I guess that supports your statement, if your baseline for being considered a scientist is winning a Nobel prize.
1 Like
Itâs entirely possible to do both and many scientists have. In some cases thereâs even a fairly robust argument to be made that the philosophical or metaphysical interests directly contributed to the scientistâs work; Kepler comes most immediately to mind(though there are also cases where those interests are distracting at best, as with NewtonâsâŚdeeply forgettableâŚlater work).
The âtime pressureâ aspect of science is not so much on an individual level (except for grad students, those poor people), scientists have outside interests, hobbies, periods of downtime; but an interesting(and actually rather remarkable given how shoddy the âwell, we basically ignore problems that look unsolvableâ approach sounds) feature: in a world of sharply limited time, cognitive resources, and information, science has shown a fairly good track record of being able to convert those things into results. Good enough that even relatively modest differences in the number of people and amount of resources committed to a given line of research can dramatically alter how fast results are achieved.
There are blind alleys that unpredictably eat up years of talented researcher effort, and there are serendipitous breakthroughs; the exact âexchange rateâ is by no means fully predictable; but science, overall, is surprisingly good at being able to promise âif you commit more researcher-hours and resources to X, we expect advances in X-ology in greater numbers and more quicklyâ. Thatâs what makes it interesting in a time-crunch/brain-crunch context.
By contrast, time pressure hardly forbids you from studying philosophy or metaphysics (as I think Iâve noted, I have the greatest fondness for them myself); but itâs markedly harder to think of situations where you can observe the fairly reliable conversion of philosopher or metaphysician (metaphysicist?) hours into new results in philosophy and metaphysics.
Thatâs the time crunch. Since humans are not, in fact, little carbon-based truth machines, that doesnât prevent us from allocating time as we wish, to science, to philosophy, to getting shitfaced and barfighting; nothing requires that we focus on producing knowledge at all; but if we wish to do so, science has a remarkably compelling âCome with me, I have an impressive record of turning limited amounts of time and skill into results.â pitch.
1 Like
Given that science doesnât require any specific belief state (remember the young earth creationist who finished a geology PhD a few years back? His intent was pretty transparently to be able to say âYup, Dr. Expert, Geologist, stands for young earth creationism!â; but he got the PhD, fair and square; by completing a suitably adequate amount of geological research under the âcontrafactual hypothesisâ that the earth was actually old. His motives were kind of slimy; but as long as he did good work under that âcontrafactualâ hypothesis, his work was as much science as the next guyâs, and even more so than that of someone who thinks YECs are nonsense but doesnât do good geology.) Iâd be more interested to see the breakdown between scientists who believe in an interventionist deity vs. scientists who believe in no deity, a non-interventionist deity, and any other âspiritualâ positions that have no materially observable implications.
Itâs hardly impossible to do perfectly good science and believe that God Works in Signs and Wonders all around us(just not inside my beakers while the experiment is in progress; though it is a rather impressive combination of beliefs to maintain simultaneously.
Aside from that, though, for the purposes of doing empiricism, an atheist and a deist shouldnât even be distinguishable, nor should a nominal theist who deemphasizes direct action in the world.
Itâd be pretty shocking to see science producing unanimous atheism, since it doesnât actually disprove any of the less active gods; but I suspect that science is (mostly) incompatible with anyone whose theological convictions preclude a belief in mostly-stable physical laws with subtle or nonexistent supernatural interference.
2 Likes
Tim Minchin is very funny, and very watchable. But this one piece just seems to glorify making fun of the mentally handicapped. When Iâm sharing a meal with someone like storm, or someone like the narrator, itâs clear that being right is more important than being interesting⌠and thereâs really nothing to say to such people.
1 Like
The point is the trend from layperson, to scientist (by a loose definition), to top calibre scientist is less and less religious belief. You can argue which way the causation goes (are existing atheists attracted to science and tend to excel in it or does scientific insight cause atheism?) but the connection is very definitely there.
Consciousness could be aphysical in whole or in part, but 1) no observed evidence corroborates this claim and I donât know how one would demonstrate it, and 2) there could also be soul particles or deities or any number of unfalsifiable phenomena affecting consciousness (and anything else ftm).
It would be all kinds of interesting if there was some reasoned explanation of nonphysical whatevers interacting with us, but in lieu of that Iâll stick with strong but tentative materialism.
Yes, itâs God of the Gaps. Absence of evidence isnât evidence of absence. Yes, this applies to strong physicalism too, but at least there is some reasonable evidence of physical stuff.
I havenât encountered one coherent account of mind in any framework and we may never develop one. Heck, we might develop a working account that was so complex that no one person could hold it in their mindâs eye. Itâs quite complicated.
Again, though, this has no clear bearing on whether itâs reasonable to strongly favor naturalism or to invoke metaphysics. The best explanatory and predictive system weâve yet developed assumes a shared external reality governed by natural laws that are discoverable at least in principle if not in practice.
If you know of one single reasonable theory that doesnât assume a shared external reality governed by discoverable laws, Iâd reevaluate things. If all you have to say is âwell, you donât have to assume any of the stuff youâre learning or interacting with is actually physicalâ, then fine. Thatâs fine. It might as well be metaphysical mindjuice and immaterial qualia.
1 Like
Thatâs amazingly well said.
I am going to quote super tiny pieces (not even whole words, not even individual letters, just picobits of the code of your thought really) and spread it everywhere on the internet now. 
My own experience, having spent a lifetime surrounded by scientists, is that most of them are either quietly religious, or loudly atheistic. But Iâm not a fan of argument from authority, especially one with such a strong flavor of foxes and henhouses about it.
Carp, I keep failing to stay out of this.
4 Likes
Well I agree thatâs an interesting trend, but its not the point I picked you up on. You made the statement that religious scientists are a very small minority, turns out thatâs not true.
1 Like
I think itâs a bit tacky of you to assume that the only people who might have objections to these peopleâs methodology are butthurt True Believers. I personally really disliked Minchinâs rant, because I felt like it relied on some very airy semantic sophistry, like that immensely silly and abstract bit about âalternative medicine that works being simply medicineâ.
I think homeopathy, organized religion, and the paranormal are utter bollocks on a factual level. I also think there are much deeper and more nuanced reasons why people are attracted to them than self-righteous little scolds like Minchin and Dawkins are willing to acknowledge. I would have been much happier with a criticism that actually sticks closer to the details, than a bunch of the same empty language games.
I got good and sick at those same tactics when their opponents were using them. Why on earth would it be a sign of my ideological commitment to object just as strenuously when I think âmyâ side is being goddamned intellectually lazy?!
3 Likes
You donât know how anybody could demonstrate it because you are again assuming your own conclusion - what you mean by demonstration is physical demonstration, but what is in question is precisely whether or not consciousness IS physical. The claim that consciousness is potentially not-physical is amply corroborated by the fact that consciousness exhibits certain characteristics and behaviors which we do not observe anywhere else in matter (self-awareness, apparent limited volition, capacity to generate accurate models of the universe, apparent ability to understand how the universe works, and so forth) - characteristics which are, in fact, fundamentally anomalous insofar as matter is conventionally understood. Of course, these problems MAY very well prove to be explicable within a physicalist framework, but at present, attempts to do so are patently unconvincing - to suggest, for example, that consciousness is an illusion of some kind (this is logically incoherent, because an illusion presupposes a conscious agency to be deceived in the first place, and raises basically a Cretan Liar paradox as to whether the illusion is deceiving us that it is an illusion, and on), or the claims of the eliminative materialists, which are simply self-refuting gibberish. If you prefer to approach the problem from a position of âtentativeâ materialism, thatâs fine, but to approach the problem with an open mind, you lose nothing, with the exception of the kind of confirmation bias which inevitably comes from addressing a problem with a pre-selected solution already in mind.
I didnât appeal to an absence of evidence. What I appealed to was the simple fact that if you can explain the interior parts of a object (the universe) according to naturalistic principals, and yet cannot explain the existence of the object itself according to those same principals, then you cannot assume that naturalistic principals are explanatorily complete. That the falling of dominoes is facilitated by each being tipped over by its predecessor is not an explanatorily complete description of dominoes; we would need to know what caused the first domino to fall, or how it is that the sequence of dominoes could be infinite, before we would be satisfied by dominoes all the way down explanations. Arguments regarding cosmological origins long predate the scientific revolution, and have not yet been adequately resolved by scientific discoveries, so to call such arguments âGod of the gapsâ is historically revisionist. (Similarly, I appeal to consciousness because, like cosmological origins, this has the potential to bear upon our entire field of knowledge, our whole understanding of the world; they are not simply tâs to cross and iâs to dot in an otherwise pristine and all sewn-up world-picture; they are the word and our picture of it.)
To me, this just illustrates the degree to which you are committed to naturalism. You say naturalism is the most likely framework to understand consciousness because of its explanatory power; yet you also say that if naturalism FAILS to explain consciousness, this should have no bearing whatever on whether or not we favor naturalism with regard to consciousness! Itâs hard to see how naturalism can really lose here: we owe our allegiance to it precisely because of its power to explain; but its inability to explain doesnât diminish its authority one iota.
3 Likes
Nope. It implies methodological naturalism. Naturalism is proven to work - time and time again. Science creates theories with proven explanitory and predictive power. Religion and new age quackery, not so much.
I am indeed begging the question, but thatâs inherent to any axiomatic position about the nature of reality; theyâre all circular in that they all reduce to minds categorizing and justifying their own thoughts.
At present, all attempts to explain consciousness in any framework are unconvincing. Given the utility of naturalist orientation thus far, it is the framework to favor. If there were utile alternatives Iâd be all for them!
I donât assume naturalistic principles are âexplanatorily completeâ, I assume theyâre the best yet developed. Unless you provide reasonable alternative or adjunct principles, all youâre doing is pointing out what is obvious, i.e. that we donât (and maybe even canât) have all the answers. From Pyrrho to Popper this stance has been widespread in western philosophy, usually tainted with wonky Platonic dualism though it may be.
Well, yes, thatâs the idea: insofar as earnest truth claims are concerned, one uses systems of thinking and investigation which produce reliable explanations and predictions. If non-naturalistic systems offered reliable explanations and predictions then our knowledge and tools would be meaningfully expanded. Alas.
1 Like
With respect, I disagree. Have you read it? Take the following part:
Does the idea that there might be knowledge frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon on Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural so blow your hippy noodle that youâd rather just stand in the fog of your inability to Google?
Isnât this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?
This is essentially a paraphrase (albeit in a more hectoring and obnoxious tone) of Douglas Adamâs quotation âIsnât it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?â What both Minchin and Adams are clearly saying here (unless you think Adams has a fixation with people paying due diligence to landscape gardening) is that the natural world as it is conceptualized by the physical sciences ( âthe natural worldâ in Minchin; the âgardenâ in Adams) is ALL THAT EXISTS; anything else is âcheap, man-made mythsâ or âfairiesâ. This not an expression of the efficacy of the sciences, but the expression of a philosophical position: wiki: âMetaphysical 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.â and âIn contrast, assuming naturalism in working methods, without necessarily considering naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailments, is called methodological naturalism. The subject matter here is a philosophy of acquiring knowledge.â
1 Like
Yes, the point being that some minds justify their thoughts better than others, this representing the difference between good and bad arguments, and plausible or implausible axiomatic positions about the nature of reality. You offer no evidence that naturalism has any explanatory utility with regard to consciousness, and no argument as to why it should have, other than it has explanatory utility in relation to other problems which are of a different nature. Far from being the default framework for understanding consciousness, naturalism has contributed nothing of value to the domain of consciousness. We owe the development of our ethical ideas, and of the sciences themselves, to our pior conception of consciousness in an explicitly dualistic manner; to a naturalistic perspective, thus far, we owe nothing but the dehumanizing fallacy of behaviourism, and its watered-down contemporary flavors: pop science truisms (the self/free will is an illusion) that people wave like sticks of candy-floss whenever the subject comes up, and forget instantly as soon as they are taxed with actually living their lives, or having to justify the implications of such beliefs. Naturalism has done nothing, in relation to consciousness, but attempt to will it out of existence or causal significance, and fail abjectly at this. It falls conspicuously behind other approaches to consciousness, because it has provided no coherent way of justifying its own assertions, and no models of consciousness which are remotely useful to people in living their conscious lives.
You assume that naturalistic principals are the best/most likely approach to any and all problems - and where naturalistic principals fail to have explanatory efficacy in regard to a problem, you say that this should have zero impact on our commitment to the notion that naturalism is the best/most likely explanatory model for this problem! This is a way of thinking which fundamentally precludes the incompleteness of naturalism being even countenanced - a self-confirmatory bubble which cannot conceivably be pierced by anything. You say one should use âsystems of thinking and investigation which produce reliable explanations and predictionsâ, but itâs hard to take you seriously on this point, because you insist that our commitment to naturalism as the best/most likely approach to a problem must hold, regardless of its capacity to produce explanations, reliable or otherwise, in relation to that problem. If a system of thinking doesnât exhibit explanatory efficacy in relation to a given problem, then we have to consider the possibility that it is the wrong approach altogether - but on your view, naturalism need never be examined in this manner - it can always be assumed to be the best approach, to all problems.
Nobody and no system have explained consciousness. I disagree that naturalism has âcontributed nothing to [its] domainâ. Cognitive and neurosciences are building an increasingly-robust account of how sensoria are integrated and how this integration in brains relates to the subjective experience of mind. This doesnât demonstrate that consciousness is or is not entirely physical, but nobody is convincing on this point.
If naturalism is to be abandoned or amended, there must be an efficacious alternative or modifier. What is it? What have you to offer by way of explaining minds or predicting their states? Iâve driven my stake in the ground and youâve mocked it; congratulations. Anything else in your repertoire?
I am not prejudiced in the way you insinuate. If there were a reasonable conceptual framework involving nonphysical (or supernatural or metaphysical or incorporeal) things interacting with us which offered reliable explanations and predictions based on such hypothesizing, Iâd be in favor of its adoption.
Perhaps you know of one.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
