Information, etc OT

Chris · 20 Apr 2006, 03:36 · from 2006-April.txt.gz

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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 03:36:02 +0000
Subject: (urth) Information, etc OT
In-Reply-To: <7414711.1145467781990.JavaMail.root at elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F27D9D3E1D4F0557B3E268786BA0 at phx.gbl>

James said:
>In recent years the natural origin of altruism has become an
>extremely popular branch of evolutionary biology, complete with its
>own ecosystem of competing theories naturally selecting for grant
>money and attention. I've never before met a 'secular' who claimed
>such scientists were engaged in a lark. Perhaps you are the first.

I am I suppose what you would call an anti-church Christian (not against one 
particular denomination, but all the organized forms on general principle). 
As such I admittedly make a very poor example of either "secular" or 
"observant". That said I wasn't strictly speaking for myself.

You're correct in that it's sort of popular to think in terms of 
evolutionary biology. But *very* few people, in secular circles or 
otherwise, are particularly comfortable with the aftermath of the whole 
Social Darwinist phase. And on a more abstract level the philosophers who 
deal specifically with such issues are very cognizant that evolutionary 
biology gives an account of "what we DO", but that "what we OUGHT to do" (if 
anything) is another question which scientific theories don't really speak 
to. There are arrogant and ignorant scientists out there, of course, but I'm 
not especially concerned with them here any more than I would be any other 
arrogant or ignorant person.

>Yes, Faith is one place to start from...but I said: to observants all such
>sources of first principles are matters of Faith of one sect or another.

Perhaps. And perhaps they're actually right about that... but only if what 
they mean by "faith" is a weaker notion than I prefer.

>1) While, it does view Reason and Faith as complementary, it ascribes to
>Faith the role of mental caulking for gaps that Reason cannot or *has not 
>yet*
>fully delineated. That's not a great difference from the secular position I
>described.

I have to say that this is absolutely not what I was getting at, and I think 
that this misunderstanding probably gets right to the root of our 
disagreement here. It is not at all a matter of filling in gaps; the roles 
of the two are not even of the same type at all. The important point is that 
Reason alone is *empty of content*. Nothing at all can be concluded from it 
alone - nothing - if you want to talk about gaps, it is ALL gap and no 
information. Actual content is dependent on your axioms.

>My point is that observants (as I'll persist in calling them although I
>realize many secular-minded people attend church regularly and many
>who do not attend still believe in revealed Truth) believe Faith and Reason
>will *validate*, not merely complement, each other...

I don't at all dispute that there are a lot of people who think so, and who 
have thought so, going a long way back. However I think such people paint 
themselves into a corner in which there is nothing left to have faith IN: 
you are left with only flat, known facts. Recall that you (rightly) brought 
up the biblical quote calling faith "the evidence of things UNseen".

>equally in the *objective* world, as do "means and motive" to
>criminal investigator. Their Faith IS a continuous intellectual
>endeavor. However, their Faith tends toward the Scholastic view of
>Faith and Reason: they are adamantly against
>giving human *reasoning* a trump over Revealed Truth (or Faith),
>since they argue (rightly, it must be admitted) that
>humans can rationalize absolutely anything.

Well, just to fit this in with what I said above about the suspected focus 
of our disagreement, I think that when most people talk about a conflict 
between faith and reason, what they really mean by "reason" is combination 
of reason with certain everyday empirical assumptions/premises that we need 
to get by in our everyday lives - reason itself being empty of content. A 
conflict between faith and "reason" in that sense would be one where to 
believe in the object of faith would be rationally incompatible with the 
everyday premises which nonetheless one cannot dispense with. To continue to 
hold to both in the face of the rational impossibility of this is what 
provides the real difficulty of faith.

>Heh, heh, heh. I've heard many secular scientists *remind* us that science
>does not ascribe absolute truth to its theories...but only when comparing 
>it
>favorably to religion. As a voracious reader of popular scientific 
>literature,
>I am pretty certain that that caveat is not mentioned otherwise.

>I've yet to read an article by a scientist (I might have missed it) in 
>which any
>consideration is given to the fact that scientists themselves (the fields 
>they
>study, the conclusions they draw, and the overall scientific consensus at
>any given time) are as subject to environmental pressures and natural
>selection as the colors on a butterflies wings.

I suggest Polanyi and Kuhn. These scientist/thinkers are not at all marginal 
figures, and their thought has been more or less incorporated into the 
modern idea of what science IS. This weighs more heavily with me than talk 
from guys like Dawkins, whose scientific work itself may be brilliant 
enough, but...

>One only needs to look at the current Climatology debate or read
>transcripts of conferences on competing Darwinian theories to see that,
>for those who make a name for themselves in research-related endeavors,
>hubris in advertising one's theories and pig-headedness and nasty 
>politicking
>in defending them are the norm. One does not get grants or attract 
>attention
>to one's published articles by concluding "Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm 
>right".

Well, one shouldn't have to SAY it - it should be implicitly understood by 
everyone involved. After all, scientists do bother to spend the effort to 
try and reproduce the experiments of their colleagues, so they seem to have 
some grasp of the idea.

Of course, whether they choose to make a point of relaying this to the 
public is another point entirely. But I think they have to understand it 
themselves perfectly well.

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