SCIENCE!
I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but I'd rather not (c'mon, you guys, I have a Chinese midterm, give me a break :P), so instead, I'm going to write about evolution. One of my classes this year is an upper-division biology class, Experimental Ecology & Evolution (E3, for short, and I love it more than any class ever), which is giving me uppity ( Read more... )
I actually do hold to determinism, now that you bring it up. Free will is basically an illusion resulting from lack of perfect knowledge. (Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen is the best illustration I can think of for this.) And I'm okay with that.
And what does science do? It maps causes and their effects or vice versa -- through either inductive or deductive reasoning. It can never reach the full picture, because the number is infinite, right? Yet it assumes -- ASSUMES -- there are causes and effects that it can map.
Right. That's the reason that introductory physics problems tell you to assume five million things so that you can actually solve for x. But once you've made those assumptions, you can solve for x. And, if the effect of the assumptions is sufficiently small (as it often is), the solution will enable you to predict what will happen when you push the cart down the track (or whatever). Even though we can't map every single cause and effect, it doesn't follow that we can't map some of them.
Reading through the rest of what you have to say, I don't really know how to respond, to be quite honest. I can tell I'm not going to change your mind. But, a few points:
- You consistently conflate the scientific method with science as a discipline.
- What we call gravity is not a force or a "thing," per se, but the measurable effect of the curvature of spacetime that occurs in the presence of matter.
- Scientists discard one theory for another only when the new theory has greater explanatory power. Describing it as "coming closer to truth" in a discussion with a philosopher was probably a mistake on my part. XP
- Heisenberg's uncertainty principle applies to measurements at the quantum level: the more precisely you measure a particle's position, the less precisely you can measure its momentum, and vice versa. What you're referring to is more properly called the observer effect (and, if you'll notice, you're invoking cause/effect all through that paragraph).
(I'm immersed in science as much as you are.)
Given that my knowledge of science is embarrassingly basic, I can't really dispute that.
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Ultimately, you must act on premises, yes, but you cannot, in argument, justify a premise with a premise. That's what I'm trying to point out there. And plenty of folks are able to create reasoned arguments without abiding by Occam's Razor. The simplest solution is sometimes warm and comfortable and easy to wrap a mind around, but when you're dealing with life, nothing is ever simple.
Dr. Manhattan, by the way, is NOT a meditation on determinism. Alan Moore has said in interviews he believes in free will. Dr. M is a meditation on power. (As is the whole graphic novel.) The point being, his power enslaves him. He is so powerful that he experiences all of time at once, and so for him, events are determined. The point being, if one has ultimate power one is utterly unfree. It is only because he perceives reality as such that it is as such. The cause does not necessitate the effect unless we presume it so. (More on this later.)
First, I am going to preface my coming arguments by saying that I'm about to venture into some complex territory that even I'm torn on. my views are by no means fixed. I once believed in determinism as you do, it seems, but views are fluid things, or at least they should be, which is itself a fluid view. I claim to have no answers, and indeed, that's precisely my problem. It irritates me when people claim that they do have answers.
So, to start, yes, I do conflate the scientific method with science as a discipline, because the method inherent in science as a discipline holds within it the view that the scientific method is universally applicable. In other words, science itself conflates the scientific method with science as a discipline. I'm only restating the beliefs of Science as you kindly pointed out for me. Furthermore, Science is not just a practice in our culture, nor is the method isolated. Science is a dominant cultural ideology. It saturates our culture, our perceptions, the way we think. There's a reason i was invoking the discourse of cause and effect in that paragraph, and indeed, throughout the argument. It's because it's in our language. I can't not invoke it, pardon the double negative. One can only express oneself with the language one is given, and language has values inherent in its very structure and vocabulary which limit what one may express. We are slaves to language. Lacan and Foucault are theorists you may want to investigate regarding this phenomenon.
Here's a simple example, and I'm using it precisely because it is beyond our cultural viewpoint. One cannot refute a cultural viewpoint from within that viewpoint, just as one cannot truly dispute science with science.
So, here's the example. The Inuit have NO abstract conception of Time. They are one of the only cultures on Earth that have no conception of Time. They have no word for it. Before western culture taught them English, they could not comprehend Time even as a possible notion. Why is this? Well, for the same reason they cannot comprehend what a fish is. Seriously. There is no word in the language of the Inuit people for 'fish'. There is a particular word for each kind of fish that they encounter, but no word for fish in general. There is no category fish. Their language resists abstraction. Thus, because their language resists abstraction, their thought resists abstraction. Because you think in language. There's no way around it. Your very thought is limited by the language by which you express it.
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On gravity: again, you encounter the same problem. So my layman terminology was imprecise. Gravity is "the measurable effect of the curvature of spacetime that occurs in the presence of matter". Alright, those are some pretty words. But it still doesn't answer the question. What is gravity? If it is not a "thing" per se, then you are effectively saying it has no "being" per se. It does not exist per se. It is a transcendent concept. It is an abstraction of an abstraction.
On explanatory power, the point of truth is still valid, because by saying a new theory has greater explanatory power, you must ask: greater explanatory power of what? Of reality. The very act of explanation presumes one can explain. It presumes there is something to explain. Thus the scientist presumes they can explain the way things really are to someone who is ignorant of the way things really are in order to enlighten that individual.
I apologize for the mix-up between Heisenberg and the observer effect, but the one is really just a demonstration of the other on a micro scale.
Which brings me to the complicated bit I warned you about. Here I am going to give the alternative to cause and effect. Just as you premise determinism, I will premise the opposite. I will premise free will. If one premises free will in humans, then free will must also exist as a latent necessity in pre-human organic life. (Humanists are delusional to think otherwise.) Furthermore, if free will exists either manifest or latent in organic life, it must exist latent in pre-organic existence/matter. It must exist latent in absolutely everything. This comes very close to a theory of animism of nature. There's a reason many aboriginal cultures, without notions of abstraction, practice religions of animism. This is very different from cause and effect, because to presume free will means that possibility is latent. What you call the 'effect' in a scientific discourse exists a priori to the 'cause' in latent form. Cause and effect have no external relationship, as there is no 'cause' per se. There is only effect. And the micro is merely a reduction of the macro. It fascinates me that science is continually reducing existence to smaller and smaller bits. This seems like an infinite progression inward to me. I don't think there is a bottom. We thought the atom was the smallest, then we found protons, electrons, neutrons etc. Then further still until we reached quarks and bosons etc. And I've heard that scientists are proposing something smaller still. And then of course there is string theory. But I don't think science is ever going to find a bottom, as i already said. Just as one can go forever out, one can go forever in. Free will then exists, to use a biology metaphor, latent in the 'DNA' of reality. Something external does not cause its existence. It always existed. Just as any effect is not caused. It was always there. The existence of 'effect' is not dependent. or, to put it even more simply, existence is not dependent. Existence is independent. Existence is. (Or, as Hegel puts it, Being is.)
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Scientific discourse says "Being is because..."
Science is the study of the "because". Ironically, monotheistic religion also says "Being is because..." but it goes on to conclude that "Being is because of God."
The existential alternative is "Being is."
And this is not as simple a statement as it may seem. Thousands upon thousands of books have been written elaborating upon that single statement "Being is."
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when you're dealing with life, nothing is ever simple.
But why can you say that life is complicated? Because you've observed it to be so. Occam's Razor doesn't mean you throw out factors that make a situation more complex, it means that you don't throw in things that you don't actually need in order to answer the question. It's theoretically possible that there are invisible fairies in my brain making all the neurons spark the way they should, but why on earth would I need to believe such a thing?
On a related note, saying that a theory has "greater explanatory power" means that it accords most closely with the data in all its complexity. For instance, until Copernicus, astronomers had to basically fudge in order to get the apparent retrograde motion of the planets to mesh with the prevailing, Earth-centered model. Copernicus realized that a Sun-centered model predicted the motions of the planets more accurately, and after further refinement by Kepler, the Sun-centered model became the most widely accepted theory. The only "truth" is the data; scientific theories are not truth, then, but explanatory and predictive frameworks.
If I recall correctly, Dr. Manhattan's omniscience didn't just make him unfree, it made everyone unfree from his perspective (I'm thinking particularly of the scene with him and his girlfriend on Mars). Sure, we make choices, but they're constrained by so many different factors that the only reason we see ourselves as choosing freely is that we don't fully understand all our constraints. If I were not a materialist, I would probably think differently, but the alternative as you've explained it smacks of invisible fairies to me (more on that in a second).
Your very thought is limited by the language by which you express it.
You apparently had no problem conceiving of your preferred framework (free will, et cetera). By your own logic, if you could conceive of it, you ought to be able to communicate it in a way that shows it to be valid, which would preclude invoking concepts that are completely incompatible with the basic premise. But, even though you can't, you're basically just asking me to take your word for it because it's way over my language-enslaved head. I don't see any compelling reason for me to accept or agree with this.
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I'm still working on a big response, but I'll just note that this may be to some extent true, especially if one is not thinking deeply about whatever the topic under discussion is, but it's clearly not absolute - otherwise, how would people invent new words, new technologies, and new ideas? Not to mention coming up with language in the first place!
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About gravity: it's basically geometry. Incredibly complex four-dimensional geometry, but all the same. As far as I can tell, you're not even trying to understand it, and your seeming unwillingness to do so, even as you continue to claim that its nature supports your argument, is not helping your case.
Thus the scientist presumes they can explain the way things really are to someone who is ignorant of the way things really are in order to enlighten that individual.
Yes, and? There's nothing stopping the latter individual from checking the scientist's work and determining whether the scientist's conclusions are in accord with his/her own observations. (For this reason, I would also dispute your earlier characterization of scientists as priests.) Furthermore, I'm not sure what's wrong with observing things and then communicating those observations to other people. Isn't that what writing (for instance) is all about?
I apologize for the mix-up between Heisenberg and the observer effect, but the one is really just a demonstration of the other on a micro scale.
My understanding is that this is not exactly accurate - I wasn't just trying to be pedantic - but this is far from my area of expertise, so correct me if I'm wrong.
To be honest, I would rather say "Being is because..." with the ellipse, and go investigate the world around me, even if I will never fully understand it. You say that "Being is [free will]" ... well, what is free will to you? An invisible force, the prime cause underlying everything, existing both within and without the material universe - how is that so different from the idea of a god? Your statement, and religion's statement, both end in periods. Both take as given something that is not falsifiable (there's that scientific discourse again) and is therefore impossible to argue with.
With that in mind, I don't think we're going to get very far by continuing to debate this. I would prefer at this point to just agree to disagree, and I hope that you feel the same.
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I would agree to disagree, but the problem is, you are misconstruing, or at least misunderstanding, the way in which I disagree, so let me try to explain again.
First, there's no such thing as formal training in philosophy. (Unlike with science.) If you can read and think and write you can participate in philosophic discussion. However, it helps to be aware of different trends in philosophic thought before you argue something. (ie. The validity of science.) It just helps to understand how people structure and understand arguments so that you don't repeat points that have already been refuted, which unfortunately is happening here. A lot of the points I just made were missed, misunderstood, or denied through the use of the very scientific discourse that's under question, thus making your arguments self-fulfilling. It is rather frustrating attempting to refute self-fulfilling arguments, for the same reason, as I've said, that it is frustrating for you to argue with a religious fundamentalist.
But why can you say that life is complicated? Because you've observed it to be so.
Yes, true. I observe life. I experience reality through my senses. Putting aside the fact that senses are neither complete nor reliable, as Descartes went over long ago, but science goes beyond mere experience. You're effectively saying here that by virtue of the fact that one experiences reality, science is necessarily valid. I experienced something, I drew a conclusion from that something. Is that science? No. That's called perception and thought. Science is not equatable with either. However, when looking through the paradigm of Science, the scientific individual believes that to be the case. Thus while one can propose theories and counter-theories within the discourse of science, any theory, idea, or mere thought that is beyond scientific discourse is automatically discounted as false, or "silly superstition" or something to that effect. Faeries, as you put it. Don't you see why this is frustrating? Please, if you are going to argue for science, do not presume that all non-scientific arguments are automatically invalid. Please extend the same courtesy I extend to you. I posited two fundamentally different ontologies. "Being is." And "Being is because…" I did not say either was invalid. Either could be valid. I hold to "Being is." You hold to "Being is because…" Either could be true, but you cannot argue that one is true and the other is not by arguing within the ontology itself. They're mutually exclusive. You can't judge the statement "Being is." On the basis of the statement "Being is because…" If I did that to your argument, it would be unreasonable, so I simply ask for the same courtesy. Though, I guess my begging is pointless, because materialism demands that you do just that, which is where my bone of contention lies.
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Furthermore, I never said some mystical force is what animates things. You are mistaking logic for magic. Just because an argument based upon logic is not a scientific argument does not make it magic. However, on that note, I must say, I have experienced things I cannot explain. Does that mean there isn't an explanation? No. But does that mean there is an experimentally reproducible explanation? No. It is for the very same reason that one can neither prove nor disprove God that you can neither prove nor disprove material reduction to causes. Ultimate causation (ie. determinism) can similarly be called reducible to 'faeries' in this manner. So don't you dare say that I'm resorting to superstition in making a carefully reasoned and self-contained argument when you are attacking it with a self-fulfilling argument that relies upon base causes that have no explanation.
saying that a theory has "greater explanatory power" means that it accords most closely with the data in all its complexity
Alright, now I'm a bit irritated, because you completely missed the refutation of this point for the third time. If you are going to counter an argument, use a new argument, don't restate the old one. (I'm saying this to help you develop better argumentative skills. I don't mean it in a malicious way.) Who gathers data? People. Sets of data are always incomplete. In fact, as we already established, there will always be an infinite amount of data that is both relevant and unaccounted for in any situation. Furthermore, the theory in question does not come from the data. This is part of the FUNDAMENTAL problem with scientific discourse. Nature does not speak to the scientist through data. The theory, as you have shown, comes from the scientist, not the data. The scientist matches an idea out of their head to an incomplete set of observations. But again, this does not get to the heart of Being itself. You are not examining nature. You are examining and theorizing on THE DATA.
To put this back into the basic ontological framework I established earlier: Science is the study of the "because" in the statement "Being is because…" Science studies causation. Science does not study Being itself. There. It’s right there. Don't dismiss this off the cuff. Sit down for a good hour and seriously think about what this means. "Being is because…" The scientist studies the "because". You want to talk to me about faeries, well guess what? The scientist makes up his/her own fairies. See, to me, this seems as mystical as you claim my argument to be. How can you make up the cause of Being and then attempt to match it with Being? You're not even comparing the same thing. My problem is not with Science but with when science assumes that "Being" is the "because" of Being. Much of Science confuses the "because" with "Being" itself. They are not the same thing. Science does not ever get closer to explaining "Being" because science is not explaining "Being". Science is explaining the "because".
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You apparently had no problem conceiving of your preferred framework (free will, et cetera). By your own logic, if you could conceive of it, you ought to be able to communicate it in a way that shows it to be valid, which would preclude invoking concepts that are completely incompatible with the basic premise. But, even though you can't, you're basically just asking me to take your word for it because it's way over my language-enslaved head. I don't see any compelling reason for me to accept or agree with this.
Let me also put straight, this is not a matter of philosophy versus science. There is plenty of philosophy that endorses science. There is no such thing as 'my' logic. There is logic. Logic doesn't belong to anyone. Logic, however, is as flawed as anything. It's flaw as I was arguing lies in language. I'm not asking you to take my word for it, I'm saying that's the way it is, whether or not you are a materialist, religious, or an existential philosopher. I was not at all saying "if you can conceive of it, you ought to be able to communicate it in a way that shows it to be valid". You're putting words in my mouth. I said much the opposite, actually. I said that the way we communicate things is the way we conceive of things. If you had no language, you would not be able to think. And when I say language, Rachel, I mean language in a broad sense: that is, one thing is used to express another thing. Attaching meaning to perception. Language in its primitive form could just be images. One can think in images. Prior to language, a baby is basically just a ball of Desire. When the baby enters the world, it enters a world of pre-established meanings into which it is indoctrinated. Yes, you can make up new words and languages, Rachel. You almost have the idea grasped, but you're missing just one little bit, which is my fault, because I didn't talk about it. Basically, creation of new symbols with which to express oneself is just a broadening of the cage. You can renovate the prison of words, but there will always be an infinite number of meanings that are, by virtue of being inexpressible, inconceivable. Here we could also get into how language functions in relation to the unconscious mind, which further complicates matters, as we also repress meaning, but that would require way too much work on my part and I have things to do and I think it would be better if you just took some Lacan out of the library.
And as for new ideas, I think Shakespeare once said something about there being no such thing as a new idea, but I don't want to get into that. We'll just leave it at another renovation to the prison. I'd also like to say, this is not incompatible with Science. It might benefit you to learn more about it.
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Oh, please, a quote from maybe-Shakespeare does not constitute evidence, and if you want to make that exceedingly foolish claim, I would greatly appreciate it if you would deign to support it.
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Under an ontology of "Being is." an idea is a different thing entirely. This is where Hegel's dialectic comes in, but that would take forever to explain. I'll leave it at this: if effect is already latent in being, ideas are already latent in Being, so one does not create new ideas, one brings out ideas that were always there just not consciously conceived.
I would further like to note that even if I had the quote, you would claim that it does not constitute evidence, correct me if I am wrong. But you see, there is the self-fulfilling prophecy of science. Only a scientific argument constitutes evidence. What does it matter that some man once said something? According to science, that means squat. (And in my opinion, Shakespeare has contributed more to human understanding than Science ever could, and he was only one little man.)
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Well, yes, because people can say things that are dead wrong. But let's take an actual Shakespeare quote - Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, for instance. Someone who has never had occasion to contemplate suicide, nor known anyone driven to that level of despair, will not understand it. But to everyone else, it resonates, because it accords with their own observations about life.
So, Shakespeare's statements are not evidence for their own truth (and really, how could they be?); rather, the truth of his statements is a conclusion that the reader draws, using his/her observations as the evidence. Just because a statement isn't considered evidence for the purposes of a particular type of discussion, it doesn't follow that it is meaningless.
At any rate, if the original idea does not accord with Rachel's observations, I don't quite understand how a quote that essentially restates what you're trying to argue ought to be taken as proof - however brilliantly it may phrase the idea.
(If Shakespeare expressed an idea similar to what you were originally saying [which is entirely possible], I cannot think of it off the top of my head. However, you might have been thinking of Ecclesiastes 1:9, "There is nothing new under the sun." And given that Ecclesiastes is basically Solomon drowning in his own angst, if I were you, I would hesitate to put forth any line from its early chapters as a truth about human existence, or evidence thereof.)
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Did you perhaps mean the quote: "there is nothing new under the sun"?
Cause it's not Shakespeare. It's from the Bible.
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That's very offensive. I could say the same to you with regards to my arguments, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you just haven't understood them yet. What you said just there is like saying, as far as I can tell, you're not even trying to believe in God. It's like saying that in order to understand your argument I have to already believe your argument to be true. I understand the basic mechanics of gravity as it is explained by science. My understanding may be limited, but even if I fully understood how Science describes gravity, down to the numbers etc., that's beside the point. I'm not debating whether or not the current Scientific theory of gravity is valid or not. I'm debating the idea of Scientific theory. Please, again, take a moment to put into perspective what is being argued here. I'm unwilling to abide by a materialistic conception of Being. That doesn't necessitate that I don't understand a materialistic conception of Being. You seem to forget, I used to hold to a materialistic conception of Being myself. I understood what I held to. Agreeing and understanding are two different beasts. Please don't demean anyone by saying that just because they don't believe they therefore don't understand. That's again what people say about their religious beliefs.
There's nothing stopping the latter individual from checking the scientist's work and determining whether the scientist's conclusions are in accord with his/her own observations. (For this reason, I would also dispute your earlier characterization of scientists as priests.) Furthermore, I'm not sure what's wrong with observing things and then communicating those observations to other people. Isn't that what writing (for instance) is all about?
Um, I'm sorry, but are you capable of disputing the theories of a theoretical physicist within scientific discourse? Only another scientist is assumed capable of disputing another scientist with science. Only a priest has the power to dispute the views of another priest. The comparison holds. And again, communicating observations is not the same as Science. This is to assume a universal Scientific world view, which I already disputed above.
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