Deathray 6

A friend of mine, Jason, was having an email conversation with someone from his discussion list. It was on the issue on the nature of science, among other things. They fowarded him a critique of his support of methodological naturalism. The critique was written by some dude named Leon Brooks. I did some research on Mr. Brooks, and I found some evidence that seems to point out that he is a creationist (from his mentioning of ID "theory" as well as this discussion: http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/06/24/0455228.shtml?tid=160 ), which would explain his rejection of methodological naturalism. Here are excerpts from the discussion, with certain personal information deleted as per Jason's request. His comments have the > in them, while Leon's dont:
---------------------------------

------ Forwarded Message
From: Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 23:00:58 +0800

Subject: Re: [thoth-l] Thoth VII-1

Please forward as appropriate.

On Wed 26 Feb 2003 11:52, Jason Goodman wrote:
> "The systematic pursuit of useful, reliable, quantitative knowledge
through
> the scientific method." -- quoted from the above mentioned natural
sciences
> lecture

> "The study of the physical world and its manifestations, especially
by
> using systematic observation and experiment." - from Encarta
Dictionary

Those two, I like... with a caveat on `the scientific method', see
below.

> "...the goal of science is to seek naturalistic explanations for
> phenomena... within the framework of natural laws and principles
> and the operational rule of testability." - National Academy of
Sciences

> "Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for
what
> we observe in the world around us." - from the original draft of the
> Kansas State Science Education Standards that was written by a 27
> member committee of scientists and educators

> Science can be simply defined as "the practice of seeking
naturalistic
> explanations for the world around us through the scientific method,
which
> is a systematic search for useful generalizations about nature." It
is a
> simple definition. It works.

But all of these suffer from a serious deficiency: by insisting on
naturalistic explanations, they rule out of court any explanation which even looks supernatural; that limits science to worse than a snail's pace in terms of progress. As many clever people have noted, a generation with a particular attitude to an area of science basically have to die off or retire before any greater advance can be made, new paradigms introduced.

In Real Life (IRL), `naturalistic' means two things, `materialistic'
and `conventional'. Materialistic, by definition, rules out any explanation which we seriously don't understand, and 'conventional' rules out any explanation which even tends that way.

For example, it's safe to debate about whether Valles Marineris was formed by water, sand or geologic activity, but unsafe to add `bloody great bolts of lightning' to the debate, because while lightning in itself is not supernatural, a bolt big enough to etch VM certainly looks like a Deus mactatu `destroying stroke of the Lord' to a materialist, and a conventionalist has absolutely no credible suggestions for a source of so much electricity.

> "Pseudoscience" is then easy to define. It can be defined as
"Something
> that pretends to be science but is not subject to testing (and
> falsification) by the scientific method...," to once again quote the
> above mentioned natural sciences lecture.

If (ie, if and only if) the `scientific method' implicitly excludes
the unconventional by defining `natural' as effectively equivalent to 'conventional'.

> WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
> Science is a realm of inquiry devoted to explaining the natural world
> through naturalistic means.

No. And if you accept that, you will be fighting uphill all the way. If
you hew to this definition, however...


...your work will be much easier. "Systematic observation and
experiment." Good, solid, unarguable phrases like that which carefully do not invoke a great deal of philosophy is what you're after.

This concept of backing down to the fundamentals and avoiding wasted contention as much as possible has served the Intelligent Design community extremely effectively, and regardless of your attitude to their _content_, I think their _method_ will serve you equally effectively.

> Pseudosciences are, in essence, theories and fields that employ such
> things as supernatural or paranormal causation.

No, barking up the wrong tree again. It's quite reasonable to
experiment scientifically with the supernatural (although I wouldn't normally do it), and in fact engineering disciplines have developed a host of techniques for dealing with exactly the kind of data that you would expect to meet in such experiments.

Think about SETI, for example. Chandra and Wickramasinghe
notwithstanding, I think they're going to come up dry. However, the approach is scientific, methodological, and is likely to produce verifiable results.

Where most of the tinfoil-hat brigade go wrong is in not systematically observing, and not methodically experimenting.

> Supernatural forces are by definition beyond the realm of nature,

Right.

> and thus beyond the realm of science.

Wrong...

> Therefore, something that is reliant on supernatural causation cannot
be
> science.

...and therefore wrong.

Just because it's supernatural doesn't mean it's beyond study. It may well prove to be, but until you set about studying it, you will not know! (-:

To discard something as unscientific just because you guess that it can't be studied, is in itself unscientific.

> To quote philosopher of science Arthur Strahler: "Supernatural
forces, if
> they exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the
procedures of
> science -

Wrong. Classic mistake of armchair science.

For example, if Moses appeared in front of you and parted the nearest lake, you would be able to measure that, wouldn't you? Videotape it, ask nearby seismo sites what they heard, see if any satellites were looking at the time, record shoreline surges, write down what other witnesses saw and so on.

You would have observed, measured, and recorded the effects of a supernatural force.

> that's simply what the word "supernatural" means.

No. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=supernatural says:

1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural
forces.
3. Of or relating to a deity.
4. Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power;
miraculous.
5. Of or relating to the miraculous.

Being miraculous doesn't exclude it from measurement. Being
irreproducible doesn't exclude it from measurement, nor from experiments being done towards replication of it. The science is in the method, not in the results.

> There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces
and
> forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up from "nowhere."

This is iff you make the false presumption that `supernatural' events are either fantasies or inexplicable according to our current understanding.

For example, if an isolated and primitive jungle dweller found a solar radio, as far as he was concerned every part of it would be supernatural, totally inexplicable: literally fantastic.

But it would not prevent him from doing experiments on it. For example,he might note that it only worked in light, the more light the better. He might note that in certain places (lots of haematetic rock, or in a sunlit cave mouth) it didn't work as well. He might notice some directionality in the antenna and use that to find a radio transmitter. He might notice a pattern in the content and use it as a clock. He might pick up the tunes from
it.

All of this is scientifically aquired information (observation and
methodic experiment) on a `supernatural' object.

> if science must include a supernatural realm, it will be forced into
a
> game where there are no rules.

Non sequitur. Just treat the supernatural component as you would any other engineering problem, and press on. The only time you lose the ability to do science is if there is nothing that you do understand to work from, no point of reference anywhere to base an experiment on, nothing to observe and record. And in those circumstances I imagine you'd be too busy to anyway. (-:
_________________________________


That's it. Any comments or help that I can suggest to Jason?

~Deathray

Philosoft

First, a pet peeve: unless "supernatural explanation" is defined as "ability to engage in metaphysical guesswork," naturalistic science most certainly does not exclude "unconventional" explanation.

That said, I don't really have a problem with Mr. Brooks' position in principle; that is, tautologically, anything that can be quantified and/or measured can be quantified and/or measured. It's certainly not anti-scientific to look at prima facie supernatural effects and to try to determine causes.

The problem is, if "supernatural cause" entails a violation of naturalistic cause-and-effect, the most we can ever say about the effect is that we believe the "cause" is some supernatural thing S. Mr. Brooks' own example illustrates: It's certainly possible that what's being measured is a supernatural force. But what does it tell us about the cause? What happens when we start considering the possibility of supernatural causes without an empirical pathway from the effect to the cause? Watching Moses part a lake would immediately bring to mind divine intervention by the Judeo-Christian God. But why would we be justified positing the actions of the JC God over the following:

1. Satan, in an effort to gain Moses' trust under false pretenses, parts the lake.

2. A rather rogue angel, smitten with Moses, parts the lake.

3. Loki, tricky Norse deity that he is, implants false images in our minds of Moses parting the lake, when no such thing is actually happening.

As you can probably see, we could have an entire forum on this website devoted to supernatural explanations, as there probably exists at least one unique supernatural explanation for every individual and every event.

Sometimes, supernatural/Christian apologists will appeal to the Bible stories as eyewitness accounts that lend support to the idea that events similar to those in the Bible are probably caused by the JC God or Satan or whomever. However, this is a non-starter because the characters from the Bible would have suffered the very same empirical difficulties we now have. Moses might have been tricked by Loki into believing he was lectured by incendiary shrubbery.

I hope I've covered everything.