The 5 Degrees of Scientism

May 24, 2016    By: Jeff G @ 1:39 pm   Category: Apologetics,Bloggernacle,orthodox,Truth

“Scientism” is a slippery category, thus making it ideally suited for charges and accusations that are difficult to refute. For those who are more familiar with my views, it should come as no surprise that I accuse almost all intellectuals within the Bloggernacle of advocating “scientism”, a label which they strongly – and with some reason – reject.  Their idea of “scientism” is a much more localized and extreme group of people from which most such intellectuals seek to distance themselves.  As such, these people are strong advocates of “epistemological humility” – as defined by the distinction that they wish to emphasize between themselves and those more extreme advocates of scientism. By disentangling the 5 different levels of legitimacy that we might attribute to science I wish to clarify why I stand by my accusing so many others of scientism and why I am so dismissive of their pretensions to “epistemic humility”.

To anticipate a bit, the 5 levels are as follows:

  1. Science is king and you are its subjects.
  2. You are king and science is your only adviser.
  3. You are king and science is your most important adviser, above all others.
  4. You are king and science is one among many advisers.
  5. You are king and science is your subject.

  1. Science is king and you are its subject – you must always hearken to science. Within this view, our own wishes and desires have no claim upon science since it unilaterally dictates truths and values to us, never the other way around. This position is so extreme that it is difficult to find anybody who truly fits the bill – although Henri de Saint-Simon, August Comte (the two inventors of modern sociology) and Vladimir Lenin are all close enough for our purposes. Even the post-cold-war advocates who we usually associate with the name of “scientism” condemn this group for giving science far too much authority and say-so in how we run our lives.
  2. You are king and science is your only adviser – you mustn’t hearken to any others. These are the largely post-cold-war advocates of scientism – most strongly associated with the post 9/11, New Atheist movement – who think that science and only science can tell us anything concerning truth. These people think that religion is both morally bankrupt and potentially dangerous.  While these people do not think that science should necessarily dictate every aspect of our lives, they are utterly dismissive of any non-scientific challengers. When intellectuals within and without the Bloggernacle speak of “epistemic humility” as an antidote to “scientism”, this is what they are objecting to.
  3. You are king and science is your most important adviser, above all others – you can hearken to others, unless science says otherwise. These are intellectuals allow for non-scientific sources and traditions of truth and values… so long as they do not contradict those of science. When such a contradiction between science and religion does arise, such intellectual strenuously seek to dissolve it, for if we must decide which one has the “real” truth, the answer is obviously science. To take a stand against well-supported science would be “irrational” and it is this assumption that largely motivates apologetics. These people who are so dogmatic with respect to those below, while at the same time claiming to be so humble with respect those those above, are who I accuse of “scientism”.
  4. You are king and science is one among many, relatively equal advisers – you can hearken to others and they will sometimes trump science. This is the pluralistic society imagined by Paul Feyerabend wherein science is one among many traditions and religions who inform the truths and values we will endorse and defend as a community. Whether we, as a society, obey or even listen to well-established science will depend upon what these other traditions have to say.  While it is certainly nice if science agrees with any or all of these competing traditions, any irreconcilable differences are not all that troublesome.  Since science and religion are equals, sometimes the former will trump the latter and sometimes the reverse will be the case. This is basically what I think is a decent model for public discourse for our “secular” society as a whole.
  5. You are king and science is your subject – hearken to it only if you want to. Within this view, science has no moral claim upon us whatsoever in that we can listen to or dismiss it as we see fit with no more need to justify this decision than when I do not buy a particular make of car.  It is difficult to see why any of these people would ever bother defending any belief “scientifically” (a la apologetics) since science does not have any authority whereby it could offer support for or against anything else. This is how I think Mormons should think of science within their private lives – as an optional tool that might be useful for various jobs or a fun little hobby of sorts, but nothing that could ever have any kind of claim over us.

While none of this amounts to an argument for or against any of these positions, I hope it does articulate and clarify the reasons why, when I accuse a person of being (3), their attempts at setting themselves apart from (2) do not really further the discussion.

Perhaps people could sound-off in the comments with a) which role they think science should play, b) which role they think science actually does play and c) which of these roles they dismiss as “scientism”.

 

 

73 Comments

  1. Hmm. Am I the person advocating epistemic humility? I’m trying to think of someone else using that term. (LOL)

    I don’t use it just in opposition to New Atheists types or even naturalistic critics of Mormonism. Rather I use it for people who often take press presentations of science without understanding how strong the actual studies are. Often people don’t distinguish between pretty exploratory studies lacking any confirmation and with extremely weak evidence with heavily tested theories. A little humility goes a long ways there.

    While I’d probably come closest (by my own reckoning) to your (3) I’d quibble a bit. Again I think one has to look at the arguments. There’s no “Science” that makes pronouncements. Some things are very well established while most things are actually fairly weak. So I think you’re question begging when you raise the issue of contradictions with Science.

    I certainly oppose (4) which was my sense of your view. But I’m surprised you actually advocate (5) which is pretty indefensible as I see it. Of course to a person espousing (5) the very idea of a defense is non-sensical I’d take it.

    Comment by Clark — May 24, 2016 @ 2:35 pm

  2. Hahaha. You were only one of the people that I had in mind who use that term. The main person was in a private, email exchange, so I’ll keep his name to myself unless he says otherwise.

    I find your use of the term somewhat unusual here. By your definition, the New Atheists would not be advocates of scientism – and this just strikes me as wrong.

    “Some things are very well established while most things are actually fairly weak. So I think you’re question begging when you raise the issue of contradictions with Science.”

    As long as we are measuring how well something is or is not established by the standards of science, I don’t think I’m begging the question at all. (How much of a relief is it to find somebody who knows what that phrase actually means?)

    “Of course to a person espousing (5) the very idea of a defense is non-sensical I’d take it.”

    If one is talking about a *scientific* defense, then yes, it’s pretty meaningless. Just because (5) does not see give science a claim over his/her life, however, doesn’t mean that they do not recognize the claims of any other traditions over them.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 24, 2016 @ 3:02 pm

  3. Why not go the whole hog:
    6. I am king and science is my henchman to rule other people.

    Comment by Martin James — May 24, 2016 @ 4:16 pm

  4. Because the uses to which science is put is an entirely different issue altogether. This post is about the flow of moral obligations between ourselves and well-supported science.

    I will grant, however, that moral objections to the military industrial complex was a major inspiration for the post-modern objections to (2) and (3)… The same way that 9/11 was a major inspiration for the New Atheists’ objections to (4) and (5).

    Comment by Jeff G — May 24, 2016 @ 4:31 pm

  5. Jeff I find the New Atheists are frequently philosophically naive. While they do fall into scientism I don’t think they always do. To me what characterizes the New Atheist movement isn’t connection to scientism but to a kind of atheistic evangelical fervor. Usually the scientism comes out from their typically being philosophically naive.

    I don’t quite understand your critique of epistemic humility. I think epistemic humility just means paying close attention to how strong ones arguments actually are – that is being a fallibilist. I don’t see how the relates to the New Atheists, who by most accounts give lip service to fallibilism quite regularly.

    Regarding strength of evidence and argument, I don’t think there is a “standard of science.” Maybe I’m just not understanding your claim though. The reality is that Science, looked at carefully rather than with a naive authoritarianism, simply has arguments with different strengths. About the only real requirement is public evidence and reproducibility. If we talk about things that aren’t public or easily reproducible (say what I heard yesterday) we can still talk arguments, but we’re typically not doing science anymore. Doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the strength of argument or evidence.

    The reason I find (5) so difficult is that I think it ignores why science is so successful. Eventually one has to account for the public evidence. Typically “traditions” that contradict well established science are simply ducking their heads in the sand to avoid difficult questions. Which is fine, but avoiding problems is not an admirable position.

    Comment by Clark — May 24, 2016 @ 6:48 pm

  6. “I think epistemic humility just means paying close attention to how strong ones arguments actually are – that is being a fallibilist.”

    The question which such claims conveniently elide is: Humility to who/what? Humility is simply preventing our own interests from interfering with our adherence to some rule or standard. What such people (I mostly have scientifically trained popularizers in mind) advocate is a humility that amounts to a closer adherence by each individual to the rules and oversight of science. This, however, is the exact opposite of having humble aspirations for the practice and values of science as a whole. History clearly shows that preaching humility is one of the best strategies if unchallenged imperialism is your goal.

    “simply has arguments with different strengths. About the only real requirement is public evidence and reproducibility.”

    Oh, it’s not at all that simple. Those might be the affirmative requirements, but the standards of science absolutely rule out a great many things. (The list of fallacies is a decent summary of these intellectual “sins”.) It is, then, totally incompatible with a standard that allows for, or even requires appeals to revelation, tradition or priesthood authority. So the choice in standards against which we measure the “strength” of the evidence or argument is clearly very relevant. There are lot’s of traditions where certain people are set apart to pronounce upon different issues without argument ever even arising. By such standards, the “strength of an argument” is simply beside the point.

    “The reason I find (5) so difficult is that I think it ignores why science is so successful.”

    Who cares why it is? It can be as successful as it wants, it still doesn’t give anybody the right to tell me what I should and should not believe… and that’s what (5) is about.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 24, 2016 @ 7:17 pm

  7. Perhaps a clear example would be an female immigrant who moves to the US without knowing any English at all. She spends essentially all of her time tending to her family and her home and at least 80% of the information that she gets regarding the rest of the world is filtered through the male workers in her extended family. What do we think her attitude is toward the findings of well-supported science? The fact is, she doesn’t really care about it either way, nor does she have any use for it in her life.

    I’m not saying that all (5) people should be just like this. Rather, I’m arguing that lots of people actually do endorse (5) and that its not just “some possibility that we struggle to conceptualize”. Indeed, I would suggest that (5) is the default position which the vast majority of people that have ever lived have endorsed.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 24, 2016 @ 7:55 pm

  8. I think it is really a battle of competing naïveté. Scientism is naive about free will. Science can only either hold that it doesn’t exist or that science isn’t relevant to it. What form of scientism is the most completely fatalistic? To me the heart of the matter is who is being more naive, those that believe in free will or those that don’t. What possible response could a scientist give to a claim that “science says I can’t believe in science?” How could it possibly be refuted?

    Comment by Martin James — May 25, 2016 @ 6:26 am

  9. Jeff, you of course have the right to believe what you want. However that doesn’t make beliefs correct or justified. Certainly you’re right that many people don’t care and science is purely about authority and not arguments. They can’t distinguish between poor reporting on weak papers about say dietary things from evidence for black holes. The fact most people can’t draw such distinctions though doesn’t mean *you* can’t.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 7:44 am

  10. Martin, I think one issue with “free will” is the semantics. While some scientists are definitely naive on free will issues there are also many who are sophisticated.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 7:48 am

  11. Okay, but justified to who? I’m sure if we asked this strong majority of people, they would say that they were perfectly justified in ignoring the scholars. Put differently, just because I can draw such distinctions doesn’t mean that I or anybody else ought to draw them.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 8:37 am

  12. I agree with Clark on free will. If our repeated, endless debates on the issue here taught me anything, is that nothing all that interesting really hangs on the issue.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 8:38 am

  13. If you don’t believe in free will there is no choice and no moral choice. To the extent one is a scientist, one doesn’t believe there are moral choices. I would say a lot hangs on it.

    Comment by Martin James — May 25, 2016 @ 10:05 am

  14. If this series of threads has taught me anything it is that you don’t have the choice not to believe as you do and I don’t have the choice to stop trying to get you to change. Fate Uber alles.

    Comment by Martin James — May 25, 2016 @ 10:07 am

  15. Moral talk is pretty much obsolete.

    Comment by Martin James — May 25, 2016 @ 10:09 am

  16. Let me clarify that. Moral talk has moral persuasion is obsolete. Moral talk as a rallying war cry to one’s side before power plays is not obsolete.

    Comment by Martin James — May 25, 2016 @ 10:17 am

  17. “If you don’t believe in free will there is no choice and no moral choice.”

    Obviously, no amount of evidence could ever decide this issue either way.

    What is really at stake are the claims by which we justify our moral praise/condemnation of others… and I refuse to allow any group of scientists to hold such practices hostage.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 12:08 pm

  18. I’m a bit more old school than that. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but moral claims can never hold me hostage.”

    Comment by Martin James — May 25, 2016 @ 1:59 pm

  19. Jeff (6) I guess I’m not sure what one means with “humility to whom”? Humility to me is a kind of skepticism towards ones conclusions that is aware of ones fallibilism. Admittedly we are less humble in some areas than others, but I’m not sure the meaning of humility changes.

    It’s true that some people use the word “humble” to simply mean “trust these experts over others.” However I don’t think that’s really what humility means.

    To your second point, again I’m just not sure I agree with your conception of science. I just don’t see any inherent conflict between science and revelation anymore than I see a conflict between science and the phenomena of romantic love. You’re suggesting there are, but I think you need to be explicit here.

    Jeff (11) when you say, “justified to whom” I think you’re using justified in a fundamentally different way. Which of course gets at the fundamental divide between us. You think these things are always indexed to particular audiences while I think we can talk about reason, arguments, justification and so forth that transcends such groups. That is I think there’s a fundamental difference between being justified and being treated as justified by a particular group or subgroup. This is the realist in me coming out again. But I think it leads to very significantly different conceptions.

    Martin (13), again I think you might be setting up false dichotomies. Before you can say whether there is free will or moral choice one has to first be clear what we mean by free will, will, choice, morals or moral choice.

    Now of course there are many people who don’t think humans have free will or moral choice, given the common way some philosophers define these terms. But that seems to be a different issue. The other choice is to perhaps say we don’t have free will given what this particular philosophical tradition means by it yet simultaneously be skeptical that this is the best way to talk about it.

    Whether moral talk can be persuasive or motivational seems a very different issue. Contra what you say in (16) I think moral persuasion still has a significant role to play, although I think it’s easy to overestimate how much influence it can have with the masses. Which is a way of saying I think there’s a lot of truth to your quip but I think you push it too far.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 2:29 pm

  20. “Humility to me is a kind of skepticism towards ones conclusions that is aware of ones fallibilism.”

    But it’s not just any old willy-nilly or blanket, universal skepticism; It is a principled skepticism. The question immediately arises: skepticism according to whose principles?

    Humility is (intellectual) deference. Deference to who?

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 3:05 pm

  21. Jeff G,
    Can’t one be deferential to nature, i.e. skeptical about oneself without putting anyone else in its place?

    Comment by Martin James — May 25, 2016 @ 4:50 pm

  22. Nature doesn’t speak for itself so it has never made any such claim upon us. Rather, there are only those who claim to speak for nature, and it is they who make such claims upon us.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 5:19 pm

  23. I don’t think humility is intellectual deference. That’s why you’re missing what I’m saying.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 7:24 pm

  24. I guess the big difference lies here:

    “You think these things are always indexed to particular audiences while I think we can talk about reason, arguments, justification and so forth that transcends such groups. That is I think there’s a fundamental difference between being justified and being treated as justified by a particular group or subgroup.”

    To me, the idea of us passing judgment on scenarios that exist beyond all people who might pass judgement upon them is a rather obvious performative contradiction. Thus, the idea of what does or does not hold beyond all groups and persons is, to me, not only practically meaningless, but hopelessly incoherent.

    (I was pretty surprised that you didn’t comment on my last post (not that you ever had any obligation to) where I addressed this point a little more directly.)

    I just don’t understand what kind of practices you think humility does and does not entail, outside of a principled deference to others.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 7:48 pm

  25. Probably I was just busy.

    I think humility is about acknowledging our personal fallibilism. It’s not about deference but awareness we can be mistaken. Being mistaken doesn’t entail deference. After all I might think others are mistaken too.

    What you call a performative contradiction arises because you don’t see the universe as a whole as what we are attempting to represent. It’s quite possible to acknowledge perspectivism and related issues while also being a realist and thinking there are mind-independent structures (such as what justifies particular things). Effectively you’re discounting the universe itself as an audience or end.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 8:01 pm

  26. I’ll try and check out that earlier post. A bunch of my free time was caught up doing T&S posts. I also made the mistake of commenting too much at BCC which I now regret.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 8:02 pm

  27. Well, I’m certainly in no place to fault anybody for failing to walk away from a disagreement. :/ I need to set some personal rules for myself, like limiting myself to 2 – 3, max – comments per thread on other blogs.

    “I think humility is about acknowledging our personal fallibilism. It’s not about deference but awareness we can be mistaken. Being mistaken doesn’t entail deference.”

    This is where I get confused, since (I’ll break it down a bit to see where you push back):

    1) fallibilism only makes any sense as measured with respect to some normative standard, and
    2) the non-social world provides no such normative standards outside of those that the social world prescribes us.

    The idea that the universe itself can dictate anything to us seems to be a rather obvious mechanism by which people attempt to mystify their own moral claims upon other people.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 8:25 pm

  28. Basically, the challenge that my position mounts is:

    If non-social nature can provide such standards, independent of the social world, where should I look to find it? Without an answer to something like this question, I find all such claims to “natural” laws suspect.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 8:48 pm

  29. I don’t think it’s the issue of blogs. Just that it’s not clear what kind of comments Steve wants. At least for me. BCC has changed a great deal – especially the last 5 years. Given a post it’s just not clear if he wants push and pull versus he just wants people sharing their feelings/experiences versus just saying if they like a post. It’s kind of confusing. Admittedly the types of posts I like are also getting rarer there. I certainly don’t want to push people off. And I definitely don’t want to force the comments to be what I like if that’s not what the author or Steve want. On the other hand I don’t regret my comments on a similar type of post at M*.

    To your other points. I just don’t agree fallibilism only makes sense with respect to a normative standard, depending upon how you narrow normative. Again you want a present standard. To achieve that you index it to a particular group. I just fundamentally disagree with that. I think our standards are alway off in the future. Even our comparisons are themselves fallible.

    To my ears what you are saying is one can only be fallible with respect to some fixed answers that are fully present. Whereas I think we can see we’re wrong without that. I also think that our ultimate standard is endlessly deferred. (This is where my Peirceanism and influence from Derrida comes to play against the type of perspectivisms you embrace)

    The idea that the non-social world (whatever that means – I confess I’m not sure) gives us nothing and only the social world does I just fundamentally disagree with. Certainly the social is involved but that’s not all. If I think it’s not raining out and I go outside to discover raindrops falling on my head, it’s not clear how that is given to me socially.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 8:58 pm

  30. To put our difference in perspective, while you don’t fully embrace Rorty, my sense is that he’s a good example of your approach here. Whereas my approach is basically Peirce’s realism which Rorty rejects. As I said that has powerful implications.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 9:14 pm

  31. “I just don’t agree fallibilism only makes sense with respect to a normative standard”

    Our disagreement must be much deeper than I thought, because my position on this seem flat out obvious to me. “Infallibilism” is to perfectly adhere to some standard, while “fallibilism” is to fail to do so. Without some standard of infalliblity against which to measure fallibliity, I can’t make any sense of it at all.

    “To my ears what you are saying is one can only be fallible with respect to some fixed answers that are fully present.”

    I definitely do not believe think it presupposes any definitive answer, it does presuppose a set of principles to which one must be responsive/fallible, almost certainly to the exclusion of other principles (especially if they are in contradiction to the former). This does not require some definitive and incorrigible answer, just a standard for measuring the right/wrongness of any proposed answer.

    “Certainly the social is involved but that’s not all. If I think it’s not raining out and I go outside to discover raindrops falling on my head, it’s not clear how that is given to me socially.”

    Right, but rain falling doesn’t present itself as having a claim upon my behavior – it is not normative in any important sense. Also, my claim is not that social factors are sufficient to explain any and all such claims upon our lives (especially descriptions of the natural world), but that such social element are necessary. Outside of the social, there exist no norms, not that norms are fully contained within the social.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 25, 2016 @ 9:28 pm

  32. It’s relative to a standard but not necessarily a normative one in the sense of arising from a finite group. That’s why I said, “depending upon what you mean by normative.” If by normative we merely mean the broad sense of standard then of course there are standards. If by normative we mean a human standard then I don’t think that’s the case.

    I have no trouble with Peirce’s conception of truth as what the infinite community in infinite time would stabilize on. Fallibilism would simply entail the tendency to believe things other than what that final truth would be.

    The implication, since this is an indefinite long deferred truth, is that while there are standards, we can’t be responsive to them the way we are responsive to present things. So I can respond to actions upon me but how can I respond to something that hasn’t yet happened?

    Regarding rain, it’s not at all clear why fallibilism involves “a claim upon my behavior” (again depending upon what you mean by that). Certainly it makes demands but I can of course not necessarily respond to those demands. The obvious change in my behaviour is that if I’m not mentally aberrant in some way I’ll believe it’s raining out.

    Now I don’t want to deny the importance of the social. Clearly there’s a social aspect to my ability to linguistically form the notion of rain. So the social is a background necessary for intelligibility. But I’m not limited by the social.

    Comment by Clark — May 25, 2016 @ 10:19 pm

  33. “Nature doesn’t speak for itself so it has never made any such claim upon us. Rather, there are only those who claim to speak for nature, and it is they who make such claims upon us.”

    I’m just confused by why claims and talk and morals play such a big role for you compared to hunger, lust, beauty, and sensation. It’s as if somebody said “hey, take a look at that sunset” or “there are some raspberries over there” and you are more concerned with the “claims” they were making and how they were trying to influence you rather than the pleasure of the sunset or the taste of the raspberries.

    Religion and truth and God are like that for me. They don’t make moral claims, they just tell us where the food is.

    Comment by Martin James — May 26, 2016 @ 6:31 am

  34. Clark,

    “but not necessarily a normative one in the sense of arising from a finite group”

    Well then where did it come from? Where should I go to look for this standard if I can’t ask some finite number of people?

    (edit: I just don’t see how an indefinite future that nobody has or ever will have access to is supposed to do any practical work at all. It might function as an effective language game within a finite group of individuals – which is exactly my point – but beyond that it seems like a clear case of mystification. Put differently, for any such standard to be practically relevant, it cannot be causally inert, and any such causal sequence necessarily flows through the social.)

    Martin,

    “I’m just confused by why claims and talk and morals play such a big role for you compared to hunger, lust, beauty, and sensation.”

    Well then why do you keep claiming that I am wrong? Why don’t you treat my posts as if they were saying “look at that sunset”?

    Comment by Jeff G — May 26, 2016 @ 8:56 am

  35. Well then why do you keep claiming that I am wrong? Why don’t you treat my posts as if they were saying “look at that sunset”?

    Often I do. I’m just worried you aren’t getting enough food.

    Comment by Martin James — May 26, 2016 @ 10:45 am

  36. Let’s see if I can’t throw together some cheesy equations that summarize my argument:

    1) Causal impotence -> practical irrelevance -> Moral Irrelevance.

    2) All impersonal sources or standards of moral duty/responsibility/obligation are causally impotent.

    I am open to somebody pointing me toward impersonal sources of such moral obligations/duties/responsibilities (even though their pointing me towards it likely subverts their efforts), but I don’t think it can be done…. and if it can be done, it is clearly not how the vast majority of people learn of them.

    One way of pushing back against me might be to accuse me of depending too much upon a Cartesian disenchantment of the material world – in that a world that has spirits and demons built into it might produce a very different conclusion. While I’m not sure if this argument would go through, I am pretty sure that this would throw out an awful lot of physical science with it, which would probably defeat the motivation for such an objection.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 26, 2016 @ 11:11 am

  37. Geoff, you say most people who ever lived are no. 5. I don’t think this is true. Even if you are a creationist, you have your own science which supports creationism, and you see mainstream science as bad science. Or you say that one day, science will vindicate your views. Most people THINK their ideas are rational, and thus supported by what WOULD be perfect science. Thus fundamentally and philosophically, almost everyone practices scientism and always has.

    The real question is: what is your attitude towards MAINSTREAM science? Do you hold conspiratorial views about mainstream science, do you see your religion as MORE rational and scientific than mainstream science (apologetics), or do you see mainstream science as our best response to the questions of the universe?

    Few religious people can recognise, let alone embrace the irrationality of their own faith. They need some kind of rational paradigm in which to conceptualise their faith.

    Comment by Nate — May 26, 2016 @ 2:45 pm

  38. Nate,

    “you say most people who ever lived are no. 5. I don’t think this is true.”

    Oh sure, most modern minds who live in the western world today are specifically taught something other than 5, and it is for this reason that you’re right about them. This is, however, but a very small portion of the people that have ever lived in the world – or who even live in the world now. We must be careful to to generalize and project our own western standards upon everybody else.

    “The real question is: what is your attitude towards MAINSTREAM science?”

    That is exactly what my post is about: well-established, mainstream science as is favorably cited within peer-reviewed, academic literature.

    “do you see your religion as MORE rational and scientific than mainstream science”

    But this is to beg the entire question! That’s like asking whether the Lakers or the Yankees are better at baseball, when only one of the two even claims to be playing that game.

    (edit: This is exactly why I scowl at apologetics and creation science in that they wrongly see themselves as playing the same game as academics and scholars.)

    “Few religious people can recognise, let alone embrace the irrationality of their own faith.”

    The point of 5 is that they see no reason why they should care how “rational” any of their beliefs are. Such virtues are by and for recluse and bookish scholars, totally removed from and naive to the actual needs of the common person’s day-to-day life. Even in our modern society, there is still a lot of truth to this.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 26, 2016 @ 2:58 pm

  39. What I was trying to say is that most people see themselves as rational, and I think this is true of people even outside of the modern Western world, although I could be wrong.

    “They wrongly see themselves as playing the same game as science.”

    I scowl with you at apologetics and creation science. But the fact is that they ARE doing a type of science: bad science. Conservative religious people are as seduced by scientism as secularists are. So whatever attack you launch at secularists, make sure you include fundamentalists as well, because I think there isn’t much difference philosophically.

    I disagree with your theory about rationality being the domain of ivory tower intellectuals. Whether or not our beliefs are rational is of extreme importance, even for people with a more child-like faith. Children especially want to know “why” they are asked do do things. Once they understand the “why,” this understanding inspires them to follow a given paradigm. Having a “why” is the essence of rationality. It is also the essence of having a purpose and meaning in life. I would say that it is the ivory tower intellectuals that have to try to find ways to live in a world without answers, without reason. They have a rational way of trying to analyse the absurdity of the world, but they are the only ones who actually recognise its absurdity.

    Comment by Nate — May 26, 2016 @ 5:23 pm

  40. I don’t see why “religion is bad science” makes any more sense than “science is bad religion”.

    Most people throughout haven’t really cared about rationality as a concept… The scriptures sure don’t care about it. They were more concerned with religious categories like righteousness.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 26, 2016 @ 5:57 pm

  41. I guess you and I are operating under different definitions of “rational” and thus “science.”

    By rational, I personally mean that something has a convincing explanation. A creation myth is an explanation. A divine threat or promise is an explanation for why we should do something. In the scriptures “righteousness” always has very clear explanations attached to WHY one should be righteous. The Greeks believed winter came because Persephone was cast down to Hades several months a year, and this makes Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, too sad to produce fruit. This was a perfectly rational explanation for lots of people.

    But it is a bad explanation because it is variable. The seasons could be explained equally well by any number of such myths. But the explanation that the seasons are produced by the rotation of a spherical earth on it’s axis as it orbits the sun is a better explanation, and hard to vary. According to Popper, this lack of variability in a good explanation is what separates good science from bad science.

    What separates religion from science is not the desire to find rational explanations for behaviour. What separates them is a culture of criticism and conjecture that allows them to arrive at explanations which are more difficult to vary. Authoritarian systems like religion are unfriendly to criticism and conjecture, and thus their explanations are more variable than scientific ones. (not that authoritarianism doesn’t have other advantages.)

    Comment by Nate — May 27, 2016 @ 2:00 am

  42. Well, any appeal to Popper will be 1) completely biased towards the scientific side and 2) quite inaccurate in its depiction of science as it is actually practiced.

    It would be like me inventing an idealized world of intellectual virtue and then calling the practices within this idealized world “religion”. Clearly this wouldn’t prove much of anything other than how biased I am.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 27, 2016 @ 7:38 am

  43. Interesting ideas on the matter!

    Comment by David — May 28, 2016 @ 12:15 pm

  44. Jeff, I don’t know too much about Popper other than a bit about falsifiability. But my comment was more about the definition of rationality, which you say is not important to people generally, and not important in the scriptures.

    This doesn’t make sense to me because I see rationality as a matter of seeking reasonable explanations, which is something humans always do, indeed is central to human nature. Religion has been central to these explanations, and they were always understood as reasonable and believable by pre-modern peoples, and by today’s fundamentalists. That’s why I don’t think you can separate a philosophical tendency to worship scientism from worship of God. To a religious person, they are one and the same (that is, true scientism and true religion are the same). Practical, earthbound science may be beset with Satanic conspiracies like evolution, but this doesn’t alter the basic rationalist philosophical bent of all fundamentalists.

    If you are going off of a different definition of rational than the one I’m using, I’d love for you to expound upon it.

    Comment by Nate — May 28, 2016 @ 4:01 pm

  45. I reread some of my previous comments and realised I’m just repeating myself. Sorry about that!

    Comment by Nate — May 28, 2016 @ 4:07 pm

  46. ” see rationality as a matter of seeking reasonable explanations, which is something humans always do, indeed is central to human nature.”

    But the empirical evidence simply does not support such a claim. Most people throughout history have simply not worried very much about the question “why?”

    There is a significant difference between (what Max Weber calls) a traditional society and a legal-rational society. Only the latter is interested in “explaining” phenomena, typically in terms of natural “laws” to which they hope to match their “reason.” The former, however, doesn’t feel much of a need for such “explanations” and asking “why?” is seen as impractical, at best, or subversive, at worst. “Brash”, “speculator”, “upstart”, etc. were all terms of derision.

    Of course these people had a traditional and typically enchanted discourse regarding the world around them, but for the most part they simply take it as it is. This is the function that tradition plays and they just aren’t that interested in “laws” or impersonal/universal “reasons” that would constitute an explanation, as we recognize the term today.

    If by “rational” and “explanation”, however, you mean something even more watered down than this, I would likely agree with you, but only because the stand you’re taking is so trivial that it’s not even worth debating.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 28, 2016 @ 4:47 pm

  47. Sorry if the last post came off harsh. Not what I was going for.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 29, 2016 @ 9:37 am

  48. Not harsh at all. You could be right about the ancients, but its hard for me to imagine. What I think you are saying is that ancient people probably didn’t see the world as discoverable in the way we do today. There were basic explanations, like myths, which had been around for longer than probably anyone could imagine, which people probably just took for granted without subjecting them to their reason.

    But its still hard for me to imagine that ancient people didn’t use their reason when trying to decide whether a merchant was cheating them, or if the witch was really going to float or not, etc. I think ancients would have used their reason to categorise the messy world around them according to the authoritative paradigm. They would have used reason to explain why the plague was God’s punishment, and why the king had divine right. They used their reason to make sure everything lined up with the status quo. This is the same thing that fundamentalists and apologists do today. They start with a preexisting notion and then seek evidence to support that notion, or use apologetics to explain why contradictory evidence actually supports the notion.

    So I think what you are getting at by “scientism” isn’t really about rationality. It is about the post-enlightenment culture of conjecture and criticism which challenges authoritative paradigms. This culture of continuous criticism is what separates the science of fundamentalists from true science.

    Comment by Nate — May 29, 2016 @ 1:33 pm

  49. Jeff (34) “I just don’t see how an indefinite future that nobody has or ever will have access to is supposed to do any practical work at all.”

    Well it’s more why there is this endpoint. It occurs because reality acts on us and limits our interpretations if we are being even only somewhat rational. (D&C 93 is a great place to see this, although I’m here more speaking from a pragmatic perspective) So the disagreement is really over how or if reality acts and how that affects our interpretations. From my perspective this future is indefinite only in that we don’t have absolute surety of what it’ll be like (what truth is) nor when we’ll arrive at truth.

    There are implications from that, but I think you simply are rejecting truth as a regulatory factor at all. You want an already present norm to ground judgements whereas for me it’s a question of the process of inquiry and how reality is acting upon us during that process.

    Comment by Clark — May 31, 2016 @ 8:18 am

  50. Nate,

    “So I think what you are getting at by “scientism” isn’t really about rationality. It is about the post-enlightenment culture of conjecture and criticism which challenges authoritative paradigms. This culture of continuous criticism is what separates the science of fundamentalists from true science.”

    This is exactly where the inaccuracies in Popper come in. Kuhn made a very convincing case that paradigms are NOT subjected to anything approaching continuous criticism. Scientists will only begin to seriously question a paradigm (and even then, somewhat grudgingly) once a “critical number” of “anomalies” have accumulated.

    If you’re going to take Popper’s description (it was actually a prescription) as paradigmatic of “scientism”, then I agree that his is of a rather peculiar, and in some ways diluted, kind. On the one hand, he thought that the scientist deserve no more respect or deference than any other person. (This was very utopian, at best.) On the other, he only thought this because he thought that EVERYBODY should think “scientifically” (in rejecting appeals to authority, tradition, revelation, etc. as means of justifying claims, in exchange for pure experimentalism and deduction).

    Popper thus becomes a clear case of prescribing universal epistemic humility, but only with respect to a single, very imperialistic way of thinking.

    Clark,

    “I think you simply are rejecting truth as a regulatory factor at all.”

    Well, if by “truth” you mean an accurate and value-neutral description of how the world is, then of course I reject it. The natural world surely constrains us, but it does not “regulate” anything in any important sense of the word.

    If all you’re holding out for is a language game in which “the future convergence of inquiry upon a unique answer” plays a important role, then I can see some value in this…. But I would absolutely reject any claims to universality, timelessness, necessity or intrinsicality to this language game. Others have gotten along just fine by using very different language games, and I see no reason to think that future people will not do so as well.

    Anything more than this modest defense of this language game is just metaphysical speculation in which a causally impotent future is supposed to have some, unobservable effect upon the present. Unlike the natural world, the future does not even constrain us, let alone regulate us in the present.

    “You want an already present norm to ground judgements”

    Of course. If the norm isn’t present, then it’s simply irrelevant. I fairly certain that you disagree with my chain of reasoning above (in 36), but I’m not sure where:

    1) Causal impotence -> practical irrelevance -> Moral Irrelevance.

    2) All impersonal (non-language game/non-social) sources or standards of moral duty/responsibility/obligation are causally impotent.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 31, 2016 @ 11:03 am

  51. I don’t think truth is value neutral, although I confess I’m not sure what you mean by that.

    I’m not sure I’d call this a language game at least as Wittgenstein means it. I think that’s a useful metaphor but can lead astray at times. All I’m really saying is that reality acts on us and while that doesn’t fully determine what our interpretations are it certainly biases them. The element of surprise is a big deal. My qualm is that when we talk language games it makes it appear as if all that matters are the judges subjectivity in determining what people believe. While that may explain much about language I don’t think it explains well what we do with language. That is we use language to talk about things at least somewhat independent of our selves.

    Your point about future/present misses the issue of process thinking. That is are we talking about a process in which the meaning depends upon both past present and future or are we talking about time slices. These are two very different ways of thinking about problems. I’d assumed you were more in the process thinking camp, but maybe not. As soon as you say something isn’t present doesn’t matter seems odd. It’s as if you can explain a football game only by what is present. The meaning of the game is the whole of the game. Likewise even if we are talking just about language games surely we have to talk about the game as a whole and not just a time slice of the game.

    Comment by Clark — May 31, 2016 @ 2:21 pm

  52. To be clear, I think the problem with most epistemology is that it seeks at an instance what counts as knowledge. I’m not saying that can’t be useful at times. However the bigger issue from my perspective is knowledge-making or the processes that lead people to knowledge. This is why Peirce tends to shift the discussion from idealized justification conditions to a discussion of not blocking inquiry. The pragmatists think that as we continue to inquire, even if we screw up, we are heading towards the truth. (Not necessarily converging in the sense of always getting better – it may proceed more like a ping pong system rather than a nice even convergence)

    Comment by Clark — May 31, 2016 @ 2:34 pm

  53. “The element of surprise is a big deal.”

    In what sense? After all, I do not deny the practical relevance of the natural world. I have only denied its moral relevance.

    This is what I meant when I said that the natural world constrains us but does not regulate us. It determines what is possible, but is totally indifferent and irrelevant to what is ideal in any regulative sense.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 31, 2016 @ 4:21 pm

  54. What do you mean by a moral claim? How do I know when someone is making a moral claim as compared to another type of claim?

    Comment by Martin James — May 31, 2016 @ 5:37 pm

  55. Martin,

    I think you’ll have to give me a bit more context (I’ve used the term “claim” a few different ways in this post and thread).

    As far as one person claiming something to be true (or something like this), ALL claims have a moral element to them.

    If, however, you mean reality having a “moral claim” upon us, then I simply mean “obligation” or “assigning a moral duty” or some such thing.

    Comment by Jeff G — May 31, 2016 @ 5:55 pm

  56. Here is one reason why I ask. I don’t think most people think other people have a moral obligation not to be crazy or irrational, they just make a judgment based on self-interest to ignore or avoid the irrational. So, I don’t think it counts as scientism (3) in any kind of a moral way, if one says that I am going to discount the moral claims of a person they see as irrational. In fact, they probably think they have a moral obligation to ignore their claims. One could argue that it is not epistemically humble to consider other people crazy, but I would say that it is just being epistemic. Most people seem to have a way of determining who they find mentally infirm and an appeal to science seems to be no less humble than many other methods.
    It would seem to me that accusing someone of scientism (3) is just accusing them of being rational which wouldn’t seem to have much
    moral force. This is not to say they are correct in their assessment of who is or is not crazy, it just seems to me that trying to argue that one isn’t crazy by doubting the basis of someone else’s rationality is crazy. Or in other words, to the extent you are correct about them being victims of scientism (3) it is pointless to point it out.

    Comment by Martin James — May 31, 2016 @ 8:16 pm

  57. Well I think the natural world tends to act upon us in ways that bring us to moral decisions. Perhaps not as swiftly or as unambiguously as it does our judgments of say the color of the sky. But I tend to think moral facts are part of the universe.

    For instance one place I think we agree is in seeing things like logic or mathematics as essentially ethical demands. We say bad logic is wrong because it violates rules. But where did those rules come from? There I suspect we start to part company. I think people inquiring would independently arrive at mathematics and logic just because of the way the universe is. That is these are real structures and as the universe acts upon us it pushes us to discovering them much the same way we discover what color the sky is when we look.

    So I definitely disagree about the natural world’s moral relevance. While I’m skeptical of many moral rules, I am a moral realist.

    Comment by Clark — May 31, 2016 @ 8:32 pm

  58. To add, Levinas’ ethical demand is a kind of moral duty that arises as we encounter elements of the universe. So this isn’t that new.

    Comment by Clark — May 31, 2016 @ 9:07 pm

  59. Clark,
    But play that out further. If morality is like math and logic, then what plays the role of axioms and undefined terms? Which logic are we talking about?
    One can have perfectly good math that is based on contradictory axioms. Is it the same with morals?
    What is the relationship between moral laws which are apparently based on contingency and physical and logical laws that are apparently not based on contingency? Doesn’t it seem odd to make an analogy between something that is about necessity and something that is about contingency?
    And what of evolutionary logic? If morals are something real and discoverable, how do you think they apply to different types of being? Do they apply to other animals and extinct hominids? Do they apply to life forms on other planets? To artificial life forms like the transhumanists think?
    I’ve made the case here myself for moral realism, but it is not really that helpful in terms of discovering morality because we don’t have any agreed way to discover morality besides a notoriously self-interested one. Jeff just says that is all the morality that matters. I think that morality just means disinterested, universal rules but it is very hard to prove that existence. In other words, I think morality may not exist but if it does it is certainly not any morality we have had so far.

    Comment by Martin James — June 1, 2016 @ 6:18 am

  60. My version of your realism is the speculative science of what one senses or apprehends when one has a moral sense. In other words, morality is either a creation of the human body de novo and in no way depends on anything outside if it, or it is some approximate realization of something outside itself. I think this applies to math, logic, beauty and the other universals. I think the convergence of neuroscience and artificial intelligence will reveal, according to God’s plan which of these is the case. We will become as gods by creating new life and an attendant moral sense which may either be unique to that creature or we will discover what universals are by the process of discovering how a being apprehends them. My guess, but it is only a guess, is that Jeff sees the mechanism as somewhat beside the point and that, of course, morality is a creation of some particular type of sociality of personhood. What I can’t get past is that it takes personhood as a given in a way I find hopelessly naive as described above and that is why the question for me is how one creates a moral agent. We know one way, sexual reproduction, but are there others and how do we know. Jeff’s approach wants to cut off all of this as beside the point and irrelevant. You propose an alternative but so far science hasn’t been able to establish any links to the contingent and the conscious. I don’t know that it ever will, but I believe that if doesn’t then we will never know what morality is or have any moral knowledge.

    Comment by Martin James — June 1, 2016 @ 6:37 am

  61. Jeff,
    I think I am scientism type 6, techno-scientism.

    Comment by Martin James — June 1, 2016 @ 6:39 am

  62. Jeff,
    The reason that I don’t think I fit the other 5 is that I don’t think we have discovered the science of morality, so science can’t inform any moral judgements. Morality is what science has yet explained. But because I view science to the extent it apprehends truth is knowledge and that to the extent that there is moral knowledge then science will discover it by revelation. To me that is just obviously what Mormonism is and the parts that deviate from the unity of all truth as knowledge are evidence of a lack of faith.

    Comment by Martin James — June 1, 2016 @ 6:47 am

  63. I think many of our developed moral intuitions play the role of axioms. If you look at how ethics in practice is argued, we have intuitions we’re pretty sure of (murder for gain wrong, slavery wrong, etc.) We then build off of those uses them as premises to find more things to understand (often with more disagreement since the arguments aren’t purely deductive as with say geometry)

    Comment by Clark — June 1, 2016 @ 8:14 am

  64. Lot’s of good comments!

    Martin (56): You make a good point. The way that I would approach the “irrational but not immoral” is basically different degrees and kinds of our social response. Obviously, a strong degree of irrationality will cause the rest of us to marginalize and exclude such a person to a non-trivial degree. Thus, while we may not actively punish such irrational people, we certainly do exclude them from the benefits that those who are “rational” do enjoy.

    “One could argue that it is not epistemically humble to consider other people crazy, but I would say that it is just being epistemic.”

    I think you’re exactly right, if I understand you right. Such appeals to “epistemic humility” would be a great way of exposing both the limitations and the presuppositions which undergird that virtue.

    “It would seem to me that accusing someone of scientism (3) is just accusing them of being rational which wouldn’t seem to have much moral force. ”

    Well, “rationality” can mean sooooo many things, that I would resist any straightforward equation of two. I am sure, however, that all 3-people would argue that a proper adherence and deference to orthodox science is a necessary condition of “rationality”. It’s because I am a 4-person (at best) that I would either a) grant that it is necessary for rationality while insisting that we aren’t always supposed to be rational in this sense, or b) argue that since I reject 3, that I do not want to say that it is a necessary element of rationality. So long as there is room for some amount of morally justified rejection of orthodox science, I don’t really care what you call it.

    Clark (57): “I tend to think moral facts are part of the universe.”

    What part of it? Do they have any causal effect at all? If so, where? If not, how are they practically relevant?

    “We say bad logic is wrong because it violates rules.”

    Yes, we do agree here. Like Vico said, the reason we know with absolute certainty that 1+1=2 is the same way that we know with absolute certainty that pawns in chess cannot move 3 spaces – we made the rules ourselves.

    “I think people inquiring would independently arrive at mathematics and logic just because of the way the universe is.”

    You’re probably right, but I don’t see how this entails anything very interesting. In Dennettian language, mathematics is a really “good move” in the conceptual evolutionary space (the same a kidneys and hearts going together), but this doesn’t mean it a forced or obligatory move in any important sense.

    As for Levinas, what little I have read of him (long ago) struck me as rather blatant mystification. That said, I do agree that your version of moral realism is not a new comer.

    Martin (58): “I think morality may not exist”

    I absolutely reject that claim. The problem isn’t that we haven’t found “a” morality, but that we have found so many of them. We social beings cannot help but develop a rather robust morality. The only question is whether the morality that we live by is (at least compatible with) God’s morality.

    (60): “the question for me is how one creates a moral agent. We know one way, sexual reproduction”

    I would argue that sexual reproduction is neither necessary nor sufficient for the creation of such an agent. For example, an infant can die before it is socialized in any moral system (isn’t this what the age of accountability is for?). Another example is that a self-existence intelligence can be socialized into a moral system – as in one model of the pre-existence (whether this model is true or not is beside the point).

    (62) Science doesn’t have to explain morality in order to inform it. After all, it hasn’t explained consciousness, but reject that science informs consciousness is to reject science altogether.

    “To me that is just obviously what Mormonism is and the parts that deviate from the unity of all truth as knowledge are evidence of a lack of faith.”

    This seems far too morally charged (in its dismissal of many as faithless) as well as far too reified (in its viewing knowledge as an object that either goes in the timeless and unchanging box of truth our falls outside of it forever). Bodies of knowledge are social practices which continually re-adapt themselves to the social and natural environments in which they operate. Any theory that denies
    1) it’s organic and fluid nature,
    2) the causal relevance of the natural world, or
    3) the moral and interest-laden relevance of the social
    have no place in my mind.

    Clark (63): “I think many of our developed moral intuitions play the role of axioms.”

    That is basically what I accept too. Moral and logical axioms are conceptual adaptations to a finite and historically varying context. Any contradiction will endlessly be reinterpreted, according to our socially regulated intersts, as 1) a modus ponnens, 2) a modus tollens, 3) a distinct to be drawn or 4) a concept to be redefined.

    Comment by Jeff G — June 1, 2016 @ 11:41 am

  65. I’m going to create some new words. I will call moral-manners as what Jeff thinks morals are. I will call moral-universal as what I am holding morals are. Here is my recap.
    I makes no sense for me to try to argue to Jeff that his use of morals is insufficient because he can easily say that I can only bring particular evidence not universal evidence plus he maintains the right to choose the moral axioms. I think his moral-manners are amoral by my moral-universal lights but I have no argument against him.
    Clark on the other hand seems to maintain that morals-universal are possible but by making an analogy to axioms gets jeff’s agreement because it sounds like morals-manners. So take slavery. It seems obvious to me that many morals-mannersists held slavery to be moral and so I think jeff would concede for them it was moral. But what of Clark who seems to be using it as self-evident that slavery is a wrong in a way that most certainly was not self-evident to earlier people. Does Clark think they were mistaken in a way that an axiom cannot be and not agreeing with Jeff or not?
    Jeff’s whole point is that the self-evidency is both relevant and relative. This seems at odds to me with moral realism. If just is right then I just think that morals-universal doesn’t exist and I’m not under any obligation to follow morals manners. I’m an immoralist in his system as he is an amoralist in mine. Unlike him, I think the only use of morals is for the self not for influencing others.

    Comment by Martin James — June 1, 2016 @ 12:41 pm

  66. Martin,

    There are a few points that I think are worth pointing out here:

    1) Throwing around the word “universal” as something that sets your position apart from mine is insufficient. Consider the four options below:

    a) Some people have a moral obligation to condemn some people who do X.
    b) Some people have a moral obligation to condemn all people who do X.
    c) All people have a moral obligation to condemn some people who do X.
    d) All people have a moral obligation to condemn all people who do X.

    All but the first can be described as “universal” and (b) is most definitely included within my view.

    2) By replacing the “X” in (b) with “~(c)” or “~(d)”, we can thus view the latter two as subsets of the second! In other words, according to (b), some people (such as yourself) condemn all people who do not condemn all people for X. This is essentially what you’re doing. In this way, my view incorporates a very strong amount of universalism within it.

    3) The main objection, is that there doesn’t seem to be any interesting connection between how universal something is and how “morally binding” it is. The fact that all people breath oxygen is morally irrelevant and its not clear to me why any other universal practice should be any different. The law of Moses, to push in the other direction, was not universal and yet it seemed very morally binding.

    Comment by Jeff G — June 1, 2016 @ 12:58 pm

  67. Moral truths to the degree they reflect innate mind independent structures in the universe can have causal relations the same way any other structure can.

    Comment by Clark — June 1, 2016 @ 1:31 pm

  68. Martin, I’m not saying moral truths are self-evidence. Far from it. I am saying that through the process of inquiry we arrive at them as truths.

    Comment by Clark — June 1, 2016 @ 1:34 pm

  69. “Moral truths to the degree they reflect innate mind independent structures in the universe can have causal relations the same way any other structure can.”

    Well then

    1) In what sense are they different from any other non-moral pattern that structures the world?
    2) Why does science seem so able to speak of the latter but not the former?

    There doesn’t seem anything mysterious about perceiving patterned regularities in the natural world. The idea of perceiving moral obligations in the natural world seems extraordinarily mysterious, by comparison.

    Comment by Jeff G — June 1, 2016 @ 1:43 pm

  70. ” I am saying that through the process of inquiry we arrive at them as truths.”
    This doesn’t seem at all like axioms which are posited not discovered.
    “Moral truths to the degree they reflect innate mind independent structures in the universe can have causal relations the same way any other structure can.”
    what innate mind independent structure do you have in mind that condemns slavery?

    Comment by Martin James — June 1, 2016 @ 4:43 pm

  71. Jeff,
    I don’t think morals have anything to do with condemning anything. I think they have to do with the consequences for an individual’s soul. We are our own judges under the law.

    Comment by Martin James — June 1, 2016 @ 4:47 pm

  72. Unless each person gets to make up their own law and/or accountability is being thrown out the window, my objection stands.

    Comment by Jeff G — June 1, 2016 @ 8:06 pm

  73. Jeff, have you listened to the current Partially Examined Life on existential ethics? Kind of an interesting approach to what you say in (72).

    To your questions in (69) I think ethics are about “oughts” whereas most structures are about “is.” I’m not sure I agree morals are mysterious. They seem mysterious only if we think direct simple empirically observables are all that exist. Yet clearly we know that’s not true. (No one has seen dark matter) Likewise we can’t scientifically observe consciousness, yet individually we all are aware of it. Many things judged mysterious are done simply because they can’t be obviously reduced to physics. I think that just a major philosophical error. So for instance I think the idea that the hard problem of consciousness is mysterious is nonsense. We are aware of consciousness much more intimately than we are gravity. The problem is hard simply because of a reductive tendency of some to think the entities of physics are the only entities that matter. Most mysteries are like that.

    As for why science can’t speak of ethics (or consciousness for that matter) it’s because science concerns only empirically measurable entities. Yet again (and this gets back to the original post with its topic of scientism) we know lots of things that aren’t known scientifically. It’s just a huge philosophical mistake to assume only science matters.

    Comment by Clark — June 1, 2016 @ 8:38 pm