I read an article today that was drivel.
It makes me furious when religious viewpoints are allowed to first assume they are true, and then defend themselves as though they were as valid as any scientific theory.
What makes me even more furious is that most people cannot see what is wrong with that.
To demonstrate the fact that idiots pervade every strata of society, Mark Vernon of the Guardian obligingly offered up his apologies as to why Anglican priest and physicist John Polkinghorne can't seem to stop talking about god and chaos theory in the same sentence, and why this *cough* definitely isn't the god of gaps fallacy.
Mark Vernon, who flirts far too closely with religion, probably because if he didn't he'd lose his job (more on jobs where honesty is discouraged later in the blog), immediately puts me on edge with this little gem:
"The challenge is to avoid concocting a "God of the gaps" – a deity whose action occurs in the gaps where scientific explanations apparently fall short. The best known example of this is probably the bacterial flagellum."
In his usual snivelling, apologetic fashion he forgets to mention that there is no "apparent" about the bacterial flagellum having no explanation, at least not beyond the "apparent" inability of science to explain why the universe is only 6000 years old. It was a creationist myth spawned by another incompetent scientist marred by an inability to believe in a god for which there is no rational justification, the ever-twattish Michael Behe, who was promptly smacked down in his court action when he came up against the fact that 99.99% of scientists in his field have actually read about the bacterial flagellum and, whether or not they believe in god, recognize that there is overwhelming evidence as to its evolutionary origins.
Notice the logical fallacy already? Both Polkinghorne and Behe have done what all scientists have to do in order to believe in god; they've decided on what is true first and tried to make the evidence fit.
But it doesn't fit. Like smacking a square block into a spherical hole; if you choose a random idea spawned from humanity's ignorant past (Christianity in this example) and go "THAT'S TRUE", owing to the fact there that are literally infinite things that can be believed but do not exist, you are going to be incorrect and when you go looking for the evidence that you're right it won't exist.
Now, not many people know this, but for most of humanity history there has been no rational discourse, and the "empirical model" was completely outside of the consciousness. In its place was what was called "the authority model", whereupon things were considered true if somebody in authority said them.
Almost all things that were 'known' were known because somebody in authority had said them and the same rule that choosing a random belief will guarantee you're wrong applies; during this entire time the only people who actually knew anything true were the scant few empiricists, who the church was hanging in order to transfer their souls to another dimension full of fire where their cosmic being put his army of fallen demon angels whilst they waited for the end of the world (compare and contrast their views, and remember whose side you're on if you're arguing religion is true, as if that's even a rational claim given there are so many).
Now this is the natural human urge, clearly; most people still exist thinking according to the authority model, and the only reason that's not what is actually done is because people operating on this principle do not have the capacity to do what scientists do, which means economics and politics will always favor science (it's also why I don't sit around trying to 'save' science from irrationality. Money will do it for us; nobody is going to be choosing homeopathy or religion over science because both are bunkum and provide no results).
In essence, no amount of "authority" translates into reality, which is why a nuclear scientist can create an explosion that'll turn a city to glass and theologians are still sat around scratching their arses trying to decide whether to take gods word for it that homos are the devil incarnate.
And yet because theology, postmodernism, homeopathy and all other manner of bullshit dresses up like academia, idiots still operating on the authority principle can't see that their claims are meaningless unless validated against reality. Meanwhile science works entirely on evidence and does not actually assert authority, but this is only comprehensible to other scientists who recognize the fallacy of appealing to authority, which leads to a tremendous rejection of scientific ideals in the majority of the population.
So how does this apply to the case-in-hand? Well, Mark Vernon is a great example of why people think it's significant that John Polkinghorne believes in a god; he is an authority. They do not care for the claims he's making because they cannot comprehend them, but they know he is a 'scientist' therefore he's an 'authority' therefore he should be taken seriously.
It is the same reason creationists go insane for trying to prove that Einstein and Stephen Hawking were religious; they are human beings who operate on the 'authority' principle, as comes naturally to humans, and they don't understand that even if they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that ALL people in authority were religious it wouldn't mean anything.
Reality has no authority.
This is why before something exists you need to prove it; reality doesn't answer to anyone. If you claim something is true then go "you can't disprove it" reality doesn't give a flying rats anus, even if you get people to agree with you. God won't exist even if you get every person on earth believing in it; there is no authority when it comes to things that exist, only facts which are known through evidence.
Back to the article; John Polkinghorne has managed to baffle Vernon into trying to explain his viewpoint from any perspective other than "He's lying or imperfect in his reasoning or even afraid of dropping dead", and he wraps up this drivel on a note which essentially proves the 'Authority model' as the culprit behind religious apologists:
"Whether or not you buy that will depend much on your prior metaphysical assumptions. We all have them. But be they theistic or otherwise, there is a general conclusion that can be posited about science: from the point of view of mathematical description, what chaos theory and reductionism more broadly demonstrate is that most of nature is scientifically underdetermined – which is to say that scientific explanations are limited. "
Firstly: we don't all have them. [This will drive imbeciles mad, because it requires a huge brain to understand properly] Some people operate on logic, which is the antithesis of an assumption.
Secondly: It's irrelevant whether we do or don't have them. Stop trying to "allow" failings of science by saying "we're only human, we all fuck up!". That doesn't excuse anything; if I answered all my coursework questions (yup, I'm studying) "Well, I could derive the equation for this systems action, but actually GOD DID IT GOD DID IT" I wouldn't have explained anything to anyone, and because I'm not an authority figure there'd be no apologists to go "Come on now, hes' not wrong; we ALL have metaphysical assumptions".
"Further, it's not an epistemological gap that's being appealed to in John Polkinghorne's work, but rather an ontological causal openness. Hence the possibility, at least, of making the link with divine action."
Openness? OPENNESS? Are you fucking kidding me? He believes that a GOD is causing everything he says it's causing.
A) what kind of quack definition of 'openness' involves not only a single explanation.
B) That explanation is from the fucking Bible.
Also what is this "possibility" of a divine cause? SCIENTISTS are the ones open to the possibility of a divine cause.REVEREND Polkinghorne is the one who is absolutely fucking sure that the indeterminate nature of things is god secretly hiding there playing the odds and making the things we haven't explained happen.
Why is it people who talk about being open minded are usually the ones who have already decided on an explanation and are pissed of that you won't let them assert it without a challenge? Never mad that you disagree though; the "closed minded" bullshit crotch shot line only ever comes out when they want you to pretend that they're smarter than they are.
Do I need to point out here that John Polkinghorne was raised in a religious society, indoctrinated into religious belief them smacked that religious belief all over science in the vaguest way possible and now just sits there lapping up the confusion it causes in retards who are too stupid to comprehend evidence so they just believe whatever the fuck anyone claiming to be an academic says?
This isn't openness and this isn't a rational viewpoint; this is a stupid (or weak) man claiming something is true then refusing to be dislodged from that position for anything.
And most importantly....
This IS the 'God of Gaps' fallacy
Some people operate on logic, which is the antithesis of an assumption.
ReplyDeleteThis statement makes no sense. Logic is a process which starts out with a premise and ends with a conclusion. The premise may be based on either knowledge or assumptions or both. Sometimes assumptions are necessary because the knowledge is uncertain or not available. In any rate, just because something is logical doesn't mean it's correct; conclusions have to be tested in the real world to be absolutely certain. (And this is where knowledge quite often comes from in the first place.) It doesn't seem reasonable that something which is often integral to a process could be antithetical to it.
If there's any things which are an antithesis to "logic", I would think that "fallacious thinking" or "wild guess" would be much more likely candidates as such than "assumption".
Full quote..."[This will drive imbeciles mad, because it requires a huge brain to understand properly] Some people operate on logic, which is the antithesis of an assumption."
ReplyDeleteYou're mixing up logic and empiricism.
Not really. The portion of my statement which said:
ReplyDelete"In any rate, just because something is logical doesn't mean it's correct; conclusions have to be tested in the real world to be absolutely certain. (And this is where knowledge quite often comes from in the first place.)"
...may have been about logical empiricism, and was possibly extraneous information if it was not needed as an example. But with or without that portion of my statement, it doesn't change the validity of the rest of it. Logic is a process which sometimes uses assumptions out of necessity, if only because no one has perfect knowledge. So therefore I don't see any basis for calling it an "antithesis" of logic.
Logic is a process which sometimes uses assumptions out of necessity
ReplyDeleteYou're still mixing up logic and empiricism.
From your original post..."This statement makes no sense. Logic is a process which starts out with a premise and ends with a conclusion."
You're still describing empiricism retard.
So therefore I don't see any basis for calling it an "antithesis" of logic.
Then you're an idiot, and you're completely blind to the fact that you're using the word 'assumption' in the everyman sense when what you're describing is 'assumption' in the scientific sense. A far more accurate word for when things are assumed out of necessity is 'hypothesis'.
Hypotheses in logical positivistic theories exist purely to disprove themselves; when a one is proposed it is tested with the aim of falsifying it (proving it to be untrue). This is practically the dictionary definition of an antithesis.
Hypotheses in logical positivistic theories exist purely to disprove themselves
ReplyDeleteSince when were people being logical positivists around here? Besides, the initial premise of an argument can be an assumption, and then proceed logically. This is a conditional proof, and, what do you know, the antecedent is called the conditional proof assumption. This is basic symbolic logic.
Now, the actual article: the term "ontological causal openness" is an obfuscatory way of saying "we know what happens, and we mostly know why, but we can't explain why things happen at all." This isn't a scientific question. The question of why the universe exists and how it came about cannot (for now, at least) be answered, mostly because the laws of nature basically break down within 10^-43 seconds of the creation of the universe. What came before, whether the concept of "before" even has meaning, these questions are apparently unanswerable (not to take anything from those brave theorists who try.) A hypothesis of a theistic cause is not unreasonable here. Neither is a hypothesis of an atheistic cause.
The trouble is, neither hypothesis is verifiable. The atheistic hypothesis is only falsifiable with miraculous evidence. All the empirical evidence available points to a universe that consistently follows natural laws, and basing theistic belief on the evidence that can't be empirically examined is the god-of-the-gaps fallacy.
God could still be somehow acting within these constraints, but an essentially Deist clockwork God does little to soothe the soul. People who expect the world to have some sort of teleological quality naturally lend themselves toward theism. People who do not are naturally atheistic. Both are being reasonable. The atheist has the advantage of simplicity, while the theist has an advantage in dealing with existential crises. Neither is easily argued as superior.
Religious belief, even when irrational, isn't really a concern to me when it makes people happier and more moral. It is a concern to me when it is used to justify violence, oppression, and terror. This is not a unique peril of religion, it is the problem with any ideology that puts itself before life and liberty.
All I was doing was trying to be clear without resorting to arcane terminology. At any rate, for someone appears to practically deify logic, you sure seem to be painting yourself into a corner of illogic in the attempts to deny my statement on technicalities. Let's spell things out, okay?
ReplyDelete1. A hypothesis is a type of assumption. It may be a "special" type of one, but it still is one.
2. Logical Empiricism usually needs hypotheses.
3. Logical Empiricism does things with those hypotheses using logic.
4. Therefore, at least sometimes, assumptions are used in logic.
In addition, if one defines a "hypothesis" as a "thing to be disproven" (which is not really correct, it is more like a "thing to be attempted to be disproved in order to prove it") then its antithesis would be a "thing to be proven" (or much more accurately, "thing to a attempt to proved in order to disprove it"). So if logic were the antithesis of a hypothesis, then the reason why we would engage in it would be in hopes of ultimately proving that logic as a process is invalid or doesn't exist!
And even if that were true, it doesn't change the fact that it's something which is true of hypotheses, but not necessarily true of all kinds of assumptions. So the statement where you appeared to be equating hypotheses with being the antithesis of logic is probably irrelevant to your original statement that assumptions are the antithesis of logic.
And that doesn't even consider ordinary everyday experience rather than logic within specialized disciplines. When making decisions, regardless of whether one uses logic or intuition, one usually has to make reasonable guesses (also a kind of assumption) about what could happen and how other people will do, etc., because by the time one could get all the necessary information (if it's even possible), it's usually far too late to actually make that decision.
Now I would agree that there are some people who make assumptions about the world and/or the way things work without ever using logic to see if those assumptions reach conclusions about reality which can be verified. (I know, empiricism again, but what else involving logic would most people do with "assumptions about the world and/or the way things work"?) But calling an assumption the antithesis of logic is sort of like calling variables the antithesis of math.
Now, of course, if you're using the term "assumption" in some specialized, arcane manner which I have never heard of, and does not appear in any of the obvious places to look in wikipedia, or in wiktionary, or in my unabridged dictionary (circa 2002), then this is something that should have been clearly spelled out in the original post. Otherwise all this just makes you appear to be deliberately obtuse, not informative.
"1. A hypothesis is a type of assumption. It may be a "special" type of one, but it still is one.
ReplyDelete2. Logical Empiricism usually needs hypotheses.
3. Logical Empiricism does things with those hypotheses using logic.
4. Therefore, at least sometimes, assumptions are used in logic."
Your reasoning is also exactly the same as...
"1. A cake is a type of food.
2. Baking usually uses cake.
3. Baking does things with this cake using a rolling pin.
4. Therefore, sometimes, a rolling pin is a type of food."
Not Me said... "A hypothesis is a type of assumption. It may be a "special" type of one, but it still is one."
No. That's not right. An assumption in the colloquial sense is not a 'special type' of assumption in the scientific sense. The words just happen to be the same.
Think of the word 'action' used in physics and the word 'action' used when referring to Bruce Willis films; they're the same word but have nothing to do with each other.
Enjoy your rolling pin!
"Since when were people being logical positivists around here? Besides, the initial premise of an argument can be an assumption, and then proceed logically. This is a conditional proof, and, what do you know, the antecedent is called the conditional proof assumption. This is basic symbolic logic."
ReplyDeleteYou know the term Empiricism? It's a synonym of logical positivism. You forgot to google for that didn't you :P
"Now, of course, if you're using the term "assumption" in some specialized, arcane manner which I have never heard of, and does not appear in any of the obvious places to look in wikipedia, or in wiktionary, or in my unabridged dictionary (circa 2002), then this is something that should have been clearly spelled out in the original post. Otherwise all this just makes you appear to be deliberately obtuse, not informative."
Yeah, my definition is so bizarre and arcane that it's only the...uhh...first google result result for 'scientific assumption'.
(second result is the wikipedia entry on "Theory" and the third result is "Philosophy of science" from the wiki which defines it on the first line. How hard did you look again?)
You know the term Empiricism? It's a synonym of logical positivism. You forgot to google for that didn't you :P
ReplyDeleteIt's not a synonym. It's similar, and one is a certain variant of the other. Empiricism is reliance on experience for knowledge. Logical positivism argues that not only must you rely on experience, but by extension all metaphysical statements are meaningless because they can't be proven. This is the basis of the verification principle. Popper (you remember Popper, don't you?) argued that this was foolish, and that instead falsifiability was the best criterion. Even then, he only argued that it should be a scientific method, not a standard for meaning.
It's not a synonym. It's similar, and one is a certain variant of the other. Empiricism is reliance on experience for knowledge. Logical positivism argues that not only must you rely on experience, but by extension all metaphysical statements are meaningless because they can't be proven.
ReplyDeleteIt was nice of you to clarify that, however in the context they were synonyms.
Also what are you even trying to prove? You said "who was being a logical positivist" and clearly the answer is; "everyone" by your own post?
Neither me not the person I was discussing with was confused, the only person demanding a definition was you? Well, couldn't you have googled this before asking and saved us the bother?
(it's worth noting that we were actually talking about logical positivism, not just empiricism. I and presumably the other poster recognized that logical positivism is Empiricism with Rationalism as a framework, and so I transitioned from empiricism to logicical positivism as the topic changed from just logic to Empiricism with Rationalism, which is a synonym for logical positivism. This might have confused you as it's a terribly subtle subtext, but there's no need to be an arsehole about it.)
Hmm, in that context, they *were* being used as synonyms. I accept your apology.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I am aware, there are no cake recipes in existence that call for the use of a rolling pin. Cakes are usually composed of liquid batter baked at an appropriate temperature until it forms the breadlike, sweet morsels we know and love. At no point does dough have to be rolled out and shaped.
ReplyDeleteThat's for pies.