Dusting off my knees

Science is a philosophy.

That, of course, is not all that it is; it is in many ways much less than that.  But let's start there.  Philosophy does not spring from science, any more than all human knowledge does.  Science is a type of knowledge, and a body of knowledge, and a philosophy.  All of those in part; and in this case, to be sure, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.  Some of the parts, in fact, are greater than the whole that is "science."

I start this because of a post at Thought Criminal in which Neil DeGrasse Tyson, rather like Carl Sagain before him, displays the limits of his understanding.  Ignorance is not criminal, unless you parade it as knowledge, or a replacement for knowledge.  I got wordy over there, and had to bring the discussion over here.

That post led me to the "original" post, and the comments there.  I didn't think much of the commenter there (somite, @toxicpath) who admonished philosophers to mind their place and show due deference to scientists.  But it took me a moment to realize that even the commuters who ably countered somites rather sophomoric points were themselves still tugging their forelock before the altar of science.

And that bugged me.

Science does not have access to, nor establish the grounds for, what is "true."  Another commenter there said science is concerned with what "exists," never for a moment considering what the word "exists" means in that sentence, or how it could be applied to a stone, a cat, and an individual, with very different purpose each time (while all the time purportedly never changing the meaning of the word).  DeGrasse Tyson himself said in the interview:  "All of a sudden it devolves into a discussion of the definition of words. And I’d rather keep the conversation about ideas."  Which is just a little bit silly.  But the silliness inheres in the attempt to not do what one must do when discussing abstract concepts: engage in philosophy.

Because we simply cannot escape philosophy; and the idea that science is somehow an objective discussion of what is true (or what "exists") is itself a philosophical position.

And a damned untenable one.  But almost every comment at that post (well, perhaps now I'm being unfair; I made no attempt to read 50 of them, no to mention 240 or so) defers to the validity of science as a standard of truth, a kind of deference that is simply "faith-based" (in the Hebrews 11 version of "the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen").  I daresay if you dropped Kuhn into that argument there would first be a half-dozen responses about how Kuhn is widely misinterpreted, followed by a half-dozen more that Kuhn is simply wrong, all because science is, at its heart, about "truth!"

I don't mind the scientists being that ignorant (in that they join religious fundamentalists, for whom a little knowledge is also a dangerous thing), but I do mind when the apologists for philosophy start from the premise that science must be acknowledged as co-equal, if not supreme.

Sorry, but philosophy was here first; and as Hume pointed out, all science can really tell us is analytical statements which are variations on: "This stone is heavy."  Science can lead to products like the computer I type on, or even the vaccines that keep me healthy and the medicines I take to stay healthy; but such work on such matters is done by technicians, by engineers.  Theorists like Tyson or Hawkings work in a rarified atmosphere where engineers aren't supposed to tread; much like the once rarified air of the theologians, v. the priests who dealt with birth, death, disease, and despair among the "messy" lives of real people.

The Greeks understood this.  They even had a name for it.  "Techne," they called it.  It was the knowledge that made buildings like the Parthenon stand, even to this day, without mortar or cement.  It was useful, "techne."  But it wasn't as important as "sophia."  We don't remember the builders of the Parthenon, except among Classics scholars perhaps.  We all know who Plato was; and Socrates.  And Tyson forgets that the logic he prizes so highly in science (but clearly doesn't practice nearly so well) was the product of Aristotle; and refined by philosophers through the ages, including the greatest logician since Aristotle, and friend to Einstein at Princeton:  Kurt Godel (sorry, can't do the umlaut here).

I doubt if Tyson read Godel's Theorem he would understand it.  Does that mean we should dismiss it?

Science can tell us the stone is heavy; engineering can tell us some interesting things we can do with that knowledge.  When you reduce it to the fundamentals, that is really all science is capable of.  It cannot tell us to use the antibiotics we discovered in the 1940's (not yet 100 years ago!) wisely; which is why we face a risk of anti-biotic resistant diseases.  It cannot tell us to use vaccines wisely; and so we face a return of polio, whooping cough, and no doubt German measles.  Science can create these things; but it cannot teach us anything about wisdom.

And in just those two examples, I can ask:  without wisdom, what good is the knowledge given to us by science?

DeGrasse Tyson recently pointed out that the dinosaurs couldn't see the asteroid coming that wiped them out, but we can see climate change coming and have no excuse for not responding to it.  We caused it, after all.  But science made that destruction possible.  True, science can, arguably, also make the cure possible:  but can science make us implement it?  In the simplest terms of Mr. Godel's incompleteness theorem, there are questions science can raise ("What do we do now?") that can only be answered in areas completely outside science.  Science has power; but it does not have the power to make us other than human.  Wisdom is also human; and wisdom also deals with what exists, which is to say, human beings and our existence.  Science explains the material world to us.

It doesn't help us much to understand how we should then live in it.

I was equally bemused by comments at the post arguing there are whole fields of knowledge, as well as philosophical terms, which should be discarded.  Theology, of course, must go; because:  positivism, basically.  "Dualism" should also be expunged; but I ask, very practically, what you replace it with.  Does the writer of that comment even understand how different the conception of the human was before Augustine?  Harold Bloom argues it changed again (or for the first time, perhaps; I don't quite agree with Bloom, when you get down to it) with Shakespeare.  I think it changed again with Wordsworth, who following on Locke taught us that the child is father to the man, an idea we all now identify with Freud and, while no one is a Freudian anymore, try imagining that your childhood didn't lay the foundation for your adulthood, or that you don't do things due to "unconscious" promptings; or that "brain" and "mind" are not two different concepts, indeed, two distinctly different realms.*

Expunge "dualism"?  Go ahead; try it.  Good luck to you chasing down all the metaphors, assumptions, presumptions, and embedded concepts that are as natural to you as your own fingernails.  Indeed, try to think of "you" as being, as the Hebrews did, in your fingers as much as your "guts," in your ears as much as your toes, and that your brain is not separate from the rest of you, that you are not encased in a skull and staring out through two eyes.  Go ahead, try to imagine it is not so, that if you are as paralyzed as the man in "The Butterfly and the Diving Bell," you are still you in your now functionless toes, not "you" locked in the cell of yourself up in that matter atop your neck.

Go ahead; reimagine that, and like Augustine and Wordsworth, make it stick this time for all Western civilization.  Please, I'm asking:  make it so.

I'd love to see the results; because right now, they are literally unimaginable.  Perhaps it can be done; but you can't do it by just expunging words from your vocabulary, or claiming certain ideas "foolishness."

But go ahead; it would amuse me to see you try.



*That would be an interesting question to put to Tyson: what does science have to say about being human?  Anthropology, sociology, psychology; these are not the "hard" sciences that physics and cosmology are.  And can the former provide an adequate answer to the question?  Does Tyson speak to his beloved in terms of anthropology and psychology, or in those vague "ideas" of "love"?  What is love?  Does it exist for science?  How, then, can we say it exists at all?  Away with it!

Against Interpretation

The concept of interpretation is all here: there is no experience of truth that is not interpretative. I do not know anything that does not interest me. If it does interest me, it is evident that I do not look at it in an uninterested way.

Gianni Vattimo, "Toward a Nonreligious Christianity," After the Death of God, ed. Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press 2007)

The world is kind to scientists.

This is not because science is true or good or wise; it is because we have arranged our culture this way.  Once upon a time the world was kind to religious figures.  We call that 'medieval' now, though it was true in Europe and America until at least the end of the last century, and is still true somewhat now, despite the best efforts of the "New Atheists."  Still the world is much kinder to science than it is to religion.

Which is not a statement of value about either one.  If anything, I prefer religion, especially Christianity, to be out of power rather than in power.  Lord Acton's proverb is a correct one, and power is antithetical to the gospel message of the blessed poor and meek and hungry and mourning, and of who we should care for and when we care for God in doing so.  So it isn't that the world's values are topsy-turvy and we should turn back time or turn history back toward what never was.  It is not a statement of value, it is just a statement of fact.

The world values statements of fact.  The Western world does, anyway, the Anglo-American world even more so.  So leave it as a fact:  this world is kind to scientists, because we have structured it to be so.

Which is why science can ignore religion, but religion must take cognizance of science.  Science proceeds largely unchallenged, except by economics and politics (which fuel and fund it), and rarely by society (only through the arms, really, of economics and politics:  what we are willing to pay for, and how we are willing to pay for it).  Proceeding unchallenged it doesn't brook challenge, either.  Thomas Kuhn points out how science works in terms of paradigms, and scientists struggle to deny it or rewrite it so that science still produces "truth," even if they are careful not to get anywhere near Pilate's question:  "What is 'truth'?"  Philosophers and theologians struggle with that question (or presumably so).  Scientists consider it settled, and whatever disturbs their complacency is ignored, or re-interpreted.

Some religious figures do the same thing, and making the parallel is not unintentional.  Science functions now much as religion did then:  in a culture that is kind to it, supportive of it, and doesn't allow serious challenges to be made.  If Kuhn's philosophy of science unmoors science from access to "absolute truth" (whatever that phrase means!) or "reality" (again, meaning!), he does no more than David Hume did 200 years ago.  But science can't be bothered with philosophy, and the culture is kind to science and not to philosophy, so science rolls on.

How many scientists study any subject that challenges their fundamental assumptions, their basic beliefs?  How many scientists attend schools where professors attack what they have held to be long true, and try to replace it with other answers, or force the students to find answers on their own?  How many scientists even study the philosophy of science?  Are challenged to consider that what they prefer to think may not be true?  Are made professionals in their field precisely by examining the verities they thought unassailable, and finding them mere opinion and speculation and written on beach sand and the wind?

And then are told to go out and do their jobs?

The world is kind to scientists.  We've made sure to construct it to be that way.  We've told them that what they know is true, and they just need to apply their mathematics and their knowledge of physics and zoology and genetics and biology and go out there and discover more true things about all those fields.  And we will look kindly on their endeavors and accept their conclusions like tablets brought down from Sinai.

Who among has seen the evidence of the Higg's boson?  Who among us doubts its credibility, unless we are told it is incredible?  And then we are ready to believe when told, no, no in fact it's true after all.  Who are we to judge?  The scientists said so, it must be true.

But if I say God has told me to hand out blankets to the homeless, to lug pots of soup to the hungry, to welcome the stranger into my home as if he were my oldest friend...what would the world say then?  That I was mad?  That I was Mother Teresa, and someone had become my Christopher Hitchens?  I've as much evidence for the reality of God as I have for the Higg's boson:  in both cases, it's because other people testify to that reality, and I accept their testimony.  In one case, actually, I accept the testimony as explanation of my own experience.s

But science could say my experience is a delusion.  I cannot say the scientists are deluded about the "God particle."  I don't know enough about science to do that; and the world will not be kind to me if I declare the physicists liars.

The world is kind to scientists.

Scientists don't go through boot camp to be recognized as scientists, to earn their Ph.D.'s.  They aren't taught that all they learned about science in childhood is false, that is all must be replaced with new knowledge, that they must be ready to accept what they were always told cannot be true because it is better to bend with a parishioner than to break on the rock of unyielding certainty in what you believe.  Scientists know and believers only believe; but scientists know only what they believe.  They accept the premises and conclusions without ever doing each and every experiment themselves. They accept the explanations and the systems of thought; good students have to be very, very good at accepting systems of thought.  What they cannot be good at it original thought, is skepticism, is questioning everything a la Descartes.  They cannot be good at wondering why love is more important than gravity, or what bosons have to do with human society, or why technology is so easy and justice so hard.  They cannot be good at those things, they can only be good at certain things; and the world is kind to them for what they are good at.  The world rewards systematic thought that understands systems and works within them, that perhaps cuts a new groove but works deeper and deeper into the system.  The world does not reward people who ask the wrong kinds of questions; who ask hard questions.

The world only likes people like that when they are dead; when they have stopped asking questions.  The world is kind to scientists because the world is always kind to power.  The world is not kind to those who question power.

Pastors are taught to question power.  It's not a lesson they always learn, but it is a lesson they are repeatedly taught.  They are taught, among other things, that science has the power; that science has the whip hand, and discussion of "miracles" and metaphysics must bow to science, must crook the knee and bow, because there is no good to come of challenging science anymore.  And there's something right about that; and there's something wrong.

They are taught first to challenge the power of what they believe: to recognize it is brittle and fragile and will break easily and at the worst possible time, and what will you do then?  Best you learn now, in seminary, and not out there, in the world.  The church is in the world.  The church is a microcosm of the world.  And the world is not kind to the religious.  So pastors are taught to question power, because they don't have any power anymore.  Perhaps they never did; but they certainly don't now.

So pastors are taught to challenge power; because in a crisis, in despair and fear, in the moments of horror in the face of death or challenge to what one has held most dear, it is power that is lost.  The power to keep your child alive, or your spouse from dying, or your family together:  the power to save your own life, to maintain the life you've had and always expected to keep.  You have to learn there are no certainties, in order to steer people toward certainty; because platitudes won't do.  You seldom comfort people with "she's in a better place" or "God won't give you more than you can handle," unless you leave soon after you've said it, and imagine what you did was good.  If you are going to stay with them you have to live the experience with them; and sometimes for the experience there are no words and there is no comfort except compassionate humanity.  Sometimes you do not speak; you can only endure.  The shortest verse in the Bible, in the Gospel where Jesus is the wordiest man in the room, in the entire story, tells the tale:  "Jesus wept."  Sometimes common humanity is all you have to offer.  It is a challenge to your power, to realize that some experiences just have to be lived through, in mutuality; in communion with one another.

You have to question the validity of power, because it will one day make you question the validity of all you hold dear, even life itself.

If you do not question, you will not know what is true.  Scientists pride themselves on their questions; but they do not question their fundamental assumptions.  They do not challenge their basic beliefs, and if they are so much as called into question (the example of Kuhn), most scientists are quick to point out that Kuhn doesn't mean what he seems to mean, or that he isn't really talking about "science."*  They rally round to protect their field more ardently than any theologian, more devotedly than any religious believer.  If you do not question, you will not know what is true.  If pastors are taught to question, it because pastors are not taught science, they are taught wisdom.  They aren't necessarily good at it, any more than every scientist is the best and purest scientist possible.  But their subject is wisdom, and the path to wisdom starts with questions, guided by the challenge that "everything you know is wrong."  If you think it isn't, you will find yourself one day in a place where you realize it is:  and what then?

Not every believer has to go through that; but not everyone who benefits from science has to be a scientist.  It really is a matter of how narrowly you think you have to define your interests; and, in Godelian terms, what questions your system will allow you to ask, and what questions you won't force it to look elsewhere for.

*"These kinds of speculation are fun, but they are not science, yet. 'Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,' goes the saying attributed to Richard Feynman, the late Caltech Nobelist, and repeated by Dr. Weinberg."--Paul Davies  Gotta keep those magisteria from overlapping, ya know.  Gotta keep science pure, which is to say, in another vocabulary:  holy.

"Help thou my unbelief."

Pretty much like that....

"Belief," as in "Do you believe in the existence of God?", is only an issue for the church (or Christianity) if the baseline is atheism:  i.e., God cannot exist and cannot be "believed."

But most people are not atheists.  If they are indifferent to the claims of Christianity (for which apparently "belief" is paramount), then they are equally indifferent to the claims of atheism.  Both espouse the centrality of theistic thinking, one positively, one negatively; at least, that's the argument. And then it's just a matter of either/or, of who has the best argument.  And besides adherents to the arguments, who's interested in that?  Yes, there are people on the intertubes whose motivating purpose seems to be arguing about anything and everything, but especially politics.  Even most politicians, however, don't go in to politics to argue (though that seems to be their raison d'être since at least the "Gingrich Revolution"); they to it to serve in government (or line their pockets, if you want to be cynical).  There were once people who served in government to do what was right, generally.  Two names come to mind from the Congress:  Lyndon Johnson, in the Senate, and Sam Rayburn, in the House.  Turns out they were instrumental in helping Hawaii become a state, by overcoming objections from Representatives and Senators from the South.  Of course, they accomplished some other worthy goals, too.

They didn't do it because government was good or evil, was intrusive or exploitative, was a "deep state" or a "derp state."  They didn't do it because government was either/or.  Now, however, everything is either/or, to a pitched degree.  It's not the kind that is different, it's the degree.  There has always been a struggle between believers and non-believers; it's the degree of emphasis that's the issue.

Much as Christianity specifically has taken empiricism as the baseline for human understanding and epistemology (Christianity is on much sounder footing in Western philosophy connecting with phenomenology), so the discussion of religion in Western culture has taken atheism as the baseline, against which theism must assert its bona fides.  That is completely the wrong argument.  In fact, the problem is the diagnosis that an argument is what will "fix" the "problem" of the church.  Contrary to what may be common experience, people don't go to church to argue; and solving the "argument" of atheism v. theism won't bring people flocking back to church as if this were the 1950's redux.

People go to church because church means something to them, and because they find people of like mind there, people they can be friends with.  The Church of Meaning and Belonging can't get a foothold without the Church of Belonging existing first, and the Church of Belonging can't exist if people don't find people there they want to share time with.  Then there is the question of how they share their time, and why they share their time.

But why did "belief" become the dividing line of our thinking?  Why must we stand on one side or the other, with one side "wrong" and the other "right"?

Slate ran an interesting article about the "march for science," which turned on this concern:

Instead, the march revealed the glaring dissonance of opposing that trough of ignorance by instead accepting a cringe-worthy hive-mind mentality that celebrates Science as a vague but wonderful entity, what Richard Feynman called “cargo cult science.” There was an uncomfortable dronelike fealty to the concept—an oxymoronic faith that information presented and packaged to us as Science need not be further scrutinized before being smugly celebrated en masse. That is not intellectually rigorous thought—instead, it’s another kind of religion, and it is perhaps as terrifying as the thing it is trying to fight.

What the article argues for, ironically, is a more scholarly approach to knowledge, but does so in part by citing that Feynman article where the scientist relies on the hoariest of shibboleths (the "Middle Ages" were ignorant, then came the enlightened salvation of the Renaissance!) to make his point.   Talk about "an uncomfortable drone like fealty to the concept."  But that's that point, one drummed into me in seminary more than anywhere else in my education:  what you cling to as certainty is your idol, your false god, your deity made in your image.  It's a useful hermeneutic of suspicion to keep before one, because the either/or of belief (either you do ("fool!") or you don't ("wise!")), is just such a dead piece of silent, eyeless stone.

Jump to the end of the quote there, and "cargo cult" is connected with the broader non-science of Western culture:  religion.   Because religion is not "intellectually rigorous thought."  Except, again, as I said, the most intellectually rigorous education I ever had was in seminary, where every assumption was challenged and no answers were given.  I seriously doubt any student of any science had their assumptions, presumptions, and conclusions challenged as thoroughly as that.  Even law school only challenged how I organized my thought and how I analyzed situations.  Once I learned to "think like a lawyer," I had made it through the barrier between the laity and the learned.  I left seminary knowing much more about the challenges than the certainties, much less inclined to "march" for religion than to consider the place of humans in the world they were busy making.

How many scientists are trained to think that way, trained to actually call in to question everything they have been told in lower-school science classes for decades is true?  I don't mean the basic concept of science v., say, alchemy or astrology, but the conclusions of scientific research, of scientific thought, of accepted scientific theory.  Not to question it because it is wrong, but to question it because you can't truly understand what you don't critically examine.

When it comes to belief, everybody just believes:  that's the real foundation of modern Western philosophy.  Not Descartes' cogito, but his conclusion that he had to rest his thought on his cogito:  if he didn't accept something as a given, he couldn't establish anything.  His ability to think escaped his hermeneutic skepticism only because, without that escape, all he had left was skepticism.  You have to accept some givens in order to postulate a system.  If you insist your ideas are not founded in a belief, then you are insisting it really is turtles all the way down.  How many scientists study philosophy in order to understand empiricism, the philosophical basis of the scientific method?  How many study phenomenology, or world religions, or even take a course in philosophy of religion?  How many study formal logic, philosophy of science, the history of philosophy?  And yet in my seminary studies I studied philosophy, history, absorbed information and thinking from anthropology and archaeology, studied languages and how language affects our understanding, our perceptions, our thinking; examined and developed hermeneutics, systems of interpretation and analysis.  Do scientists study any of this?  Or do they just study the field of science they are interested in?

That paper from Feynman about "cargo cults" doesn't display much more than a muddled, popular understanding of religion, history, and human culture.  Anthropology is the scientific study of human culture, but what Feynman knows about that subject seems to be the pop culture notion of a "cargo cult" being one-for-one mapping of non-scientific, i.e., "religious," thought.  Anthropologists wouldn't even engage that kind of discussion, because it is as ignorant as saying the planets are set in crystalline spheres rotating around the earth.  I know this, Richard Feynman apparently doesn't; yet he is lionized for his "knowledge."  Except, in certain areas, it should be spelled "nollij."

What's happening in modern American society is a dissolution of cultural bands that once held the center together.  At least it seems that way, though I'm not so sure those bands were ever so strong or binding as we imagine.  Most of us either remember the '50's, or take our starting point for American culture from there, and tacitly use it as our starting point for what we believe (v. what we know, in this context) about where we are now.   I've quoted Eliot's "Choruses from 'The Rock'" time and again, about culture falling apart because of motor cars; words he wrote almost 100 years ago now.  Cars mean nothing to us now, now it's cell phones and social media dividing us up.   But, as Howland Owl said of nuclear physics, the situation ain't so new, and it ain't so clear.

We despise ambiguity; we want certainty.  Many a scientist, or one scientifically trained, will outright reject or find reason to denigrate, Kuhn's ideas about science and "paradigms," because Kuhn introduces a conditional ambiguity into science.  Similarly Schrodinger's cat tells us, not that the cat is neither dead nor alive, but that we can't predict with accuracy the reality of the state of the cat, we can only observe it by opening the box.  The ambiguity is inherent in the position of not yet observing the contents of the rigged box.  We want certainty, but the paradox of Schrodinger's thought experiment is that we can't have it without intervening (opening the box).  Kuhn's ambiguity is that science is a human system, prompted and guided by human interests (and by the drunk under the streetlamp).  But science must partake of the divine, the true, even if that "true" is the cosmos itself.  We want to link our understanding of the cosmos to the cosmos so what we know what we know is "true."

We despise ambiguity; we want certainty.  If I say I know God in my life, I'm immediately charged, or understood, as saying "God exists."  We want that certainty because if God exists, then certain things must be true.  But saying "God exists" is not the same thing as saying "A platypus exists."  Surely it's odd to find a platypus in the wild, but the existence of the platypus means nothing to my life, to my culture, to my world.  To say "God exists" is to say something entirely different than to say "My daughter exists," even though that statement has more meaning for me personally (and for her).  I tend to agree with Tillich on this one:  that the concept "existence" or "To exist" can't really be applied to a concept like "God" (and already someone will think I've slipped a card from the middle of the deck by using the term "concept," but it is the right term in this conversation).  My father is dead, but does that mean my father doesn't exist?  If by exist you mean "alive," then no, he doesn't exist.  But his absence creates a presence that is still quite real for my mother, for my family, and the memories of him are no less real than they were when he was alive.  Let's face it, most of what we know about friends and family is memory, especially as they grow older and move on.  I have a large extended family I seldom see anymore, yet they exist for me even as more and more of them pass on. Not only in memory, but in me:  I am who I am because of friends and family.  I am my father's son, just as my daughter is his granddaughter.  "Exist" goes far beyond a name etched into a headstone, or simply still drawing breath.

We want certainty, and we cheat to get it.  God must "exist" as people do, as trees do, as platypi do; because that is existence as we know it.  Except it isn't, of course; a tree I don't know about still exists, whether I know about it or not (unless you are a Berkeleyian, and I don't think there are many of those left around, though I would never say they don't exist!).  But does a tree have existence?

Ambiguity is the heart and soul of thinking; which may be why we despise thinking so much.  Thinking never leads to certainty; it only leads to more questions.  So, ironically, to march for science is to march for uncertainty; and to not understand that is to abuse scientific reasoning as much as to declare certainty about God is to abuse Christianity.  Am I certain about God?  It is not a question I can answer, because it is not a valid question.  I have faith in God, which is to say I have trust in God.  Does that mean something to you?  Perhaps no more than if I say I love my wife.  I cannot prove that statement, but who asks me to?  People said Bill Clinton could not love his wife, when he betrayed her trust so often and so publicly.  People questioned how Hillary Clinton could love her husband, and in a simpler world perhaps they would have conformed to some expectations and divorced, or at least been publicly miserable about each other.  They didn't, and we all had to realize whether or not they loved each other was not for our determination.  No one asks if my love for my wife exists, but perhaps we could ask if it is true.  Again, how would I prove it?  I've known couples who loved each other even after their divorce, or without any benefit of marriage.  Do such externals prove something that cannot otherwise be true?  How do I establish that truth?  If you say I cannot love my wife unless I prove it, my first question will be:  what does "love" mean to you?  If you say I cannot believe in God until I prove God's existence, I have two questions for you:  what does the word "God" mean to you?  And what is "existence"?  Is it a property inherent in materiality, or a property of being?

You can see where this goes.  We use language too loosely.  We don't like to think about what we are saying, so busy are we to say it.  Buckminster Fuller reportedly spent a year in silence, trying to recover the proper use of language.  I'm not sure language is recovered in silence, so much as the use of it is discovered, perhaps even revealed (surely a revelation is at hand!) in usage.  Rather like life itself; even the desert fathers lived in community, not in solitary isolation.  If they had not contacted some other living soul, how would we know they were ever there?

Do I believe in God?  I do.  Do you understand what I mean by "believe" and "God"?  Probably not.  Do I communicate anything except confusion when I answer the question?  Undoubtedly so.

Such is the ambiguity of the current situation.

Lost Among the Stars

The concept of interpretation is all here: there is no experience of truth that is not interpretative. I do not know anything that does not interest me. If it does interest me, it is evident that I do not look at it in an uninterested way.

Gianni Vattimo, "Toward a Nonreligious Christianity," After the Death of God, ed. Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press 2007)

I've been pondering this post for too long, now. I'm putting it out in what may well be an only partially-edited form; so I may come back to it, or just start over again with more thoughts as I find time to write them. Initially I started out simply responding to some of Rorty's essay, which is still the main thesis here. Later, I began to put it in a larger and larger context, including some thoughts on philosophy of religion by Tillich, and in the more or less contemporary debate on Christianity (not really religion) v. atheism. I had one purpose for the Vattimo quote, above, originally. I meant to place it in relationship to the Rorty quote, and explication of that quote, just below. But more and more I look at the Vattimo quote in light of my thoughts on atheism, and the argument that atheism needs Christianity (not religion more generally) in order to exist; that atheism as it is broadly practiced (by Dawkins, or Hitchens, or Harris, or even Pharyngula) is merely and solely anti-Christianity, especially Christianity as they choose to define it. But I'm not interested in debating and identifying still more straw-man arguments; as the Vattimo quote directs me, it's more a question of interpretation. Atheists, it seems to me, are consumed with interpretations of Christianity which they may then denigrate with their "objective" examination. But, of course, if I am not interested in a subject, I have no interpretation of it (I, for example, have no interpretation of fields of science which are probably critical to, at least, my technological existence); and if I am, how can I say my interpretation is objective, and yours is not?

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, though. This began with reading Rorty in an essay about religious belief (as he defines it), and atheism, and interpretatation (heremeneutics) and knowledge (epistemology):

I can summarize the line of thought that Vattimo and I are pursuing as follows: The battle between religion and science conducted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a contest between institutions, both of which claimed cultural supremacy. It was a good thing for both religion and science that science won that battle. For truth and knowledge are a matter of social cooperation, and science gives us the means to carry out better cooperative social projects than before. If social cooperation is what you want, the conjunction of science and the common sense of your day is all you need. But if you want something else, then a religion that has been taken out of the epistemic arena, a religion that finds the question of theism versus atheism uninteresting, may be just what suits your solitude.

--Richard Rorty, "Anticlericalism and Atheism," The Future of Religion, ed. Santiago Zabala (New York: Columbia University Press 2005), 39.

Rorty is not referring to that particular passage quote from Vattimo; but the quote summarizes nicely Vattimo's hermeneutic, and hermeneutics, or the principle of interpretation, will ultimately be the topic here. This is a concept that sparks no little debate, since while Vattimo's observation ties in with Rorty's pragmatism (as we'll see), and both seem to tie into Kuhn's idea of paradigms, many philosophers of science still insist Kuhn doesn't mean what Vattimo and Rorty mean. And I come to insist neither of them are right about religion or theology, either.

Are we having fun yet?

First, to put the Vattimo quote in context, it's preceded by this:

Heidegger also realized that the scientific claim of objectivity...is inspired from a determined interest: for example, to describe a natural phenomenon in a way that others could also speak of it in the same way and develop this self-same knowledge of the world does not function as a mirror. Instead, there is a world and someone who is "in the world," which means someone who orients himself in and to the world, someone who uses his own capacities of knowledge, hence someone who chooses, reorganizes, replaces, represents, etc.

Vattimo takes this insight about objectivity back to Heidegger, but I would take it back to Kierkegaard, as regards our relationship to truth (the broader point) and point out Kierkegaard learned the truth of subjectivity from Augustine. Not exactly Godel-Escher-Bach, but another eternal golden braid anyway. And the connection to Rorty? One of his most famous books critiquing the generally accepted notion of objectivity is: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. There may or may not be a spoon in the Matrix, but Rorty is quite sure there is no mirror of humanity in nature.

But both Rorty and Vattimo are addressing issues in philosophy of religion: Vattimo is addressing certainty and interpretation, Rorty (in the essay quoted) the existence of God and the existence of religion. The problem with philosophy of religion is that all philosophers imagine they can be philosophers of religion, too. After all, in Western culture, we're all experts on religion, right? The other problem is that none of them imagine theology has anything to contribute to the conversation, nor that they have any need to know what theologians think. In other words: where to start with how wrong this is? Well, let's start at the end and work our way backwards.

Fundamentalists still get mightily exercised about atheism, which itself seems to get mightily exercised about the question of the existence of God. Rorty, an atheist himself, distinguishes this commonly understood defining attribute of atheism from what he preferred to think of as his own position, which he called "anticlericalism:"

...anticlericalism is a political view [!], not an epistemological one or metaphysical one. It is the view that ecclesiastical institutions, despite all the good they do--despite all the comfort they provide to those in need or despair--are dangerous to the health of democratic societies.* Whereas the philosophers who claim that atheism, unlike theism, is backed up by evidence would say that religious belief is irrational, contemporary secularists like myself are content to say that it is politically dangerous. On our view, religion is unobjectionable as long as it is privatized--as long as ecclesiastical institutions do not attempt to rally the faithful behind political proposals and as long as believers and unbelievers agree to follow a policy of live and let live. (p. 33

*Rorty provides a footnote at this point which reads (without the citations):

Of course, we anticlericalists who are also leftists in politics have a further reason for hoping that institutionalized religion will eventually disappear. We think otherworldliness dangerous because, as John Dewey puts it, "Men have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing." (p. 41).

Yeah, that sums up Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King in a nutshell, don't it? Should I point out the example of Cotton Mather, whose slave taught him about smallpox vaccinations long before Pasteur? Should I mention the Congregationalists who helped the slaves on the Amistad win their freedom, and sparked the Abolitionist movement? Sure, there are a lot of errors laid on religious believers entering the political sphere, with our without institutional support; but the very idea that religion in politics is bad is, well....a bad idea. A foolish one, at best. An ignorant one, even. One expects better of someone like Rorty.

As I say, fundamentalists get very worked up about the issue of God's existence, but I know of few other religious thinkers, theologians, pastors, or Christian laypeople who do. It's just not a "live option," as William James (another American pragmatist) would say. So if that's the kind of religion you value, well: don't bother to send in the clowns, they're here.

The fundamental problem here is identifying the subject by the margins, the fringes, the boundaries: by discerning what you don't know, and considering that positive knowledge of the ding an sich. The via negativa may work well in theology where the nature of God is actually considered (and where percipi is neither esse nor nature existence), but it applies because it posits subject which is but which cannot, by definition, be known. Rather like a human being in that way, if we were wholly honest about our relationships and how "other" even the most intimate people in our lives remain to us. But the via negativa doesn't work as a way of discerning what can be known. And that's the problem with philosophy of religion, and with those who think philosophy of religion only requires a few opinions about a few public topics such as atheism, fundamentalism, and religion.

Even Rorty's distinction between atheism and anticlericalism is a distinction without a difference. Atheism, at least as he defines it, is aimed at eradicating religion by denying the basic tenet of that religion. Anticlericalsm aims at being more tolerant, but this is merely intolerance in the name of tolerance: I will tolerate your religious beliefs, so long as you go away and take them with you, and never let me hear of them again, because they bother me! Rorty justifies this by following (ironically!) the dualism of Augustine (in which the world is neatly divided into either/or), and dividing the world into the realm of the polis (where everyone must agree with everyone else on what is important, and we must all use the same basis for that agreement) and the private (where you are free to believe any damn fool notion you like!). Apparently the public gathering of believers which constitutes the ecclesia of Christianity (to limit ourselves to only one religion out of the world's religions) is either private within Rorty's sense, or is public but can be treated as private so long as it minds its place and stays out of the realm of the polis altogether. The polis seems to be the only proper public sphere (no surprise there!) in Rorty's scheme. All other public institutions are merely subservient to it (schools, government, etc.) or irrelevant to it (social institutions, charities, religious institutions, to name a few).

In other words, Rorty's ideal polis is quite happy to tolerate the other, so long as that other is not too wholly other, because then the polis brings on the righteous smackdown and drives the other into seclusion, where all un-like minded beings belong. Can't have people being unmutual, you know, especially over something so irrational, or, in Rorty's terms, unmusical. Religion, Rorty argues, is like philosophy: not everybody "gets it." So just as we wouldn't foist music on those with no talent for it, or philosophy on those who find it pointless, neither can we allow religion to have a hallowed place in the polis; or a place at all. We can't all be religious, but we can all be reasonable (which is neither a philosophy nor a philosophical stance, so don't get smart with me! Er, with Rorty, I mean.). As long, of course, as we are all reasonable in the same way. Because the minute you aren't reasonable with me, well, then you're unreasonable, and then you are outta here, buddy!

Which still doesn't explain what we do with Reinhold Niebuhr, or Dorothy Day, or the Rev. Dr. King; but it takes care of James Dobson (who isn't part of any institutional religion) or Pat Robertson (ditto), or Rick Warren (finally, someone in an "institution"!), so it's all for the best. Right? Nor does it explain why only one definition of "reasonable" gets to hold sway for all of humanity. I suppose the answer is the same as to why there is only one definition of "religion" in the world, and that is Rorty's, derived from some understanding of Western culture and some of the religious beliefs which have constituted it.

In this essay Rorty references Derrida, but does so to his detriment. Derrida acknowledged the multiplicity of religions in the world. He understood Christianity was only one among many, and Western Christianity only a part of world-wide Christianity, and all the American variants only sects among those, and all those variants not wholly United State of American (there is Central and South America, with even more variants there). But let's take Rorty seriously a moment, and see precisely where science has allowed us to carry out "better cooperative social projects than before." Certainly technology has advanced human comfort as never before, at least in certain countries. Turns out other countries have to sacrifice in order for some countries to advance. The colonialization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas by Europe didn't lead only to unstable and fractious nations on all three continents, and to the current turmoil in the Middle East. The exploitation of those countries continues unabated to this day. Our "better cooperative social projects" come at "their" expense, but that's better...for us, at least.

And that brings us back to Derrida, who spoke of the West's globalatinization, with all the Roman hegemony the word implies. As Derrida notes, to speak of "religion," of religio, is already to speak Latin, to force the world into one tongue and hammer human existence across the globe into one mold. Derrida links globalatinization to what he labels tele-technoscience, by which me means the use of scientia and technos via tele-technology such as television and, now, the Internet. Derrida was writing in the late '90s', but he proves oddly prescient a decade later:

Prominent British Muslims are being recruited to star in a government-backed advertising campaign aimed at preventing people in Pakistan from engaging in extremist activity, the Guardian has learned.

The three-month public relations offensive, called I Am the West, consists of television commercials and high-profile events in regions such as Peshawar and Mirpur. It is being funded by the Foreign Office which is paying up to £400,000 for a pilot project.

The idea here, of course, is to approach Muslims and try to "reason" with them. But it is also to get them to accept the hegemony of the West, if only because it asks the Muslims, not the "West," to change. Which is not to critique the effort so much as to point out that, as the French say: the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Derrida at least recognizes the world; Rorty seems uaware of religion in America except as he sees it in passing, or on television. And yet, steeped in the culture, he is an expert, no?

Keeping the church out of politics can cut both ways, too.

Truth and knowledge are, indeed, matters of social cooperation, but societies are not merely closed circles with no connection to or interaction with other societies; and science is not the only source of truth, knowledge, or social cooperation. There is also the question of ethics (at least), which is why a philosophical system like utilitarianism, which is usually associated with the "dismal science" of economics, or merely with the "scientific" evaluation of value based on what works best for the majority, is actually first and foremost an ethical system. (And because it is an ethical system, Rawls's critique of it tries to correct it on largely ethical grounds.) Ethics determines truth and knowledge, too, because it determines value. Hume's distinction between synthetic and analytic knowledge divided what we can know into the obvious ("This stone is heavy") but unimportant, and the debatable ("This goal is good"), Hume concluded we can't say anything useful (well, philosophically useful) about either category, but we still need those categories, even if neither leads us to truth. We may abandon metaphysics, and so abandon any notion of "eternal" truth; but there are still truths valued by a society, truths which we must acknowledge in order to have any social cooperation at all, then those truths will not arise solely from a scientific context. Otherwise Oliver Wendell Holmes is right, and "Three generations of imbeciles is enough!" Holmes' sentiment is not offensive simply because it is scientifically unsound. After all, despite The Mismeasure of Man, and other re-considerations of "IQ" and how we measure intelligence in animals or humans, despite removing "Idiot" and "Imbecile" from our legal lexicon (Holmes was speaking technically, not pejoratively), we still cling to ideas that are unsound or unappealing, and their lack of appeal or soundness is not solely because of social cooperation or how science regards them. Holmes’ opinion, rather, is offensive because it offends our moral sense (if not our ethical one). What has changed between Holmes’ day and our own could be said to be our sense of ethics about the treatment of the class of persons concerned in that case; but that reconsideration of the value of the individual is more arguably a moral, rather than an ethical, shift. And a moral shift presupposes precisely the metaphysics that both Rorty and Vattimo start out by rejecting (i.e., we should all be treated equally; and what is the source of that equality? I don't believe it is the "original position," which is only an intellectual exercise, anyway).*

Which is less an argument for the validity of metaphysics, than it is an object lesson in trying to throw out the bathwater without tossing the baby with it. It may seem sound theory to reject metaphysics once and for all, but just as Heidegger can't talk about Being in concrete terms and becomes more apparently metaphysical as he tries to be less so, neither can Rorty or Vattimo reject metaphysics or even institutional religion, without presuming a remnant of both to serve other purposes they cannot do without. Anymore than Rorty’s refinement of atheism (“anticlericalism”) can do without institutional Christianity.

I’m still not sure what to make of these attempts to remove something that cannot be removed, especially when without it, the position you espouse would be eradicated as well. As Tillich writes:

Both the theological and the scientific critics of the belief that religion is an aspect of the human spirit define religion as man’s relation to divine beings, whose existence the theological critics assert and the scientific critics deny. But it is just this idea of religion which makes any understanding of religion impossible. If you start with the question whether God does or does not exist, you can never reach Him; and if you assert that He does not exist, you can reach Him even less than if you assert that He does not exist. A God about whose existence or non-existence you can argue is a thing beside others within the universe of existing things. And the question is justified whether such a thing does exist, and the answer is equally justified that it does not exist. It is regrettable that scientists believe that they have refuted religion when they rightly have shown that there is no evidence whatsoever for the assumption that such a being exists. Actually, they have not only not refuted religion, but they have done it a considerable service. They have forced it to reconsider and to restate the meaning of the tremendous word “God.” Unfortunately, many theologians make the same mistake. They begin their message with the assertion that there is a highest being called God, whose authoritative revelations they have received. They are more dangerous for religion than the so-called atheistic scientists. They take the first step on the road which inescapably leads to what is called atheism. Theologians who make of God a highest being who has given some people information about Himself, provoke inescapably the resistance of those who are told they must subject themselves to the authority of this information.

Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 4-5.

Precisely so.

Wait a minute! Maybe I should be thanking Rorty for his service, instead of criticizing him. Hmmmm…..

*on the other hand, there is nothing essentially metaphysical in the ethic proposed by Jesus in the gospels: make the first last, and the last first, and make the highest goal to be last of all and servant of all. It's a very practical, very "this-worldly" ethic, and it's only appeal to God is for model, not authority ("God makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike.") So it isn't even that an appeal to metaphysics is necessary in Christian ethics. The issue of discarding it, in the context of a discussion of religion, is aimed at discarding the deity; which is the aim of atheism: to discard Christianity. Which is less a problem for Christianity, than it is for atheism. Once you catch that car, what are you gonna do with it?

So, About That High-Flying Market Value

Trump’s social network has 30 days to stop breaking the rules of its software license https://t.co/Kruoz7myyB pic.twitter.com/TSZV2WoUNQ

— The Verge (@verge) October 22, 2021

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) says former President Donald Trump’s new social network violated a free and open-source software licensing agreement by ripping off decentralized social network Mastodon. The Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) has 30 days to comply with the terms of the license before its access is terminated — forcing it to rebuild the platform or face legal action

....

Truth Social hasn’t officially launched. But users could access a test version of the platform, where many of them created prank accounts that flooded the service with false company announcements and even fake Donald Trump posts. (The platform has since been replaced by a waitlist.) The SFC demands that TMTG offer all these users access to the Truth Social source code. “If they fail to do this within 30 days, their rights and permissions in the software are automatically and permanently terminated,” Kuhn says. 

If Truth Social fails to make the source code available, the SFC could sue it for violating the terms of the license it used. Earlier this year, the group sued electronics maker Vizio for “repeated failures to fulfill even the basic requirements” of free software licensing. “We will be following this issue very closely and demanding that Trump’s Group give the corresponding source to all who use the site,” Kuhn writes.

And the smart money said yesterday the SEC was eventually gonna get 'em.  Looks like the SFC won't let it be around long enough for the SEC to get involved.

Although the structure of this thing gives Trump a name on the door and a title, it looks like it is, as usual with Trump, structured so that none of the mud splatters on him.  He ran a similarly public traded entity that owned casinos with his name on 'em.  Trump got paid, the casinos went bust, Trump walked away clean (and shameless as a whore).  He'll do it again with this, no matter what happens.

A fool and his money are soon parted; that's the only way Trump has ever made any money, and there's a sucker born every minute.

Ghostbusters!

So I'm on my hobby horse about cliches we can do without.  Thinks like "Pain is just weakness leaving the body."  That one's fairly new, and it's fairly offensive.  A more familiar one is:  "That which does not destroy me makes me stronger."  Just don't drop that one in conversation in Newtown, Connecticut anytime soon.


And it's not just that a cliche like that is offensive in the wrong context, it's offensive, period.  It's a stupid idea.  So enough poison to make me sick but not kill me is a good thing?  A little mercury in my diet is not so bad?  Feh!

My latest cliche that should be tossed is the one tossed around lightly by people who think they are being scientific, or who think they know what the word "evidence" means:  "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Often used in discussions about the existence of God (which discussions are never conducted within the understandings of the discourse on philosophy of religion), it is meant to shut down the authority of believers by putting them on the spot, since, well, "proof" of God is a problem that goes back to Isaiah:

Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence,
As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!
When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence. 

Isaiah 64:1-3, KJV.

Yeah, like that.  "Evidence," however, is a term I am quite familiar with; to a lawyer it means something rather different than it does to a non-lawyer, even a scientist.  But a good empiricist never strays far from the proof of the evidence either, and anyone with a minimal appreciation of the complexity of the concept realizes "evidence" is not a unitary term measurable on a scale from "extraordinary" and "quite ordinary."

Much of scientific reasoning, as Kuhn established, is altered by paradigm shifts.  It isn't done by the presence of extraordinary evidence.  Einstein shifted physics from Newton by building on the work of others, not by producing sui generis his own theory which no one could deny.  Indeed, some parts of Einstein's theory have only been established in recent decades, which is not to say the physical evidence was unimportant, but the theory was accepted long before the evidence for all of it was available. There were, of course, good reasons to accept Einstein's reasoning, just as there were good reasons to accept, or at least pursue with fantastically expensive equipment and an untold number of man hours, the suppositions of Peter Higgs.  And the reasoning about the Higgs Boson is not fully accepted until enough evidence is present to establish it, but the finding of evidence always follows the theory; it is seldom the other way around.  Reasoning leads to conclusions, not observations alone.

This has been true in Western thought since Socrates, who from argument alone established the idea of the immortal soul, and idea that may have no post-Enlightenment merit, but which as proven durable across the centuries nonetheless.

Science simply doesn't shift because of "extraordinary evidence," and it never has.  Science shifts because of reasoning, as Kuhn showed.  It shifts in part because evidence accumulates that supports a new claim, but it also shifts because reasoning leads to the search for evidence that supports a new claim.  Extraordinary evidence is never available, because what is "evident" or even "evidence" depends upon a claim to establish it.  Evidence does not walk up, shake your hand, and explain to you what it is in terms of current scientific reasoning.  Reasoning looks for, and eventually finds, the evidence.

For example, when I was a child, there were two kingdoms in the Linnean system of classification:  animals and plants.  Viruses were known, when I was in elementary school, but they had no language of "genetic material" to describe them, and I remember one theory that wasn't rejected out of hand, was that viruses might be proof of extraterrestrial life, because they didn't fit the classification system of "life" that science had established.  Well, now, of course, we know viruses are quite terrestrial.  We also know there are five kingdoms, not two.  Because we discovered variant life forms never accounted for when I was a child?  No, because we finally let go of the old classification system by realizing its limitations and errors.  Did extraordinary evidence lead to this massive change?  Evidence of what:  the existence of algae and fungi?  No; observation and reasoning led to the conclusion that just because a living organism didn't seek its food, it wasn't necessarily a "plant."  It might have been an extraordinary claim, when I was a child, to say that fungi were not plants; but it didn't take extraordinary evidence to establish it.  It just took a reconsideration of the system of classification.

Science is full of such changes, and never relies on "extraordinary evidence" to establish a claim.  If anything, science relies on careful examination of its own reasoning (and it's a good thing, too!).  Which brings me to the relationship of evidence to the law.

In a court of law, nothing is taken for granted.  If you want to establish that it was raining on a day important to the facts of the case, you need to bring acceptable records of atmospheric conditions for that day.  You need even to establish your client's identity, their relationship to other witnesses, even the smallest details of their story.  Any claim made in a court of law is subject to proof by evidence, and in a very literal sense every claim of fact, however small and "ordinary" it may be, is treated as "extraordinary" in a court of law.  Not because it must be established beyond any reasonable standard (and what constitutes "evidence" is a complex set of determinants, not all of them clearly established rules), but because it must be established at all.  If we can return to Kierkegaard's example of the prisoner on trial, the prosecution must establish not that the person on trial exists, but that he is the criminal guilty of the crime.  This does not rest on "extraordinary evidence," as it does on TV or in the movies.  It rests on a great deal of tedious and minute evidence, the kind that makes trials last for weeks, not minutes.  Even then, of course, we don't establish the truly extraordinary claim: that the criminal exists.  To do that, we have to establish a working definition of existence.  The best Descartes could do was "Cogito, ergo sum."  And he only stopped at the cogito because he quite reasonably reasoned that to wonder if he weren't thinking at all, if even his own self-awareness by knowing his thoughts was an illusion, would lead to a reductio from which there was no escape.  That way, he concluded, lies madness; and that would lead him to no conclusion at all.

To establish the existence of any scientist, then, for example, would require extraordinary evidence indeed; starting with the criteria for establishing existence at all.

Science never proceeds from the proof of "extraordinary evidence."  It proceeds from extraordinary reasoning (the "paradigm shift") to identify evidence in light of the new paradigm, much as a court of law examines evidence relevant to a case, but limits evidence subject to consideration to that which is deemed relevant to one theory or another presented by the case.  "Extraordinary" evidence doesn't establish anything outside an accepted paradigm, because it isn't taken as evidence within that paradigm.  If it is accepted, it isn't "extraordinary," it is consistent with the paradigm in effect.  If it isn't consistent with that paradigm, it isn't evidence.  I can, for example, present all manner of "extraordinary evidence" which I claim established the reality of ghosts.  But since no scientific paradigm (well, not in physics; perhaps in anthropology) accepts the claim of an immortal soul which can exist apart from the body, such evidence will never be accepted as proof that ghosts are, in fact, real.  Such evidence will always be explained in ways that support the existing paradigm.  Which doesn't mean ghosts are, in fact, real; it just means acceptance of their reality means stepping out of the existing scientific paradigms, or radically shifting those paradigms.  Whether that has to happen, or ever happens, would require, among other things, a re-definition of the subjects of science, and how science understands, and so explains, the world.  If science ever has to accept the reality of ghosts, or of an immortal soul, the currently accepted thinking is that it would break science to do so.

So better to say there is no extraordinary evidence available to do that, than to change fundamental scientific reasoning.  At least, among some scientists.  But do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?  Better to say they require a shift in what is allowed to be considered evidence, which means a shift in what is allowed to be considered:  period.

(And do ghosts exist?  I dunno.  Depends on how I examine the evidence....)

The Center Of The Universe Is Some Jive Ass Shit

 This is precisely where I think the “battle” between science and religion exists: in the fight for which gets to claim the role of defining reality.

Based on that, I think it's inaccurate to call those self-serving declarations of science that Epstein felt entitled to practice is "pseudo-science." I agree with what Marilynne Robinson said, if religion is answerable for bad religion then science has to be answerable for bad science - especially as so much of it exists quite contentedly within what is called science.

Eugenics was scientifically sound enough in this country to base laws on it and force the sterilization of individuals by it; until the Nazis took our example to its logical extreme, and embarrassed us out of it altogether.

Science really has no more claim to “objective truth” than religion does (and the concept of “objective truth” as most people bandy it about was done in by Kierkegaard in the 19th century in Denmark). I can remember (a few years ago) how apologists for Thomas Kuhn pulled his concept of paradigm shifts back from the ledge by arguing Kuhn was not undermining the “objective truth” (read: “God’s knowledge”) basis of science. But his concept clearly does (whether he meant it to, or not, is beside the point). Science changes (forget “progresses” or its synonym, “evolves”) because paradigms change, not in response to new information, but in response to new arguments. Newtonian physics is not Einsteinian physics is not quantum mechanics. Which is not to say one wipes out another. Existentialism replaces idealism and empiricism, in one sense; and in another, it doesn’t. And none of those replace Platonic metaphysics or Aristotelian logic, anymore than deconstructionism replaces Western philosophy, even as it critiques its bases and analyses.

In theology, few of us may be Augustinians any more, or Thomists, but try to engage theology without those two fundamental schools. You’re just kidding yourself or betraying your ignorance if you think you can. To return to Kierkegaard’s conclusion, the more we think we can get an objective perspective (which means to see as we imagine God sees; or “perfectly,” if we prefer to be Platonic), the more we mire ourselves in subjective experience. And, I would say, culture. You really can’t formulate an idea that can’t be imagined, much less understood, in the context of your culture. Even a “perfect” idea involves a cultural concept of “perfection.” And that concept lines up with your culture, not the nature of the universe. Just ask the victims of British colonialism; or French; or Belgian.

How this happens is more simply explained. The arguments of any paradigm shift may be based on new information (atoms; quanta), and the paradigm shift may allow room for new information; but there is no fundamental change in how decisions are made. They are made by a community that gains authority by numbers accepting the new arguments, not by superior rationality. The old guard pass away, the young Turks become the “establishment,” and the world spins on. 

I’ve studied literary criticism, theology, and law. Starting with the first one, I was trained in contemporary literary theory in the late ‘70’s, encountered the new theories of structuralism and reader response criticism, “multicultural” theories like feminist studies and colonialism critiques, even the then “bleeding edge” of deconstructionism. (Derrida’s Of Grammatology had just been translated into English when I was in graduate school, and the translator, Gayatri Spivak, was a prize guest in our seminars for a semester. She seemed to regard us all as yokels in Austin. So it goes.) Almost 50 years later all of that is as ancient as British imperialism. And about as well regarded.

In law I learned the traditional forms of statutory and constitutional interpretation, and even a bit in jurisprudence about legal realism. “Originalism” and “textualism,” equivalent to religious fundamentalism and biblical literalism, now control, at least among the Sinister Six from their Olympian heights. None dare call that “progress.” Or they shouldn’t, anyway.

In theology, the “new” historical interpretation theories of the Jesus Seminar are already forgotten (not really; but neither are they the bleeding edge anymore), and much of what I studied was already old news in other seminaries at the time I studied it. Reagan and the CIA obliterated liberation theology (which would now be simply dismissed as “woke”), although I see its influence still (if not its truly radical nature) in Pope Francis and in Pope Leo. There are shifts that reaffirm the status quo, shifts that alter it. The latter seem to disappear quickly, but actually persist. Status quo changes, and very slowly for the better.*

What does this have to do with the “battle” between science and religion? Everything. The fundamental conflict is over who gets to define reality: engineers, or preachers? That’s the popular dichotomy, and it’s a false one. The fundamental concept of reality is not explained by mathematics and data (what even the empiricist David Hume called unimportant information to the question of how we understand existence), anymore than its explained by strained Platonic metaphysics and the tangled mess of Christian doctrine/dogmatics. But those two warriors vie for the superior position, the authority to provide the Grand Unified Theory of what it all is: God’s Creation, or the product of physical laws (or at least wholly explained by those “laws”. And both, in their claim for “truth” (which both understand in a Platonic context, even if one claims to be Aristotelian), assert a claim to know the mind of God: either literally, or metaphorically. Because that’s the objective standard, one set (again) by Plato (it’s not an ideal that has anything to do with the Hebrew Scriptures). My claim for the basileia tou theou has nothing to do with the claims of quantum computing (which, after all, is mere techne in Plato’s world), but everything to do with how AI is used, and abused, and misdefined (and who picks up the pieces after that bubble explodes). I am not in conflict with science. I am in conflict with the claim to the superior explanation for the world and how we should then live in it (which seems to be largely as consumers of technology and its products). Computers are not “wrong.” Using computers to further inequality and injustice, is quite wrong. And science really has nothing either fundamental nor useful to say about that.

I’ve wandered far afield from the original post I quoted, but I wouldn’t leave you here without redirecting to that post. The “objective” view of sexual intercourse and consent has consistently been viewed from the male perspective. “Incels” today are merely boys primed by popular culture (James Bond being the paradigm, since Playboy is gone but Bond is forever) to believe women are merely sex objects and receptacles for male desire (Pussy Galore is even more clearly a lesbian in the novel than the movie. Still, it just takes a good man to change her mind.). The same paradigm permitted Jeffrey Epstein to walk away from serious charges of sex trafficking in Florida, something the prosecuting attorney admitted under questioning by Jasmine Crockett, recently. “Walk away” because the victims were poor, from broken families, and easily portrayed as deserving their fate because, after all, they accepted poverty and took the rich man’s money. 

“Objective” is always a matter of perspective. We condemn Epstein now, in no small part because he preyed on young women from a higher economic bracket than those in Palm Beach, and he did it in NYC, where people with more money (and so, power) took it more seriously. Acosta, in Florida, was just following the cultural rules. But then came the paradigm shift.

Or, as some Christians would put it, the arc of the universe, which bends towards justice. They would also call justice the moral center of the universe, and urge us to take it more seriously. Which is not such a bad idea. What, after all, would science put at the center of the universe. The laws of physics? And how should we then live?

*I have to belatedly add that liberation theology came out of a central concern for the people as the starting point of Christian concern, and out of the experiences of corruption and oppression in the Americas. And it can’t be coincidence that the echoes of that theology (however faint) now sound from the Papacy, where the last two Popes have been: from the Americas.

There is still more light to spring forth.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

I was looking for a bit of information on Michel Foucault, and turned to The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (Pantheon Books, New York 1984). I was going for something else (which I'll get back to later), but this passage from the introduction seemed to speak more plainly to the kerfluffle over the Wieseltier review of the Dennett book "Breaking the Spell." Atrios picked up Leiter's critique, and Pharyngula weighed in, and still the issue has generated more heat than light.

So, in the interest of shedding a bit more light, let's start with Rabinow's introduction to Foucault's work.

The context here is a debate on Danish TV (and try to imagine that in America, even on PBS) between Chomsky and Foucault. Rabinow begins by characterizing Chomsky's position:

For Noam Chomsky, there is a human nature. This point is fundamental: unless there is some form of relatively fixed human nature, true scientific understanding is impossible. Starting from his own research, Chomsky asked: How is it that on the basis of a partial and fragmentary set of experiences, individuals in every culture are able not only to learn their own language, but to use it in a creative way? For Chomsky, there was only one possible answer: there must be a bio-physical structure underlying the mind which enables us, both as individuals and as a species, to deduce from the multiplicity of individual experiences a unified language. There must be, Chomsky insists, a "mass of schematisms, innate governing principles, which guide our social and intellectual and individual behavior. . . there is something biologically given, unchangeable, a foundation for whatever it is that we do with our mental capacities." Chomsky's scientific career has been devoted to uncovering these structures. His aim: a testable mathematical theory of mind. His lineage: Cartesian rationality.

Stop right there, and take that in. Rabinow is discussing this issue on philosophical grounds, the underpinnings beneath all assumptions about what "reason" is and how "reason" functions and why reason is important. He places it as the underpinning of Chomsky's analysis, and puts his view in the context of Cartestian rationality. Which, frankly, is where these discussions need to occur, but don't.

If you wade through the comments at Pharyngula, for example, you will find all kinds of arguments about where reason comes from; but no coherent discussion about what reason is. All the assumptions are that "science" represents "reason," and all agree on what "science" is (have they even read Francis Bacon, much less Thomas Kuhn or Richard Rorty?). Pay attention, too, to the comment about Chomsky's assertion about "human nature." If that universal is removed (and philosophers and some anthropologists would gladly show you how to do that, should you ask them), Chomsky says true scientific understanding is impossible. That seems to be a crucial issue in Dennett's work, and yet no one raises it. Why not? Because the investigation would stop right there? Is that a "scientific" analysis? Or proceeding from comforting assumptions?

Michel Foucault rejects Chomsky's view of both human nature and science. In a methodologically typical fashion, Foucault avoids the abstract question: Does human nature exist?, and asks instead: How has the concept of human nature functioned in our society? Taking the sciences of life during the eighteenth century as an example, Foucault draws a distinction between the actual operational categories within a specific discipline at a particular historical moment and those broad conceptual markers such as "life," or "human nature," which, in his opinion, have had very little importance in the internal changes of scientific disciplines. According to Foucault, "It is not by studying human nature that linguists discovered the laws of consonant mutation, or Freud the principles of the analysis of dreams, or cultural anthropologists the structure of myths. In the history of knowledge the notion of human nature seems to me mainly to have played the role of . . . designat[ing] certain types of discourse in relation to or in opposition to theology or biology or history." Foucault is highly suspicious of claims to universal truths. He doesn't refute them; instead, his consistent response is to historicize grand abstractions. In the last analysis, he doesn't take a stand on whether or not there is a human nature. Rather, he changes the subject and examines the social functions that such concepts have played in the context of practices "such as economics, technology, politics, sociology which can serve them as conditions of formation, of models, of place, etc. . . . what [it is] in social forms that makes the regularities of science possible." (emphasis added)

Which, in part, is where Thomas Kuhn's "paradigms" come in. But to read the comments on the web, you'd think science was one seamless paradigm of constantly unravelling knowledge of absolute truth, progressing ever "forward." Or what Wieseltier called "contemporary superstitions."

For Foucault, there is no external position of certainty, no universal understanding that is beyond history and society. His strategy is to proceed as far as possible in his analyses without recourse to universals. His main tactic is to historicize such supposedly universal categories as human nature each time he encounters them. Foucault's aim is to understand the plurality of roles that reason, for example, has taken as a social practice in our civilization not to use it as a yardstick against which these practices can be measured. This position does not entail any preconceived reduction of knowledge to social conditions. Rather, there is a consistent imperative, played out with varying emphases, which runs through Foucault's historical studies: to discover the relations of specific disciplines and particular social practices.

Now, am I saying at this point that Foucault is right, and that Chomsky and the "scientific" view of the world, is wrong? Not at all. Foucault's reasoning takes him, as he acknowledged in the interview, too close to Nietzsche for me. Much of what he says I disagree with for other reasons, as well. Still, his analyses are powerful, and insightful, and have to be taken into account. As my favorite seminary professor used to say, "Life is messy," and that messiness extends to our intellectual understanding. We understand better by broadening our awareness of the scope of human thought, not by narrowing it. And it seems to me that Foucault's point about human nature is a valid one: we like to consider it "absolute," but we define it in terms of those things we either wish to accept, or wish to challenge. And if we think those arguments gets us closer to the Truth, we are deluding ourselves.

But still, Foucault makes a valid point, one relevant to this discussion, and one that explains why Wieseltier's review should generate so much energy:

For Foucault, knowledge of all sorts is thoroughly enmeshed in the clash of petty dominations, as well as in the larger battles which constitute our world. Knowledge is not external to these fights; it does not constitute a way out of, or above, the fray in the way Chomsky views it. Rather, for Foucault, the "will to knowledge" in our culture is simultaneously part of the danger and a tool to combat that danger. Following Nietzsche, Foucault asserts that knowledge did not "slowly detach itself from its empirical roots, the initial needs from which it arose, to become pure speculation subject only to the demands of reason. . . .Where religions once demanded the sacrifice of bodies, knowledge now calls for experimentation on ourselves, calls us to the sacrifice of the subject of knowledge." Foucault confronts this challenge, this threat, by refusing to separate off knowledge from power.

"Follow the money," William Goldman had "Deep Throat" say. What he meant was: "Follow the power."

The man with the hammer is handing out nailing guidelines....

Chris Hayes:

What he'd come to realize, he wrote, was that "it isn't a question of correct theory or incorrect theory, but whether or not the results of the implementation of that theory are right or wrong in a moral sense."

Economics began it's life as moral philosophy. Adam Smith was considered an ethicist. Utilitarianism, which became wed to modern economic theory so thoroughly almost no one questions it any longer (see., e.g., Rawls' "Theory of Justice," which doesn't critique utilitarianism at all, but only seeks to modify its harsher, "Omelas" effects), began life as a moral philosophy. Almost all Western thought, upon the rise of the university, was considered a branch of theology, and theology was always concerned with ethics. It was only after empiricism took precedence over the system of thought (in the Anglo-American realm) that all thought slowly but inexorably became "scientific."

As I've said before, there's a reason existentialism and phenomenology are products of Europe (the "Continent") and give rise to schools of thought (such as modern day philosophy of religion, and many modern theologies) which are disparaged in Anglo-American circles. And there is a reason, which Chris Hayes doesn't quite touch on, why "efficiency" is preferred in economics (at least by the "Chicago school") over equity.

Equity, after all, is a product of the ecclesiastical courts. There is a reason English barristers wear robes and white wigs; it is a tradition. But it is a tradition that began with the Church. The barrister's robes included a pocket in the back, where payment for services rendered was supposed to be placed (without the barrister seeing it or, publicly at least, touching it). Barristers were related to clergy, and clergy were not supposed to be paid directly for their services. Money is the root of all evil, don't you know? But the traditions of equity in the law stem from the ecclesiastical courts, courts one could turn to in England at one time when the civil courts had failed to do justice, usually because of some "technicality." The ecclesiastical courts might be available to a party, if certain conditions could be met; and a greater interest in justice than in the letter of the law (or, more accurately, the demands of the common law) meant the courts of the church could offer relief not available in civil courts. When the church courts were finally abolished, the principles and rules of those courts survived in the civil courts as "equity." Sometimes, you see, the civil courts were too "efficient," and so the church courts had to be "fair." Contrary to what Professor Sanderson says in Chris Hayes post, society does deal with what is "fair" through its institutions, and has done so for centuries. Indeed, if we hadn't, the entire structure of the justice system would have come down centuries ago.

There is, in other words, always a moral sense; and setting it aside in the name of "efficiency" or, better, "measurement," is a fool's game. It is also, in the language of Professor Sanderson, grossly inefficient. Consider the state of the prisons in the United States today as one example: we can measure "justice" by the yardstick of prison time, and that seems to be a most satisfactory measure for many people. No politician ever lost office by arguing for stiffer prison sentences and more jails to house criminals, all of whom are dangerous, else why would we have to lock them up? But is the system efficient, at all? Are we really better off, as a nation, with the highest incarceration rates in the world? It's easily measured, but is it efficient? Shouldn't we consider a system that is more fair, that is more rational, that takes into account something other than number of prisoners and number of years behind bars?

Science is associated with measure, and measure is associated with truth, and the closer science gets to what is measurable, the closer to truth it comes. That is the assumption running about in the United States, anyway. "Hard" sciences have measurable data on their side, and therefore they are more "true" than "soft" sciences, which try to emulate the "hard" ones by getting data they, too, can measure. It helps if the data doesn't seem to need interpretation, of course. Interpretation introduces error, and error is the bugbear of "science." Or, at least, it's supposed to be.

There are still people who reject Thomas Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science, because he calls into question the measurement of the universe, and the reliability of data. But Kuhn points out a salient fact that is all to easily overlooked: all data is a matter of interpretation. Indeed, this was the simple secret of David Hume, the one that drove Kant out of his academic dreams and into philosophical history. Hume divided the world into two kinds of information: that which would be easily empirically verified, such as "This stone is heavy," (or weighs a specific amount, as determined by an agreed upon scale of measure) and "This object is beautiful." The former, he pointed out, was trivial information, of no real value beyond the obvious (perhaps, we could say, useful to engineers, but of no philosophical or greater value). The latter, he said, was merely interpretation, and could not be verified. And so it was equally irrelevant. What were we left with, then? Tending sheep, said Hume. Philosophy, he decided, trying to say anything universal about objects and ideas, was a mug's game.

Which pretty much shuts down science and, in this case, economics, too. If Professor Sanderson were to point out to me that "fair" is an indeterminate concept, I would point out to him that describing a system as "efficient" is really no different from describing it as "beautiful." His "efficiency" is really no more grounded in truth or science, than "fairness" is. Now what?

In truth, of course, we don't insist upon such absolutism, nor do we need to (which, if we stick to the realm of philosophy, is where Kant comes in; but let's leave that alone for now). Sanderson is insisting upon a kind of absolutism in his lectures, at least as Hayes describes them; one slanted to give him the outcome he prefers. When Hayes describes Sanderson's technique as "Socratic," it is precisely the carefully calculated approach of Socrates that Sanderson is following. Socrates was not so interested in discovering Truth as in establishing his philosophical preferences as truth (although more accurately, Socrates was interested in irony. Socratic dialogue, in its logical conclusion, is a snake that not only eats its tail, but swallows everything attached to that tail).

Back, then, to ethics.

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

We tend to think of ethics as a matter of individual behavior and individual concern; this is completely wrong. Aristotle's "Ethics," which introduced the word into non-Greek European tongues, was wholly concerned with the individual fitting into the society at large. Aristotle's advice, boiled down to its essence, was to find the happiest, most successful person in your society, and emulate him (it would be "him" for Aristotle). Conform, in other words, to what society expected and rewarded, and happiness (and success!) will spring from that.

It is well to remember Aristotle is the "observer" of the universe, and the prototype for the "scientist" as popularly understood today. He tries to draw his conclusions from what he sees rather than from what memories he recovers, as Plato's Socrates does.

So ethics, for most of European history, was a societal concern. Ethics was not (and still isn't, really) a matter of what was in your heart, but what was in your actions. And your actions took place in a society of humans, so ethics was a matter of how the society functioned, not how you got on with your personal concept of God or good. So when the concept of society began shifting, because of the Industrial Revolution, from property to productivity, from patronage to open markets, the question of how should we then live almost inevitably became an economic question (and it was no coincidence the influential economists in the 18th century were British, or that a Frenchman like Charles Fourier despised them). And so economics began its life as a moral philosophy, where the morality was for the society at large, or at least for the greater good. And, according to Chris Hayes' post, it's still a matter of morality: those who benefit are those who deserve to. "Trade works the same way as technological progress: While it might put some people out of work, in the end, it makes everyone better off." Or, in simpler terms, the greatest good for the greatest number. Losses are inevitable, and regrettable, but this is the great truth of the universe: "in trade, there's an enormous amount of agreement between economists about what constitutes the truth. The disagreements are between economists and everybody else."

Economics explains it all to you, if only you choose to understand. Not only is it ethical, it's scientific and therefore true. But, of course, nothing is that simple, especially ethics:

On the whole, then, we must conclude that no philosophy of ethics is possible in the old‑fashioned absolute sense of the term. Everywhere the ethical philosopher must wait on facts. The thinkers who create the ideals come he knows not whence, their sensibilities are evolved he knows not how; and the question as to which of two conflicting ideals will give the best universe then and there, can be answered by him only through the aid of the experience of other men. I said some time ago, in treating of the `"first" question, that the instuitional moralists deserve credit for keeping most clearly the psychological facts. They do much to spoil this merit on the whole, however, by mixing with it that dogmatic temper which, by absolute distinctions and unconditional "thou shalt nots," changes a growing, elastic, and continuous life into a superstitious system of relics and dead bones. In point of fact, there are no absolute evils, and there are no non‑moral goods; and the highest ethical life--however few may be called to bear its burdens--consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narrow for the actual case. There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qua philosopher, is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete emergency than other men. He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most men what the question always is-‑not a question of this good or that good simply taken, but of the two total universes with which these goods respectively belong. He knows that he must vote always for the richer universe,, for the good which seems most organizable, most fit to enter to complex combinations, most apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole. But which particular universe this is he cannot know for certain in advance; he only knows that if he makes a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon inform him of the fact. In all this the philosopher is just like the rest of us non‑philosophers, so far as we are just and sympathetic instinctively, and so far as we are open to the voice of complaint. His function is in fact indistinguishable from that of the best kind of statesman at the present day. His books upon ethics, therefore, so far as they truly touch the moral life, must more and more ally themselves with a literature which is confessedly tentative and suggestive rather than dogmatic‑-I mean with novels and dramas of the deeper sort, with sermons, with books on statecraft and philanthropy and social and economical reform. Treated in this way ethical treatises may be voluminous and luminous as well; but they never can be final, except in their abstractest and vaguest features; and they must more and more abandon the old‑fashioned, clear‑cut, and would‑be "scientific" form. (emphasis added)

Interesting how the economics professor wants to squeeze all the ambiguity out of the world, while "the American James, who seems so mild, so naively gentlemanly....remains, a genuinely radical thinker." As LeGuin points out, it was also James, in the same lecture quoted above, who pointed out that:

All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.

Need I point out that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth were never about the past, or the present, but always about what was coming?