Hugo Holbling

Joel,

Here's another point which may interest you, although i fully expect to be hung for making it:

Any demarcation between science and metaphysics that claims the former is in some sense distinct or "better" because it has proved more useful is only applicable within a scientific context; i.e. it assumes what is supposed to be proven. Metaphysical ideas are useful to metaphysicians; theology is useful to theologians; witchcraft is useful to witch doctors. Primitive (so-called) societies based on non-scientific or metaphysical worldviews work and are successful means of organizing life and experience. For example, the metaphysical and epistemological systems (if they even concern themselves with these terms) of rainforest indians work and are successful in structuring their lives and providing explanatory and predictive power. To suppose that this kind of utility is inferior in kind or essence to that afforded by science is a decidedly metaphysical step in itself; that is, the successes of methodological naturalism are only an argument for it if the same applies equally to similar arguments for other methodologies and conceptual schemes. But then the discussion is moot.

*runs for cover*

Celsus

Hi Hugo,

Let me see what I can work on here...
I think this is a bit simplistic in terms of how people are "dismissing" nonscience. It is not a "single criterion" by which things are rejected. But the "list" definition also implicitly implies that in order to meet the parameters of science, all items must be, in some degree, met.
"Natural, repeatable, and governed by law" is a simple catch-all for the realm that science can deal with--by default, this rules out the supernatural. It may often be too simple but it's a good place to start. That was lifted straight from Michael Ruse. Popper's falsifiability criterion is indeed, just one of many aspects of science, and but it is not simply the case that science rejects nonscience on that basis alone. Instead, we can try Kitcher's demarcation criteria of independent testability, unification, and fecundity. Unification means that disparate ideas and theories are brought together to generate an overarching theory (e.g. the Darwinian synthesis, General Theory of Relativity), and fecundity refers to the opening up of new paths to knowledge and avenues of research.
I apologise for not being entirely familiar with terminology. I did tell you I wasn't a philosopher right? This "verifiability" was more refering to Kitcher's 3 criteria, but Ruse's would work fine for the purpose of discussion--that is, metaphysics meets no standards akin to science--it would never be able to generate a demarcation problem between metaphysics and pseudometaphysics in the first place!

Here is an article that nicely covers Kitcher and Ruse (and exposes the problems in Ruse's criteria): Naturalism and Nonteleological Science:_A Way to Resolve the Demarcation Problem_Between Science and Nonscience. The two references to check up in the footnotes are Ruse's But is It Science? and Kitcher's Abusing Science (there is a lot less difference between the two than the article tries to make out to be--and Kitcher's book is a beautiful destruction of the old generation of Creationists in its own right).
I tend to dismiss anything prior to the Enlightenment because for one, science or natural philosophy was nothing like what it is today. It has come a long way--and we have the living standards, clean water, pollution, etc. to show for it. That is, science itself has been evolving towards more profitable guidelines--and the test of it is simply the changes in material standards. Perhaps this idea isn't well thought out.

On to your large quote: I understand what it is getting at, but I have to disagree. Again, my lack of philosophical knowledge is probably at the root of this. Let me respond with a large quote (since I typed it out for TWeb before):

• The neural systems by means of which organisms generate and manage their beliefs are biologically expensive. Both in terms of the genetic coding required, and in terms of energy expenditure devoted to growth and maintenance, neural systems--brains in particular--are costly devices. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise, given the nature and complexity of their functions. This appears to be especially true of the mechanisms for belief formation and processing. First, beliefs must be generated--in our case, by distinct mechanisms linked to the dozens or more sensory, proprioceptive, and introspective modalities with which we are equipped. Next, to be of use, they must be catalogued and stored for efficient retrieval, they must constantly be squared with one another to insure as much consistency and inductive coherence as possible, and there must be inferential mechanisms devoted to the production of further beliefs.
  
  Of course, many organisms get along without all of this--or any of it; but having these capacities, as we clearly do, is an expensive proposition, biologically speaking. That gives the neoDarwinian a prima facie reason for assigning a low probability to the development of such mechanisms unless they confer a decided selective advantage. The selective advantage of intelligence, when linked in an appropriate way to action, can hardly be denied. While many ecological niches can be successfully filled without the benefit of intelligence (witness the cockroach), Plantinga will agree that Homo sapiens has, more than any other species, specialized in intelligence as a survival strategy. We have few other biological advantages; most of our eggs aer in that basket. Our heavy investment in big brains and otherwise mediocre bodies makes it all the more unlikely that resources would be wasted on elaborate belief-forming and processing mechanisms that have no practical utility.
  
  Fales, E., 1996, "Plantinga's Case against Naturalistic Epistemology," in Philosophy of Science, vol. 63, Sept 1996

You may say that this doesn't solve the epistemological questions, but I have every reason to accept that as a working basis on which to trust my cognitive faculties--not that it is perfect, but that it is more or less reliable. You might argue that older generations of people also had the same cognitive facilities, but I would argue that we have built up that, and more. I am tempted here to introduce the idea of memes. Are you familiar with it?
And the cure for smallpox was only useful to scientists? Technology (and this is one aspect of fecundity) has applications everywhere. Granted there are all sorts of failed applications (e.g. animal magnetism, homeopathy, etc.), but the ones that consistently produce results are distinct from the witchdoctors and metaphysicians. My dad was a surgeon for 12 years in Africa. He can tell you how fucked up a job witchdoctors did--sometimes killing their patients, sometimes delaying them and aggravating things so much till amputations were required, etc. There is a distinction to be made, and that aspect is why I keep shouting, "It works!" Again, the idea of fecundity is important here. Whereas (to me) philosophers are rehashing the same old problems over and over through all eternity, scientists have long taken for granted the splitting of the atom or the particle-wave duality of light. Yet we don't have to go very far back at all to find a generation of the greatest minds struggling (or engaged in polemics) over these issues.
But then, evolutionary biology and anthropology tells us that successful species (including humans) must successfully adapt to their environment or die. So we can subsume that particular idea. The evolutionary explanation may be a metaphysical postulate, but I find it an extremely powerful explanatory tool.
Again I suggest the evidence from medicine. Human life > human death--after all cognition from which to argue these points out relies on it. So if we take modern medicine, its extraordinary success (longer lifespans, better healthcare--which have themselves caused problems of overpopulation, etc.), its methodological base, the change in nature of problems (whereas once contagious diseases were prevalent, in the developed countries, we now deal with problems of "ageing") and its fecundity, then we have to say that by these measures, it is more successful than ancient cures and remedies.

This is what I meant by withstanding the postmodern assault. You may call it ignoring it, but by ignoring it or at least focusing not on epistemology but on science (and we do not necessarily have to understand the exact "best" method in order to achieve a working approach), we are qualitatively better off than we were 50-100 years ago (just where would we be without microwave ovens?).

(That's enough for tonight though, my head hurts. Please let me know if I've been bashing a straw man all night. No doubt my lack of philosophical knowledge is going to jump up and bite me in the arse now.)

Joel

Hugo Holbling

Joel,

Perhaps, but that's what we see here sometimes. I disagree in that "some or all" is a better formulation, i think, because it hints at the possibility of non-exclusion for theories that don't meet all parameters.

Heh. You assume that the demarcation problem is a problem, contra Laudan.

It's an interesting piece, but i wasn't convinced by the author's vague conclusion:

The same criticism that Feyerabend levelled at Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programmes (of which Kitcher's is a watered-down version) applies in spades: it does not "issue orders" and yet "puts restrictions upon our knowledge-increasing activities" (Against Method). The difficulty in determining whether a programme substantially or only temporarily "violates" the character of science is akin to that involved in deciding whether a result constitutes a falsifier or an anomaly. Also, how long do we allow a new practice, given that the history or science is replete with examples of ideas that died and returned years later?

Agreed. This kind of retrospective theorizing assumes that today's living standards are better than those in the past, which may or may not be the case. I hope you won't be too quick to dismiss my objection: you and i may agree that it would be better to live as we do than in a mud hut with a life expectancy of (say) a third of what we enjoy today, but i for one have no idea what it was like to live in the myriad ways of our forefathers. Perhaps i would trade seventy years of pampered consumerist anxiety with good health for twenty years under the stars? How would i know? If we say "x is good" and note that more people have a greater chance today of access to x, that proves nothing unless we assume that x was similarly valued in the past. I'll provide another example of this shortly.

Well, i'd like you to explain your difficulty in more detail because i don't see how your large quote addresses it at all. For example:

How did we get on to the reliability of your cognitive faculties? The point is to try to avoid the conclusion that:

Or similarly, per Feyerabend:

Sure, but not overly interested or impressed. Sorry.

Ding! Let me stop you there! I don't think i said that at all - careful with your non sequitur. "Within a scientific context" refered to justification, while non-scientific ideas and knowledge may (and have, particularly in medicine) have applications outside their specific environment. Moreover, at this point i'm severly tempted to go marxist on you. Technology has applications everywhere, but not everyone wants its supposedly universal benefits. Some of these boons to humanity are unwelcome (for example, cluster bombs), while the positive impact in many cases is mediated by the often unseen negative consequences (for example, psychological problems). Any good critique by primitivists would be of interest here. Let's also not forget the fact that millions of people not only do not enjoy the positive aspects, but are lucky enough to get the negatives ones good and hard - more people than at any previous stage in history, a point made with some force by Eagleton.

My aim is not to respond with a straw man of my own, but only to draw your attention to the fact that direct (or relatively so) comparisons are overly simplistic.

In what sense? I don't want to misunderstand you.

Perhaps you should lower your voice, then, if you want to get through to me?

I appreciate the point you're trying to make but i'll not conceed it yet. Here's what i posted in the Galileo thread with regard to this question:

In addition to this point, implying (and i don't mean to suggest that you are) that we have a stark choice in such matters is an oversimplification that misses the attendent issues. I would choose a world in which a cure for smallpox has been found over one without it, but i am not given such a choice to make. The cure comes with a multiplicty of other cultural and technological aspects, some of which seem good to me and some of which i could do without. I won't die of TB but i may kill myself as a result of the alienation and anxiety that the technological world brought with it. Is the world "better" than in the past because the positive outweighs the negative? How can you possibly determine the answer in an objective way, or any more than a culture-dependent intersubjective way?

"Taken for granted" how? These examples are viewed very differently by realists and instrumentalists, for example, a point i never seem to tire of making. In any case, your critique of philosophers is wasted on me as i consider Tykwer and Haneke to be the finest living examples.

Okay, but environments differ and there is no justification for assuming that what works in one is objectively superior to any other attempts. Moreover, it hardly answers the apparent difficulty that a praxis that arose in a culture-dependent way cannot obviously be considered valid independently of it, as Feyerabend points out:

But you make my point for me. "By these measures" renders the argument valid only for those who share our values - and many do not. A very simple example is those who choose death over a blood transfusion, in which case "Human life > human death" but another term is added to the left.

[Note to lurkers: here Joel refers to the content of private correspondence.]

Perhaps we'd be around the communal fire, feeling less alienation?

Here again the problem is that you subsume everyone into your grand "we" and suppose that everyone wants what you want (in this context that doesn't appear an uncharitable reading, but my apologies if it comes across as such). A hundred years ago there were rainforest tribes living in ignorance of Western civilization and the qualitative superiority of microwave ovens - who are we to say they are better off? The so-called postmodern assault contains a strong critique of such cultural pretensions and this is why undermining epistemological and (especially) ontological assumptions is so important. Hell, if i didn't know better i'd say you sound like Fukuyama. *runs in anticipation of a beating for that remark*

It's been an interesting exercise so far for me. I'll of course continue to disagree with you wherever i can because ideas are empty without challenge, i think.

Hugo Holbling

Joel,

Here's an interesting article for you that deals with naturalism, the conclusions of which are ostensibly bad for your ideas. I'd like to see what you make of it, when you have a moment, but please don't think i'm offering it as a knock-down of your posts. Apart from noting any errors you see, i wonder if you consider the approach to have any merit?

John Page

Hi Hugo - me again. I read the linked article and have two major issues:

I don't think the entailment is correct. For example, SR can be valid without one having absolutely "reliable sources of truth". Theories are, after all, theories. Anticipating a criticism that this limitation condemns us to pragmatism, I hasten to add that one can be pragmatic in dealing with the world but it can be proven that the data about the world is independent of such prgmatism.
The laws of nature do not pervade spacetime, they are our mind's interpretation of the reasons for changes we observe. Notwithstanding this comment, I think the issue is more how and why we perceive this concept of spacetime and what relationship does this concept have to the imputed laws of nature.

BTW, I've always fought shy of naturalism (as opposed to naturism!) because its roots seem anthropomorphic. What do you think?

Cheers, John

Celsus

As you know Hugo, I'm somewhat busy at the moment, so bear with me for the slow pace of my responses.

Joel

Hugo Holbling

I suspected as much.

Isn't that moving into instrumentalist territory, though?

As if i'd make that move! Call me predictable, but i'll need more explanation as to how you can prove this claim.

I think it's no-one's business but mine what i wear at the beach.

Are you asking me if i agree that you fought shy of it for that reason? How would i know? Let's say provisionally that i'd probably agree with you, but how about explaning these roots a little more. I'd be interested.

Don't rush - allow me the satisfaction of thinking i said something worthwhile for a few days before you kill it.

John Page

No, that's Jimmy Page.

Seriously, though, yes it is! Scientific Realism is a POV that puts a stake in the ground. Relativism, however, begs for instrumentalism to explain that all POV's are w.r.t. the concepts being considered and the process of mind that is considering them.
Here goes. Mother Nature is a lesser deity than a monotheistic god but can be used in a similar way for explaining the unknown, e.g. "That's just his nature" or "That's just Nature's way" compared to "God works in mysterious ways" or "God knows!". Given this common usage, I suspect the roots of Nature go back to the roots of philosophy and the inquiry for reason.

Cheers, John

Celsus

Hi Hugo,

The real world is currently interrupting my posting time, so I'll just briefly attempt to answer some of your points.
Well, I am of the opinion that a lot of ideas in superstring and multiple universe theories do not meet these criteria. Of course, that's just the uneducated layman's perspective--I am neither happy with the situation, nor do I think that it would be useful to exclude them from the realm of science.
Heh. Actually, I don't, well at least not for the physical sciences--only that for the purposes of this debate, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.
I understand your point, but how many of these discarded and recovered principles were both based on good science or not? This doesn't solve the problem--we merely go in circles. But there have been cases where falsifications were accepted much quicker than others, and perhaps it is better to understand what the methodology of each case is. I think that Kitcher's criteria could withstand that assault--primarily through fecundity.
I will try to avoid that particular pitfall then. I did live the first ten years of my life in a little village in Africa, with electricity from 7 to 7, bitter water, etc. etc., and I certainly ideallised it (and still do to an extent). I don't think that in terms of whether the criterion of science is concerned, however, that such valuations are meaningful (and it's probably me who brought it up, and therefore my fault for not being clearer earlier)--as I said, the applications of science are what proves whether the theory is correct, whether or not it is actually a good thing. Hence changes in "material standards" was not a normative statement. For all the pains of the atomic bomb, it worked, and perhaps you can see what I'm getting at here--people might still not understand how atomic theory works, but they certainly know that it does work. (though I like to give nicer examples--notice that "pollution" was in my original list ).
Briefly, I believe that there is sufficient evidence (maybe circular, but let me get to that), to believe that evolution is an irrefutible paradigm. I am, honestly, a layman, but I have read enough--particularly on the theory of common ancestry to be convinced that all the evidence we have, from across numerous sciences, backs an evolutionary viewpoint. That said, what does the evolutionary model tell us about our (and animals') cognitive facilities? Thus Fales' argument about the costs of the neural structures of the brain pointing to the unlikelihood of its existence and power unless there was a survival advantage to be associated with it.

While specific arguments, hypotheses and theories in science may fall short to differing degrees, when we have independent confirmation (something that Feyeraband's Greek gods do not have) through various sciences for a single answer, you must be a brave man to doubt that (or a philosopher). And if this argument is circular, then it's an extremely convincing (probability wise) circular argument, considering the number of circles that are all working in tandem, agreeing with each other. Does this solve the epistemological question? I don't know, I'm not a philosopher. But it's convincing enough not to matter to me--because the various disciplines all come to a similar conclusion (and you might not realise this, because we live in an age after the great evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s, which brought zoology, botany, paleoanthropology, paleontology, etc. all under its fold--and I do know what you might reply to this, but I'll leave it there for now).
As I've explained earlier, the idea of "good" or "bad" should not feature in this debate, rather "works" or "doesn't work." And you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't think microwave ovens work, and darned well too. And they are based on scientific theories. So does that not vindicate the scientific theory (and any underlying assumptions within) that formulated it? That is why I suspect you don't understand fecundity as presented by Kitcher. "Works" means it follows from the theory in applications we can all see, and that any engineer could probably repeat (think intellectual property piracy).
Tis unfortunate, no?
I hope I've cleared it up above, or it'll be even more unfortunate.
Again, you're confusing "works" with value-judgements. Better sanitation leads to healthier lives, both epidemiologically (see e.g., the famous cholera correlation that gave birth to epidemiology as a bona fide science), and biologically (seeing germs attack under the microscope, etc.). Of course science involves inferences (there's a rather interesting debate on Tweb about this at the moment), so there's a gap for you to attack, but that does not make the technological applications (good or bad) fail.
Again, I see this as a misunderstanding of my original point, and irrelevant to the issue of whether science stands on sound epistemological grounds.
Can you explain the difference between the realists' and instrumentalists' perceptions of the ideas I gave? As I said, I haven't read nearly enough philosophy of science.
Ok, I agree very strongly with this point with respect to the social sciences, but disagree very strongly with respect to the physical sciences (and where they overlap, it's all a big mess ). I think Kitcher's criteria works very well with answering these problems (and I do not think the social sciences adequately meet up to Kitcher). The cultural context is something of an overexaggerated problem (to me)--Chinese invented rockets, Germans used them as weapons of war, Russians sent man into space on them, and Americans landed men on the moon. Aren't the principles of physics here sound? The theory of gravity, Newton's laws of motion, etc. are all very nicely reinforced here. Am I missing something?

(ok, enough for tonight, I'm tired, but no I'm not going to let you get away with that Fukuyama remark )

Joel

Hugo Holbling

Hi Joel,

Here's another installment in which i continue to disagree with you regardless of my own opinions and in the hope that my endeavour is taken in the spirit it was intended.

You call that "briefly"? Let's see if i can salvage anything.

Then we're in agreement here. The atomic theory is a good example of an idea that came and went as it was falsified, then verified, then round again as the tide changed.

That depends on what you mean by "good" science - no doubt Kitcher's criteria, or some such. Here again the atomic theory is a fine example because it shows the extent to which observations (so-called "facts") are theory-laden and the general underdeterminancy of theories. It was based on good science but contradicted by (at various times) the evidence and theory; nevertheless, it was held onto (especially by Bohr) and eventually won the day. It's hard to see how any methodological description can take all this into account.

... yet the circle may not be viscious.

If you treat each case individually (and i don't see why not) then already the idea of a unique methodology is on the back foot. No doubt fecundity seems like a good idea to you but although it may go some way to explaining why Bohr refused to give up atomism, it hardly accounts for many other moves in the history of science, or why atomism was discarded on so many occasions. It seems you follow Popper (now there's a surprise ) in your understanding of falsifications, whereby they are accepted more readily where a proposal for a better theory exists, but Popper's own remarks on this subject are flawed. Rather than the falsifications playing important roles, it was usually the opinion of scientists that "experiment [has] outrun theory" (Millikan); that is, theory continued long after falsifications had occured because empirical support was not considered as important as theory and not because of the fecundity (or lack thereof) of a particular idea. Einstein's remarks on this subject are particularly enlightening.

How charitable of you! I ascribe it to my dunderheadedness.

It seems rather more likely here that you have misunderstood me (or if we're keeping score, let's call it even stevens). The theory of the Greek gods, for example, had myriad applications and was used in all of them, hence showing it to be correct by your criterion. (Indeed, it has been suggested by some scholars that this success was one of the reasons why the Greeks didn't go on to develop science.)

Okay, but the same can be said of non-scientific models, particularly theist ideas.

Do you consider that this paradigm may equally apply to itself? In that case, calling it irrefutable would be a strange decision. Moreoever, even though you claim to be an amateur of sorts (what are the odds of the average lurker believing you? ), you must surely realize that not only can paradigms (or theories) never be considered irrefutable (and even their most vocal exponents admit this), but further no amount of evidence is sufficient to make a probabilistic case. Indeed, probabilism is one of the easiest criterion to defeat, as counter-intuitive as it may seem. Without wishing to drag this off-topic, Popper claimed that the probability of any hypothesis given the evidence for it will always be zero, following Church and Frege, and the only attempt i know of to get around his proof is Tarski's. In addition, there are always infinitely many hypothesese supported by the evidence (following Goodman), also making the probability of the "irrefutable" nature of any paradigm zero. Nevertheless, i reiterate that these ideas probably ( ) seem counter-intuitive and important only to philosophers.

I think the last remark is your most penetrating yet. It depends on what you are doubting - do you mean the utility of a theory, or its truth? If the former, how do you propose to obtain independent confirmation that a theistic view is not useful?

No. I've already explained (briefly) why any recourse to probabilism is flawed and in fact assumes the validity of the point to be proven. Nevertheless, you have an interesting point here if you are implying that coherence is a possible demarcation criterion (although it of course fails the historical test...).

Heh. You give me little credit, even for a so-called philosopher. While i am indeed as dumb as i sound, you haven't lost me yet.

Vindicate in what sense? It's an interesting and highly specialised argument as to whether success implies anything at all, other than success as defined, so the answer isn't as clear-cut as perhaps you hope.

Yes - you keep suggesting that and if you continue i may eventually come to believe it. Since the answer above was not a clear "yes", the success of a theory simply means that it was successful until such times as realism becomes alot more convincing.

No: i'm saying that if you want to use utility as a criterion you have to admit that other theories also work in their own contexts, or even outside of them. Various theisms, for example, appear to work even within a scientific context.

Well, i see the issue as the wider one (and hence relevant to the OP) of whether these purported epistemological grounds are any more sound than those on which we make metaphysical claims, which point you seem to be missing (my fault, again). It's not my intention to attack science, but rather to ask you to show that a difference in degree does exist - contra Quine.

In a word, an instrumentalist may claim that the success of a scientific theory only proves that it was a successful theory, while the realist wants to take this as having wider implications - particularly with regard to the truth (or approximation thereof) of the theory. You appear to be in the latter camp, with a sizeable dose of Popper thrown in. In any case - and as i tried to point out - the success of a theory is relative to the circumstances it is employed in and the ends to which it is used.

For the reader keen on placing posters into neat boxes, you sure get more positivistic by the minute. Consider that the physcial sciences, along with the idea that knowledge can be found by reasoning in an agreed manner from agreed axioms or principles are themselves historical and arose in a culture-dependent way; science, for example, missing both the Greeks and the Chinese (to Needham's amazement). This is the history of science and nothing much to do with philosophy (and hence Bede is something of an expert). The question is whether or not we are justified in assuming that an idea which arose in an historical and culture-dependent way can be considered ahistorical.

Perhaps. Why did the so-called scientific revolution (contra Shapin) occur in Europe and not China? The theory of gravity would be incomprehensible without the idiosyncratic and ostensibly unrepeatable steps taken to get there, while the history of science shows that at different times we would expect different results and confirming evidence.

That scares me more than any of your other criticisms. Would "Popperian positivist" calm you down any?