The Science Delusion, a talk banned by TED

[pErvinalia]

Eff seems to me to be saying that what is experienced reality IS ultimate reality. I.e. naive realism, physicalism or one of the other bazillion "isms". That's a positive assertion that will be absolutely impossible to back up, in my understanding of stuffisms.

[Hermit]

Eff seems to me to be saying that what is experienced reality IS ultimate reality.

Not "seems to". He really is. Maybe it's so obviously true to him that it never occurred to him that perhaps he should have explained to us why he thinks this is so. Maybe he will once he calms down and if he wants to return to this thread.

[pErvinalia]

I just want someone to tell me what additional information metaphysics is giving me about ultimate reality over any other logical thought process. And particularly over any other logical thought process whose assumptions are based on empirical observations. I can't believe that I've asked this question so many times in this thread and no detailed answer has followed. This either shows one of two things: 1. Those arguing that it does tell us something about ultimate reality have decided that it's an infuriating topic that isn't worth spending time on, or 2: Those arguing that is does tell us something about ultimate reality don't really understand the topic well enough to explain it.

Well, there could be a 3, as well. 3. I'm too thick to get it..

[pErvinalia]

Damnit! It's middle of the night and no metaphysicians are up. This should be their time, operating outside the normal hours of society. I've got to get to bed and then spend all day tomorrow packing up my shit for the move. Of course, I'll have to argue about metaphysics on the internet. That's a given..

[Hermit]

Not quite everybody lives in our timezone. Anyway, "enjoy" your move. I'm watching France beat Nigeria now. Go the frogs.

[Tero]

Order some pizza delivered by an epistemologist. Give him a nice tip.

[Calilasseia]

You say that almost like being reminded of Linus Pauling is a good thing.

Not really so bad, though. He did a lot of good shit, followed up by some really tinfoil-hat shit. As far as I can tell, the good shit he did has had more influence than the batshit Vit. C shit.

I think his talk was binned, and rightfully so, because he maintained that telepathy is real and the mind stretches out from the body to the extent that kind of touches the stars, and backed those claims up with no more than typical new age hand waving. His comments on the constancy of the speed of light and the force of gravity were humorously delivered and thought provoking, though. Had Skeldrake expanded on that sort of instead of taking off into fairy land, the TED board would either have decided to not bin the talk or finished up with tremendous amounts of egg on face. By going off the deep end he has also provided a convenient pretext for the people he criticised not to reply on those matters.

I honestly wonder how much of that he genuinely believes. I suspect that he may be using it rhetorically, strategicallly merely to rattle some cages. Again, I've only just stumbled upon him today, so I don't have a lot of information to go on yet. I agree that cages need to be rattled from time to time, but not that just any old off-the-wall bullshit should be proposed in the effort.

For example, science (if I may be forgiven for the anthropomorphization) does presume a number of things that it can't prove, such as the assumption that the physical laws we've ascertained apply pervasively throughout the entire universe.

Actually, this is wrong. If the physical laws applicable here in our local region, don't apply in distant regions, then this will have observational consequences that can be searched for. The simple fact remains, that no observation consistent with physical laws varying across time and space has ever been made. indeed, I have several scientific papers in my collection, in which physicists explicitly test this principle to see if it holds.

While I understand the utility of such an assumption, I do have to admit that it is, strictly speaking, unproven.

Actually, it is evidentially supported. From such sources as supernova observations. See, for example, isotope compositions of the SN1987A supernova remnant.

However, that doesn't entail "pixies in the garden" sort of claims. If he were wise, he'd rein that sort of thing in a bit. There's a philosopher of science whose name escapes me at the moment who does a much better version of the Emperor's New Clothes thing wrt scientific assumptions, but without going over the edge into all that paranormal crap. I will search for his name and get back to you on it.

If you're thinking of Thomas Kuhn, he's another one with an agenda. An agenda that whilst less batshit insane than Sheldrake's, is more insidious.

Not quite. He was legit about the need for scientists to confront the degrees of uncertainty in their work; his train didn't leave the tracks until he started positing things about telepathy and the like, imo.

Apparently Sheldrake hasn't heard of error bars.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

That's just nonsense of the highest Dawkinian order though. There are many, many things which are untestable and unprovable by science but are nonetheless real things that have an effect on the world, the assumptions and axioms of science itself being a major example.

Not nonsense at all! If anything affects the world, in any way, its very effects are a test! A test does not have to be quantifiable. The assumptions and axioms of science can be shown to exist simply because they are written down in books about science and agreed to by most scientists that you question. Not to mention their effects on the methodology of science and upon what is agreed to be "good" and "bad" science by other scientists. Feel free to find a better example.

A popular example is that of a possible interventionist god. Imagine a god that exists who manipulates the world through naturalistic means, so (for example) at some point in our history he steps in with a naturalistic event so that humans appear. This intervention would be entirely untestable and unprovable (because god is a supernatural entity and science ignores the supernatural), and yet it would have a massive effect on the world.

But such an event is testable. There is a continuity of fossil records and DNA evidence that shows a gradual progression from ape to man all of which agree with the predictions made by natural selection before such evidence was available. Such a "god act" as you describe would either stand out as a significant, noticeable, unexplainable jump, or jumps, in development, in which case it is proven, or is so trivial as to be utterly unnecessary to explain the evolution of Homo sapiens and, as such, reduces to mere speculation. What point is a god that does what would have happened anyway?

But speculation about past and future states is one of the fundamental assumptions of science. That's the point.

You seem to have overlooked the last part of my statement here: "unless a methodology of investigating them can be devised." If a test can be devised to examine the speed of light a billion years ago, or the smell of gamma rays, or the tastes in soft furnishings of quarks, then they can be examined scientifically, if not, then they cannot. This flows directly from those axioms of science that you mention (and is, incidentally, another proof of their existence.)

But we accept uniformitarianism without such measurements.

We take uniformitarianism as the null hypothesis, which is not the same thing.

Yes, that's Sheldrake's point. They aren't scientific claims. They still need to be evidence-based and supported in some way though, even when science itself is making these non-scientific claims.

...

Again, sort of agreed in that they aren't scientific questions. Nobody is claiming they are though. They are the philosophical assumptions that science needs to accept in order to work, and sometimes they are just popular philosophical assumptions that scientists adopt that Sheldrake is questioning, but the point is that they still need to be justified in some way.

Why do they need to be justified? Or rather, why do they need to be justified in order to function? Surely, the proven usefulness of the scientific methodology is its justification.

They don't need to be justified as there's nothing inherently problematic with accepting irrational positions based on faith but generally people aren't happy about doing that.

I would accept your last statement with a small caveat: there's nothing inherently problematic with accepting irrational positions based on faith until you start flying planes full of people into skyscrapers, mutilating the genitals of infants, executing apostates, dictating what people can and cannot do with their genitalia, etc.

The usefulness of the scientific method can't be used to justify the scientific method, that's circular reasoning.

No it is not. It may well be fallacious in some other manner but it is not circular reasoning. Using the scientific method to justify the scientific method would be circular. Using its usefulness to humanity to justify it is not.

[JimC]

Mr.Samsa wrote:

...suggesting that having a scientific explanation that doesn't require god is evidence that god doesn't exist or is less likely to exist...

For many centuries, theists used a variety of arguments as evidence for the existence of god. A great deal of them involved phenomena that had no explanation in pre-scientific times other than the supernatural. The classic example, of course, is the way that living things are so beautifully adapted to their environment.

Steadily, over the years, straight-forward scientific explanations have replaced every single one of those bolstering arguments for the existence of god. It is abundantly clear that, other than personal faith, there remains no shred of evidence for the existence of a supernatural being, and a large array of evidence that the development of religions is a common cultural phenomenon, one that involves a mythology that evolves to fulfil a social role.

It does not require a formal disproof of the existence of a supernatural being to simply realise that there is no need whatsoever for the god hypothesis...

[Mr.Samsa]

As for my negativity about metaphysics, I see no benefits in it at all. The quackery is only useful for hitting the plebs over the head with. That's why it is particularly popular with religious leaders, demagogues and anyone else out to control and exploit the masses. For that reason I mentioned fraud a couple of times, and I thought I was understating the harmfulness with that word.

But surely the fact that it can be misused doesn't mean it's a flawed method in itself? Some people are interested in asking questions about reality, I don't see how that's a bad thing.

A method for what? A method for finding something out about "things in themselves"? Give me an example about a particular "thing in itself", how "metaphysical enquiry" can be applied to it and what, if anything useful at all might result from that. Be sure not to slip in anything empirical. We agree that we can't use that on "things in themselves", don't we? You can't do that, unless of course you don't think the gap between phenomena and noumena is not all that unbridgeable after all. If you want to have a go at it, I would like you to tackle "Badness". Just badness. Apply the metaphysical method to it and show me the benefit that can be squeezed out as a result.

Metaphysics is also the field that justifies the claim that we cannot know anything about the things in themselves and that the gap between phenomena and noumena is unbridgeable. If you are to make those claims then you implicitly accept the need for metaphysics, unless you don't think you need rational justification for holding that position.

Thanks. That clears it up. Having slept for only three hours between tonight and early yesterday morning, I'm too tired to review your earlier posts in order to quote the bits that gave me the impression that you were fudging the boundaries between science (empiricism) and metaphysics.

Fuck. Looks like you have after all.

Looks like I have what? I assume you're saying that I haven't fudged the boundaries of science and metaphysics as you linked to a post of mine that had nothing to do with science.

Sure, but maybe so can Harry Potter. If we have no reason to think it's an accurate description of reality then I think it's doing a shit job of explaining it.

That doesn't make sense. How can we judge something that doesn't make an attempt at describing reality as being shit at attempting to describe reality?

If it gives no justification or reason to believe that it's giving an accurate description of reality then it's doing a shit job at it. The point being that even if it somehow stumbles upon an accurate claim about the real world, we have as much trust in its accuracy as we do with the claim that Harry Potter describes the real world. If a description of reality is no more reliable than a children's book then how can we say it's doing a good job of describing that reality?

So my point still stands. And you know this - science doesn't attempt to explain reality.

I'm not sure how your point still stands, as my refutation still stands.

But the real question is: what can it tell us? As far as I can tell, it doesn't tell us anything other than whether an argument is logically sound or shit.

I hope you're taking the piss here. Metaphysics is about the conclusions we must logically infer from physics and the other sciences. Physicists do metaphysics when they do cosmology and ontology. Wtf.

But the claim is that it tells us something about reality (or perhaps 'claims about reality'). I want to know what this is? I want to know what gives metaphysics special status among regular run of the mill logic. What's it telling me that I couldn't already work out with logic? And what does "reality" have to do with any of it?

It doesn't have a "special status", it's just logic applied to particular questions and we call this "metaphysics". It makes no sense to ask what it's telling you that you couldn't work out with logic because it is the field that works stuff out using logic. It has to do with reality because it's answering questions about reality.

As I asked Samsa earlier, give me an example of metaphysics telling me something about the ultimate reality of the world. He gave me parsimony and pragmatism, but they say nothing about "reality" at all. He gave me another one, which I haven't looked at yet, but given the first two examples, I'm not holding out hope for the last one.

No, you asked for examples of metaphysical evidence and I gave you those justifications for various metaphysical positions. I then explained to you that they are evidences used to support claims about reality.

As I asked you before and I don't think you answered, do you really think that the idea of a disembodied soul controlling our bodies is just as likely as the processes of our brain controlling our behavior? Remember that you can't answer that either way without doing metaphysics, so you either have to conclude that you can't decide between the two or conclude that metaphysics tells us something.

I really don't follow. Our experiences tell us nothing about metaphysical reality. All they tell us about is our experienced (i.e. empirical) reality.

There.is.no.separate.fucking."metaphysical reality".as.opposed.to.the.reality.of.experience. Goddammit.

Rev is kinda right here in that metaphysics is more than just what we experience. I think what you're saying is that we all come up with our interpretation of what our observations mean in regards to reality, usually in a naive realist way where we assume that the bus coming towards us is real and so we move out of the way. The important bit is just that there is a difference between what we observe (metaphysically-neutral) and our interpretation of what those observations mean (metaphysics).

I just want someone to tell me what additional information metaphysics is giving me about ultimate reality over any other logical thought process. And particularly over any other logical thought process whose assumptions are based on empirical observations. I can't believe that I've asked this question so many times in this thread and no detailed answer has followed. This either shows one of two things: 1. Those arguing that it does tell us something about ultimate reality have decided that it's an infuriating topic that isn't worth spending time on, or 2: Those arguing that is does tell us something about ultimate reality don't really understand the topic well enough to explain it.

Well, there could be a 3, as well. 3. I'm too thick to get it..

If you want answers to those questions then just check back to my posts where I responded. You so far haven't replied to those bits (and/or misunderstood them so badly that you probably need to read them, e.g. asking for metaphysical evidence and then thinking that that is an example of metaphysical reality).

A popular example is that of a possible interventionist god. Imagine a god that exists who manipulates the world through naturalistic means, so (for example) at some point in our history he steps in with a naturalistic event so that humans appear. This intervention would be entirely untestable and unprovable (because god is a supernatural entity and science ignores the supernatural), and yet it would have a massive effect on the world.

But such an event is testable. There is a continuity of fossil records and DNA evidence that shows a gradual progression from ape to man all of which agree with the predictions made by natural selection before such evidence was available. Such a "god act" as you describe would either stand out as a significant, noticeable, unexplainable jump, or jumps, in development, in which case it is proven, or is so trivial as to be utterly unnecessary to explain the evolution of Homo sapiens and, as such, reduces to mere speculation. What point is a god that does what would have happened anyway?

Okay then, tell me how you would test the claim that the entirely natural processes that led up to the development of man were not caused by a god? Remember that the natural processes in a godless world and the hypothetical world are identical as he's making changing using natural processes, not by major shifts in nature.

But we accept uniformitarianism without such measurements.

We take uniformitarianism as the null hypothesis, which is not the same thing.

..It's not an hypothesis at all, null or otherwise.

They don't need to be justified as there's nothing inherently problematic with accepting irrational positions based on faith but generally people aren't happy about doing that.

I would accept your last statement with a small caveat: there's nothing inherently problematic with accepting irrational positions based on faith until you start flying planes full of people into skyscrapers, mutilating the genitals of infants, executing apostates, dictating what people can and cannot do with their genitalia, etc.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it either but I think it leads to an intellectually weak and vacuous position though.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

...suggesting that having a scientific explanation that doesn't require god is evidence that god doesn't exist or is less likely to exist...

For many centuries, theists used a variety of arguments as evidence for the existence of god. A great deal of them involved phenomena that had no explanation in pre-scientific times other than the supernatural. The classic example, of course, is the way that living things are so beautifully adapted to their environment.

Steadily, over the years, straight-forward scientific explanations have replaced every single one of those bolstering arguments for the existence of god. It is abundantly clear that, other than personal faith, there remains no shred of evidence for the existence of a supernatural being, and a large array of evidence that the development of religions is a common cultural phenomenon, one that involves a mythology that evolves to fulfil a social role.

It does not require a formal disproof of the existence of a supernatural being to simply realise that there is no need whatsoever for the god hypothesis...

None of that at all brings into doubt the idea of god. If you're trying to say that science has no need for a "god hypothesis" then no shit, but beyond that the correlation is meaningless.

[JimC]

Mr.Samsa wrote:

JimC wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

...suggesting that having a scientific explanation that doesn't require god is evidence that god doesn't exist or is less likely to exist...

For many centuries, theists used a variety of arguments as evidence for the existence of god. A great deal of them involved phenomena that had no explanation in pre-scientific times other than the supernatural. The classic example, of course, is the way that living things are so beautifully adapted to their environment.

Steadily, over the years, straight-forward scientific explanations have replaced every single one of those bolstering arguments for the existence of god. It is abundantly clear that, other than personal faith, there remains no shred of evidence for the existence of a supernatural being, and a large array of evidence that the development of religions is a common cultural phenomenon, one that involves a mythology that evolves to fulfil a social role.

It does not require a formal disproof of the existence of a supernatural being to simply realise that there is no need whatsoever for the god hypothesis...

None of that at all brings into doubt the idea of god. If you're trying to say that science has no need for a "god hypothesis" then no shit, but beyond that the correlation is meaningless.

Again, you have missed the point. This goes way beyond the rather obvious point of science not requiring the hypothesis, to society as a whole not needing the god hypothesis. Before science provided rational explanations for puzzling phenomena, the god hypothesis was relevant to all humanity. Religions relied heavily on the explanatory power of the supernatural. Simply, with that gone, why would anybody have any reason other than emotional attachment from childhood to suppose a god of any sort, let alone the traditional crowd of warped and sociopathic sky daddies?

It may not formally disprove the existence of god (as I've agreed all along), but it sure as hell "brings into doubt the idea of god". You seem to be dogmatically focused on the principle that science can have nothing whatsoever to say about a religious view of life. Arrant nonsense, of course; the explanatory value of science has vastly reduced the degree to which religion of any sort has universal significance.

[Tero]

Speed of light varies --> Telepathy!

[pErvinalia]

Sure, but maybe so can Harry Potter. If we have no reason to think it's an accurate description of reality then I think it's doing a shit job of explaining it.

That doesn't make sense. How can we judge something that doesn't make an attempt at describing reality as being shit at attempting to describe reality?

If it gives no justification or reason to believe that it's giving an accurate description of reality then it's doing a shit job at it. The point being that even if it somehow stumbles upon an accurate claim about the real world, we have as much trust in its accuracy as we do with the claim that Harry Potter describes the real world. If a description of reality is no more reliable than a children's book then how can we say it's doing a good job of describing that reality?

That still doesn't make sense. No one in this thread has said that science is describing reality (well, actually, FBM has, I think; but certainly not myself, Jim, Hermit or XC).

So my point still stands. And you know this - science doesn't attempt to explain reality.

I'm not sure how your point still stands, as my refutation still stands.

What refutation? Are you claiming that science attempts to explain reality?? If so, that's bonkers.

But the real question is: what can it tell us? As far as I can tell, it doesn't tell us anything other than whether an argument is logically sound or shit.

I hope you're taking the piss here. Metaphysics is about the conclusions we must logically infer from physics and the other sciences. Physicists do metaphysics when they do cosmology and ontology. Wtf.

But the claim is that it tells us something about reality (or perhaps 'claims about reality'). I want to know what this is? I want to know what gives metaphysics special status among regular run of the mill logic. What's it telling me that I couldn't already work out with logic? And what does "reality" have to do with any of it?

It doesn't have a "special status", it's just logic applied to particular questions and we call this "metaphysics". It makes no sense to ask what it's telling you that you couldn't work out with logic because it is the field that works stuff out using logic. It has to do with reality because it's answering questions about reality.

So yet again, what is it telling us?

As I asked Samsa earlier, give me an example of metaphysics telling me something about the ultimate reality of the world. He gave me parsimony and pragmatism, but they say nothing about "reality" at all. He gave me another one, which I haven't looked at yet, but given the first two examples, I'm not holding out hope for the last one.

No, you asked for examples of metaphysical evidence and I gave you those justifications for various metaphysical positions. I then explained to you that they are evidences used to support claims about reality.

No you didn't. You explained nothing at all about "reality". You made an assertion and when asked to explain your working you ignore it. THAT's what I want to know about? Why won't you guys answer this question?? What does parsimony or pragmatism or any other metaphysical principle tell us about reality? Parsimony and pragmatism have nothing to do with reality. They are philosophical methods to apply within the field of science. And since science doesn't care about reality, neither do parsimony and pragmatism.

As I asked you before and I don't think you answered, do you really think that the idea of a disembodied soul controlling our bodies is just as likely as the processes of our brain controlling our behavior? Remember that you can't answer that either way without doing metaphysics, so you either have to conclude that you can't decide between the two or conclude that metaphysics tells us something.

I've already answered this. I couldn't be bothered re-writing my reply. I'll go and find it and edit in a link here.

Fuck, I can't find it. It must be in the other thread. You'll probably have replied to it there. But in short, without empiricism I have no way of forming an opinion of which is more likely than the other. They are equally as likely or unlikely. Score 1 for empiricism, 0 for metaphysics!

I really don't follow. Our experiences tell us nothing about metaphysical reality. All they tell us about is our experienced (i.e. empirical) reality.

There.is.no.separate.fucking."metaphysical reality".as.opposed.to.the.reality.of.experience. Goddammit.

Rev is kinda right here in that metaphysics is more than just what we experience. I think what you're saying is that we all come up with our interpretation of what our observations mean in regards to reality, usually in a naive realist way where we assume that the bus coming towards us is real and so we move out of the way. The important bit is just that there is a difference between what we observe (metaphysically-neutral) and our interpretation of what those observations mean (metaphysics).

This is the bit that so many people just don't get. And I really think it must come down to a totally different way of thinking between us and them. People just seriously can't get this point. So they have absolutely no idea what we are talking about, and we (well, at least I) have absolutely no understanding of how someone can't see this point.

I just want someone to tell me what additional information metaphysics is giving me about ultimate reality over any other logical thought process. And particularly over any other logical thought process whose assumptions are based on empirical observations. I can't believe that I've asked this question so many times in this thread and no detailed answer has followed. This either shows one of two things: 1. Those arguing that it does tell us something about ultimate reality have decided that it's an infuriating topic that isn't worth spending time on, or 2: Those arguing that is does tell us something about ultimate reality don't really understand the topic well enough to explain it.

Well, there could be a 3, as well. 3. I'm too thick to get it..

If you want answers to those questions then just check back to my posts where I responded. You so far haven't replied to those bits (and/or misunderstood them so badly that you probably need to read them, e.g. asking for metaphysical evidence and then thinking that that is an example of metaphysical reality).

No, that's not good enough. I've rebutted your answers. You need to try harder to answer the question asked, or accept that you are not explaining it well enough. I'm no philosopher, but I am smart enough to understand most things if they are explained using reason and logic. You need to re-explain your points. They aren't making sense. You are giving a lot of one line answers, which is why I speculated that criteria 1 above might be an explanation for what is going on here. But equally, 2 could be an explanation. Try and expand on your answers and "show your working". Just blurting out assertions isn't explaining anything.

And regards your last bit, I wanted to see some metaphysical evidence that told us something about metaphysical reality.

[pErvinalia]

As far as I can tell, Metaphysics is just a branch of logical enquiry that deals with logical questions about reality. But since we have no way of knowing what reality is, then it is basically very limited in what it can tell us. So in that case, I would see "metaphysical evidence" as simply a statement of whether a logical proposition was valid or not (i.e. just like the rest of logic). It can't tell us anything at all about "reality". What it can tell us is limited by it's premises and assumptions. How does that sound?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

A popular example is that of a possible interventionist god. Imagine a god that exists who manipulates the world through naturalistic means, so (for example) at some point in our history he steps in with a naturalistic event so that humans appear. This intervention would be entirely untestable and unprovable (because god is a supernatural entity and science ignores the supernatural), and yet it would have a massive effect on the world.

But such an event is testable. There is a continuity of fossil records and DNA evidence that shows a gradual progression from ape to man all of which agree with the predictions made by natural selection before such evidence was available. Such a "god act" as you describe would either stand out as a significant, noticeable, unexplainable jump, or jumps, in development, in which case it is proven, or is so trivial as to be utterly unnecessary to explain the evolution of Homo sapiens and, as such, reduces to mere speculation. What point is a god that does what would have happened anyway?

Okay then, tell me how you would test the claim that the entirely natural processes that led up to the development of man were not caused by a god? Remember that the natural processes in a godless world and the hypothetical world are identical as he's making changing using natural processes, not by major shifts in nature.

Why would I need to test for such a thing? There are viable, scientific theories that explain the processes in minute detail and agree with all available facts. There is no need to prove conjectures that add nothing to that explanations. There could be fairies, invisible, pink unicorns, gods, demons and honest lawyers in the world but we have a perfectly good model that suits for all practical purposes without having to allow for them.

Should facts arise that cannot be explained by the current thinking, then alternatives and refinements need to be found. One rabbit fossil in Precambrian strata...

But we accept uniformitarianism without such measurements.

We take uniformitarianism as the null hypothesis, which is not the same thing.

..It's not an hypothesis at all, null or otherwise.

It's the default position. There is no evidence that things are otherwise. Again, the simplest explanation suffices unless it is proven faulty.

They don't need to be justified as there's nothing inherently problematic with accepting irrational positions based on faith but generally people aren't happy about doing that.

I would accept your last statement with a small caveat: there's nothing inherently problematic with accepting irrational positions based on faith until you start flying planes full of people into skyscrapers, mutilating the genitals of infants, executing apostates, dictating what people can and cannot do with their genitalia, etc.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it either but I think it leads to an intellectually weak and vacuous position though.

Oh yes.