The latest edition of the journal Skeptical Inquirer is entitled "Science, God and (Non)Belief. The articles, uniformly atheist, are online at this link.The enticement on Arts & Letters Daily -- itself a pro-secular organ -- reads as follows:
What is prayer, and how can it work? This is not just a question of religion, but of neurophysics – and logic...
14 comments:
The Arts & Letters Daily hits the nail on the head. Most world religions make claims that could easily be tested by science. Incidentally, the most recent and well-funded study on the power of prayer
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12082681/)
Yielded strictly negative results; to no one's great surprise I'm sure.
-J.L.
A dialectical question which has come to me during this course: is there any valid testablility which is not scientific? Or, put another way, is the polemical sense of science different from the technical sense? That is, historical claims, to chose the common example, are not 'testable by science' but are still acceptable ....
I want to add (because I want to test - in the etymologically-strict sense of the term - my idea) the statement 'my mother loves me' is true but not (in some obviously true but subtly intriguing sense) testable scientifically.
ps: this pondering is not strictly related to the course dialectic - it is a result of re-reading an essay of Quine's.
It's taken a while for me to come up with a decent concise answer to this, but to put it as briefly as I can:
Scientific, historical and personal claims are not of the same variety. All of them, however, can be analyzed logically.
You'll need to explain to me a bit more what you see as the "polemical" and "technical" senses of science- I am aware of only one sense of science.
-JL
Dear J.L.:
You 'one sense' of science would, I am guessing, be equivalent to my 'technical' sense. Interestingly, I was just about to blog the following important exchange, currently much referenced, on science, scientism (i.e. 'polemical' science) and religion involving one of my linguistic heroes, Steven Pinker.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.html?id=10917&page=all
ps: more directly to answer your question, science is used polemically -- by Dawkins for instance -- when it is used in intellectual polemos: as a weapon against religion, say. My question was (& is) whether there is or is not any valid test that is not scientific: in other words, is a test valid IFF it is scientific?
PPS: For science & polemic, see this article, esp. the section "Scientific Dogmatism." in the online "Skeptic" eJournal, titled "Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion" by David Sloan Wilson:
"Richard Dawkins and I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory. We share an interest in culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. We are both atheists in our personal convictions who have written books on religion. In Darwin’s Cathedral I attempted to contribute to the relatively new field of evolutionary religious studies. When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues. Hence this critique of The God Delusion and the larger issues at stake. "
The Article on that page seems to have changed- I don't see Sloan anywhere. Still, I can at least comment on your validity question.
The answer is contingent on what you mean both by science and by validity. The scope of science is limited to the study of facts. The idea that "scientism" or any scientific thinking poses a threat to morality seems foolish to me because of the fact/value dichotomy. Philosophers will tell you: You can't derive an "ought" directly from an "is". The domain of science is the latter, and not the former.
But are there non-scientific, yet valid tests? Of course. There are logical and mathematiocal tests that are perfectly valid without ever having to bring up science.
The conflict between science and religion has to do with facts and knowledge. When religious people make dubious empirical claims about souls, gods, and miracles, scientists are perfectly justified in being dogmatic about evidentiary standards.
I will finally state (quite polemically) that I do not accept the idea of different things being "true for" different people. A declarative proposition is true IFF it corresponds to the facts as they actually are; this is my dogma.
-J.L.
Apologies: article at the link following.
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-07-04.html
Dear J.L.:
Wha about emotional states? They can be true for individuals, no?
Blogging this even though we've already talked it over:
My answer is still no. The emotional state that Paris Hilton (for instance) happens to be in is just as much a fact for everyone else in the world as it is for her. We may have no information at all about it, but that has exactly zero effect on the truth value of the proposition "Paris Hilton feels__________."
Whether we accept, reject, or suspend judgment on a proposition, it is either true or false, never both and never neither.
This takes the form of polemic, but it really isn't. Not any more so than saying "Two plus two equals four; never three, and never five."
-J.L.
Dear J.L.:
I think we on the one hand at cross purposes here, and on the other having an interesting debate .... but unrelated to the present matter.
First. The matter at hand is the passage on page 183 of Douglas Coupland's literary work Life After God which reads as follows:
"I did not deny that the existence of Jesus was real for these people--it was merely that I was cut off from their experience in a way that was never conectable."
I need to explain the passage: nothing, of course, is in play here about my own views or lack of same. And, mutatis mutandis nothing is in play about Coupland's views either. It is the narrator's view, not the author's. So, responding to your excellent comment, I will say that as a general rule of criticism, literature is not judged by logically consistency: violations of strict canons of logic does not damn a work of literary art: on the contrary, it may, in a place, crown it in glory.
Here is my statement from the lecture notes in this regard: "182-184: A statement against doctrine (Truth) and for experience (Validity)" So, the artistic design, in my view, is in line with Coupland's central principle of increasing harmony and humility and reducing dogmatic aggressiveness and arrogancy. Thus, the passage uses experience as its criterion and allows for the validity (not the Truth) of contrary experiences. So it is neither true nor false but (pace Ayer) valid as an expression of a real (to use Coupland's exact term) internal state.
Now on to your other hand. Full disclosure. My intention from a double major in English & Philosophy was a graduate degree in either one or the other. Part of my decision for English was that, where I found Logic to be exciting, important, real work and very difficult, I found Grammar to be exciting, important, real work and very easy.
With that caveat, then, let me say that I still think there is a form of truth in statements of the 'real for me' type. The statement "Fishing at Antler Lake in the village of Gold River on Vancouver Island is the ideal earthly pleasure" is real for me; even true for me in a non-trivial sense.
For instance, it is not like saying "I feel a sadness" or "I prefer Coke to Pepsi." I can offer a number of objective reasons why my "Antler Lake" statement is true. Antler Lake is more quiet, peaceful, safe, temperate, productive of angling, beautiful, balanced between accessible and remote, free of cost, than anywhere else in the world.
Of course, these are not objective to the degree that "there are sixteen thousand Douglas fir trees surrounding the lake" would be. But the point is that there is a non-trivial way that this statement is (a.) true for me and (b.) not true for other people in the world.
I do, of course, humbly await chopping from the logician superiors '--)
There is a difference here between what is said and what is meant. When Coupland's narrator says "True for" he means (as I read it) that these people really are sincere in their belief. I don't disagree with that statement. My argument is simply that such statements are not literally true.
On the fishing statement: Making a claim about "the" ideal earthly pleasure is very near to a universal generalization, and as such requires only one counterexample to refute it. I would go as far to say that ANY time you make a claim about pleasure, you are actually making a claim about what some individual (or at least a non-universal group of individuals) enjoys.
-J.L.
Dear J.L:
A little cursory and oblique here, I think ....
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