I usually shorten it to “if you are religious, I am an atheist, otherwise I am agnostic.”
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I’m afraid that I can be of no assistance in this worthy quest. I think the distinction is important, at least enough to bloviate about it; but it doesn’t really lend itself to a pithy one liner. The closest lolcat I know of is;
but that one totally collapses the distinctions I was trying to emphasize and just reinforces the ‘zOMG, skeptics are philosophically incompetent and only good at sneering and worshiping science!’ perception that a poor description can leave one with.
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Likewise, pronouncing the spelling of a word with “H” in it could determine whether you were free to go or got a beating, a kneecapping, or worse in N. Ireland during The Troubles … (Aitch versus Haitch). With the additional complication that there isn’t a right answer that would work in all situations.
Yes, but don’t you think that this is also true of doing science? If, hypothetically, scientific inquiry did encounter some meddlesome phenomena which didn’t conform with the properties and forces which we currently regard as representing the limits of the possible or “natural” world, by your reckoning, science would have to stop dead in its tracks. It would have to say “Well, the underlying assumption behind how we do business is that this phenomenon just CAN’T exist, so maybe the phenomenon is an erroneous observation. Even if it isn’t, we just CAN’T apply the scientific method to this, cause the scientific method is absolutely wedded to the assumptions of metaphysical naturalism.” In reality, scientists would concede that the assumptions of metaphysical naturalism were an incomplete description of the actual world. They would then see if it were possible to make the new data a field of scientific inquiry, to see if the scientific method in its present, or some amended, form, could facilitate the study of the phenomenon. But here’s a crucial point: if they found that the new data simply wasn’t amenable to the scientific method, there’s no reason whatever why they couldn’t continue to apply the scientific method to those aspects of observable nature which were amenable to it; they would continue to do science just as they had before, only this time with the knowledge that scientific methodology is only applicable to a limited spectrum of all that actually exists. By your argument, science would have to stop dead at this point, because you seem to think that it cannot function without assuming that its own completeness as a descriptor of everything that exists. But this can’t be right; neuroscience wouldn’t have to shut up shop if we found that the scientific method couldn’t crack consciousness; if consciousness only became more abjectly mysterious over time, this wouldn’t for a second prevent neuroscience from doing valuable work increasing our understanding of the physical properties of the brain.
Anyway, to bring this back to how started, if even the assumption of metaphysical naturalism were useful to the scientific method (and I’ve tried to argue that it is irrelevant to it), it would by no means follow that the assumptions of metaphysical naturalism were actually true, and anybody who accepts these assumptions uncritically, is no kind of skeptic in any meaningful sense. Imo.
Indeed it is, I’m just not sure where in my argument you got the idea that science would have to stop dead and freak out if something not amenable to the convenient assumption of metaphysical naturalism came along.
My intended point was twofold: ‘science’ as a set of disciplines and developments is an attractive model for the naive metaphysical naturalist because, as it happens, it has seen extraordinary success operating under a set of convenience assumptions that are pretty similar to metaphysical naturalism. It is attractive to the less naive, overtly-disinterested-in-metaphysics because it is an excellent example of how effective just not worrying about elegant but intractable puzzles and targeting more tractable problems can be. And, importantly, science doesn’t just do this at ‘the border’ of science vs. non-science. It does it internally as well in the attempt to compartmentalize complexity and keep picking the fruit that is in reach. This approach does include not worrying about metaphysics or skeptical arguments concerning the impossibility of Knowledge; but it’s not some sort of exclusive grudge. The same enthusiasm for pragmatic compartmentalization is what allows Team Biology to ignore, except when necessary, the fact that biology is chemistry on a daunting scale and chemistry is physics on a daunting scale.
It’s definitely the case that people of a metaphysical naturalist bent are likely to see the amount of ground science has covered without having to put up any ‘here be dragons’ signs as supportive of their position; but it does not, and could not, constitute a proof. What it does constitute is perhaps the best available example of an answer to the question “I have limited time, limited mental resources, and limited information; how can I proceed?”. It is my contention that this is both what endears it to ‘skeptics’ in the non-philosophical sense(the skeptics in the philosophical sense certainly don’t like it, since it tends to treat their concerns about ‘Knowledge’ as being grammatically well formed; but likely meaningless and definitely irrelevant); and what makes it so abrasive. It’s hard to argue with the results, or argue that a willingness to wade into the various metaphysical and epistemological quagmires has actually been notably fruitful; but ‘Yeah, just ignore intractable problems’ is not calculated to win friends among anyone who considers what you are dismissing as a waste of time to be important.
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If increasing mysteriousness (whatever that might mean in the context of your posting) wouldn’t prevent neuroscience from doing valuable work, in what sense would it be negatively mysterious? Is not the well-worn truism every answer births new questions?
Speaking as one whose dream Celebrity Deathmatch would feature Epicurus collapsing a gaudy Catholic church onto Plato, I reject not only most of the wispy threads of post-Popperian philosophy but the notion of any meaningfully-explicated metaphysics full stop. The word metaphysics is a vacuous hammer that might as well be replaced with god for all the naked wishful thinking and mystical ideation it entails, and that’s to say nothing of its manifold autotelic inanities (which, again, might as well be replaced with multi-volume treatises on the Trinity).
On that last point: a certain amount of wrangling with the propriety of circular or axiomatic postulates is fine, but once it becomes an end unto itself and loses sight of principle or beauty or utility I say fuck it. As indeed I say fuck Plato, fuck his damned cave, and fuck the whole lineage of dualistic woo permeating western philosophy since the merger/degradation of Hellenism into/by Christianity.
I’m generally fine with a bit of epistemic anarchism wrt the philosophy of science, but there are limits. At some point one falls off a Chomsky-shaped cliff.
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My benchmark for pop skepticism is when people heatedly yap about proof instead of calmly talk about evidence.
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I’m actually trying really hard not to get pulled in to this, but this popcorn is delicious.
I’m going to go with Konrad Zuse and Doug Hofstadter tearing off Wittgenstein’s leg and beating Saint Augustine to death with it. Perhaps I am unnecessarily bloody-minded.
“If increasing mysteriousness (whatever that might mean in the context of your posting) wouldn’t prevent neuroscience from doing valuable work, in what sense would it be negatively mysterious?”
I’m not sure what point you’re making here. I said that if neuroscience failed to advance our understanding of consciousness, that would not impede its capacity to do valuable work in increasing our understanding of the physical structure and workings of the brain. What this meant in the context of my posting was to argue that science is perfectly tenable and useful without requiring the assumption that the current objects of our physical sciences are all that exists; neuroscience doesn’t require the assumption that consciousness is completely explicable in terms of the workings of the physical brain; it only requires that the workings of the physical brain can be studied. If it arrives at an adequate and complete understanding of consciousness in terms of the working of the physical brain, well and good. If it never does, it continues to increase our understanding of the physical brain nevertheless.
The rest of your comment I can’t really reply to. You think metaphysics is a “vacuous hammer”. Alls I can say to that is that I think your rejection of metaphysics is a series of NEBULOUS NAILS that lack even a metaphorical hammer to put them to any kind of use. You don’t make any argument or point that relates to what we are discussing: whether or not the scientific method requires the assumption of metaphysical naturalism, and whether the assumptions of metaphysical naturalism should or should not be subject to skepticism.
I struggle to apply myself to this sort of thing with any useful level of concentration these days, but I do think we are seeing something very like this happening in physics. Under pressure from data that can’t be reconciled with accepted accounts of the origin of the universe, the idea of the multiverse is switching from a radical fringe theory to a widely accepted explanatory device with great speed. I believe experiments conducted with the large hadron collider have dampened some competing single universe accounts.
If the multiverse becomes the widely adopted model of describing all of nature, it will almost certainly entail that some or many aspects of nature are intrinsically unobservable to us, and will remain mysterious for all time, whatever time means in that scenario.
Note: I am quite certainly offering an opinion from a point of great ignorance here, but hey, this is a thread about Tim Minchin and the world’s most perfectly realised straw person, so, you know, fuck it.
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Again, I can’t agree with this. Science has seen extraordinary success operating under the assumptions that 1) the world is ordered according to regular principles which are, in theory, knowable by human intellect. and 2) physical observation, experimentation, and the pursuit of testable, repeatable hypotheses are the most effective methods of understanding how this natural order works. These assumptions are not, as far as I can see, pretty similar to, or boil down in any way to the assumption of metaphysical naturalism. Look at the history of the scientific revolution - the heavy lifting was done by people who believed in the prevailing religions of the time - none of them were metaphysical naturalists. Look at how many of the major players in the quantum revolution subscribed to some variety of mysticism. What does that tell you? That the success of science is fueled by methodological rather than metaphysical assumptions, and that brilliant people of a variety of different metaphysical orientations have all done brilliant science. The claim that its success is in any way as a result of metaphysical naturalism, or anything resembling the same, still seems very questionable to me.
I appreciate what you’re saying here, but I would have to say that this perceived perilous time management crisis, which apparently necessitates that one cannot do science and be interested in philosophy and metaphysics at the same time, seems like a relatively modern phenomenon. It certainly never oppressed Einstein or Heisenberg to the same extent that it seems to oppress Neil deGrasse Tyson; perhaps Twitter is a factor?
Look at the history of the scientific revolution - the heavy lifting was done by people who believed in the prevailing religions of the time - none of them were metaphysical naturalists
It’s not clear what you are using “metaphysical naturalist” to mean. It sounds like you are using it to mean “atheist” which is somewhat ironic because typically it is used in the opposite sense – to defend religion by claiming that the use of “metaphysical naturalism” allows pious people to still be good scientists by assuming that their god(s) won’t interfere with their experiments even if they interfere elsewhere in their lives. I’d agree there is no need for metaphysical naturalism but that’s because naturalism encompasses everything than can exist – whenever anything that was thought to be outside of science is explained (forces acting at a distance, like magnetism, which once was thought to be occult) science expands to include it. If the existence of ghosts or gods were adequately established, they’d be part of science too.
I’m not sure that the fact that historically most scientists were religious is very significant, though. Historically nearly everyone was religious because there were very serious repercussions for disbelief. If you look at the second half of the twentieth century and beyond when atheism became socially acceptable, it is pretty clear that religious scientists are a small minority - to the extent that so much is made out of Francis Collins’ Christianity, given that so many vocal modern atheists are scientists.
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I’m questioning the utility of this distinction. Science’s advancement or nonadvancement of our understanding of consciousness doesn’t clearly bear on whether or not all of reality is physical. The nature of mind could be wholly impenetrable or perfectly explicable and this would offer no clue as to the wider world’s materiality or immateriality (or any other possibility). One can’t demonstrate that everything’s physical anyway; absolutist belief in such a notion is intellectually dishonest. The most reasonable position is an inductively-strong but tentative (probabilistic) preference of naturalistic explanations given their continued explanatory and predictive utility and the poorness of other frameworks.
Now, if a non-naturalistic explanation for any phenomenon held water, I’d change my tune…
It seems unreasonable even in the most strained rhetorical sense to suggest that a nonphysical thing could bear on a physical thing. It’s not that I dislike such wordplay per se—I love linguistics, in fact—it’s just that it’s so damned vague and so often used in service of grotesque woo. “Physics may describe or predict realms we can’t directly interact with, therefore [insert blatant non sequitur here]”, that kinda thing. Deepak “Quantum” Chopra springs to mind.
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Nope, I’m using metaphysical naturalism the way its defined everywhere. For example, wiki: “Metaphysical naturalism, also called ontological naturalism, philosophical naturalism and scientific materialism is a worldview which holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences, i.e., those required to understand our physical environment by mathematical modelling. In contrast, methodological naturalism is an assumption of naturalism as a methodology of science, for which metaphysical naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation.” A believer in a transcendent god of any kind cannot by definition be a metaphysical naturalist; I think you mean that theistic scientists appeal to methodological naturalism?
I agree with you that too much shouldn’t be made of the fact that the founding scientists were religious - any more than should be made of the fact that the majority of contemporary scientists are atheists.
I’ve often thought that people are pissed when technology works (planes fly etc), whether bystanders approve of it or not.
I was wondering how true that was, so I asked Google. Google (by way of the Pew Center, which I know exactly zero about) says that while scientists are much less likely to be religious than the general public as a whole, religious scientists are far from a small minority. Pretty much a 50/50 split.
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But that’s how metaphysical naturalism - which I have been arguing against - is actually defined. “Inductively-strong but tentative (probabilistic) preference of naturalistic explanations” seems to me like a song and dance way of preserving metaphysical naturalism while side-stepping - just about - the intellectual dishonesty. Naturalistic explanations have continued “explanatory and predictive utility” in relation to purely physical entities; hence saying that we should thus favor such explanations in relation to consciousness is to the beg the question, and assume your own conclusion (that consciousness is a purely physical entity.) The “poorness of the other frameworks” is merely a subjective judgement on your part. I’m not sure why we need to preemptively favor explanations of any kind - however tentative-probabilistically - to extremely difficult problems which we genuinely don’t know the answers to.
Until we have a naturalistic explanation for how any of those phenomenon come to exist in the first place, and how we can know anything at all, the assumption that nothing can exist which is not amenable to naturalistic explanation is premature. And if you want to call this a God of the Gaps argument, fine. The universe (everything we can know) and consciousness (how we can know anything in the first place) are pretty big gaps.
This is an argument from incredulity - although I’ll grant you definitely one of stronger ones. But if you are inclined to think that no coherent accounting for mind and consciousness within a framework of physicalist monism has yet been articulated, then it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that nonphysical properties might bear on physical ones in a way that we simply don’t understand yet. The reducio ad Chopra is hardly a convincing argument one way or the other.
Not that religion needs to involve belief! Some of them stipulate belief (aka faith) in weird things, but some don’t. This seems to cause cognitive dissonance with those who were taught that religion is belief in weird things.
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Who the heck are you, fuzzyfungus, and why do you write so well?
The problem with that survey is that it consisted of random sampling of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – which really just means people who subscribe to the journal/magazine Science, which include working scientists, yes, but also physicians, engineers, science teachers, and laypeople just interested in science. It’s interesting that even this set is less religious than on average, but things get far more extreme – up to 93% atheist, when you look at the members of the US National Academy of Sciences (basically Nobel prize winners and people just below that level).
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