's undertaken a course of study in the history, theory and practice of philosophy — the difference being between accredited vocation and non-accredited avocation.
Sure.
Logic is a formal method of establishing the truth of propositions, based on a set of consistent axioms, a sound inferential system, and clearly-defined terms.
Rational thinking is a way to form opinion and analyse propositions, based on intellectual honesty, one's available knowledge, and attempting to exclude bias (instinctual preference).
I suppose I'd say rational thinking is essentially informal logic.
I tried, @538.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 15, 2009 10:00 AM
John Morales wrote: "Logic is a formal method of establishing the truth of propositions, based on a set of consistent axioms, a sound inferential system, and clearly-defined terms. Rational thinking is a way to form opinion and analyse propositions, based on intellectual honesty, one's available knowledge, and attempting to exclude bias (instinctual preference).
I suppose I'd say rational thinking is essentially informal logic."
That puts it better than I could put it, so I'll just second him. I'd just add that a highly intelligent but uneducated person, with a strong intuitive grasp of relevancy and the importance of evidence, is unlikely to be able on his or her own to give a clearly defined account of what he or she does, or to formulate conistent rules which not only describe what's going on but can be used to generate new conclusions (a la syllogistic reasoning). It would be like an untrained person with a flair for birdwatching generating ornithology all by himself. Logic obviously owes a great deal to untutored rational thinking, has grown out of such thinking, but (obviously) isn't identical to such thinking. And, as I said before, it's most philosophers who are responsible for making logic the powerful instrument that it is.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
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October 15, 2009 10:41 AM
A typo. Above, I should have written: "it's MOSTLY philosophers who are responsible . . . ."
Posted by: Stephen Wells
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October 15, 2009 11:46 AM
I'd also like to recommend that everyone read Bacon's "The advancement of learning" and his "Aphorisms". He identifies four classes of bad habits of thought; the Idols of the Tribe (faults common to all humanity, such as the tendency to think that humans are the most important thing in the world); the Idols of the Theatre (false philosophical systems); the Idols of the Marketplace (errors of thought caused by language, such as when we have words for things that don't exist or lack words for things that do); and the Idols of the Cave (each person's personal tendencies and private hobby-horses; he mentions what we would now call "lumpers" and "splitters").
While SEF is convincing himself that either you naturally think well or you're an unteachable moron, those of us who've been paying attention to some philosophy have realised that thinking well is an art that deserves training and practice.
Posted by: Myron | October 25, 2009 2:46 PM
1. Evolution is a complex natural process.
2. The theory of evolution is a theory that describes and explains evolution.
3. In the neutral sense, a theory is simply a set of coherent statements.
4. There are two definitions of the concept "fact":
a. =def "true statement"
b. =def "(nonlinguistic) truthmaker of a true statement" (i.e., "condition in the world that makes a true statement true")