Specter of Reason

Karen Armstrong is an advocate for NOMA, the principle which says that science and religion involve unique, non-overlapping domains of human interest. In Armstrong's view, each offers a distinct way of finding truth. Science comes from logos , the path of logic, reason, and evidence. Religion, on the other hand, comes from mythos , tapping into the mythological, emotional, intuitive path to wisdom. She believes that religion and science are both necessary for humanity, but that problems arise when either one attempts to invade the other's epistemological territory. Anyone familiar with my views on religion will know that I find this point of view highly problematic. For one thing, it romanticizes both science and religion. More importantly, the distinction is without practical sense. It cannot be justified by appeal to either logos or mythos, and so any disputes cannot be resolved by common agreement. Here are two clever responses to her latest book, The Case for God . ...

In this post I argue that enumerative, or "simple" induction (henceforth "induction") * does not play a significant role in scientific discovery. I construct this argument within a framework of epistemological behaviorism. I. The Meaning and Value of Science As I understand it, knowledge is another word for ability. Scientific knowledge is predictive ability, which is the ability to organize our behavior in accordance with the unfolding of nature. ** In other words, science is the process of learning how to predict what is going to happen in new situations. Scientific knowledge is demonstrable in so far as the abilities it engenders are demonstrable and reliable. Science is not the process of describing what has already happened, nor is it the process of describing what is happening at any given moment. Of course, science can help us understand what has already happened and what is happening right now. But the focus of science is always on the future, not o...

A friend of mine recently gave me some advice: Don't let your philosophical pursuits get side-tracked by the atheism-vs.-religion debate. I pointed out that the history of modern science and modern philosophy is inextricably tied to the debate between atheism and religion. The philosophy of science has, since Descartes and Bacon, developed in explicit reaction to religious practice. The pursuit of scientific foundations has partly been the pursuit of intellectual liberation from religious dogma. Around 1600, many rapid advancements in philosophy and science began to change the way people understood themselves and their relationship to the world. For example, Copernicus challenged conceptions of humanity by suggesting that the earth was not at the center of the universe. Galileo challenged conceptions of nature by reducing it to mathematical terms. The philosophy of science became a central issue in intellectual life. There is a widespread misconception that science itself began dur...

A blogger name John Pieret has also criticized Sean Carroll 's article about naturalism, though I think his criticisms are somewhat misguided. I just left the following comment on his blog : I have major problems with Carroll's treatment of naturalism and supernaturalism. (See here: Discovery, Demonstration, and Naturalism .) However, I don't agree with all of your points; specifically about Ockam's Razor and the so-called "problem of induction." Ockam's Razor is an indispensable explanatory tool. Consider the situation with ID again. IDers might claim that ID is simpler than natural evolution, that Ockam's Razor weighs in their favor. The question is, are they right? The answer is: of course not. Natural evolution does not postulate any entities beyond our explanatory framework, and it does not postulate anything superfluous. It does not postulate entities beyond necessity. ID, on the other hand, postulates an "intelligent designer"...

Over the past several months or so, I've approached discussions of science by focusing on the concept of discovery. Science is the formalization of discovery. There are as many scientific methods as there are formal methods for discovering phenomena. Accidental discoveries can be utilized by science, in so far as they can lead to formal methods of discovery. It occurs to me that this view of science, while essentially valid, might be easier to communicate if I adopt another term: demonstration. Science deals in what is demonstrable. A method of discovery is a set of rules or procedures for demonstrating facts. A scientific method is defined by its rules and procedures for demonstrating facts about the world. We might ask, what is being discovered here? Is it the rules, or is it the facts? The answer is: both. A scientific discovery is defined in terms of the facts discovered as well as the rules/procedures for demonstrating those facts. It is the relationship between rul...

In my last post , I suggested there might be a paradox regarding personal identity. Specifically, it seems that our ability to refer to ourselves is undeniable, and yet we cannot specify what, exactly, we are referring to. Not even a purely abstract mind-stuff would seem to get the job done. So, what are we talking about, when we talk about personal identity? If there is a paradox here, it is probably the same as the classic Ship of Theseus paradox. (There are other related paradoxes and philosophical arguments covered in the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on relative identity . I haven't reviewed that entry yet, so I'm not sure how similar or dissimilar my points here will be to anything on that site. I'm only offering the link as a suggestion--to myself as well as to others--for further research.) The issue comes down to this: that we use different methods or standards for deciding on questions of identity depending on the circumstances. In some cases, the identity ...

I say "possible paradox" because I am not ready to commit to the idea that there is a paradox here at all. I only want to suggest that there might be a legitimate paradox implicit in the notion of personal identity. It does not require an extreme amount of philosophical sophistication to recognize that personal identity is somewhat elusive. It is easy to see how the notion of identity breaks down when we think of it in terms of the body. For, we would still call ourselves by the same name were we to lose any or all limbs, organs, or bodily functions, so long as we had a set of memories or perceptions which defined ourselves as such. We are thus tempted to locate the essence of personal identity in the brain, in those processes which ground our memories and perceptions. Yet, even here we realize the notion of identity lacks foundation. For we can imagine our memories and perceptions being simulated by something other than our brain, a biological clone or computerized twi...