Pharyngula

Posted by: Akira MacKenzie | June 2, 2011 8:33 AM

Typical of the new atheists to go after lousy, mass produced sausage makers like Oscar-Meyer or Johnsonville. However, get them before a quality sausage-smith like Ursinger's and their arguments will be completely stomped!

Posted by: Bill, visitor from Planet Earth | June 2, 2011 8:42 AM

I was just taken back a few decades:

"Where's the beef?"

If you want to see the sausages, forget that wiener of a philosopher and ask a Catholic priest; I'm sure they would be more forthcoming.

Posted by: RevWubby | June 2, 2011 8:45 AM

For some reason that parable reminded me of the old Yogi Berra quote, "In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

Posted by: Kevin | June 2, 2011 8:55 AM

And a Gnu meme was born...

Show me the sausages.

Posted by: Roland | June 2, 2011 9:03 AM

I like "melodramatic prancing arse". Somehow it perfectly conjures up people who use this sort of argument.

Posted by: Pinkydead | June 2, 2011 9:10 AM

I think this argument has a weakness, which maybe reveals a weakness in the Courtier's Reply that I hadn't considered (though I still think the Reply is spot on).

The philosopher can at any point prove his case by simply turning on the machine. The theist could not do that - even if they were right.

It doesn't mean that the argument is wrong - just that there's wriggle room for the slippery believer.

Posted by: =8)-DX | June 2, 2011 9:13 AM

Tesco will be the bane of all Theology, just wait till they come along with a Tesco Value Line of theologians.

Posted by: Rumtopf | June 2, 2011 9:21 AM

The meatiest argument yet c:

Posted by: Qwerty | June 2, 2011 9:25 AM

Bill, visitor from planet Earth - You must know that the Catholic priest would say he can turn his bowl of crackers into sausages. Of course, the cracker must be made of wheat before you can perform the incantations that will turn it into the sausage.

And yes, the philosopher in the story does remind one of William Lane Craig because historians were there when the sausage ascended.

Posted by: elronxenu | June 2, 2011 9:25 AM

I don't want to ask a priest to show me the sausage; he may well take that too literally.

Posted by: GunboatDiplomat | June 2, 2011 9:31 AM

@Pinkyhead #12

I think its pretty clear the machine does not actually produce any sauages and this is the reason the philospher refuses to turn it on. A bit like when christians argue that not only is proof unnecessary because they have faith but that their position is stronger in Gods eyes because they DON'T have proof. No proof and I believe anyway! Bonus points! (hopefully will cancel out all the gay sex)

So Gods refusal to provide any proof is all for your own spiritual good. Just like all the earthquakes, famines and e-coli outbreaks.

Posted by: The Tim Channel | June 2, 2011 9:35 AM

picturing William Lane Craig

Why? For the love of goodness, did I have to see that right before leaving for an early dinner at Goody's Steakhouse in Holland?

To which you reply:

You click the buttons, you take your chances. Dance with the devil at your own risk in the PZ Zone.

Enjoy.

Posted by: chigau (◦_◦) | June 2, 2011 9:40 AM

Are the sausages spherical?

Posted by: blf | June 2, 2011 9:44 AM

Hang on, a philosopher actually built something tangible? More likely she/it/he/they would written a twenty volume tome about the “meaning” of a hypothetical blueprint for such a machine, and how it relates to her/its/his/their favourite hobbyhorse.
_{Bacon would not be involved.}

Posted by: Justicar | June 2, 2011 9:51 AM

When I want to see someone's sausage, I've never had to ask twice - just sayin'.

Posted by: hyperdeath | June 2, 2011 10:19 AM

Pinkyhead:

The philosopher can at any point prove his case by simply turning on the machine. The theist could not do that - even if they were right.
It doesn't mean that the argument is wrong - just that there's wriggle room for the slippery believer.

The Courtiers reply as used by theists usually amounts to "sophisticated theological arguments demolishing atheism exist; you are just ignorant of them". The sausage machine debate arises when an atheist asks the theist what these arguments are, and receives yet more evasive sneering.

In this case, the theist does claim the ability to turn on his sausage machine (by explaining one of the arguments) and so the analogy is fair.

Posted by: Arial Kid | June 2, 2011 10:33 AM

The nicest thing about the Courtier's Reply, and any variation there-of, is that it can appeal to all forms of logic based questioning, ad infinitum.

"You're arguing about the color of his clothes, without proving that he's wearing them."

"You're arguing about the quality of sausage it can make, without proving it makes them."

"You're arguing about the moral and political implications, without having proven that it's his picture."

This makes me really wish there was someone on any of the television news networks that applied this sort of question to -anything-.

Posted by: elronxenu | June 2, 2011 10:33 AM

#32 hyperdeath,

Not only does the Courtier's reply claim that the atheist exists, but it invites the atheist to argue against a work rather than a person. That's a fight an atheist cannot win, as works have no ears, and argument is unlikely to change the mind of the author if said author happens to be dead already. Thus, in the mind of a theist, a dead author is unimpeachable.

When debating theists I always want to hear their own arguments, rather than be pointed to C.S. Lewis or William Lane Craig.

Posted by: AKron | June 2, 2011 10:39 AM

@Akira MacKenzie #2 - It's Oscar MAYER! (A division of Kraft Foods).
Joel is still lurking here, I can feel it.

Posted by: Tom | June 2, 2011 10:58 AM

Two critical comments:

(1) As others have pointed out, the author is wrong to make the villain a "philosopher." Only 14.6% of philosophers surveyed by PhilPapers in 2010 "accepted or leaned toward" theism.

(2) The principle according to which only empirical justification is admissible is a self-defeating principle, since it can be turned on itself. Philosophers have known this for decades; this is related to why logical positivism is dead. You have to go outside of science to justify science, unless you want to rely on a circular argument.

Posted by: KG | June 2, 2011 11:18 AM

Hyperstatic,

Read the first two chapters of Nick Lane's Life Ascending for an introduction to the current most promising hypotheses for how life got started. It's not a solved problem, but progress has been rapid in the last few years. Here's my own summary of the basic hypothesis:

Abiogenesis occurred in honeycombs of hydrostatically inflated iron-sulphur compartments within alkaline vents below the early acidic ocean, with the basic chemical building blocks being produced by the reverse Krebs cycle, which produces a wide range of organic chemicals and can function perfectly well in abiotic conditions if supplied with energy, which would be available from chemiosmosis. The compartment walls would act both as sites of catalysis, and to contain the products, while allowing them to spread from compartment to compartment through the honeycomb. The first proto-organisms would be mixtures of chemicals able to catalyse their own production in such an environment, and thus spread through the honeycomb. It has been shown that lipid vesicles form readily in similar laboratory environments, and that basic constituents of life such as nucleic and amino acids can be concentrated within these vesicles. Such vesicles could plausibly escape from one vent and colonise another, still without needing anything like the genetic machinery cells have today. RNA would have preceded DNA as the genetic material (and may itself have been preceded by related polymers). The genetic code has been shown to have properties that strongly suggest it arose from simple chemical affinities between RNA and particular amino acids. We know that free-living organisms arose at least twice, because Bacteria and Archaea have both quite different cellular membranes, and different methods of replicating their DNA, which initially would have served simply as a temporary store for genetic information.

As for "going from non-being to being", you do understand that this way of speaking contains a fundamental flaw, don't you? Time, we now know, is not some extraneous measuring rod at some point along which there could have been nothing, but is inextricable from space and mass-energy. There is, and could be, no need for such a transition to occur, whether or not (and this we don't know) past time is infinite.

There remain many things we don't know about abiogenesis, and the fundamental structure of the universe. The difference between science and religion is that in science, we actively look for ways to test our ideas, and reject them if they don't pass those tests. In religion, that's considered bad: it shows a lack of faith. Lack of faith is the very core of science. If it should happen that we find good evidence that life or the universe was created by supernatural means (and in my view at least, it could), then I'll abandon my atheism.

Posted by: Kevin | June 2, 2011 11:24 AM

@29:

Yes, show me the "sausage" of non-being.

As far as I know, the state of non-being has not been demonstrated. And in quite a number of modern cosmological models is not proposed.

Life from non-life? Simple. It's chemistry all the way down. We've known since the mid-1800s (before Darwin!) that biochemistry is the same as chemistry. We divide it up into separate categories out of convenience, not because there are inherent differences in the way atoms and molecules interact. As far as I know, the right mix of garlic and paprika hasn't been arrived at; but when it is, it will involve nothing more than simply understood chemical reactions. Nothing more.

Show me the evidence of a non-chemical solution, then you'll have standing. Otherwise, you're proposing magic. And that, I'm afraid, is a sausage of an entirely different type.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 2, 2011 11:28 AM

Great argument! I think I'll use it myself: How do you get life from non-life? Show me the sausages! How do you get being from non-being? Show me the sausages!

Show me stars coming from non-stars.

Show me plate tectonics coming from a state of no plate tectonics.

Show me "being," idiot. Not "a being," but "being," just a nonsense word thrown around by ignorant fools.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/hairychris444#96384 | June 2, 2011 11:35 AM

@David #41

Actually some of their "Finest" range are rather edible. The cheap shite, not so much, but that's pretty much true of all sausages.

Posted by: KG | June 2, 2011 11:52 AM

The principle according to which only empirical justification is admissible is a self-defeating principle, since it can be turned on itself. Philosophers have known this for decades; this is related to why logical positivism is dead. You have to go outside of science to justify science, unless you want to rely on a circular argument. - Tom

I disagree. The logical positivists' error was in claiming that statements were only meaningful if they could be verified (or tested, depending on exactly which variant of LP, IIRC.) But the justification of science is empirical: it works - or at least, appears to so far. This is not a necessary truth. It could be the case that some external agent - not necessarily supernatural - systematically interfered with our experiments in such a way as to ensure that science did not work. It could even be that some such agent actually is doing so in a way that is systematically deceiving us. We cannot "justify" science, if by that you mean find a way of being certain we are not being so deceived.

Posted by: Joffan | June 2, 2011 11:57 AM

Modelling the sausage as a point entity of zero mass, we can easily see that this machine produce an infinite number of perfect sausages.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/hairychris444#96384 | June 2, 2011 12:01 PM

blf - Snail poison? If there's a point it's about 3ft over my head and accellerating towards the sun! I'm quite slow sometimes.

Posted by: frog, Inc. | June 2, 2011 12:05 PM

Sastra: Can you stuff Meaning into a sausage?

You don't care about "Meaning"? I thought everyone understood the is/should dichotomy here -- the very dichotomy that makes all those silly capitalized words like Meaning important and not amenable to empirical research.

Yup -- everything is science, and the rest of the planet should just shut the fuck up about "Values". Let's just ignore all that silly, silly subjectivity and just look at The Facts.

You know that most people don't eat to fulfill their caloric and nutritional requirements, don't you?

Posted by: serendipitydawg | June 2, 2011 12:10 PM

ereador #49

I grilled some nice brats the other day. Better than god-belief, let me tell you.

Aha! Another baby eating atheist :-P

Posted by: blf | June 2, 2011 12:11 PM

Snail poison? If there's a point it's about 3ft over my head and accellerating towards the sun!

Started at @43.
The origin of that is a mixture of attempts to be snarky, a general dislike of Tesco (based, in part, on being lied to on several occasions), and some bad sausages.

Posted by: Quidam | June 2, 2011 12:21 PM

"It might look like there are no sauusages to the uninitiated, but, as you say, the true sausagidity goes straight to Offler. He, of course, eats the spirit of the sausages. We eat the mere earthly shell, which believe me turns to dust and ashes in our mouths."

Pterry

Posted by: legistech | June 2, 2011 12:26 PM

Well, maybe no sausages, but it sure produces an awful lot of bologna.

Posted by: marcus | June 2, 2011 12:36 PM

Don'tDrive@59 Waht?! They don't have eggs, milk, flour? No baking soda, butter?!

Posted by: KG | June 2, 2011 1:07 PM

In short, how do we know science works? Empirically it seems to work. How do we know we should trust empirical observation? Empirically, it seems trustworthy. And so on. - Tom

It seems to me you're looking for something "foundational" that's just not available, and logically cannot be available. Whatever "external" justification you propose for science/empiricism, I can simply ask you to justify the claim that it justifies science/empiricism. How will you justify that? You will need another external justification, etc.

That being so, why start the infinite regress? In practice, everyone relies on empiricism, all the time. How do you know you can't walk through walls? That your mug isn't going to start eating you when you raise it to your mouth? That when you have two marbles in your left hand and two in your right, if you put them on all the table there will be four? We're constructed (OK, appear to be constructed) so we can't help using empirical observation. Logically, it could break down at any moment, but so what?

Posted by: Celeste | June 2, 2011 1:16 PM

For those of you who want your sausages with dinner as well as breakfast, I recommend the following:

Maple Glazed Sweet Potato and Sausage

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch cubes
3 Tbsp butter or gluten-free margarine.
1 lb smoked sausage cut into 1/2-inch pieces (though I prefer to use breakfast sausages and cook them before starting the rest of the recipe)
1 medium onion, halved crosswise and cut into thin wedges
1 large apple, peeled, cored and diced (I recommend a tart green apple)
1/4 cup real maple syrup (not the type you put on your pancakes)
2 Tbsp packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 to 1/4 tsp ground red pepper or cayenne (Can be left out if, like me, you have a gringo tongue)

1. Bring 1 inch water and 1/2 tsp salt to boiling in a large saucepan. Add potatoes; return to boiling. Cover and cook over medium heat 3 to 5 minutes, or until potatoes are fork-tender. Drain well.
2. Meanwhile, melt butter in large skillet over medium heat. Add sausage, onion and apple. Cook and stir 5 minutes. Stir in maple syrup, brown sugar, salt, nutmeg and red pepper, mixing well.
3. Stir in sweet potatoes, stirring to coat. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until lightly glazed.

Posted by: mike.laing | June 2, 2011 1:21 PM

Perfect timing! I was using food to refute a creationist, then came here next... FOOD IS BEING USED IN A DIRECT ANALOGY TO ILLUMINATE AN ILLOGICAL PARADIGM JUST AS I WAS!!! There is no way that could happen by chance. No fucking way! That proves there is a Basketti Monster, praise the Meatball yeah brother!

Before I shit myself, I will explain. Someone used the old 'micro vs macro evolution' stunt followed with the Mount Rushmore/'we are more complicated' gambit.*
So I said, "Exactly! It's like I've been saying about micro eating and macro eating!! (smile, happy) You have a meal, and you take a little bit at a time and then the plate becomes empty. That is micro eating, we see it all the time, it is true.

But is is ridiculous to think that 3 x 365 x 75 = 82125 meals can just disappear into one person and the empty plate becomes new species of empty dishes like bowls, cutlery, cups.

That is what the Dietitionists claim, though! Up to 100,000 lbs. of food coming together in exactly the right order(appetizers, soup, entre's, then desert) into one person producing empty dishes of all the species of crockery by the process of natural selection of food?!?!

No one has ever seen macro eating, Are they fucking stupid? Can you imagine going to the bathroo[[ That's it, this joke has been shut down for practicing macro comedy, by order of the Molecular Humorist Society ]]

*Mount Rushmore face carvings are ordered arangments of matter that couldn't and didn't come together by chance, so how could all the kazillions of just the right tiny bits come together, just so, to produce something that is vastly more complicated than rock - us.

Posted by: legistech | June 2, 2011 1:26 PM

That your mug isn't going to start eating you when you raise it to your mouth?

Oh Crap. Thanks for ruining my afternoon cup of tea.

*shudders in fear*

Posted by: Aratina Cage | June 2, 2011 1:41 PM

This is violent, militant scientism run rampant again. Hide your sausages. --Sastra

LOL! Came close to spurting Coke out my nose at that one.

@Hyperstatic

How do you get life from non-life? Show me the sausages!
How do you get being from non-being? Show me the sausages!

No no no no NO! You've got it all backwards. You are claiming that there is some kind of magic (a sausage) that is necessary to get life from non-life. You are claiming there is some kind of magic (a sausage) that makes a non-being a being. YOU NEED TO SHOW US YOUR SAUSAGE, FOOL!

Posted by: serendipitydawg | June 2, 2011 1:46 PM

From Going Postal, The Burning of Words

'As I understand it,' said Moist, 'the gift of sausages reaches Offler by being fried, yes? And the spirit of the sausages ascends unto Offler by means of the smell? And then you eat the sausages?'

'Ah, no. Not exactly. Not at all,' said the young priest, who knew this one. 'It might look like that to the unitiated, but, as you say, the true sausagidity goes straight to Offler. He, of course, eats the spirit of the sausages. We eat the mere earthly shell, which believe me turns to dust and ashes in our mouths.'

'That would explain why the smell of sausages is always better than the actual sausage, then?' said Moist. 'I've often noticed that.'

The priest was impressed. 'Are you a theologian, sir?' he said.

Posted by: Clippo | June 2, 2011 2:06 PM

Nice link.

Posted by: The Other Ian | June 2, 2011 2:34 PM

Aristotle...believed that reason alone was sufficient to arrive at the correct answer to any proposition.

False and unfair. He spent a large part of his life up to his elbows in octopus guts. Check out his book "History of Animals" if you like. It's a record of his work dissecting a few hundred species of animals. On the basis of that empirical evidence he tried to gin up a taxonomy, and didn't do too bad a job of it. (e.g. recognizing that dolphins are closer to other animals with lungs than to other sea life)

He made mistakes -- a lot of mistakes, some of them easily corrected and well nigh inexcusable -- but keep in mind that he was the first person in the western world to think biology was worth studying. It's not his fault that thousands of years of subsequent writers copied his words instead of adopting his empirical methods.

Posted by: The Other Ian | June 2, 2011 2:41 PM

Aristotle...believed that reason alone was sufficient to arrive at the correct answer to any proposition.

False and unfair. He spent a large part of his life up to his elbows in octopus guts. Check out his book "History of Animals" if you like. It's a record of his work dissecting a few hundred species of animals. On the basis of that empirical evidence he tried to gin up a taxonomy, and didn't do too bad a job of it. (e.g. recognizing that dolphins are closer to other animals with lungs than to other sea life)

He made mistakes -- a lot of mistakes, some of them easily corrected and well nigh inexcusable -- but keep in mind that he was the first person in the western world to think biology was worth studying. It's not his fault that thousands of years of subsequent writers copied his words instead of adopting his empirical methods.

Posted by: Bernard J. Ortcutt | June 2, 2011 6:03 PM

I don't understand the point of the generic reference to "the philosopher". In the Anglo-American world, the vast majority of philosophers are empiricists, naturalists, and atheists. If people want to beat up on theologians, go ahead, but most philosophers aren't the enemy. Many of the best arguments against theists, supernaturalists, and obscurantists have come from philosophers.

Posted by: evilDoug | June 2, 2011 6:42 PM

Not only does the Parable of Dunderbeck's Machine seem apt, but I think sausages are a pretty good metaphor for religion:

Both are quite popular.
Both can be made apparently palatable.
Both have aficionadi who will attempt defences against all reason.
Both require apologists (though one for bad deeds, the other for bad odours).
Both are damned revolting when scrutinized carefully.

Speaking of revolting, P.Z., you should have little difficulty finding black pudding for breakfast in Glasgow.

Posted by: P_Smith | June 2, 2011 11:59 PM

Sausages make for a great analogy on more than one level, not just because of the phallic shape and priestly pedophilia.

"Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
-Otto von Bismarck

It probably explains why religions can't produce their "god" on call. No one can see it being made because it doesn't exist.

.

Posted by: John Morales | June 3, 2011 4:36 AM

phlgradstudent, your expertise at pathetic, arrogant bullshit is indeed evinced by your comments.

Science without philosophy is science, and philosophy without science is philosophy. Duh.

Posted by: GunboatDiplomat | June 3, 2011 5:07 AM

"Until now philosphers have sought to interpret the sauages. The point however is to change(eat) them."

Posted by: KG | June 3, 2011 5:54 AM

I hope many of us would agree that we shouldn't say all sources of evidence are equal (which is apparently what we'd need if we want to say empiricism needs no metajustification), but instead that reason and observation are better for epistemological reasons than, say, "theistic intuition" or "religious experience." - Tom

No, we don't need to say that. We can observe empirically that "theistic intuition" and "religious experience" do not produce anything approaching reproducible results: different theists' intuitions and religious experiences lead them to wildly different conclusions. Moreover, these conclusions are always culture-bound: no missionary has ever come across a previously uncontacted tribe who already know about Jesus. (If they had, that would be very strong evidence that there is some reality behind Christianity, although not necessarily what Christians believe.)

I should say that I don't agree with the wholesale denigration of philosophy some here like to indulge in, which I suspect reflects ignorance more than anything. Philosophers who pay proper attention to science, Dennett being a prime example, have a great deal to contribute to the project of understanding the world. I've also found the "possible worlds" approach very helpful in understanding and countering theistic claims, and Andy Clark's work on how mental operations depend on the external world very illuminating.

Posted by: Roland | June 3, 2011 6:07 AM

Whoops. For "not more justification as" read "no more justification than".

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawn2mhn4A1qFo4N_jEUVwcQ3HSsf72Bufpk | June 3, 2011 7:25 AM

Well, that is indeed the purpose (?natural end, ?teleological cause) of the parable - it is not to roundly diss all philosophers or all philosophy - merely to highlight a serious defect in some certain areas of the philosophical domain. There is a notion around among some philosophers that science as a "human endeavour" has little to say about what is actually true - which is stunning in its irony, if you think about it. I actually do feel that some philosophy is useful - particularly the realisation that words are *labels*, and what we can do with label-based logic does not necessarily relate to *anything* in the real world.

For example, some philosophers *still* in 2011 cling to the notion that chairs have "chairness", dogs have "dogness" as definable *attributes*. If you have a herd of 100 cows, it's possible to have 101 cows, so there is a "potential cow" existing in some other universe - that sort of cobblers. They seem incapable of breaking things down into subsystems and realising that their categorical thinking simply doesn't work.

And don't forget, the philosopher in my parable *can* still turn on the machine and see if it works - the *best* philosophers do this, or they propose means by which it could be done. For example, in Einstein's time, most of his relativity predictions were pretty much pure philosophy, but, as I've mentioned before, scientists tested them and launched things like Gravity Probe B. Sausages. Delivered.

And then there is this weird entity known as "Philosophy of Science" - less said about that the better.

In the meantime, I have other musings on the defects of *some* philosophical approaches: http://answersingenes.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-sort-of-thinker-are-you-visual-or.html (Verbal vs Visual)

There is a line from Fawlty Towers: "Im a doctor. I'm a doctor and I want my sausages."

Even those of us who are non-medics would do well to live by this maxim. :-)

-@shanemuk

Posted by: phlgradstudent | June 3, 2011 4:47 PM

I also have a huge contempt for much of what passes for philosophy - I simply refuse to confuse religious bullshit with functioning philosophy. There is in reality a vast heritage of empiricism which has always driven the development of science. Science itself grew out of the work of specific men - and women - who both checked their mental maps against actuality as well as against their own mental maps. Francis Bacon is one such individual who springs immediately to mind. E.O. Wilson another. The list is long. To claim that science no longer needs philosophy is just tribal arrogance. Science and philosophy complement each other. Religion has always gotten in the way of both. If you claim that you need never check your mental map for functionality as a map, then you might as well stop pretending that your are any kind of empiricist. Join a fucking church already and leave those of us trying to deal with reality alone. If you do that and call yourself a philosopher, then you are one shitty philosopher.

Like science, atheism also grew out of philosophers checking their mental maps for coherence, consistency of signage, readability, and etc, as much as it did from scientists checking their mental maps against their sausages.

And no, philosophy is not done. Compte was as wrong on this score as Newton was about the geography of hell and Spencer about biology (and damn near everything). Whiggish history is bullshit history - or have you learned nothing from Darwin?

There are, of course, those who do science but adhere to some disgusting line of philosophical reasoning - James Watson, for example, or more recently, Kanazawa.

More personally - my tag line is both old and a big of a stick in the eye. I do history and philosophy of science, I wrote a dissertation on Darwin. Never once in many years of biology and philosophy was I expected to defend morons such as Plantinga, quite the opposite. Moreover, while I frequently experience students who defend "chairness" or some other absurd neoplatonism, I have never once heard a professor in any program I attended pretend that notions cary any validity today. Nor do I allow any of my students to wallow in such malarky(freshmen of all stripes seem always to gravitate to plato, do not confuse them with their professors). If you detest philosophy for that, then you know nothing about philosophy.

Ah, and now we are back to the presumed courtier ... no, we are not. Philosophy has sets of methodologies that are actual. They have consequences and can be quantified - not as readily as sausages, of course, but it can be done. No. 99 points out one - understanding of falsifiable hypothesis. If you do not have this on your mental map, then you do not function well as you try to grasp reality. Think everyone is born with this? Think again. How about another one, the principle of the excluded middle ... thats a grand old notion - it has some limitations, of course, but that is par for the course. The list is long, and unfinished. And it needs to be taught as well as continually renewed, and expanded when and where necessary.

Think otherwise? well, fuck off. You are as wrong as the idiots who think that science is either finished, or unnecessary, or some weird combination of the two. In point of fact, you are just like them.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 3, 2011 10:14 PM

The Big Bang for example.

Uh no. That's not at all what is being said here.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | June 3, 2011 10:27 PM

If the philosopher only had the blueprints for machine that could not be made, then when the scientist asked for he sausage, then philosopher should have said 'I don't know how to be build it. Can you help?' The scientist would have immediately become very excited, he would have called in his engineer buddy, who would also immediately get very excited. The three of them would have spent hours pouring over the blueprints in animated discussion, then retired to the nearest Dublin pub to hammer out their grant proposal and celebrate their new collaboration. And the fable would be much more heartwarming, much less funny, and very short.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | June 4, 2011 10:03 AM

Amphiox at 106 has it exactly right. Collaboration is the key to making sense out of things (as Charles Peirce called it, the community of inquirers). But the very fact that there is an argument here shows the need for philosophy. Specifically, PZ gracefully stated that he thinks this is another version of the courtiers reply, but he is wrong. It is the straw dog. Any philosopher who behaves as the fictional one in the allegory is not worth crap. He is to philosophy what Kanazawa is to science: an imbecile claiming a title but refusing to earn it, engaged in little more than public masturbation.

All these notions - straw dog, courtiers reply, true scotsman, the gettier problem, etcetera, have been developed by philosophy - and so long as we use science to discover new understandings of the world, we will need philosophers to find new ways around the idjits who always find new ways to contort it. And as it has always been, the best philosophy is done by those who also engage in science, or at least, engage with science.

I will agree with one thing Ichthyc wrote at 105 - it is sometimes quite true that philosophy is not needed. If by accident of birth into a fortunate situation, you are lucky enough to have a mental set (map) that functions well enough for doing good science, then you do not need to do philosophy to do good science. Your philosophy is working just fine and your time is far better spent on math, physics, etcetera ...

But his claim that the fact that philosophy is not required for science majors within the cal system as proof that philosophy has nothing to offer is itself a logical fallacy, as is his other claim that science journals seldom, if ever, reference philosophy. The fact that areas of specialization are specialized does not make other areas of specialization obsolete. Also, there is an empirical error here: the lack of philosophy in science requirements may well have more to do with the current fiscal impoverishment of the modern university than it has to do with the needs of the students of science. Moreover, the horse and buggy analogy is grounded in a presumption of whiggish history. Yet among other accomplishments, Darwin proves the absurdity of Compte.

The fact remains that all of us are born ignorant. All of us sometimes need a little specialized work on how to check the functionality of our mental maps - ephemeral as they are. When scientists claim status as "the last man" and sneer at their chosen straw dogs, it reveals tribal arrogance, and nothing more.

Again, it is about functionality of mental maps: I could spend all my time perfecting a map of Mordor, it will not help me get from my house to Brno. Likewise, if my map contains a mashup of symbology, rendering it, at least in part incomprehensible, - perhaps due to a presumption of never ending and-or irreversible progress, i.e. whiggism, this is likely to cripple my biology and turn Darwin into Haeckel. That is the point I have been trying to make.

Finally, to John: duh. nearly every time I post at pharyngula, you make some brain dead objection and call me arrogant. I am not saying that philosophy without science is not philosophy, I am saying that without some uncommon luck at understanding the world as it really is, such effort is likely to suck. And the same is true the other way around: again, witness Kanazawa, go back to Galton, etcetera. History is filed with examples, and history is not finished.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 4, 2011 7:18 PM

Any philosopher who behaves as the fictional one in the allegory is not worth crap. He is to philosophy what Kanazawa is to science: an imbecile claiming a title but refusing to earn it, engaged in little more than public masturbation.

How does this fictional philosopher differ from most actual philosophers? Other than not producing officially certified philosophical bovine feces?

Posted by: phlgradstudent | June 6, 2011 3:59 AM

And what the hell - I forgot to remind you of one of my favorites!

Atheism is as much a result of philosophy as it is of science. This is simple history - you can look it up.

Moreover, Pharyngula recently had several long threads arguing over the 'dictionary definition' of atheism. Somewhere in there I commented that PZ had done some first rate 'armchair' philosophy.

Methodologically clarifying the symbols you use in thinking - and working them into a system of logic - has its rewards. By contrast, the philosopher in the parable at the head of this thread is a straw dog.

Posted by: John Morales | June 6, 2011 5:39 AM

phlgradstudent:

And what the hell - I forgot to remind you of one of my favorites!

You're worthy of subtle insults.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | June 6, 2011 1:11 PM

John, what the fuck.

Lets take it in (vaguely) reverse order. To begin, I have yet to read anything you have written that was even remotely subtle, least of all your insults.

But let me remind you again of another one of my favorites: you don't actually read the things I post, do you? In fact, I specifically wrote that "you do not need to do philosophy to do good science". It would help the conversation you had read that, and understood that I meant it. And if you had read what I posted, then why on earth would you put the comment "as informed by science" in bold type? Did you not notice that a central theme of my entire argument in this thread - from word one right through to the end - was that philosophy that is not informed by science is bullshit. So what the fuck are you talking about? The more you pull things out of your ass and claim that it is what I argue - when my words say exactly the opposite - the more you resemble some dumbfuck creationist.

Oh, and thanks for that link (which doesnt seem to work) to the scientific method. I am sure that what ever you wanted to show me was brilliant - something I had never heard of before. After all, I teach history and philosophy of science for a living, and those who can't, teach, right? (And no, I am not resting on claims of authority, just making a snarky remark )

And what is that bullshit about intuition? Your intention here is, to put it politely, vague. But are you implying that philosophy has nothing but intuition, or that philosophy has nothing to do with intuition? Either way it seems you have your categories in a bunch. But in fact, intuition has as much to do with science as it has with philosophy and art. This makes perfect sense, particularly with Peirce's definition of intuition as “a cognition not determined by a previous cognition of the same object”. And yes, science does make use of intuition, thank you so much for granting that. I prefer how Gould wrote of it "Scientists are human beings, immersed in culture, and struggling with all the curious tools of inference that mind permits - from metaphor and analogy to all the flights of fruitful imagination that C.S. Peirce called "abduction". - from Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle. The point is that scientists are not computing machines. Moreover, as Gould continues, "Whiggish history has a particularly tenacious hold in science for an obvious reason - its consonance with the cardinal legend of science. This myth holds that science differs fundamentally from all other intellectual activity in its primary search to discover and record the facts of nature. These facts, when gathered and refined in sufficient number, lead by a sort of brute-force inductionivism to grand theories that unify and explain the natural world. Science, therefore, is the ultimate tale of progress..." But Whiggish history is bullshit. Check this against Biology. And as I wrote above (something else for you to ignore as you just make shit up), the presumption of irreversible progress (one definition of whiggism) has, in actual fact, crippled scientific development, Again, reference Haeckel. Actually, Gould wrote a fair amount of philosophy, some of it (NOMA) I utterly reject, and some not. I recommend that you read something other than just the wiki page.

But thank you for so kindly recognizing that metaphysics, logic, epistemology and ontology are philosophical disciplines that have had something to do with the development of the scientific method. I notice, however, that you footnote this immediately after you say: "You refer to logic, which much like science broke away from philosophy quite some time ago." How fucking typical of you.

Idiot. Logic is a specific field within philosophy. It fits any coherent use of either term, including the definition that I offered much earlier in this thread (and which you continue to ignore). It is not math, it is not science, it is philosophy. But even if I allow your unsupported assertion, let me ask: Have you ever read any? Can you name one logician, working today, whose approach you appreciate? And does she or he work in a philosophy department somewhere? (My favorite is Susan Haack her re-construction of Peircian logic is quite impressive).

But sometimes the best philosophy is not done in philosophy departments - sometimes what happens there frankly sucks. But still, as I have repeatedly stated: the straw dog (try reading John Gray), the true scotsman (Antony Flew), and the courtier's reply (PZ Myers) are all examples of philosophizing. It is shorthand references for methods of checking our mental maps for consistency, coherence, and readability. I cannot understand why this should be offensive - unless you LIKE your incoherence, of course.

That would be the final note here. It is my experience that you (specifically you, john) tend to argue from absolute categories. This is a serious problem, it will tend to cripple your ability to make sense out of the world, you really should go see a philosopher about it.

Posted by: John Morales | June 7, 2011 5:15 AM

phlgradstudent:

To begin, I have yet to read anything you have written that was even remotely subtle, least of all your insults.

Heehee.

But let me remind you again of another one of my favorites: you don't actually read the things I post, do you?

So you think I quote you and then respond without actually reading? Nifty!

And if you had read what I posted, then why on earth would you put the comment "as informed by science" in bold type?

To emphasise it. Duh.

Did you not notice that a central theme of my entire argument in this thread - from word one right through to the end - was that philosophy that is not informed by science is bullshit. So what the fuck are you talking about?

What I was talking about is what I wrote.
I don't think it needs rephrasing.

Oh, and thanks for that link (which doesnt seem to work) to the scientific method. I am sure that what ever you wanted to show me was brilliant - something I had never heard of before. After all, I teach history and philosophy of science for a living, and those who can't, teach, right? (And no, I am not resting on claims of authority, just making a snarky remark )

Yes, I failed to include the URL. It was to Wikipedia, as is my wont.

(And, to reciprocate, I advise you I don't teach history or philosophy of science for a living.)

And what is that bullshit about intuition? Your intention here is, to put it politely, vague. But are you implying that philosophy has nothing but intuition, or that philosophy has nothing to do with intuition?

Footnote #2 above.

Idiot. Logic is a specific field within philosophy.

Footnote #1 above.

That would be the final note here. It is my experience that you (specifically you, john) tend to argue from absolute categories.

How interesting.