This is a response to Supernatural Atheism
This position makes a mockery of the modern atheism that claims positive knowledge of the structure, history, and fate of the entire universe through the magic of “scientific materialism.”
This is becoming the dominant view of atheism, especially since Dawkins published ‘The God Delusion’. I really dislike this perspective on atheism.
There are many knowledge frameworks that we humans have devised in our few thousand years of history. There are many frameworks that use the concept of God. Not all of them are religious in nature. One of my favorite God-based knowledge frameworks is Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover.
The summary of the Unmoved Mover on Wikipedia is as simple as it gets, although a better detail is availible here if you’re feeling adventurous. The theory goes something like this:
- There exists movement in the world.
- Things that move were set into motion by something else.
- If everything that moves was caused to move by something else, there would be an infinite chain of causes. This can’t happen.
- Thus, there must have been something that caused the first movement.
- From 3, this first cause cannot itself have been moved.
- From 4, there must be an unmoved mover.
It’s pretty clear how this is the argument for God as Creator.
I’ve detailed the Unmoved Mover here not because I agree with it – because I don’t. I wanted to illustrate that not all knowledge frameworks involving God are particularly religious.
Science has it’s own knowledge framework that doesn’t include God as Creator. There’s a lot of people that assume that the Big Bang is basically a reduced version of the Unmoved Mover. That’s ridiculous. Scientifically speaking, the Big Bang is the most distant first event that can currently be measured, and perhaps we’ll never be able to measure from before that event. That doesn’t mean that the Big Bang had no cause. It just means that we have no reasonable way of finding out. It’s officially Uncertain whether there was a cause or not. Maybe there was. Maybe there wasn’t. Scientifically, we just don’t know.
So it’s plain to see that Science and Religion very different frameworks of knowledge – one involving God, and the other not.
My problem is this: That the word ‘atheist’ has become synonymous with ’scientist’. By ’scientist’ I don’t mean a professional scientist. I just mean someone who exclusively uses in the scientific knowledge framework as a way of explaining the world.
This isn’t what atheist means. Atheist just means someone who doesn’t use the frameworks that involve God to explain the Universe. It doesn’t mean that they have to be scientists, because there are frameworks other than science that do not involve God.
As an example, there is the framework that exists before Truth. The idea here is that everything based on the ideal of Truth is suspect, because Truth itself is a matter of unproven faith. Under this framework there are no absolutes, only particulars. Everything is context-sensitive. This doesn’t mean that good things can’t come from science or religion because they most certainly can. But it reduces science and religion to works of art, not statements of absolute Truth – because in this framework, there is no Truth.
This third framework, which I’ll call Before Truth, is one that I’ve been finding increasingly attractive over the last few months. It’s deeply atheistic – under this framework, the idea of God itself becomes a plaything of artists and poets. But so does science.
I’ll label those of us who use the Before Truth framework as Madmen, since that’s pretty much how it works out. 
So this third example shows that atheist doesn’t have to mean scientific materialist. It just means ‘not-a-theist’. There’s a lot more ways to be a ‘not-a-theist’ than just science. In the same way that a Christian and a Muslim are both gentiles, a Scientific Materialist and a Madman are both atheists.
And this is even without cracking the shell on Taoism and Buddhism and other such ‘Godless’ knowledge frameworks.
Because of this, most of the arguments between theists and atheists that I’ve been reading lately are completely moot.
For example, the so-called atheists are attacking theism on the grounds that it is unscientific. Of course theism is unscientific! Theism and science are completely different knowledge frameworks! You may as well accuse a cat of not being a dog and it’d make about as much sense.
In response the theists are trying to justify theism scientifically. This is also completely ridiculous! You cannot justify religion using science because they’re two completely different things! You may as well tape floppy ears and a false muzzle to a cat and call it a dog.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t blur the line between the two a bit – that’s actually really artisitc and cool if you can pull it off. But you can’t go saying that theisim is wrong because it’s not science. You can make the case for why you think science is superior to theism, but you can’t go judging theism by the yardstick of science. It doesn’t work that way.
So I disagree with Richard Dawkins.
… Yeah, that kind of came out of the blue, didn’t it?
For the record, I have a very great respect for what Dawkins has been doing to politically motivate the atheist community in America and abroad, as well as push for atheists to not be viewed as some kind of evil, monstrous fringe group. I have my scarlett A shirt and my scarlett A lapel pin. It’s a great idea, and I support it wholeheartedly.
However, Dawkins criticsizes the God-believers with one question: “Is God true?” What he’s actually done is assume that scientific truth is absolute, and that the claims of God-believers can be judged true or false based on the scientific yardstick. This is ridiculous.
Yes, he can put forward an argument for why scientific method is superior to religious faith. It would probably be a very good, highly persuasive argument – he’s a very clever writer and speaker. But that’s all it would be, an argument.
So can the atheists and theists please cut it out with all the mutually snarky bitching about scientific ‘proofs’ for or against theism? It’s getting really tedious.
Quite right. The whole idea of an atheism/theism debate is pretty boring in principle. However, the aspect that involves discussing the meaning of scientific truth is interesting to me.
Comment by emerod — March 29, 2008 @ 4:39 am
Great- you just denied objective reality. Good going. Do you have any idea what you are talking about?
You seem to be under the delusion that theism and science are two seperate ways of knowing. They aren’t. Theism is science, but using god as an explanation. Scientists don’t use god as an explanation anymore because it doesn’t work. There aren’t two seperate ways of knowing- after all, the conotation of atheism is that theism has no subject matter.
You are right that atheism doesn’t require on to be a materialist or rational. However, all the arguments only make sense if you are “gasp” a materialist and rational.
Comment by Samuel Skinner — March 29, 2008 @ 9:12 pm
emerod:
The meaning of scientific truth is interesting… But I think I’ll have to get into this when I address Samuel’s post, so I’ll leave it for there.
Samuel:
I’ve got two problems with your reply. I’ll address the second one first.
“Theism is science, but using god as an explanation.”
Theism is only to be considered science if, by ’science’, you mean ‘the study of absolute Truth’.
Theism and Science do have this in common – the belief in absolute Truth – which I did mention in my post above. However, the two knowledge systems approach Truth from completely different perspectives.
Theisim says that there is an absolute Truth, and that the absolute Truth is God. That Truth has revealed itself to the faithful in the form of religious texts and teachings. Everything else in a religion seems to be either intepreting, revising, or acting on those texts and teachings.
Science is very different. Science tells us that there is absolute Truth – but we have no idea what that absolute truth may be. It could, in fact, be God – but at the start of Scientific enquiry we just don’t know. Science tells us instead that we can model an approximation of the Truth mentally, and that these models can be verified based on observational evidence because the measure of a model’s success lies in its ability to predict future events successfully. The models and their evaluations become the texts and teachings of Science.
So no, Theism is not Science. In Theism the Truth has taken an active role in revealing itself. In Science the Truth does no such thing; we must slowly and incrementally move towards Truth through the ceaseless re-evaluation of our mental approximations of what that Truth might be.
And I can already see a rebuttal coming: “But in Science the Truth reveals itself via observation of evidence.” No. It doesn’t. What you actually get is a probability based on the observational evidence. Nothing actually gets ‘revealed’. One of the big criticisims of Science is that it will probably never actually accomplish the act of achieving a model that exactly represents absolute Truth, and this is a valid point – Science probably won’t… Although as far as Science is concerned, this doesn’t matter. The goal is to keep getting closer to Truth and hope for the best. Whether or not we get there will remain a mystery until we do or we give up.
Second problem:
“Great- you just denied objective reality. Good going. Do you have any idea what you are talking about?”
Yes, I do have an idea about what I’m talking about – and no, I’m not denying objective reality. That would be stupid. I’m not arguing nihilism here. Nihilism sucks; it’s really boring.
What I’m denying is that the belief in absolute Truth has a any valid basis. That is not to say that I’m saying that nothing good can come from such knowledge systems that base themselves on this belief – because Science and Theism both provide some very good things, and I’m not one to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
What I’m saying is that these knowledge systems themselves are not absolute. That they are themselves a form of artistic expression – albeit a really weird and covoluted one. It’s just that, in order to perform Theism or Science, you have to let yourself forget that you’re being artisitc; you have to deny the artistic creativity inherent in all knowledge systems in order to have any kind of certainty about the world around you.
And I’m not knocking certainty. Certainty can be nice. We need a bit of certainty every now and again. But I am saying that it’s just as valid to step outside of the systems of knowledge that we humans have invented over our history and into the realm of total uncertainty. That’s where we humans are the most creative, the most beautiful and the most alive. It’s also frightening and kind of dangerous, so I accept that not everyone will allow themselves to do this. But it’s very liberating to step beyond the predefined and create newness.
Maybe you actually have to try the things I’m talking about to know what I mean… That would make a lot of sense, actually. It wasn’t until I started playing around with this idea – wilfully stepping beyond the realm of certainty and into that of uncertainty for short stretches at a time – that I realized how delicate and transient our knowledge systems really are.
And don’t get me wrong here either; I’m not knocking absolute Truth. It’s a beautiful belief; but that’s just the thing, it’s a belief. A work of art. In fact, absolute Truth is probably the greatest work of art you’ve never thought about.
Artistic impulse and creativity come first. Knowledge tags along after.
Comment by Ubiquitous Che — March 29, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
Lord, preserve me from your followers.
In short theism relies on authority. And how did these authorities get their truth? Evidence. Isn’t the reason the Jews believe in God because The Lord delivered them from Egypt? Isn’t Christianity founded on Jesus’s life and Gospel and the Resserection.
Science is a process. It is the search for information and understanding about our world. Laws are formulated from correlations between variables (Kepler’s Laws) and hypothesises are developed to explain why things work that way. Evidence is aquired to try to disprove the theories people have aquired. Experiments are conducted by many parities to cover for bias. If a theory wheters repeated attempts to falsify it and it passes with flying colors it becomes a theory. Then the engineers take the information developed and use it to form new technology. This is the modern system- the previous was more trial and error, with less inbuilt corrections.
What do you mean by “truth”? Are you denying casality? Are you saying the universe is essentially random? If a rock falls a thousand times do you think it will be different the next time?
You seem to be an idiot, so I’ll help out. Does science have absolute certainty? No. Why? Because it is have absolute certainity without having a backround to base it on. SO the reason we can’t be absolutely certain is that we can’t be sure we completely understand a phenomena- it basically boils down to the fact that we don’t know the limits of reality (proving reality exists and the like). How does religion deal with this? We have absolute truth because we say so. In other words, complete intellectual dishonesty. Do you think the origional founders of religion acted that way? They believed because they saw the hand of God in the world. They had evidence. I’ll say it again- reiligion relies on certain things having happened in history and thus puts it under the banner of science and its scrutiny. I’ll give you an example- lets say that there is a rain spirit. Rain doesn’t happen because the air is saturated- it happens because the spirit wills it. How would we know this? Because whenever people attempt to appeah it, it rains- because temples to the spirit raised in the desert blossom into oasis, because one of the spirits orders to its worshippers is to not waste water, because it would tax its power. In short order a science would emerge. How does the spirit cause rain? What is most pleasing to it? Can we replicate its abilities? Make it stronger?
In short theology would be a branch of the sciences. The marvel of science is that, as a process, it can cover all phenomena, no matter how weird as long as it is real.
Comment by Samuel Skinner — March 30, 2008 @ 12:40 am
Sorry if I sound condesending, but the fact is that theism deals with a god that EXISTS. And existance falls under the perview of science and evidence.
Comment by Samuel Skinner — March 30, 2008 @ 1:37 am
Samuel:
You’re not listening.
I know this. That was my point. I’m not suggesting otherwise. It is the entire institution of authority that I’m calling into question!
Theism accepts on authority from God that God exists. Theistically, this is totally acceptable and is really cool and beautiful.
Scientifically it’s not permitted to accept anything on authority. For example, Darwin’s Theory of evolution is only considered a valid scientific theory because it has not been conclusively proven otherwise. It’s not – let me repeat, it’s most definitely not considered a valid scientific theory merely due to the authority of Charles Darwin.
If Darwin’s Theory was disproven – or if a superior scientific theory were to be successfully validated through prediction – Darwin’s Theory would be dropped the same way Newton’s Law of Gravity was dropped for Einstein’s ideas on the relation between matter and space.
A scientific model remains scientifically valid only until such time as it is disproven or replaced. Each currently valid model is, by it’s very nature, in question… There is no authority whatsoever.
What you seem to be proposing as Theism is a blurring of the lines between Theism and Science – which as I said in my original post is actually pretty cool in and of itself.
But Theism itself isn’t Science, because God as a hypothetical model fails the most vital test of a valid scientific theory – that it must be falsifiable; there must be some prediction that can be made by the God-model that, should it not eventuate as predicted, would disprove that model.
The problem is that even if the God-model were to make such a prediction, were that prediction turn out to be false the God-model would just have to say that “God made it to happen that way” and, hey presto, the God-model wasn’t actually disproven!
Let me emphasise that this is totally acceptable under the knowledge system of Theism. I’m not knocking the knowledge system of Theisim, it’s artistic and cool and I dig it.
But the God-model isn’t valid under the knowledge system of Science because the God-model fails to make measureable, testable, potentially falsifying predictions about future events, which it has to do to be considered a valid Scientific model.
Once again, this doesn’t make Theism an invalid knowledge system! It just makes it incompatible with Science.
Consider the question: Is Truth true?
The way the test for truth or falsehood works is to take a model about the world, check it against those parts of the world that are observable, and see if they match up.
This works for Theism as much as it works for Science. It’s just that applying two fundamentally different knowledge systems yeilds two fundamentally different conclusions. Neither conclusion is valid under the other knowledge system, but they don’t have to be. They just have to be valid within their own knowledge systems – which they are.
But how do you test if this practice of checking a model against the observable world is a valid approach for understanding that world?
You can’t. Truth is the test for validity. How do you test the validity of the process of testing for validity? It’s like trying to use logic to prove logic or faith to prove faith. You can only prove the validity of proving things by first assuming that proving the validity of things is valid. You can only use the thing to define itself! The act of proving something – Truth – is itself tautological.
And that’s okay with me. I’m happy to say that Truth is tautological. It’s a beautiful tautology. Let it be a tautology! Let all knowledge be tautological! That doesn’t invalidate that knowledge, or make it any less beautiful or useful. It just makes that knowedge a form of artistic expression – a very refined, highly artistic expression – instead of being absolute Truth.
But for those people who are inclined to use critical thinking and logic as their means of understanding the universe – which is a very beautiful and artistic means of understanding the universe – tautology is the worst thing ever, because you haven’t defined anything. You’ve defined something using itself. I think that’s actually pretty cool, but it tends to make people who believe in Truth – as I assume you to be – very anxious… Which is probably why you keep trying to dismiss me as an idiot.
Even if I am an idiot… Actually, I like that. Ubiquitous Che, the Idiot Sophist… Has a nice ring to it.
However, my being an idiot in and of itself doesn’t neccesarily mean I don’t have a point.
Yes, it does have absolute certainty. It has absolute certainty about the results of experimentation and whether the experiment was validationg, invalidating or inconclusive in regards to the model it was designed to test. That’s all the certainty Science claims, and that’s all the certainty science needs, save one: That Truth is true.
Comment by Ubiquitous Che — March 30, 2008 @ 2:03 am
Science and religion are independent; there is some peculiar tendency to have them oppose each other. I really don’t know where it is coming from.
Neither can be proven to be correct or false. Only certainty there is comes from logic, and even that only assuming that humans can think logically and not make mistakes.
Comment by Tommi — March 30, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
? Okay…I have no idea what your point is… damn sohists. I can’t tell if you agree with me or not. For the record my point was religion is false, while science is the only valid method for understanding how the world works.
As for Tommi… the reason they oppose each other is that they describe the same thing- reality. And only one can be true. Did humans evolved in the Great Rift Valley or were they formed of mud in Eden? Only one can be true.
Things can be proven true or false, given a framework, Logic is one example of a framework that you can use. The beauty of logic is even if you are wrong, someone can show you how.
Comment by Samuel Skinner — March 30, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
Samuel:
Yeah… Sorry about that. I don’t mean to be incomprehensible.
Maybe a shift in lauguage might be helpful? What I’m arguing for is something very close to Ontological Anti-Realism. I’m trying to argue from an ontological perspective without using the language of philosophy, because the assumptions used in the language of philosophy is one of the things I’m arguing against. Besides, the language of philosophy is really, really boring. I’m trying to inject artistic expression into the arena, and make that which is boring beautiful again.
If you want a background on Ontological Anti-Realism, then Chalmer’s essay on the subject is as good a place as any to start. Like Chalmers my sympathies lie with Ontological Anti-Realism… but for different reasons.
Be warned, though. It’s 48 pages of pure boredom. I got about five pages in and wanted to die. I skimmed through it and got a feel for things, but I couldn’t bring myself to read the whole thing in detail. I don’t mean to knock Chalmers; the man does some very interesting essays, it’s just that this isn’t one of them. However, the simple fact that it’s completely inartistic might make it a bit more accessible if you’re finding my use of artistic language too opaque.
Samuel and Tommi:
One of the things I’m trying to argue about Logic is that Logic isn’t something that brings us to an understanding of absolute Truth. I’m arguing that Logic is actually a form of persuasion via artistic expression. This doesn’t invalidate Logic in my books – it beautifies it.
That’s what the origin of Logic was. Before Logic, there was Logos. It’s only by convention that Logos is valued above Ethos (style) and Pathos (emotional appeal) – we have Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to thank for that.
Originally Ethos, Pathos and Logos were three equal parts of the same whole, to be valued differently according to the requirements of each audience. The purpose of Logos, Ethos and Pathos was not Truth, but to persuade. Persuasion was viewed as the revision of or addition to Mythos (the myths and beliefs that people hold about the world). A good argument was an argument that not only revised Mythos, but added to the beauty of Mythos and the world. This is what the original sophists called excellence.
I’m arguing here that Science and Theism are themselves two different systems of Mythos. I’m also arguing that this doesn’t invalidate them or make them less than you might think they are if you believe them to be manifestations of Truth, because I’m also arguing that Truth itself is a form of Mythos.
I’m arguing that recognizing Science and Theism as Mythos makes them more than you have thought them to be. Just as valid, but at the same time more artistic and beautiful than you ever realized they could be.
I was avoiding the use of sophic and rhetorical language to do this, because sophistry has earned itself a negative reputation thanks to the criticisms of Plato, and this reputation has carried over to both Theism and Science – two different offshoots of the Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian traditions.
But if other people reading this blog are as confused by what I’m arguing for as Samuel is, then I figure this might help to shed some light what I’m trying to do here… Even though it leaves me open to all the arguments against sophistry that have ever been made.
It’s a bugger, but what can you do?
Comment by Ubiquitous Che — March 30, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
Samuel,
One can posit that God created life (including people) through evolution, created the universe through the Big bang, and so forth. A very reasonable point of view (that I don’t hold).
Che,
You see everything through the lens of rhetoric. I see everything through the lens of mathematics or logic (or roleplaying. but that is besides the point).
Personally, I know there is at least one absolutely true thing: I think, therefore thought exists. (A weaker statement would be that something exists.) One can’t deduce that there is time or that there is an objective reality or that there is or is not a God. Absolute truth is extremely limited in scope, though it does exist.
Given that, what logic can give is meaningful conditional statements. For example, assuming time and causality, can one deduce the existence of a prime cause? (Yes, but only if one assumes that the causal chain must have only a finite number of states, which is pretty strong claim.) Or, assuming that the reality is roughly as I think it is, should I take an umbrella when going for a walk?
Note that logic can be both be a means of persuasion and a method for discerning (conditional) truth. One does not exclude the other.
Comment by Tommi — March 31, 2008 @ 11:18 am
Tommi:
“You see everything through the lens of rhetoric. I see everything through the lens of mathematics or logic (or roleplaying. but that is besides the point).”
This is just my point. Science is a lens, Theism is a lens, Rhetoric is a lens, all the ways of looking at the world are lenses.
The only difference is that where you say ‘lens’, I say ‘Mythos’; lens is limiting word. Mythos means everything that lens means, but also much more. It expands on the meaning of ‘lens’.
So the statement “I know there is at least one absolutely true thing: I think, therefore thought exists,” is a part of your Mythos.
And the belief in the concept of a “discernable (conditional) truth” is another part of your Mythos – perhaps it’s even the root of your Mythos. Yes, it’s a belief that is built on a firm foundation of logic and self-experience – but it’s still a belief. Calling it a belief doesn’t make it any less valid, and you can still argue for grounds why this belief is superior to other beliefs.
A Truth is stable. It never changes. It’s dead and boring and lifeless. But a belief…. A belief can change and grow and live. Beliefs are much cooler than Truths. Beliefs shape Truths, they redefine Truths. Truth is the plaything of belief, and a belief is a brick in the edifice of Mythos.
All I’m saying is that it’s a wonderful thing to remind yourself, from time to time, that your Mythos is Mythos; that your lens is just a lens. Not all the time, mind you. A lot of the time it’s very useful to forget that your Mythos is a Mythos and allow yourself to perceive it as Truth, because this is the only way you can have any real certainty and stability in life, and certainty and stability can be very nice. But when certainty and stability become stagnant and cloying, you can always step outside the realm of Truth.
It’s insane to live outside of Truth, and I don’t reccomend staying there for more than a few minutes at a time. But you have to try it, even for a few moments. It’s fantastic.
Comment by Ubiquitous Che — March 31, 2008 @ 11:26 pm
Samuel and Tommi:
Before I forget, I’d also like to thank you both for taking the time out to disagree with me. I can only hope you don’t stop now. You guys are really helping me flesh this thing out. I like criticisim. It’s good.
Comment by Ubiquitous Che — March 31, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
Occasionally one can have informative discussions over the internet. The reason for it being so useful (for me).
Anyway.
Che,
Mythos or lens, I don’t care about the word being used as we seem to mean the same thing either way.
I find myself agreeing with most of your points. I don’t find questioning the existence of an absolute truth to be that dangerous or exotic or mind-shattering; that may be due to significant exposure to fantasy literature and roleplaying, both of which essentially construct new worlds and ask the reader/participant to assume that they make sense and are true (for a given meaning of true; relevant or important may be a better word). Or maybe the bit of philosophy I have studied is more significant than I give it credit for. Or maybe it is the sometimes axiomatic nature of mathematics; the set of axioms one selects is essentially arbitrary but given them what follows is strictly defined. Bayesian statistics and certain lecture on the subject matter may also be significant.
Whatever the reason, I find it hard to think how people who believe in significant absolute truth think (like Gods or no Gods). There’s the sceptic’s paradox: Is it an absolute truth that there are no absolute truths? (My stance is to say that I have not found sufficient justification for assuming absolute truth and find the alternative less dangerous.)
That there is (very limited) absolute truth is indeed part of my mythos. I’d be interested to hear any counterarguments, aside from “everything is subjective”, which categorically attacks the assumption that there might even be an inherently true thing and hence can’t be attacked on the level at question.
Comment by Tommi — April 3, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
I’d like to apologize for not returning promptly- I use Google search and… well I lost your site. I don’t have time now, but I will soon and I promise I will respond.
Comment by Samuel Skinner — April 29, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
Logic is a method to show that something is impossible or true or false by showing it fulfills or does not fulfill certain rules. These rules are based on what we know about reality. They could be wrong- except some of them that, when false lead to conclusions that do not exist and therefore the rules are true.
Science is a process to find information about reality based on empirical evidence.
No one has come up with a truly good definition for religion.
Lens! Yes… yes I REMEMBER!
Almost slipped my mind. When you say lens, science isn’t a lens- it the process for getting truth. All attempts to find information about the world are similar to science- science is just them, but with safe guards. When you say lens- it isn’t science that it means.
It is looking into an area and seeing the beauty of it… or how it was planned out by architects… or where the animals go… or where the cover and firing points are… or how the air flows. Lens are when you focus on specific details, ignoring everything else that isn’t relevant in order to see something in depth.
It is amazing.
Tommi
Saying God created life through evolution is… odd. God is all powerful- it would be like cleaning your cloths by placing them on a car roof. Bad plan- it would work, but it is stupid.
Rhetoric isn’t a lens. It is a skill.
You only know thought exists because you have defined thought as what you do.
There is an absolute truth- reality and all that springs from it. Of course we can’t be positive about it, but given the odds we are close enough. Don’t you know .99999… equals 1?
Comment by Samuel Skinner — April 30, 2008 @ 10:19 pm
Greetings, Samuel.
Logic is constructed in such a way that to humans it is/looks like infallible. If it is not so, there is some inherent deficiency in human thought that humans can’t notice. To postulate such is possible, but, in my opinion, not very useful; logic seems to work and there are no alternatives, so …
Science and rhetoric are both associated with a given lens/mythos/whatever.
That is: science is a process, where you first make an educated guess and then try to get support for and against it, hence gaining information about reality. It is quite different from other ways of gaining information; most people don’t try to actively falsify things they hear. People generally trust what other people and media and so forth say, because functioning in a society is very hard without doing so.
The lens that is associated with science is that of making hypotheses and seeing if they hold true. It is one way of looking at information or information-gathering. There are reasonable alternatives: Sometimes knowing something would be very painful or inconvenient, and hence people will not do so (there’s a term for this; shock or denial or some such). Sometimes knowing something supports other opinions, and hence people know it. For example: Me knowing that Expelled is bunch of nonsense, even without having seen it or researched it.
Likewise rhetoric: If you know about rhetoric, you will look at writing and performances in different way. Personally, I know little about them, so I’ll use another example. I’ve learned a bit about search engine optimisation, because an internet friend does it. I look at websites from that perspective pretty instinctually. It is a skill and a lens.
On god and evolution: I can use the exact same argument to say that a supreme being would not have created any processes whatsoever, only a static end result. Is there a particular reason to think evolution is fundamentally a different sort of entity than, say, the current economical system, which certainly did not spring from anything fully formed?
On absolute truth: First, 1 = 0,99999 exactly because that is the way the decimal system is constructed. What are you are referring to are limits. For example, 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + … + 1/(2^n). The more terms that are summed (that is, the greater the n is), the closer the sum gets to 2. It gets arbitrarily close, but never quite reaches 2.
Take an arbitrary sequency. It converges with probability 0. (This does not mean that it is impossible to find one that converges; rather, the amount of series that converges is vanishingly small.) One can think of scientific knowledge as a sequence (of sets, probably). Does it converge; is there some ultimate truth it moves towards? I’d sure hope there is, but, again, there is no way of being certain. It might just move from one paradigm to another, with none being more “correct” than the others. I find that this is the likely reality (if it exists). New paradigms give new lenses to use when looking at things, and hence give more information.
You are assuming that there is an objective reality. This is very impossible to show. For example, see other minds problem and phenomenalism. People have no power to get information that does not come from thinking or the senses. There is no way to know that these sources actually work.
Essentially, yes. I’d say it in another way, though: I know that this things exists and I chose to define/name it as “thought”.
Comment by Tommi — May 1, 2008 @ 8:21 am
Science is not a lense. Period. Science is a process of gaining knowledge.
Rhetoric isn’t a lense either. Rhetoric is a method of speaking and convincing others.
A lense is a way of looking at the world that ignores certain information to focus on other details.
Science is the method of gaining information the is the most rigorious. For example if you want to find out if something is true than you look for contradictory evidence.
Also, an objective reality has to exist. The alternative is that reality is determined by the observor. The problem with that? It is insane. There is no reason, method, explanation… anything for people being able to manipulate reality with their minds.
Comment by Samuel Skinner — May 4, 2008 @ 12:17 am
Hey Samuel.
I’d say that lens ignores certain potential information, but this may be simple semantics.
Science, as a process, includes certain (potential) information, like the existence of god(s), and focuses on others, such as that provided by experiments that can be repeated. Exactly as any lens does.
Rhetoric (and any skill), I’d say, is not a lens in and of itself, but rather defines one; likewise, any lens defines a skill. Certain analytical skills may be nothing but a lens, but many skills do offer much beyond a single lens.
Someone skilled in rhetoric can focus attention on things that are relevant to convincing the audience; details that people not as skilled won’t notice. I’d go as far as to say that this is automatic, but this is based on subjective experience, so generalising it without further proof is unwarranted. Anyway; presumably, someone focusing on the rhetorical tricks used will ignore some other things, simply because human attention is limited. Hence, rhetoric defines a lense. The argument can be generalised to any other skill that is not pure automation.
Take, then, a particular lens, which is a mental tool for focusing on certain details and ignoring others. Using a particular lens hence allows one to gain more information than someone without that lens could, and hence allows more sophisticated analysis of the subject matter. Hence, every lens defines a skill.
On science: It is as rigorous a methodology for gaining information as is possible and still gain meaningful information about the real world (assuming such exists, on which more later). Mathematics is more rigorous, but inapplicable in almost all situations. This is no way contradicts it being a lens.
An objective reality: Here’s a scenario with no objective reality. You can’t prove that it is wrong. Assume everything around you is merely a figment of your imagination; this includes all your memories. Sure, you remember everything being (fairly) consistent and reasonable, but how can your be certain that you don’t misremember? Maybe you are a creature who remembers everything as consisten, even if it is not so? Or maybe you’ll remember tomorrow and see everything you take for granted being replaced with something utterly alien and strange? Or maybe only what you can sense exists, and there is an undetectable entity that creates world as you move around, and what you don’t sense collapses after you, only to be reconstructed again when the entity deems you think reconstructing it is necessary to make you think that there is an objective reality?
To take a less fancy example, consider quantum mechanics. As far as I know, matter does not so much have a location as a probability distribution. Assuming this is true, what does an objective reality even mean?
Or; how do you know that the way you see “red” is the way everyone else sees it? Maybe, if you could see world as everyone else does, all colours would be inverted in some fantastic way? If such is the case, which colour is the actual real red?
Comment by Tommi — May 4, 2008 @ 6:37 pm