1. Comment #62001 by Robert Maynard on August 7, 2007 at 8:54 pm

A thoroughly excellent treatment of an incredibly frustrating tactic I've run into repeatedly - particularly on these comment threads.
David Robertson, devolved, Bizarro Dawkins, your thoughts on this article would be appreciated.

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2. Comment #62004 by BAEOZ on August 7, 2007 at 9:17 pm

A great summary of science and knowledge. It clearly states why the scientific method isn't dogmatic and only deals with what can honestly be termed knowledge. It reminds me of the discussion I had with WeeFlea last week. The lying flea claimed knowledge of things he couldn't possibly know. If it can't be measured, it can't be said to exist (I'm not saying that means it doesn't exist), and without evidence (the real kind, like a measurement), the probability of existence is very slim indeed. Which is why it's dishonest to have faith in god. Just like it's dishonest for me to say fairies exist........
It also quite clearly shows that most frustrating tactic of the superstitious, equivocation. Oh you believe evolution explains life, well then you have faith tooo.....Arghggh!!!!! Belief in something with evidence is good, belief in something with no evidence is not the same thing. Liars!!!! Sorry, just letting off steam.

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3. Comment #62018 by njwong on August 8, 2007 at 12:31 am

The phrase "I place my faith in science" is a commonly uttered construct even by atheists and agnostics (in fact, I recently found Carl Sagan saying it in one of his lectures in his book "The Varieties of Scientific Experience - A Personal View of the Search of God"). Obviously, we are using the word "faith" to mean that we have "confidence in something - after giving it much thought and studied consideration". This is not exactly the same as the religious meaning of "faith" which implies "embracing a belief unquestioningly despite evidences of the contrary".

Similarly, the word "God" is used to both mean the Abrahamic god figure by Judeo-Christian followers, or the Universe/Cosmos by atheists and agnostics.

Because of such ambiguities, atheists and agnostics should perhaps try to avoid using such terms (although this is extremely difficult due to sheer force of habit), and use "confidence" and "Universe" instead when that is their intent. This may reduce the number of arguments due to quibbles over semantics.

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4. Comment #62030 by bouwe on August 8, 2007 at 1:18 am

This, along with PZ Meyer's recent analysis of A.McGrath, are the two best things I've read on this site for a while. If our main (realistic) aim is to convince the fence-sitters, then (in my view) it is the battle with these slippery, misleading arguments which should be the focus of our attention.

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5. Comment #62033 by Diplo on August 8, 2007 at 1:31 am

Very good article. It still amazes me how theists can consistently accuse Dawkins et al. of being "arrogant" whilst, at the same time, contending they are a conduit to the creator of the Universe and have a deep understanding of some hidden reality that "scientists" cannot comprehend.

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6. Comment #62040 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 2:07 am

Good article. However, you seem to be missing the broader point of "non-overlapping-magisteria". There are different types of "knowledge", and the empirical method is not amenable to all of them. For example; scientific / engineering knowledge may enable you to construct a musical instrument, but they won't tell you much about composing a symphony.

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7. Comment #62042 by Jiten on August 8, 2007 at 2:26 am

stag You forgot the word yet at the end of your last sentence.

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8. Comment #62048 by infidel_michael on August 8, 2007 at 2:52 am

Stag:
scientific / engineering knowledge may enable you to construct a musical instrument, but they won't tell you much about composing a symphony.

Maybe, but nobody claims to have knowledge of the "only true way of composing a symphony", nobody tells you that if you don't like his symphony, you will suffer forever, etc. Art is not based on objective truth-claims, but on subjective emotions. "Knowledge" is not the right word in the context of art, "skill" is better one. Yes, you can say "I know how to write a nice symphony", but it doesn't mean that you know something to be true, but rather that you are able to do something.

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9. Comment #62051 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 3:04 am

Jiten,

The point is one of subjective vs. objective "knowledge"; gnosis vs. logos. No amount of scientific understanding on how the brain interprets audio signals will ever replicate the actual experience of listening to Beethoven's 9th, for example. In a similar vein, analysing the chemical composition of a piece of fruit is not the same thing as actually tasting it.

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10. Comment #62052 by posiedon on August 8, 2007 at 3:10 am

BAEOZ. It reminds me of the discussion I had with WeeFlea last week. The lying flea claimed knowledge of things he couldn't possibly know.

Have any of you been taking part in the debate, "How dare you call me a fundamentalist" at the Times online?
There is a guy on there (Father Bryan Storey) who can outdo even the flea, after reading about two dozen of his posts I had to leave, my stomach couldn't take any more.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1779771.ece
Off to read the article above now.

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11. Comment #62055 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 3:19 am

infidel_michael,

Maybe, but nobody claims to have knowledge of the "only true way of composing a symphony", nobody tells you that if you don't like his symphony, you will suffer forever, etc.

Granted. The NOMA argument cuts both ways, and religious people who try to use it to shore up their own positions would do well to bear that in mind. Deriving claims of objective "truth" from purely subjective experiences is equally problematic. For example, "apples are better than bananas" is clearly nonsense, objectively speaking.

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12. Comment #62058 by infidel_michael on August 8, 2007 at 3:48 am

stag:

No amount of scientific understanding on how the brain interprets audio signals will ever replicate the actual experience of listening to Beethoven's 9th

I agree, but the point IMHO is elsewhere.

Take the following situation: I don't believe that something is on this CD, because I don't hear anything when I play it. But there are people who say, that I'm kind of deaf, and there is actually a song. But one says it is Beethoven, the second says it is Metallica and the last says Eminem.

This is exactly the situation with God-experiences. Isn't it suspicious?

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13. Comment #62064 by phasmagigas on August 8, 2007 at 4:50 am

No amount of scientific understanding on how the brain interprets audio signals will ever replicate the actual experience of listening to Beethoven's 9th, for example. In a similar vein, analysing the chemical composition of a piece of fruit is not the same thing as actually tasting it.

I had a believer subject me to 'can you prove you love your wife?' under the assumption that if i couldnt therefore god exists, i suppose this is a similar idea. I guess that love could be measured as some variance in brain chemicals over time but besides, the next time that question is smugly posed to me i shall grab the hand of the person, bang the thumb with a large hammer, hear them respond in pain, claim that ive proved pain within their mind (as I guess theyd agree a shriek is evidence of pain)and then show them that I proved god doesnt exist.

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14. Comment #62065 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 4:53 am

infidel_michael,

I don't believe that something is on this CD, because I don't hear anything when I play it. But there are people who say, that I'm kind of deaf, and there is actually a song.

Looks like the metaphors have gone off the boil a bit here. So long as we all know the difference between Beethoven, Metallica, or "nothing", we stand a fairly good chance of reaching a consensus on the contents of the CD (which is close enough to "objectivity" for our purposes). However, if the discussion turns to the relative merits of Beethoven or Metallica, we have ourselves an altogether different type of discussion.

I agree with the general thrust of this article -- claims of "scientism" are a blatent and crude tactic by the religious to shift the burden of proof away from themselves. My issue here is the implication that there is only one meaningful way of knowing anything, i.e. science.

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15. Comment #62073 by Johnny O on August 8, 2007 at 5:20 am

Therefore we accept and make peace with the unknown, for it will always be with us.

That is an absolutely fantastic turn of phrase, I might get it translated into Latin and make myself a coat of arms. What a brilliant "phylosophy" by which to live your life. It's not saying don't try and find out, only that there will always be something else we don't know.

Stag

For example, "apples are better than bananas" is clearly nonsense

Too right it is, because bananas are far superior to apples...

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16. Comment #62076 by Johnny O on August 8, 2007 at 5:26 am

I had a believer subject me to 'can you prove you love your wife?'

You may not be able to prove your 'love', but you can prove the existence of your 'wife'...

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17. Comment #62110 by Robert Maynard on August 8, 2007 at 7:41 am

stag: The point is one of subjective vs. objective "knowledge"; gnosis vs. logos.

I don't think it's a good idea to look to the ancient Greek philosophers for a modern understanding of experience and knowledge. It's not a valuable distinction, and I think it's a mistake to elevate subjective "knowledge" to a level anywhere near approaching "objective", or empirical, knowledge. I don't think subjective experience can accurately be called "knowledge" at all. Empiricism is so valuable precisely because it can produce unambiguous and unequivocal results which take huge dollops of subjective "knowledge" to dismiss.

I also think that you've outlined a misleading analogy. I'm not sure many people have claimed that understanding a phenomenon can replicate experiencing that phenomenon. People didn't gain the ability to experientially conjure rainbows after Newton explained how they worked. BUT (this is critical), they did learn how to manipulate their environment to create their own rainbows. When we understand what goes into creating an phenomenon, we can try to construct our own, if only to make sure our understanding is correct.

No amount of scientific understanding on how the brain interprets audio signals will ever replicate the actual experience of listening to Beethoven's 9th

Let me outline a situation: One's individual experience of listening to Beethoven's 9th symphony is an electrical affair, the audio signals triggering waves of activity, a symphony (if you will) of chain reactions, electricity crackling throughout the brain. It can stimulate sections dedicated to remembering the experience of previous listenings, for instance, stimulating sections related to a sense of melody and rhythm, perhaps remembered images of Beethoven portraits (tangential split-second thoughts of what it took to compose anything while completely deaf), thoughts of similar composers or compositions in the Romantic period, memories of specific passages one is eagerly anticipating and memories of how much time is to elapse before each passage arrives.
Suppose we kept track of exactly how this electrical symphony played out in tandem with the audio symphony, several times, in a single subjects brain, and came up with an averaged "experience" session for that song and that person.
Do you think that if we sat that subject down, and stimulated their brain precisely for over an hour, in accordance with their "experience" information, they would very likely experience Beethoven's 9th without actually hearing it? I think they probably would.
The brain might even attempt to cover up the dissonance between experiencing a song while not listening to it by making the subject think (or remember on reflection) that he actually was listening to it all along.

[[ EDIT: The 9th actually presents an opportunity for a much simpler demonstration of my point: are you saying that Beethoven, while clearly understanding exactly what he was writing down in musical notation, was not capable of personally replicating the experience of hearing his composition, because he was completely deaf at that stage?
If you can use the language, you can send the message. ]]

The way you said it makes it sound like you're saying that sitting down and researching how brains interpret audio doesn't replicate listening to audio. That's a non-sequitur.
What it does do is allow people to use that knowledge to trick the brain into experiencing things it isn't actually experiencing. Studying experiences like this allows us to fully expose the gulf between knowledge and experience: Experience is deceit-prone, jerry-rigged artificial knowledge, full of ambiguities and with no guaranteed link to events in the physical world.

Understanding how brains and bodies work will be able to replicate the experience Beethoven's 9th. It may also allow us to create new experiences, like a mash-up orgy of your experiences of ALL of his symphonies put together, (one would hope) without a cacophony of noise.
I'm pretty sure scientists can already stimulate brains to the point of orgasm without sexual contact, so what exactly is the difference?

Understanding things enriches our experience, and lets us improve on it. That's the whole friggin' point. Your argument sounds like a skeptical caveman emoting something along the lines of "No amount of understanding how fire effects dead animal flesh can replicate the experience of eating that cooked meat."
Yes, it can, and more.

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18. Comment #62111 by BicycleRepairMan on August 8, 2007 at 7:50 am

Looks like the metaphors have gone off the boil a bit here. So long as we all know the difference between Beethoven, Metallica, or "nothing", we stand a fairly good chance of reaching a consensus on the contents of the CD (which is close enough to "objectivity" for our purposes). However, if the discussion turns to the relative merits of Beethoven or Metallica, we have ourselves an altogether different type of discussion.

I dont think thats what he meant at all, let me try to put it more plausibly, if you will: lets say you and some friends are lost in the woods, its dark, you're all tired, hungry and a bit scared; suddenly one guy says "hey did you hear/see that? sounded like a wolf!" and then the next guy says "Do you mean that snake-like sound?" third guy thinks it was a bear, and so on. If you heard nothing yourself, what would you make of their claims? Wouldnt you be wisest to past judgement when everyone does hear something, and it sounds to everyone like a specific animal??

The metaphor is meant to represent the different religions, every major religion make mutually incompatible claims about the universe, but as long as its just ignorance talking, none of them are really likely to be true. Without evidence, its just baseless assumptions..

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19. Comment #62117 by Bonzai on August 8, 2007 at 8:21 am

I agree with stag.

Robert Maynard wrote:

Studying experiences like this allows us to fully expose the gulf between knowledge and experience: Experience is deceit-prone, jerry-rigged artificial knowledge, full of ambiguities and inadequacies.

What if the purpose is not to gain "knowledge"? I don't listen to music or watch movies or get high as a means to attain knowledge in any objective sense other to enjoy the experience.

There is "wisdom" in experience, or if you like, "knowledge of the flesh" which is not reducible to "knowledge of the mind", which is related to epistemology.

Dawkins often speaks of "awe". Awe towards nature and there is also awe towards existence. Awe is an experience and you cannot convey it to someone who doesn't feel it even if you can tell him all the neuro chemistry that underlies the emotion of awe.

Flashes of insights that scientists experience and the enjoyment of figuring things out are emotional response, they are not based on pure logic. You cannot program a robot to do science. A purely rational being would not experience the awe that motivates the scientists. Scientists are also motivated by aesthetics. Feynman said, "you gotta have good taste to do physics". Well a psychologists may know more about the biological underpinning of "taste" than Feynman but he wouldn't be a great physicist (or a great artist) because of that knowledge.

You have a very narrow idea of "knowledge". We have a lot of intuitive knowledge about how people behave without studying psychology. We gain "understanding" about life, love, grief and other emotional experience through art and literature. For most people the knowledge of the biochemical mechanisms that produce these emotions are quite irrelevant unless they are trying to control them through drugs.

Even if I put aside the issue of relevance, life is full of ambiguities and not even all " objective knowledges" can be reduced to scientifically testable hypotheses. Scientifically testable hypotheses have to be very precise and they require that we have quite a lot of knowledge about a subject to begin with in order to formulate such hypotheses and many simplifying assumptions would have to be made. Anyone who actually works in science rather than just reading pop science books would know that. Even in the social sciences,--where the purpose is to get objective knowledge,unlike say in literature,-- you cannot easily formulate a testable hypothesis,--most situations that are amendable to "quantitative studies" in the form of hypothesis testing in the social sciences are largely trivial. Interesting and provocative works,on the other hand are largely qualitative and "unscientific",--which means you also have to take them with a big grain of salt. This makes the social sciences largely pesudo sciences, but it does highlight the difficulties in actually applying "the scientific method",--at least in the sense understood by most natural scientists,--in highly ambiguous situations.

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20. Comment #62119 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 8:31 am

Robert Maynard,

The distinction between different types of knowledge is a useful one, despite your protestations. The crux of the NOMA argument is that objective and subjective forms of knowledge are incommensurable, it is frankly absurd to assert that either one is somehow superior to the other.

I know what an apple tastes like, I also know the chemical formulae of fructose and the various volatile esters that comprise that taste (when interpreted by the tastebuds / nervous system). The latter information is objective, the former subjective. No amount of neurology or chemistry will tell you what the apple tastes like, unless you already have some sort of subjective knowledge to compare it to. A high fructose content would imply a sweet apple, but this means very little, subjectively speaking, if you have no experience of "sweetness". It's the old qualia problem, in other words.

It is entirely feasible that in the future we would be able to stimulate the brain in such a way as to perfectly recreate the taste of an apple. This has no bearing on the argument.

Two different types of knowledge, non-overlapping magisteria.

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21. Comment #62124 by Janus on August 8, 2007 at 8:57 am

But of course, no religion is composed entirely (or even mostly) of subjective beliefs. They all make claims about objective reality.

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22. Comment #62125 by Robert Maynard on August 8, 2007 at 8:58 am

Bonzai: What if the purpose is not to gain "knowledge"? I don't listen to music or watch movies or get high as a means to attain knowledge in any objective sense other to enjoy the experience.

I will use your own words.
You have a very narrow idea of "knowledge".
Our experience IS "knowledge", or awareness if you like, formed by sensory data. You have a knowledge of your surroundings, as informed by your eyes, nose, ears, skin, and sometimes your tongue. When you listen to music, you have a knowledge of what you're hearing, what it means to you, whether you like it, etc.
When you read a book, you are not only learning its contents, you are learning about the book. Even if the content is not educational, you are engaged in a learning process. Same deal with music, and ..well, everything, actually (including "getting high", Cheech).

So, uh.. you misunderstood me there. One of the potential pitfalls of language, I guess. It's subjectively interpreted.

The problem, as I said, is that experience is not a very good form of knowledge - it is prone to ambiguities and manipulation, and shouldn't be considered in the same league as unambiguous empirical knowledge.
Intuitive (also known as "anecdotal") insights about human behaviour are valuable rules of thumb, formed at a young age in our development, but their insights are not worth the grey matter we childishly scribbled them on compared to good psychological research.

"You cannot program a robot to do science."
Again, to quote Jiten, you forgot to add "yet" at the end of that claim. Otherwise, someone might think you're just making baseless assertions.
Machines are what you make them. If we understood more about how awe and passion works, yeah, actually - we could program robots to do science, and even feel a sense of satisfaction when they did it well. I fear you are straying close to a silly kind of dualism, where you're accepting that things like emotions are physical in nature - chains of functions, calculations and reactions which are literally mechanical - but then turn around and say "OH, but we'll never be able to replicate or manipulate these completely causal phenomena, even if we understood them in intricate detail!" Why not?

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23. Comment #62127 by Bonzai on August 8, 2007 at 9:18 am

Comment #62125 by Robert Maynard

Robots are what you make them. If we understood more about how awe and passion works, yeah, actually - we could program robots to do science, and feel a sense of satisfaction when they did it well..

My point is that the scientist is not motivated by reason and logic alone. If he is like Data from Star trek than he won't be doing science.

As for "If we understand more.." you sound like a breakthrough is around the corner. Well get back to me if you have made any headway into AI.

AI is quite a bust if you apply the normal standard of judging science. But does it mean that before the day comes when we fully understand how passion works we should simply deny its significance simply because it cannot be fitted within our current paradigm? The thing is, we don't even know what kind of questions to ask, let alone testing hypotheses in many areas that relate to the human experience.

But this is just an aside anyway.

Even if we do know how passion is codified,--even in humans,-- that will not replace the experience of being in love, either with idea or with people. In the same way knowing how to build a TV wouldn't enable you to make great TV programs and reading electronics textbooks will not create the experience of watching your favourite show.

The physics of acoustics is very well understood by physicists, but it doesn't follow that studying physics would make you a great musician. On the other hand, most great musicians don't know anything about the wave equation and Fourier analysis.

To say otherwise is blatantly absurd.


So I disagree with you on two points.

1) you assume all levels of "knowledge" is reducible to "scientific knowledge",--epistemology.

2) You vastly underestimate the difficulties in applying the scientific method to most real life situations where ambiguities are really the way things are, not just because "our experience is ambiguous"

Hypothesis testing has very limited applications in understanding human affairs except for more or less trivial situations because of the shear complexity and multiple levels of entanglements among different factors,--in mathematics that is called "strong nonlinearity". We typically navigate ourselves through these situations with some kind of "heuristics", which are vague and not easily articulated, let alone reducible to computations (which is likely the case in the neuronic level, but we do this by instinct and are shielded from the actual computations for good reasons: it doesn't even make evolutionary sense to say that experience is reducible)

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24. Comment #62130 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 9:39 am

But of course, no religion is composed entirely (or even mostly) of subjective beliefs. They all make claims about objective reality.

Indeed, the NOMA argument cuts both ways as I have said. It is rather ironic when religious types invoke it to suggest that science shouldn't step on religion's toes. Many of the problems with religion stem from it making bold claims to objective truth which would be better approached empirically.

Examples of religions making minimal claims to objective truth would be certain forms of Buddhism, secular "religions" such as Humanism and also the particular sort of Christianty as proposed by John Shelby Spong. You could also throw in Deism and Pantheism, though "religion" might be stretching it a bit in these cases.

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25. Comment #62138 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 9:56 am

Machines are what you make them. If we understood more about how awe and passion works, yeah, actually - we could program robots to do science, and even feel a sense of satisfaction when they did it well.

Again, programming a robot to do science, and knowing what its like to actually be a robot doing science are two different things. What is it like to be a bat?

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26. Comment #62140 by Robert Maynard on August 8, 2007 at 10:10 am

Bonzai: Even if we do know how passion is codified,--even in humans,-- that will not replace the experience of being in love, either with idea or with people. In the same way knowing how to build a TV wouldn't enable you to make great TV programs and reading electronics textbooks will not create the experience of watching your favourite show. To say otherwise is blatantly absurd.

Urgh.. you are simply churning out non-sequiturs, my good man. You are not required to understand something for it to happen. To suggest as such, or to suggest that anyone thinks as such, is a contradiction of the whole idea of empiricism (which is in essence, observing things happening, in order to form an understanding of how it is happening).
The very notion that I have suggested that understanding the mechanics of emotions is the same as actually experiencing them is ludicrous. What I have suggested is that these experiences, once understood as causal processes, can be replicated, and perhaps even enhanced. There is nothing mystical about them, and if you think that cheapens them, grow the fuck up. (I really hope that isn't what you think)

It is difficult for me to come up with a more simple and obvious demonstration of the flaws in your reasoning than the very example you gave about televisions. But let me give it a shot.
What you're saying is the logical equivalent of this: You could look at a photograph of a beautiful sunset, and wish to have one of your own. Thus you learn about cameras, and use a rather improbable growth in expertise to masterfully understand and construct your own camera. At this point, you resign and claim "But it will never produce a picture of a sunset!"
Yes, it will, if you included all of the elements that went into the original.. like, oh I don't know.. a sunset.

Now as for your example, yes, if you replicate a perfectly functioning television set, it will not display high quality television programs.. yet. If you were to, however, also invest in the replication of video cameras, boom mikes, television studios, talented actors and writers, and transmission systems, it would.
You cannot declare that something is by nature impossible to replicate, if you refuse to consider all (or even most) of the factors that go into it.

Let us again consider the science performing robot. We can say with a great deal of certainty that the human mind is a biologically constructed information processing machine. The parameters of this machine are shaped by what functions it needs to serve, and as such our minds are defined by the modalities of information that our sensory organs can produce, and the evolutionary conditions that selected for the differential processing of some stimuli over others. A human brain is an organ, like any other, which functions in harmony with the other systems of our bodies to yield physical and chemical behaviours that are conducive to our survival and replication. Keep this in mind when you think about emotions and motivations.
There are centers in the brain (such as the nucleus accumbens) which are responsible for the pure phenomenological sensations of reward (or happiness) and repulsion (or suffering). The human limbic system (or indeed, that of any animal) is a set of adaptive, genetically predicated pathways and predispositions, which elicit differential experiences of happiness and suffering in response to different combinations of stimuli. In essence, they are the functional parameters that allow us to process the range of sensory input we are likely to encounter, in a manner that will promote the long-term survival of our genes.
Put simply, they are the necessary initial programming for a series of organic robots which we all happen to be members of. Precisely what part of such functional parameters that guide algorithmic processes do you think are NOT replicable (or for that matter, already replicated) in computers?

In this sense, science can only be, and only is, performed by some manner of "robot". Why then, is it so difficult for you to fathom that with more precise information regarding the details of how we do what we do, that we would be capable of inventing other machines of near identical function, to conduct scientific inquiry as well, if not better, than we do?

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27. Comment #62142 by Robert Maynard on August 8, 2007 at 10:16 am

stag: Again, programming a robot to do science, and knowing what its like to actually be a robot doing science are two different things. What is it like to be a bat?

I can't understand this perverse emphasis you keep putting on the unique peculiarities of any subjective cognition.
If one were capable of measuring, constructing or modifying sets of neurons with such accuracy as to perfectly replicate the cognitive patterns of a living bat, could that collection of neurons experience precisely the sensations of being a bat? Of course.
Would it ever be useful, interesting, or even communicable to do so? No. Never.

So is your objection even relevant to what may be achieved through science? I think you know the answer.

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28. Comment #62144 by tieInterceptor on August 8, 2007 at 10:22 am

Hey guys click on the link and DIGG it, lets see if it goes to first page ;)

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Atheist_Metaphysics_and_Religious_Equivocation

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29. Comment #62145 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 10:25 am

Robert,

The very notion that I have suggested that understanding the mechanics of emotions is the same as actually experiencing them is ludicrous.

I never said that you did. So we agree then there is more to knowledge than that which can be dertermined by objective, empirical means?

Good, I need to go home and get some dinner.

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30. Comment #62147 by Kakashi_monkey on August 8, 2007 at 10:36 am

That's the reason why science is infalliable; we only accept what we know is true. Religion is its evil opposite, seeking groundless knowlege. Christians believe what they want to, whether it makes sense and has evidence or not. Go science!!

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31. Comment #62149 by Robert Maynard on August 8, 2007 at 10:44 am

1) you assume all levels of "knowledge" is reducible to "scientific knowledge",--epistemology.
2) You vastly underestimate the difficulties in applying the scientific method to most real life situations where ambiguities are really the way things are, not just because "our experience is ambiguous"

I have already discussed subjective knowledge, and the only time I've explicitly said it isn't knowledge was while setting up an argument in which I tried to demonstrate that it isn't a way of "knowing" in a useful (ie. corroborated) sense.
Beyond that, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, but this should be easy to clarify:

A) You've hinted at kinds of knowledge besides "scientific" knowledge. Do you feel that "scientific knowledge" as you've defined it includes everything observable? If so, see B)

B) Are you suggesting there are metaphysical factors involved in our knowledge? If so.. jiggaWHAAA?? ..Did you read the article?

P.S.
I've only just worked up the nerve to read the rest of the lecture in #19 about how social sciences are not very good at finding out things, and how I'm just a pop science reader and you're a pot smoking research scientist, or something to that effect.
What exactly is your point, sir? That the scientific method is limited? That portions of social reality are simply unknowable? That there are ways of knowing more effective than the scientific method? Or that we simply don't know enough yet to use the scientific method effectively in the case of social science?
You have a real fondness for suggesting there are myriad ambiguities in "the real world" which I have either not encountered or not taken into account. I can almost hear you punctuating each sentence with "Junior!"

I say again, is there anything we can learn about social systems without observation, reflection and corroboration? If so, what is the nature of this mystical magisterium?

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32. Comment #62150 by Robert Maynard on August 8, 2007 at 11:04 am

stag: So we agree then there is more to knowledge than that which can be dertermined by objective, empirical means?

No. Arguing that two different things are not the same, as though I was arguing the opposite, is what I described as ludicrous. I would've gone on to describe it as "mind-explodingly idiotic" too, but I had a lot of other things to say.
Bonzai said "understanding that passion is codified in humans will not replace the experience of being in love", which is rather like saying, "Understanding why supporting walls are important will not replace the experience of building a house."
It's almost as though he was describing two different enterprises..

I don't agree if what you and Bonzai are essentially saying is "There are legitimate kinds of knowledge that are derived neither by observing the world nor reflecting on previous observations,"
This, near as I can tell, is untrue.
When you talk about tasting sweet fruit, and say it's a different kind of knowledge - okay, I'll let you put it that way if you insist (I hope your dinner is tasty), but you need to be aware that it is knowledge (as I've said consistently) which is nowhere near as reliable or useful or "good" as that available through empiricism. You need to understand, if you don't already, that your perception of reality is constructed based on the functions your sense organs have evolved to serve. It's only through empirical observation that we can observe and come to understand the limitations and even defects of our in-built modes of perception.
Subjective experiences shouldn't be considered a different "kind" of knowledge, in the same way that observing the world while inebriated won't give you reliable answers about your world or state of mind. Your experience of the world takes place through human-tinted glasses, and this does not yield a different kind of real knowledge - it yields shaky, ambiguous, evolved, artificial knowledge.

You both keep implying that emotional experiences like being in love or listening to a great song are irreducible units of untouchable "knowledge". They're not. They're processes, they're replicable in laboratory conditions, and empirical means are the way we will discover (and to some degree, have discovered) how.
Understanding love scientifically and being in love are two different things. This is a non-sequitur that's been repeated multiple times here so far.
I really want to know what would make you and Bonzai repeat that the latter is a non-empirical matter and a different kind of knowledge, if we were to understand all of its empirical particulars? We certainly wouldn't begin to experience love as an empirical matter (which is exactly why it isn't really knowledge - though our brains operate rationally, "we" are not kept aware of "its" designs), but we could understand that what we find attractive is deterministic, (likely based on a combination of genetics and upbringing), and we could reflect on what first attracted us to a particular person in rational terms. Where is the secret magic ingredient that makes it non-scientific?

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33. Comment #62152 by epeeist on August 8, 2007 at 11:12 am

Comment #62147 by Kakashi_monkey

That's the reason why science is infalliable; we only accept what we know is true.

Like Newton's theory of gravity you mean ;-)

Scientific theories are not true, they are contingently valid until they are falsified.

This is still stronger than theism whose ideas are not evidence based, predictive, testable or falsifiable.

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34. Comment #62155 by Jiten on August 8, 2007 at 11:56 am

epeeist You wrote:

Like Newton's theory of gravity you mean ;-)

Whoever said Newton's theory is no longer true? It's still as true today as it was in Newton's time.NASA uses it to send humans to the moon! It's just that it is an approximation to reality and has been superceded and incorporated by a better approximation-Eienstein's theory of Relativity.

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35. Comment #62156 by Jiten on August 8, 2007 at 12:05 pm

stag,Bonzai I think it boils down to understanding conciousness.Your position seems to be that we'll never understand it.Why? How do you know what marvels of understanding will not be brought to us by science in the future? Of course we may never understand conciousness but we haven't finished yet.

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36. Comment #62157 by epeeist on August 8, 2007 at 12:15 pm

Comment #62155 by Jiten

Whoever said Newton's theory is no longer true?

It was never true.

To use a simple example - for billions of years the sun has risen each day. One can therefore postulate with a high degree of probability that it will rise tomorrow, but one cannot prove it. It is not possible to reason from a finite number of cases to a general one.

Which is why theories are theories. We accept them as contingently valid unless they are falsified.

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37. Comment #62159 by Diplo on August 8, 2007 at 12:22 pm

Comment 62040 by Stag:

There are different types of "knowledge", and the empirical method is not amenable to all of them. For example; scientific / engineering knowledge may enable you to construct a musical instrument, but they won't tell you much about composing a symphony.

You analogy is misleading because obviously engineering knowledge won't help you compose a symphony, any more than knowledge of baking will help you construct a kite.

However, I disagree with your wider point - that there are "different types of 'knowledge'". People can be knowledgeable about different subjects, and it's true that knowledge of one subject may not cast much light on a completely different subject. However, I'd contend that there is really only one actually "type" of knowledge - it's just that some knowledge is more complex, abstract and harder to quantify than others.

In other words, the knowledge to be able to construct a musical instrument and to compose a melody on that instrument do stem from the same place. All that is different is that we can break down the engineering knowledge into easily followed steps far more easily than we can the knowledge required to compose music.

I'm a musician myself, and it's tempting to say that we "pluck" melodies out of the ether, but that isn't the case. Music is fundamentally a complex form of maths, where different ratios of wavelengths when combined produce certain types of harmonic. Some people have an intuitive understanding of maths, some don't, and the same is true of music. You don't need to be conscious of this, in the same way you are not conscious of the complex calculations your brain is doing when you catch a cricket ball.

However, I'm fully confident that, in theory at least, it would be perfectly possible to use scientific methods to understand why certain combinations of sound waves are more pleasing to the ear than others and to then use this information to compose symphonies. Algorithmic music, generated by computers, is already quite sophisticated. The problem isn't that the knowledge is "special" or "mystical" but, rather, that it's extremely complex and hard to quantify and record.

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38. Comment #62160 by Happy Hominid on August 8, 2007 at 12:28 pm

Robert Maynard and Jitten are right on this, and I understand that you are frustrated with some inability to grasp what you are saying. Remember that consciousness is a very difficult subject. There will be a lot of debate about it for quite some time until we get further along than we are now. May I suggest, for instance, reading Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate". If nothing else, you will realize that we WILL have the answers and, like I think Robert said, We will know and already do in many cases.

What's the point of subjective vs objective reality in regards to Black Sun's article? You may think there is a subjective sense of knowing the taste of an apple, loving your wife or listening to Beethoven that can never be understood objectively. But you have to admit (and, in fairness, I think Stag did) that this level of subjective "knowledge" is entirely different than the subjective knowledge of the supernatural.

Finally, let's all take a moment to reflect on the fact that as recently as 1950, someone could have looked at the moon in wonder and thought about how great it would be to go there but "it will NEVER happen. At least not in MY lifetime". Or later in the 50's after Crick described DNA and, as he recounts, not even giving CONSIDERATION to the possibility of the human genome being decoded in his lifetime - because it was so fantastically outside the sphere of knowledge at that time. So when you claim that we can "never" know certain "subjective" realities in an objective way... pause before you say so.

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39. Comment #62165 by stag on August 8, 2007 at 1:15 pm

Happy Hominid,

If nothing else, you will realize that we WILL have the answers and, like I think Robert said, We will know and already do in many cases.

Of course we can have the answers to subjective questions. It's just that they will be subjective answers. What does an apple taste like? Not difficult.

What's the point of subjective vs objective reality in regards to Black Sun's article?

As already stated, my issue was with the implication that the only knowledge worth having is that which can be empirically derived.

Subjective knowledge is a function of individual observation. It is personal and, to a large extent, non-communicable (except through allusions and metaphors). Objective knowledge on the other hand exists independently of any particular observer. By definition, they cannot overlap.

I have no doubt that certain subjective experiences can, or will ultimately be able to be, understood in objective terms. But this would an entirely different kind of understanding than the subjective experience itself. As Robert Maynard has already pointed out, it is a non sequitur. This is my whole point, one does not follow from the other.

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40. Comment #62166 by TheCelestialTeapot on August 8, 2007 at 1:22 pm

Stag:

I disagree with you on several points, although I do commend you for attempting to argue your position on subjective knowledge. The first, is that NOMA, I believe it was initially proposed by Stephen J. Gould, is clearly a blatant defense of mysticism. It attempts to protect religions among other things from scientific research and scrutiny by saying that religion is a different realm of knowledge than science and is therefore somehow immune or should be free from scientific inquiry or methodology. I assure you that it is not, nor should it be. In reference to Beethoven's 9th (one of my favorites by the way) if you are merely speaking about the replication of audio pathways then I believe that science will be able to do so in the future either with A.I. or robotics, and MIT is on the cutting edge of this sort of thing. However, I felt that you may have been arguing for something else entirely. I thought you might have been referring to "qualia" or the "subjective qualities" of experience in the individual. This is really not a tenable position either with listening to symphonies or eating fruit for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that among cognitive neuroscientists the notion of qualia is quickly evaporating as more and more information enters the field and more experiements are being conducted. Dan Dennett refers to the proponents of "qualia" as "closeted dualists". Qualia is kind of a loaded term that refers to a number of things. It may mean a difference between the mind/brain or soul/body, or simply what you consider the specific taste of a fruit might be. However, if you take seriously our evolutionary past it becomes frankly inconceivable that a soul comes into play at any given point. Would a soul enter into the body in the early homonids? Earlier? It's kind of absurd. The only knowledge we have therefore stems from the material world. If I could get you to concede that modern human beings have roughly the same wiring, circulatory system, organs, neurons, and the like then I would same that we are all made up of the same stuff which functions in similar ways. If you bite into a piece of fruit, the fruit enters your mouth, stimulates the tastebuds, this in turn sends an electric signal to the brain which forms a pattern of neurons corresponding to that taste, and you receive this information back in the taste glands. We are all wired in this same way within a limited range. To say then that tasting fruit in a certain way is specifically personal to you is then really a cognitive illusion. While it may be true that there are some differences in taste, and that tastebuds may actually change, the personal and specific experience that you may classify as subjective knowledge only known to your person is really known by many. It seems to me that any implication made that something is completely subjective and remains so even beyond scientific experimentation is nothing more than an act of protection. Although I will concede on the possibility of difference among tastes with individuals, it does seem rather improbable that nature would implement that kind of wasteful variance among all human beings. Since cognitive neuroscience has only been around for 50 years or so the notion of qualia is still argued by many. David Chalmers comes to mind. But like anything... given enough time I think science will produce answers.

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41. Comment #62167 by steve99 on August 8, 2007 at 1:48 pm

Dan Dennett refers to the proponents of "qualia" as "closeted dualists". Qualia is kind of a loaded term that refers to a number of things. It may mean a difference between the mind/brain or soul/body, or simply what you consider the specific taste of a fruit might be. However, if you take seriously our evolutionary past it becomes frankly inconceivable that a soul comes into play at any given point. Would a soul enter into the body in the early homonids? Earlier? It's kind of absurd.

I think you are confusing sensible questions about the nature of qualia with attempt to talk about 'souls'. These are not the same thing at all.

I feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction when I come across arguments that attempt to dismiss qualia. It is the same feeling I get when I find physicists attempting to say that 'time is an illusion'. One of the main points of science and philosophy should be to explain experience. What we experience is the passage of time, and qualia. Trying to hand-wave those away seems to be to be betraying what science and reason are for. I also don't get a feeling that qualia are any less important the more we discover about neuroscience. Indeed, the more we know about mechanisms, the stranger it seems that that those mechanisms make red look like *that*.

Also, arguments about the existence of qualia can't also be dismissed by saying it would be improbable that experience could vary from person to person. That is not the point at all. A strong argument for qualia is that we can even conceive of the possibility of experience being different.

I don't share your optimism that this problem will be solved any time soon.... we aren't really sure what the nature of the problem is, let alone how to progress with it.

And as for Dennett's argument about proponents of qualia being dualists - I happen to think that is just wrong. If theories of mind turned up that explained qualia using the physical world as we know know it, I don't think many 'pro-qualia' people would object.

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42. Comment #62168 by Happy Hominid on August 8, 2007 at 2:01 pm

Stag - to follow-up on what CelestialTeapot just said in Comment 40, let me run a speculative scenario past you and get your thoughts:

In the not too distant future, science stimulates your brain in such a way that you know, to a very close general degree, what a certain type of fruit (never previously experienced by you) tastes like. You then are given the fruit to actually taste. When you do so, you have a general expectation of the taste will be and it is met when you bite in. The similarity was, in fact, as close as what you would have if you bite into a nice red apple and it turns out to be slightly sweeter and crisper than your expectation - but still causes no surprise (other than happiness that you happened upon a good apple).

Would that change your mind at all about what you've been suggesting? I know it's highly hypothetical but, honestly, I think we will be there AND a lot further in our life times.

And I still say that this type of subjective experience is really unrelated to the subjective experience of "knowing" that there is a god. Experiments have already been done where the brain is stimulated into a quasi-religious state. Interestingly, I believe it only seems to work on people who already think they "know" something supernatural. That should tell you something about that particular physical structure of the brain.

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43. Comment #62169 by Robert Maynard on August 8, 2007 at 2:02 pm

stag: My issue was with the implication that the only knowledge worth having is that which can be empirically derived.

It seems to be the only knowledge useful for understanding things. I didn't say it was not "worth" having subjective experiences, or that we should aspire to fashion our conscious experience to be as empirically aware as possible (and I don't think BlackSun was arguing this either). Indeed, one can't avoid subjective experiences, and shouldn't try to - they're part of our wiring (then again, who knows what the future holds). What I have tried to emphasise is their fragile value as actual, or useful, "knowledge", given our observational paradigm as big-brained bipedal mammals. Understanding what that kind of thing is naturally going to enjoy gives you a fairly good idea of why you feel or think certain things, and helps you take your personal ideas with a grain of salt.

Our most useful knowledge has been repeatedly derived from revisable, mutually consistent and majoritively corroborated observations about how the world appears to work. Not "personal and, to a large extent, non-communicable" observations.

If you can't communicate it, in what sense can you really claim to know it, to understand it?
In what sense, then, is it actually knowledge?
We don't understand our emotions subjectively, precisely because they are chemical cues fed to us by our brains, plying us with the carrot and the stick to pursue directives that will sustain our operation and benefit our genes.
I didn't say that made emotions terrible (there's certainly no use complaining about them, and its not useful to imply some kind of submissive relationship dynamic, with our brains as drug-peddling dictators ordering us around for a fix, given that the sum of our experience is itself an effect of the brains chronic monologue), I just said it made them a really lousy way of understanding things, and nowhere near on par with the fruits of empirical inquiry.

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44. Comment #62170 by TheCelestialTeapot on August 8, 2007 at 2:09 pm

Dismissive? Perhaps. One reason that I may be dismissive is that the notion of qualia simply isn't new. Descartes started this whole duality thing a long time ago with his cogito ergo sum and the rest. Most qualists, if indeed they can be called that, cannot even agree on a working definition of what qualia may be. Describe to me what an apple taste like, or what a symphony sounds like. My main point in the previous post is that oftentimes I see qualia as a last ditch effort to protect some mystical notion. Whether or not that was the point stag was trying to make I don't know, I merely wanted to bring that to light. And if you want to talk sensible then it seems to me that beginning with scientific testing and methodology is much more beneficial than beginning with the subjective experiences of individuals who by nature are prone to make perceptive errors in their own judgements. Among the proponents of qualia that I am familiar with, not one is pushing for a reductive materialist point of view, so to say that they would be in favor of a physical world explanation seems to me to be at odds with the other part of their position.

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45. Comment #62172 by TheCelestialTeapot on August 8, 2007 at 2:37 pm

I would also like to add a few things to this discussion because I think it is imperative to do so. I think that the best we can do would be to approach this problem pragmatically, and Robert has stated it in far better terms than I could formulate. Really we have to ask ourselves how well either my personal experiences or those of another individual will benefit the community of knowers. I think that everyone on this site is concerned with truth, and in particular objective truth. Pierce argues that "beliefs are a mode to action" and we cannot escape the fact that there exists an independent reality which operates despite whatever opinions we may hold in contention. There is a simple test to prove this statement and either you accept the opinion-free independent reality or you do not. If you hold the claim that somehow subjective knowledge trumps objective truth then prove it as such. It should be noted that we as humans certainly do not behave in that way, unless of course you buy into books such as "The Secret" or films such as "What the Bleep Do We Know?" both of which can be proven false or at the very least questionable. The way in which we act is much more important than that which we claim to believe. It is not my intention to be combative on the subject, but I would suggest that those arguing in favor of qualia do so with a clearly stated definition. As previously stated I think it's a loaded term and it means a variety of things to different people. I would also like to say that this has been one of the more provocative discussions I have seen on the site, and good work to all parties involved.

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46. Comment #62173 by BAEOZ on August 8, 2007 at 2:41 pm

Steve99:

One of the main points of science and philosophy should be to explain experience.

I thought science was a project to explain the natural world. Experience, to me, seems to be like common sense, something subjective. Science doesn't deal with the subjective.
As to stags points. Music sounds good because our brain evolved that way, there's nothing intrinsically beautiful about music. Similarly with fruit, there's nothing intrinsically sweet about it, just the way our brain evolved to usefully model the sensation of finding readily available carbs...... We all understand the term sweet, cause we're all wired the same (within limits).

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47. Comment #62175 by ? on August 8, 2007 at 2:43 pm

I used to get stumped by the "paradigm" routine. Its easy to do if you're essentially a tolerant, open-minded person. "But that's just you're secular viewpoint. If you assume a supernatural, interventionist God (or the idea that only thought is real or whatever), everything changes." True, up to a point.

But supernaturalists, philosophical idealists and the like have to contend with the fact that EVERYONE has to play at being a "naturalist" or "materialist" to get through the day.
There are people who never pray. There are many more who have never imagine themselves as part of a cosmic overmind. Hardly anyone casts spells.

But, you can't get up and go to work if you do not at least on some very serious level accept the premise that you are a mortal, physical being who moves through three dimensional space and linear time; your identity is linked to your body; you get things done by acting upon the extrernal world; and any number of naturalistic premises.

Naturalism is a part of life for everyone all the time. Other paradigms (even if they were true in some sense) are not. Therefore, no anti-naturalist paradigm can compete with naturalism as an explanation for or way to understand human experience.

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48. Comment #62176 by TheCelestialTeapot on August 8, 2007 at 2:44 pm

BAEOZ,

I'll never get over your icon; he scares me every time. LOL.

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49. Comment #62179 by roach on August 8, 2007 at 2:54 pm

The article implied that the only knowledge worth having is empirically derived? Strange but I didn't get that impression at all.

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50. Comment #62184 by BAEOZ on August 8, 2007 at 4:12 pm

TheCelestialTeapot:

I'll never get over your icon; he scares me every time.

That's funny, I never thought the devil growling would seem scary. They are cute little idiots who lope about with almost no coordination and argue all day with themselves. Mind you, their bite can is several times more powerful than a canine of the same size.....

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