Critical Thinking, reductionism, epistemology RI megathread

[Project Willow]

...
and for those who think I went too far...

*raises hand*

[Project Willow]

There are plenty of oligarchs, child traffickers, CIA torturers, etc., etc., in the world to spend one's time ridiculing and disliking. I wish this thread would be locked as well.

[norton ash]

Duly noted, PW. I'm sorry.

As one who was once bullied and deals with shame and justice issues, shameless bullies who don't play fair remain an issue for me.

As are people who invent trouble and indignation about sweet fuck all or things they don't understand, and then can't shut up about it.

Exit thread left. I'll take any PMs.

[barracuda]

chew on it, dude.

Jeff has suspended your account, so it seems petty and unfair to attempt to really get into the objections and issues in your post, much as I would like to. But you should know that threads like the one you started in the lounge are routinely locked here, as a quick trip to the firepit will attest.

There are plenty of oligarchs, child traffickers, CIA torturers, etc., etc., in the world to spend one's time ridiculing and disliking.

My feelings regarding the backers and developers of the Intelligent Design program infiltrating propaganda into public schools systems fit them right in with your examples, as far as I'm concerned.

I wish this thread would be locked as well.

After the grief I received for the two threads I've locked in the last week it would take a request by the original poster for me to consider doing that. It might actually take even more than that. Maybe any such request should be forwarded to Jeff for the nonce. There's no way in hell I'd lock another thread today, not even if the very spawn of satan were to log in and start posting naked pictures of me.

[Project Willow]

^ Maybe you need to take a break so that you can give others a break.

And I did approach Jeff, and I wasn't asking you.

[barracuda]

^ Maybe you need to take a break so that you can give others a break.

My thoughts exactly.

[Searcher08]

Blimey.
Cuda, I wanted to say thank you for the really considered response you gave earlier (my previous one to you took a couple of hours). I need a little while to digest your response - it really surprised me. I feel like this thread is making progress and edging forward. I think going into ID territory was an (very unintentional by C_W) painful sting for some folks - for that I am sorry.

I should also say I noticed really clear movement on this thread when I used language from Marshal Rosenbergs NonViolent Communication approach, even though at the time I was feeling narky.

[seemslikeadream]

just how many people does one get to piss off before one realizes that it is not the fault of the pissees but the fault of the pisser?

[Searcher08]

just how many people does one get to piss off before one realizes that it is not the fault of the pissees but the fault of the pisser?

42

[vanlose kid]

you mean the naturalism against evolution section of the talk, right? starts about 36 minutes in? the conflict between naturalism and evolution.

Yes. His points regarding why Christianity is not incompatible with evolution, I agreed with nearly entirely. The only issue I have with that premise is that to maintain it, you must first divorce Christianity from large portions of the Old Testament, something which is expressly understood as non-negotiable by most Christians.

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and Jews for that matter. but i don't think that to maintain that premise one has to, necessarily, "divorce Christianity from large portions of the Old Testament". or at least i don't see why you think it is necessary to do so.

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AP sets it up saying that one cannot sensibly believe both naturalism and evolution. not that they are logically incompatible. the reason being that naturalism is understood as eliminative materialism [EM] which holds that "people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.[1] Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions" (Wiki).

I think that's too complicated for me. I want to understand naturalism as a position in opposition to supernaturalism, or more pointedly, as assuming the world is natural and does not include the presence of God. He is speaking directly about the notion of a director of events standing outside of evolution, so it seems safe to view his argument this way.

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i'm not saying that it's wrong for you to define naturalism in the way you do, but in the context of AP's argument naturalism is as he explains it, that is to say, as defined by the foremost naturalists themselves (Paul and Patricia Churchland, et. al). that you have to take into account in order to understand and evaluate what he is saying. in that sense, yes, naturalism "does not include the presence of God" but what's more important in the context of the argument is that naturalism denies the relevance of cognitive faculties or consciousness altogether (God or no God). it's that second part that AP is aiming at with regard to R. that's why i used the term "meat machines" - in order to make the central point clear.

the form of naturalism that AP takes up in his argument is in some ways the end point of the spectrum that begins with Cartesian dualism and passes over epiphenomenalism:

The history of epiphenomenalism goes back to the post-Cartesian attempt to solve the riddle of Cartesian dualism, i.e., of how mind and body could interact. La Mettrie, Leibniz and Spinoza all in their own way began this way of thinking. The idea that even if the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of behavior, even in animals of the human type, was first voiced by La Mettrie (1745), and then by Cabanis (1802), and was further explicated by Hodgson (1870) and Huxley (1874).[1] Huxley (1874) likened mental phenomena to the whistle on a steam locomotive. However, epiphenomenalism flourished primarily as it found a niche among methodological or scientific behaviorism. In the early 1900s scientific behaviorists such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner began the attempt to uncover laws describing the relationship between stimuli and responses, without reference to inner mental phenomena. Instead of adopting a form of eliminativism or mental fictionalism, positions that deny that inner mental phenomena exist, a behaviorist was able to adopt epiphenomenalism in order to allow for the existence of mind. Wiki

So we have (1) Cartesian dualism: mind/body relation; (2) epiphenomenalism (a form of naturalism): mind/body but no relation; and (3) (eliminative) naturalism: body and no mind. there are of course gradations and combinations along the way.

AP might be said to conflate (2) and (3) but that doesn't really matter in the context of the argument since in the case of (2) even if there is a mind is has no role to play with regard to adaptive behavior. hence the epi-. as we know from behaviorism at it's most scientific, babies are born blanks, the meat-machine is programmed through stimulus-response, and the "person" is made in that way. (cf., the opening minutes of Scott Noble's Human Resources.)

an eliminative naturalist could write a book that riffs on Dawkins The God Illusion and call it The Mind Illusion. i.e. no mind, no self, no person, no nothing. it's all "folk psychology". this of course does not mean that any of them subscribe to Buddhism. it's all meat and nothing more.

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then he goes on to look closely at premise one, annexing EM to N. so if EM is true, that creatures (humans included) are meat automata and nothing more, they have no beliefs. and even if they do the beliefs don't matter because what ensures survival is neural/biological functioning or adaptive behavior. if the automaton functions correctly/behaves adaptively then no beliefs are necessary for the functioning survival. here's where the frog example comes in.

Right, and the assumption that human beliefs are true is my issue with his premise. Beyond that, I find the entire argument massively anthropocentric.

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he doesn't assume that they are true by default. what he does say is that they are reliable and attempts to assign probabilities. this is standard procedure within analytic philosophy because if you can assign probabilities to truth values of propositions philosophy becomes more scientific. a lot of it has been imported from economics. the materialist bean crunchers and scientific priesthood love it. it looks good on the bottom line.

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if what counts is behavior (how your limbs move/how the machine functions) whatever beliefs you might have about the world whether true or false, make no difference. e.g. whether your belief that you're eating chicken or not is true or false doesn't matter. whether you have a belief about the chicken doesn't matter. as long as the neural machinery operates adaptively then all is fine. beliefs don't have any role to play in survival at all.

But look how far one has to go 'round the block to justify eating chicken as an action wherein the adaptation was merely an error that happened to work. The neural function of reason is what makes most adaptions of this category workable, i.e. we have a survival adaptation called reason which is massively imperfect in most ways you can think of, but it does allow for certain proper choices to shake out and be passed along rather than a slew of improper ones, if only by trial and error. A brave man was he who first eateth an oyster, I say. Surely hunger and chance drove such a decision rather than reason.

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this is where it gets confusing. because according to themselves they self-describe as rationalists. that is thinking things. but according to naturalism thinking makes no difference. so being committed rationalists i wonder why they think at all? what's the point? it all ends in compete incoherence as far as i'm concerned, but then again, i'm easily dismissed as being irrational anyway. i'm a religionist, as Jack says. so what i say doesn't matter, whereas what they say does. only nothing anyone says matters at all. only what they say matters more because it's scientific and hence true even if it doesn't matter. and they get funding and tenure and invited onto talk shows with Bill Maher and influence policy and win awards and are published all over the place, so there!

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why do e.g. EM'ists write books, have tenure, teach EM? what's the point of all this unnecessary activity? are they malfunctioning?

They're trying to get laid?

that's funny. only i tried to say that once to a fervent believer in this stuff and he didn't seem too well pleased. they do take themselves seriously and consider their efforts to be noble and humble and for the greater good of meat-kind and so on.

of course materialists span the entire spectrum from (1) to (3). Freud for instance lies somewhere between Cartesian dualism and epiphenominalism. the reason i say somewhere between is because its not entirely clear where he is as his thesis posits that the psyche evolves gradually, i.e that the person is formed post-birth. if memory serves somewhere around the age of three. this of course raises a lot of questions and difficulties because if you think it through, before the age of three you can do whatever you want to a child seeing that you're not harming a person at all. there is no person there, only meat waiting to be formed. in this he is no different from the behaviorists. but if that is the case then how does childhood trauma between birth and the age of three work other than as programming meat? you're not harming a soul but building a human machine in whatever image you deem fit. (i realize that my formulations of the problem are crude but with history in mind they're nothing in comparison and closer to the truth of the matter in my view.) there's something else one doesn't mention in polite company. what this mode of thought "allows for".

as for the thought that all meat machines are driven by wanting to get laid and fear of death, where does that leave notions such as e.g. love? what about human taboos such as incest and paedophilia? what are morals if it's all meat driven by wanting to get laid and fear of death? i find such thoughts horrifying. but that's me. others find such thoughts comforting because they rip away all illusions or morality, love, grace, redemption, harm etc., because they are completely rational and scientific, which by definition means true. go figure.

rationality and love. if all science is based on causality and all meat-kind operates on the basis of wanting to get laid and fear of death what answer does a parent give to the question why do you love me? because i want to get laid and fear death? aren't these the fundamental causes? what does love mean then? a synthesis of wanting to get laid and fear of death? these are not rhetorical questions by the way. i'm trying to make sense of how these people think.

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edit: formatting, typos, etc.

[vanlose kid]

*

here's a classic discussion of naturalism i meant to post pages ago. adding it here to clarify some of the issues involved. (if anyone's still interested.)

NATURALISM *

I SHOULD like first of all to state as precisely as I can that proposition or those propositions with which in part, at least, naturalism is to be identified. For this purpose, I should like to take sentences straight out of the test tube - a much more authentic source even than the horse's mouth. Once having identified these sentences, I intend to examine them in order to discover further how to deal with them. Are the sentences in question exclamatory, or empirical, or are they tautologies?

The sentences which I am to quote are sentences in which their authors, respectively, aim to define naturalism. These sentences fall into two groups, and the distinction between them will immediately be evident. Here now are three in the first group. The first is from Edel. Here it is: "Reliance on scientific method together with an appreciation of the primacy of matter, and the pervasiveness of change, I take to be the central points of naturalism as a philosophic outlook."1 The second is from Hook: "What unites them all is the whole-hearted acceptance of scientific method as the only reliable way of reaching truth about the world, nature, society, and man. The least common denominator of all historic naturalisms, therefore, is not so much a set of specific doctrines as the method of scientific or rational empiricism. '"2 The third is from Dewey; it runs: "It suffices here to note that the naturalist is one who has respect for the conclusions of natural science. "3

Now these three sentences agree in identifying naturalism with a certain attitude toward scientific method, variously described as "reliance upon," "whole-hearted acceptance of," and "respect for." Every naturalist is one who maintains an attitude similar to the attitude here described. He is excited about something. The excitement may vary in intensity, but in some degree naturalists all share it. This is not difficult to understand. In many cases, no doubt such excitement is the spontaneous overflow of new curiosities looking forward to tomorrow. There are secrets in 10,000 boxes, and you have opened forty, and know now how to go on opening a box a day for the rest of your life. What a feast for eager eyes! Who has not shaken a box and wondered, keyless, what was inside it-and later, furnished with a key, found out? Precious key! Well, a naturalist is a man with 10,000 unopened boxes, newly furnished with a key. No wonder he dances, key in hand up-raised, among the boxes.

But this is idle curiosity, idle secrets for idle eyes, and is only half the motive of the naturalists' dance. For in those boxes snuggled away out of men's sight is the furniture of the land of hearts' desire. Here is a box of the beauty that will not fade in the rain. Here is a heart that will not fail, a pump with scrutable controls. Here are pellets for stretching the hours, and wobbling all dimensions. Here are new snuffers for old pains and here are new pleasures for old duffers. Besides, there are new and quick get-aways, new smashers, new glue better than love, daisies that will tell even what the old ones wouldn't, rapid transit swifter than gloria mundi, lightning to keep your orange-juice cold, falling water to dry your feet, shocks to give you peace, a drop or two to make you jump, babies delivered in cellophane, bloodless wars, holocaust by button, one big rumble for all last "whimpers," a piece of powder for a gland, teeth from Dupont's, everlasting shoes, a feather to lighten your load, suspenders to keep up your courage, a new Joseph for all your dreams, cant about what man can, the last straw, and so on from 9,000 and more other boxes. So the naturalist does his dazzle dance. Who then would not accept scientific method, and prefer to go to Babylon by candle-light? Scientific method is successful.

So far then there is no issue, no controversy, and by that token we may be sure that we have not yet ventured to be philosophical. Be reminded, then, of what so far we missed and be prepared to resist. Mr. Hook speaks of "the whole-hearted acceptance of scientific method as the only reliable way of reaching truth. " And now we are prepared to introduce that second group of sentences. In this group are these sentences: The first from Dennes, which is this: "There is for naturalism no knowledge except of the type ordinarily called scientific," and this one from Krikorian: "For naturalism as a philosophy, the universal applicability of the experimental method is a basic belief."5 By the pricking of the hair on your chinny chin chin I realize that these are philosophic statements.

Let us now consider these sentences, with special attention to the phrases: "the only reliable way," "no knowledge except, " "the universal applicability of." Obviously the point of such sentences is that other men have spoken of "other reliable ways," of "knowledge other than," of "a certain inapplicability." Notice first the form of Dennes's sentence. Mr. Ringling might say: "There is for Ringling Brothers no elephant except of the type ordinarily called big." Does Mr. Ringling intend to deny there are any little elephants? Does he mean that besides Jumbo and Mumbo there is no little Nimblo? I think he means no more than that there is a difference between big elephants and little elephants, and that Mr. Ringling has no use for little elephants. If you tried to sell him one, he wouldn't buy. He can't use any. Or try this sentence: "For all the boys in our alley, there's no girl but pretty Sally." What, have the boys in our alley seen no girl but pretty Sally? Don't be silly. Of course, they know Helen and Ruth and Betty. It's just a way of saying that above all the girls they know, they prefer Sally.

And this is now the way in which we are to understand Mr. Dennes? Does he mean to be stating a preference? Mr. Ringling says: "There are really no elephants but big ones," and the boys in our alley say: "There's really no girl but Sally." So Mr. Dennes: "There's really no knowledge but . . . ." In this case, of course, Mr. Dennes might have admitted other types of knowledge too, but would in this instance merely have intended to say: "Well, so long as I have my choice, let mine be scientific." In this case, once more there would be no issue. If Mr. Dennes prefers blondes or gas-heat or lemonade, or a hard mattress or scientific knowledge, well, that's all there is to it. I think that this is certainly something like what Dennes is saying, but not quite.

Before we settle these matters, let us inspect Krikorian's sentence. It is: "For naturalism as a philosophy, the universal applicability of the experimental method is a basic belief." Consider the parallel sentence of the vacuum cleaner salesman: "For vacuumism as a philosophy, the universal applicability of the suction nozzle is a basic belief." He may argue to himself: "If I ever give this up, I'll never sell another vacuum cleaner. It is basic." To the house-wife who asks: "And can you use it to dust books?" he replies: "Of course." And when he shows her and finds that it does not do so well, does he deny the universal applicability of the nozzle? No such thing. He may complain that he himself is not skillful, or that what seems like dust to the house-wife is not dust. The universal applicability of the nozzle is now the touchstone of dust. If the nozzle is applicable, it's dust. If it is not applicable, it is not dust. Is Krikorian's statement now like the statement of the vacuum-cleaner salesman? Well, for the moment, I should like to say that it is, and then to add, before I breathe, that it isn't. And for the next moment I should like to postpone my decision.

It will be remembered that at the outset I proposed to determine whether the sentences defining naturalism were exclamatory, or empirical, or tautologies. I think, though I have made no point of it, that naturalists are very fervent. But I also think now that without further trial of these sentences it will be misleading to classify them in either way. I propose accordingly to dandle them some more before deciding. Let us, then, just playfully bounce them.

There are, in any case, at least three ways of frisking a philosophical theory. You may try to misunderstand it which in philosophy requires almost no effort at all. Almost anyone can at once misunderstand a philosophical statement. This method is very popular, very chuckling, but also very exasperating. In any case I have already forsworn the obvious advantages of this and must resort to something else. Fortunately there are other ways. You may then in the second place try to refute the theory in question. In this case you settle upon some clear and plausible import of the theory, and then you discover some contradiction. The contradiction must be hidden, subtle, and for the best results should pop out like a jack-in-the-box. You show that the theory conceals a jack-in-the-theory, which the theory on its face denied. The theory said: "No, no, there's no little jack," and then you pressed a little word, and out popped jack. This method is ideal, absolutely ruinous, guaranteed to fluster. Every philosopher submits to it with modesty, and, after three minutes, with cheers, whenever, that is, he also recognizes the little jack. The most authentic and last case of this sort is, as you will remember, recorded with a new-fangled pen in the reminiscences of a certain Thales whose comment on this has amused many scholars since. His comment is, "Of this too it may be said that all is wet." There is a third method which is this. You may try to understand the theory in question. This is, of course, a very dangerous expedient. It is clear that having understood the theory you may be taken in by it, and so suffer the corruption which you certainly intended at the outset to avoid. On the other hand you may discover that what you have come to understand turns out now to be so trivial that all your effort can scarcely be dignified by the admission. It's quite all right to leap bravely from one's horse to let the blood of a wind-mill, so long as you can keep on calling the wind-mill Beelzebub. But who would fence with a piece of wood? So the risk is great. There are, however, rewards. A little corruption will no doubt improve everyone.

And now I should like to try the second of these methods, refutation. And let us settle without very nice circumspection upon this sentence: "Only scientific method is successful." Can this sentence be refuted?

Now there certainly are people who think that it can be refuted. These refutations take at least two forms. There are first of all people who argue in this way. They say: "The application of scientific method, whatever it is, does involve thinking. Now thinking itself presupposes certain facts, namely, the laws of thought. For the truth of these laws there can be no evidence, for any evidence at all would once again presuppose them. Hence, since we obviously do know these laws, there obviously is knowledge, other than knowledge arrived at by scientific method." Nor is this all. It is clear that without the application of mathematics, scientific method would have been almost impotent. Now then, mathematics is also knowledge, and it is not commonly maintained even by those who are so excited by scientific method that there is anything experimental about mathematics. Once more, then, there is a type of knowledge, namely, mathematics - ask any mathematician whether he knows mathematics. And this is not knowledge which in any way depends upon scientific method. Both of these considerations seem so obvious that it is very curious there should be naturalists at all. Doesn't the naturalist then know, has he never heard, about the laws of thought and about numbers ?

Of course he does and has, and yet he does not admit the refutation. What, then, does he say? Well, bluntly, that what in the proposed refutation is cited as knowledge, is not knowledge at all. There are logicians and there are mathematicians, but in these capacities they are not Knowers. The question here is as to what leads naturalists to speak so curiously, and then, once we have understood this, the further question is whether or not there still remains some intelligible issue as between the naturalist and his refuter. I am not at all certain now that I can represent this matter correctly, but I will do my best. Suppose we admit that knowledge is always about something or other. So if we know that thunder follows lightning, then what we know is something described by that sentence, and not at all to be identified with that sentence. We all know what this means. Now suppose we ask: "Do the laws of thought describe anything? Is that they do not, what you mean by their being laws? Further does 2 + 2 = 4 describe something?" If you hesitate over these questions, then I think that you have some inkling as to what the naturalist here has in mind. That thunder follows lightning may be knowledge, since you can very well imagine what it would be like for it to be false. But that the laws of thought should be false, or that 2 + 2 should not equal 4, both of these are inconceivable. This, so far as I can see, is the main motive underlying the statement that logic and mathematics are not knowledge. And so far at any rate there is no issue. Both the naturalist and the refuter are agreed. Scientific method does not presuppose any other type of knowledge. For logic and mathematics are not knowledge.

The issue which we have just now discussed has turned out to be a verbal one. There are, however, related issues which are interesting. We all remember that when Socrates questioned the boy in the Meno he showed that the boy knew things which he had never been taught, that these things were true, and that he must have come to know them by recollection. When Kant questioned the same boy he too showed that the boy knew a priori things which he had never been taught, that these things were true, and that he came to know them because all little boys are like that. When today the naturalist questions that boy he discovers that boy still answering as he answered Socrates and Kant. He knows his grammar. Where did he get it? Well, grammar and the laws of thought are historical accidents. Who could have predicted that the squirrel would have such a bushy tail? Who could have predicted that a creature without any tail at all should have written the Iliad? You never can tell. Now Socrates was amazed at the bright boy, and describes him as a reminiscing soul on tour. He learns his mathematics in one world and is furnished with it, ready for Euclid in the next, a romance of two worlds! Kant too is puzzled by the boy, but not by the origins of his prodigy. Marvelous boy! anticipating the whole structure of the world by being the creator of it. Both Socrates and Kant did not know what we now know. The little boy is an organism, part of a long line of adaptation, missing poisons, dodging rocks, escaping tigers, milking cows, sowing seed, fetching fish, but, most important of all, saying the word. To milk a cow one must have a hand to fit and flush an udder. To say the word one must have an order to fit and flash one's prescience. What is the history of the hand, from hoof to dainty pats upon your cheek? Ask Darwin. What is the history of the laws of thought and 2 + 2 = 4? Ask Darwin's brother. No one could have predicted what the laws of thought would be, had prediction been possible without the laws of thought.

I have no intention, however, of considering this matter further. The issue appears to be empirical. It is interesting, however, as an illustration of how the naturalist's view of scientific method, and of distinctions involved in it, is intertwined with certain results of the application of scientific method. This is the biologist's view of the origin of the a priori. And part of the point here is to insist that the presence of logic and mathematics are as irrelevant to the existence of anything else as is the presence of the monkey's tail. The tail like the appendix may be positively misleading. There may be a tail and no trees, and no flies. So what about the laws of thought? They too may turn out to be useless. Am I talking nonsense? I'm sorry. And now there is a second type of refutation. The refuter goes on: "You may be quite right when you say that scientific method is successful. The libraries and the stores are full of its success. But we also know that scientific method has never been justified from a purely intellectual point of view. Now I do not necessarily mean that we know what that justification is, so that once more we have knowledge which is not arrived at by pursuing scientific method. I mean rather that this request for a justification involves a question which cannot possibly be answered by any such method. If you tried to answer it in this way, your method would, of course, give rise to the same request. Hence, unless we admit that there are altogether reasonable questions, but no method at all for answering them, there must be at least one method other than scientific method for answering questions. And so it is not true that scientific method alone is successful."

And is the naturalist now quite perturbed by this? He is not. His reply might be as follows: "I think I understand you. You are assuming that a good argument must be tight like a syllogism or like a proof in geometry. That's what you mean by the phrase 'from a purely intellectual point of view.' So you are worried about the uniformity of nature, that every event in nature has a cause, that tomorrow the sun will rise, and tomorrow and tomorrow and petty-paced tomorrow. If you only knew things like this, then you would consider conclusions about fruit flies, about hydrogen, about vitamins, etc., as justified. But actually the conclusions of science are not presumed to be tight in any such sense. Now listen. It's all very simple. Yesterday and today we find uranium, under certain circumstances, behaving as though it were very angry. Tomorrow it is angry again. Next week it still behaves angrily. So we go on expecting that it will continue to do so and it does. If, however, in four weeks it should quite suddenly be mild and bleat like a little lamb, this would certainly surprise us. Who knows, however, a little angry uranium may be enough to put all the remainder fast asleep, so that even bombardment could scarcely make it yawn. Scientists after all are only human. They do no more than record the genesis of their expectations. So what we mean, in any case, by the success of scientific method is something so modest that it requires no such justification. It is justified, if you like, in the same way that your expectations generally are. If you expect to eat at six, and do eat at six, what more do you want ?"

This reply is, I take it, sufficient. Refutation has failed. If you claim for science that its arguments require some necessary propositions about the order of nature, then obviously the justification of these arguments will require them. But the naturalist's account of scientific method need not involve any such necessary propositions. So once again, that scientific method is successful does not presuppose that there is besides this some other method.

The statement of naturalism, then, involves no contradiction. Can we not, however, move him by confronting him with a discrepant instance? No. But let's see.

Mr. Dennes says that there are no other proofs. X, which vaunteth itself a proof, comes up and says: "Am I a proof ? They call me a proof." So the doctor touches a nerve, the nerve of the argument, and says: "No, you're not a proof." X replies: "But I wear a 'since' and a 'therefore.'" The doctor says: "And that's all. You've no nerve, so you're not a proof." He knows what he means by a "proof." Other candidates come up, each asking: "Am I a proof?" And the doctor separates them. Now up comes a philosophical proof. "Am I a proof?" The answer is: "No." But the proof now argues: "That's what you say, and I see what you mean, I am not the kind of proof you are talking about. My friends do not use the word 'proof' at all in the way in which you do. I'm a proof all right, but you just don't like me. So you won't call me proof. It's as though I asked you 'Am I a darling?' and you had another sweetheart, and so, of course, you said: 'No.' All the same I am a darling."

This, now, is a very difficult situation. Nobody is lying. Nobody is insincere. Does the doctor see something which the philosophical argument does not see? Maybe. He sees both types of argument, and sees that the one is good and the other is not. And what does the philosophical argument see? It sees both arguments and says that both are good. So once more if the argument asks: "And why do you say I am not a proof?" the doctor must say: "Because you are not like this." And that is all there is to it. And if this is all, then, clearly, the philosophical argument may feel thoroughly vindicated. If all the doctor means is that a philosophical argument is different from an empirical argument, the argument may respond: "Of course, that's true, but it has no bearing upon my status. After all I am another man's darling."

Suppose that he goes on to say: "No, I don't mean simply that you are not like this argument. What I mean is this: 'This type of argument is successful, and you are not.'" The response is: "And what is the criterion of success? If you mean that by means of me you can never predict the weather, well, of course, that's true. But if you ask those who love me whether I am successful, you'll get a different answer. I determine in some much subtler way the spiritual weather, and that not by prediction but by seasoning all time and eternity. Success! How would you like to be a thinking substance? "

So far as I can see there is nothing further for the doctor to do. He has judged the proof, but he can not now justify that judgment to the argument. There is no agreed-upon principle of adjudication. Further argument is futile. To each other they must continue to be queer and incomprehensible. It's as though the boys in our alley all sang out: "There's no girl but pretty Sally," and someone objected: "Oh, but that can't be!" This didn't quiet the boys. They said: "Oh, you forget that once Eve was the only girl. So it can be." And then along came Helen. "Tut! Tut!" said she, "Look at me. I'm a girl," to which the boys responded, "No, you 're not." And when she said "Prove it," they laughed, told her to go home and be quiet. "You're just a girl out of a store window, that's what you are."

So far I have shown that you can not refute this apparent main thesis of naturalism. You can not do it by detecting any contradiction, nor by adducing any evidence. And you can not do this because there is no thesis. When Mr. Krikorian speaks of this sentence as a basic belief, this is strictly a mistake. There is no belief at all. There is no belief because nothing has been said which could be false.

How, then, are these several sentences to be interpreted? I think that something like this may do. These sentences are strictly an enunciation of policy. In effect they say: "Let us be scientific." And negatively: "No more metaphysics." In a sober and quiet way a naturalist might say: "I've tried to do metaphysics. I can't grasp it. So I've turned to matters within my reach and grasp. I can do botany so much better. Or I can cut hair or polish teeth." If this were now what naturalists did, there would, I think, be no mystery at all. What causes the difficulty is that having said: "We are going to do science," they do not do science. If a man who sold groceries suddenly tired of selling groceries, exclaimed: "Enough! I am going to wash automobiles," and went out and washed automobiles, there would be no puzzle about this. But if he repeated his resolution frequently, put on his hat and coat and walked to the door, and then started for the other side of the store to sort potatoes, what then? Well, so it is.

Is, then, naturalism, in any case, a good policy? I think that the naturalists' defense is this. Metaphysics and science aim at the same thing. Metaphysics fails. Science succeeds. Accordingly, naturalism is nothing but adoption of the successful policy. Who, to get home, would deliberately take the way that won't get him there? And the naturalist might go on. Even though it were true that metaphysics and science do not aim at the same thing, it is clear that metaphysics fails in whatever it aims at, whereas science succeeds. How foolish, then, to engage in failure. So in either case naturalism is the best policy.

Once more, then, the dispute breaks out. Do metaphysics and science aim at the same thing? Is metaphysics a failure? Disregarding, for the moment, the obscurity of both these questions, I should, throwing my words about wildly, make this noise. Metaphysics and science do not aim at the same thing. And now I should first like to explain this. Metaphysics arises out of the fact that men come to have a variety of beliefs, beliefs about God, about how they should live, about the material world, about their own other-worldly destiny, etc. Some expurgated people escape nearly all such beliefs, but most people either believe or are uneasy. In any case, with respect to such beliefs, men have tried to do two things. They have first tried to prove that what they believe is true. In this respect there certainly is an analogy between science and metaphysics, and this may be what justifies the naturalist thesis. For if he now also holds that it is precisely in this respect that metaphysics has failed, namely, in its attempt to prove, then I, at least, am inclined to agree that he is right. For there is in metaphysics no criterion of proof. I take it that there is among metaphysicians no agreement upon even one purported proof. If, then, the purpose of metaphysics is to prove, metaphysics provides no intelligible account of what this could be.

This is not, however, the whole story. Men have also tried in their metaphysical adventures to weave together the contents of their beliefs into some coherent pattern, to keep more steadfastly before their minds the scene of their hopes, their aspirations, and their fears. In the past the aim to prove has clouded and vexed this endeavor by an ungainly and tortured vocabulary, but, even so, the present ruins in some way, no doubt, served. I expect that varieties of belief will continue, and that this motive to elaborate and to fashion a crazy or a sane quilt in which to wrap oneself against all temporary weathers will continue. And I do not mind. I shall continue to be entertained by it, and will in one instance even love it. Nevertheless, I think that metaphysics with this single aim will, when successful, be much more like poetry or a novel than like the metaphysics which, with divided and obscure aims, has puzzled and pleased men in the past.

Naturalism, as a policy, is then no mystery. It has seized upon a certain clear notion of proof, and in the light of this clear notion of proof it is easy to see from what defect metaphysics has come to be so sick. Metaphysics will walk again only when it surrenders pretension to proof, and, as humbly as the Apostles' Creed, begins its words with: I believe!

O.K. Bouwsma
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan. 1, 1948), pp. 12-22Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2019709>.

*All citations (not seen here) are from Naturalism and the Human Spirit [sic], ed. Y. H. Krikorian (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).

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[Sounder]

Excellent posts Seacher08, cuda and vanlose kid.

The general tenor of intellectualism, whether of a secular or sectarian variety, (and for many centuries of cultural conditioning), has been corrupted or limited by the assumption that reality by nature is split. This assumption, that cannot be proven, because the consequent cannot prove the antecedent, has created our situation where pictures of reality are used to merely support ones particular characterological type. So the idealists and the empiricists battle it out with the one side saying that knowledge is but the recognition of pre-existent form, and the other saying that knowledge is discovery of something new. Aristotle’s reconciliation attempt was to suggest that any answer is dependant on the question that is asked.

Our current (nearly universally shared) conceptual model with its built in ‘gap’ between the spiritual and material results in a situation where ‘order’ is claimed to be derived from a part of reality that is ‘made up’ to look like it represents all of reality.

These are mind games to assuage our fragile ego’s that have a hard time admitting that we are asking the wrong questions or that our answers barely touch the potentials of the infinite.

[Hammer of Los]

Before this thread gets locked too, I must contribute.

No-one here has much time for the idea of intelligent design, as a form of propaganda for the usxtianrightwing. So for goodness sake we don't need to argue about that one. Point taken, at any rate. Some may say the idea of intelligent design at its most basic might profitably be studied, or considered. That seems reasonable. I like to try and view as many sides of an issue as possible, as many highly varied perspectives that I can find. This will clearly extend my understanding more than taking sides prematurely, or putting my own education secondary to political or other aims. To see clearly, without prejudice or preference, all that one studies, is the aim for me.


I really rather loved the Wizard Prang piece;

When I was a young boy, I discovered with my brother that we had the ability to change our molecular density.

We liked to pretend we were "The Vision", a Marvel Comics superhero. He was an android created with human brain patterns by Hank Pym's evil brainchild, the ultimate robot, Ultron. He had the power to change his density at will, to become more solid and heavy, or lighter than air and as yielding as the mist. Anyway.

We would stand there, and one would will his density to increase to maximum, and then dare the other to try to lift his feet off the floor. My brother is two years older than I, and normally we could lift each other's feet off the ground with relative ease, especially my brother, being older and stronger.

When I had willed myself to maximum density, my brother could never raise my feet off the floor, no matter how hard he strained. We replicated this phenomenon often.

I haven't tried it in years.

But my goodness I've learnt a lot since then!

I read the Wiz's bio. I wonder where he lived in mid-Wales. I studied Philosophy at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in the '80's. I lived there for nearly ten years. I am also the most amateur of reluctant self taught hedge wizards. I don't do the occult. It scares me. I like niceness.

Oh, this bit;

The wizard thought of adding that space/time itself is an illusion, but thought better of it. That isn't schoolboy stuff. You have to go back to being a baby to perceive it. After that, education makes sure you get space/time systematically wrong. Knowledge is systematic ignorance.

Bingo!

On the subject of passing on of personal subtle wisdom, can it be done? Can a teacher do it for you? That is a very interesting question. We are all confused and in need of guidance and compassion, but ultimately we learn and suffer alone. I have very little in the way of pedagogic urge, personally. And that's a shame because a personality test I undertook years ago gave my most favourable profession as teacher/minister of religion. Maybe I can do a blog. I bet I can channel the wizard. Probably better hadn't though.

I'm not familiar especially with the work of Charles Fort;

We ought to take a Fortean approach, to be as sceptical of the offlicial position as the others. So we should equally take seriously the Vedic hypothesis your Cremo lad puts forward, and Darwinism, and Lamarckism, and Creationism, and adaptive evolution and guided evolution and so on.

In mere impressionism we take our stand. We have no positive tests nor standards. Realism in art: realism in science -- they pass away. In 1859, the thing to do was to accept Darwinism; now many biologists are revolting and trying to conceive of something else. The thing to do was to accept it in its day, but Darwinism of course was never proved:

The fittest survive.

What is meant by the fittest?

Not the strongest; not the cleverest --

Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.

There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.

"Fitness," then, is only another name for "survival." [26/27]

Darwinism:

That survivors survive.

Although Darwinism, then, seems positively baseless, or absolutely irrational, its massing of supposed data, and its attempted coherence approximate more highly to Organization and Consistency than did the inchoate speculations that preceded it.

I think I do adopt the Fortean approach. I commend it I think, insofar as I understand it.

And what refreshingly obvious and self evident sentiment about evolution! Quite right too, that there fellow's right. Or as Stephen stated more succinctly in summation;

Of course pretty much no-one disbelieves evolution per se: "that survivors survive", as Fort put it. It's a tautology.

While I am quoting Stephen in approving mode, here is some more refreshingly obvious sentiment;

What life means is another philosophical question. People keep mixing up science and philosophy. Even if we knew the physical details of the origin of life on earth (my money's on panspermia), if would have no deeper meaning in and of itself.

Before any chide me with accusations of being anti-science, I am not. What is anti-science is the dogmatism of the cult of scientism. When I was young I devoured orthodox scientific materials, being inspired by documentary series' such as Cosmos, Life on Earth, and Connections. I was interested in the study of "natural philosophy" or science since I was very young. I read the original Origin of Species when I was 12, I'm not kidding you. I had a lovely large illustrated version. I loved Darwin. He was the naturalist's hero.

In answer to AD's question Do you like Icke?! Well, do you??!!;

On the subject of Icke, is he a witting or unwitting disinfoteer to some degree? Quite likely. On the other hand, I happen to agree with him on certain things, and not on other things. I'm agnostic about the lizards. But the things I agree with, I agree strongly, and there aren't too many with the guts to say them. So I like Icke, I can't help it. Some of them are got to, some of them are plied with drugs and disinfo, some of them say some things they probably shouldn't and some of them go plum crazy. So what, they are human beings too, like everyone. I'm thinking Alex Jones, Icke, Ruppert, Shayler and so many others. If you publish and speak publicly and openly in defiance of the managed information flow, releasing the sorts of information typically suppressed by Power and its paranoid representatives, it can cause stresses and strains, possibly suicide or even suicide. I've never read his books, simply seen him on tv and video and on the 'net. I'm not an advocate.

And this is some guy being quoted by AD in support of some anti "new age," anti cult campaigner overwhelming bias thing he so clearly suffers from. Good luck with that prejudice and preference thing there though AD. You might want to seek a fuller understanding of the world and its people one day, so good luck with that too. Sorry to be mean. Here it is, with my comments in italics;

Before this polemic begins in earnest, perhaps it will be best to sketch out a definition of the concept that concerns us. By 'New Age' I mean to refer to any world-view that:

1. is decidedly postmodern, in that it picks and chooses from vastly older traditions those features it finds useful;
(I practice thoroughgoing agnosticism, or buddhism without beliefs or whatever you want to call it. A meta epistemology. In other words, I am not decidedly anything. I suppose I do read and consider materials from a great variety of sources, certainly all the worlds large "religions" and traditions both old, modern and in between. I have no idee fixee. You have to survey the thought to consider it at all, so I cannot reject anything out of hand, can I?)

2. is sloppily multiculturalist, in that it levels out and denies legitimate distinctions between the traditions from which it borrows;
(Again, I'm not sloppy about anything. Note the negative framing. Broadly speaking I suppose I am multiculturalist yes, seeking to take the kernel of truth from everything, and reject the husk of human misconception, ignorance and delusion. And how can I deny a legitimate distinction? I would certainly support legimate distinctions and not support illegitimate distinctions. Not that I know what any of that means, he is simply employing a form of question-begging.)

3. is individualistic, in that it takes spirituality to be a 'quest', and sees the ultimate end of this quest as self-fulfillment (however much it may borrow from traditions that emphasize self-overcoming or dissolution of the ego, even at times insisting that it shares this goal);
(That's just a confused muddle from someone with little to no understanding of what he is talking about.)

4. is nostalgic, in that it maintains that with the rise of modernity, humanity experienced the loss of a distinctly 'spiritual' disposition, in contrast with the rational disposition;
(No, I would not support that proposition in any way.)

5. in large part as a consequence of its suspicion of rationality, is also uncritical as a matter of principle;
(I am not suspicious of rationality. I seek to understand what rationality is, and what it means for a mind to be rational. And I am highly critical of everything.)

6. portrays itself as apolitical, or, better, as tapping into a reality so profound that any explanation of it in terms of the social, economic, and historical plights of its adherents can be safely dismissed as irrelevant.
(I neither recognise nor understand that position as stated above. The spiritual is the political and vice versa. All one world, interconnected.)

But my word, what a big fat immobile straw man! A breeze and his stuffing would come out. Is it easier to pillory some imaginary character than enter a dialogue with your fellows? This imaginary character described above exists nowhere but in the author's head. Let's leave him there, for he is clearly a fool, just as his author intended.

[American Dream]

In answer to AD's question Do you like Icke?! Well, do you??!!;

On the subject of Icke, is he a witting or unwitting disinfoteer to some degree? Quite likely. On the other hand, I happen to agree with him on certain things, and not on other things. I'm agnostic about the lizards. But the things I agree with, I agree strongly, and there aren't too many with the guts to say them. So I like Icke, I can't help it. Some of them are got to, some of them are plied with drugs and disinfo, some of them say some things they probably shouldn't and some of them go plum crazy. So what, they are human beings too, like everyone. I'm thinking Alex Jones, Icke, Ruppert, Shayler and so many others. If you publish and speak publicly and openly in defiance of the managed information flow, releasing the sorts of information typically suppressed by Power and its paranoid representatives, it can cause stresses and strains, possibly suicide or even suicide. I've never read his books, simply seen him on tv and video and on the 'net. I'm not an advocate.

And this is some guy being quoted by AD in support of some anti "new age," anti cult campaigner overwhelming bias thing he so clearly suffers from. Good luck with that prejudice and preference thing there though AD. You might want to seek a fuller understanding of the world and its people one day, so good luck with that too. Sorry to be mean. Here it is, with my comments in italics;

Before this polemic begins in earnest, perhaps it will be best to sketch out a definition of the concept that concerns us. By 'New Age' I mean to refer to any world-view that:

1. is decidedly postmodern, in that it picks and chooses from vastly older traditions those features it finds useful;
(I practice thoroughgoing agnosticism, or buddhism without beliefs or whatever you want to call it. A meta epistemology. In other words, I am not decidedly anything. I suppose I do read and consider materials from a great variety of sources, certainly all the worlds large "religions" and traditions both old, modern and in between. I have no idee fixee. You have to survey the thought to consider it at all, so I cannot reject anything out of hand, can I?)

2. is sloppily multiculturalist, in that it levels out and denies legitimate distinctions between the traditions from which it borrows;
(Again, I'm not sloppy about anything. Note the negative framing. Broadly speaking I suppose I am multiculturalist yes, seeking to take the kernel of truth from everything, and reject the husk of human misconception, ignorance and delusion. And how can I deny a legitimate distinction? I would certainly support legimate distinctions and not support illegitimate distinctions. Not that I know what any of that means, he is simply employing a form of question-begging.)

3. is individualistic, in that it takes spirituality to be a 'quest', and sees the ultimate end of this quest as self-fulfillment (however much it may borrow from traditions that emphasize self-overcoming or dissolution of the ego, even at times insisting that it shares this goal);
(That's just a confused muddle from someone with little to no understanding of what he is talking about.)

4. is nostalgic, in that it maintains that with the rise of modernity, humanity experienced the loss of a distinctly 'spiritual' disposition, in contrast with the rational disposition;
(No, I would not support that proposition in any way.)

5. in large part as a consequence of its suspicion of rationality, is also uncritical as a matter of principle;
(I am not suspicious of rationality. I seek to understand what rationality is, and what it means for a mind to be rational. And I am highly critical of everything.)

6. portrays itself as apolitical, or, better, as tapping into a reality so profound that any explanation of it in terms of the social, economic, and historical plights of its adherents can be safely dismissed as irrelevant.
(I neither recognise nor understand that position as stated above. The spiritual is the political and vice versa. All one world, interconnected.)

But my word, what a big fat immobile straw man! A breeze and his stuffing would come out. Is it easier to pillory some imaginary character than enter a dialogue with your fellows? This imaginary character described above exists nowhere but in the author's head. Let's leave him there, for he is clearly a fool, just as his author intended.

A few quick comments:

Firstly, I should say that I care about the disinformation because I care very much about the good information- our planet is hanging by a thread and telling a more real story of what is happening is an intensely powerful act that just might make the difference between survival and extinction.

As to thinking that Icke, Jones, Shayler and others having some good information- well, of course they do!

I need barely offer up the spectre of a Kool Aid that is, say, 70% pure at least...



If you swallow it, you do so at your own peril.


As to the six features of "New Age" as described above, I think the author is describing aspects of a spiritual culture that might weaken our critical faculties in regards to..."Intelligent Design", anti-Semitism, crypto-Fascism, shape-shifting reptilians, messiahs, money grubbing/mind stealing cults et cetera, et cetera...

It's a very real problem, though anyone who would suggest that therefore any and all new or unorthodox forms of spiritual expression must therefore be bogus, is themselves perpetuating the worst sort of logical fallacy...





So, sure it's fine to play around with all sorts of fantastic and unproven ideas and even dive deep into those dark waters, but reason and (gasp!) the Scientific Method will only prove all the more essential if we do...

[vanlose kid]

AD, since the one member of the board who, due to the current circumstances, it was possible for you to hound incessantly with the accusation of being a supporter of the "Reptilian theory" has had her account suspended (pat yourself on the back there, you killed the witch, if only for a week, excellent job), and since hounding and outing "Reptilian theory" believers is your only interest here, and since no one else here, not even those who came to conspiracy theory by way of Icke, not even slimmouse, really believes in "Reptilian theory", and since you have nothing else to say other than warning of the perils in believing in "Reptilian theory", and since you otherwise contribute nothing to or have any interest in the OP (other than as an opportunity for you to engage in your infantilizing crusade), and on the assumption that there is some common decency and grace left in you, would you mind leaving this thread or starting a thread that exclusively discusses your pet crusading cause? notice that i'm not invoking any authority here, i am (despite the fact that i think the probability is near zero) asking you to cease and desist, for just one week, okay? your litany is a bore and your crusade is nothing but mean spirited. please, kindly, leave.

ps: it would be great, if you should decide to leave out of the kindness your heart, that you should refuse to reply to this or merely refrain from doing so, as it would add nothing. don't let the door hit you on the way out. thanks.

*