Look out! It’s scientism!
The Manhattan Institute, a conservative ‘think tank’ in the US, declares its mission on each page:
The Mission of the Manhattan Institute is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.
Oh yeah? Then what’s the latest piece of obscurantist theistic sciencephobic mystification from Leon Kass doing there? The ideas are so not new that they’re more like a putrefying corpse, they’re about closing down greater economic choice rather than fostering it, and they’re about irresponsible irrational scaremongering rather than about individual responsibility. Fucking typical of most US conservatives of the respectable stripe: they talk resounding bullshit but they line up obediently behind ‘ideas’ that ought to be anathema to them; in short, they’re just party hacks who make right-wing groupthink everything and careful rational thought nothing, while pretending to do something different. A pox on them.
And on the twice-curdled dreck that keeps spilling out of Leon Kass.
But beneath the weighty ethical concerns raised by these new biotechnologies—a subject for a different lecture—lies a deeper philosophical challenge: one that threatens how we think about who and what we are. Scientific ideas and discoveries about living nature and man, perfectly welcome and harmless in themselves, are being enlisted to do battle against our traditional religious and moral teachings, and even our self-understanding as creatures with freedom and dignity. A quasi-religious faith has sprung up among us—let me call it “soul-less scientism”—which believes that our new biology, eliminating all mystery, can give a complete account of human life, giving purely scientific explanations of human thought, love, creativity, moral judgment, and even why we believe in God. The threat to our humanity today comes not from the transmigration of souls in the next life, but from the denial of soul in this one, not from turning men into buffaloes, but from denying that there is any real difference between them.
Impressive, isn’t it? In its ineffable familiarity, its staleness, its pathetic adherence to a formula, its witlessness? I especially admire that ‘let me call it “soul-less scientism”‘ as if all this bedwetting were original with him. Yeah sure Leon, let you and fourteen thousand other people call it that; it still won’t add up to anything useful. (Do you fret about ‘soul-less engineering much? Soul-less shoe repair? Plumbing? Dry cleaning?)
All we have here is yet another incarnation of the absurd strawman claim about a quasi-religious faith that believes biology can give a complete account of everything everything everything, including – would you believe it? – love! creativity! moral judgment! God! That’s a tremendously profound, illuminating, shrewd, cogent, perceptive observation except for the one tiny problem that it’s not true. There is no quasi-religious faith that biology can give a complete account of everything everything everything, that’s a ridiculous claim and it has no function except to rile up a credulous audience. Leon Kass should be embarrassed at himself.
The stakes in this contest are high: at issue are the moral and spiritual health of our nation, the continued vitality of science, and our own self-understanding as human beings and as children of the West. All friends of human freedom and dignity—including even the atheists among us—must understand that their own humanity is on the line.
That’s a nice touch, isn’t it? Even the atheists among us – those unclean kafirs, those aliens, those Others, those bizarre beyond the pale monsters, whom we normally exclude but this time include, and who are inexplicably and frighteningly ‘among us.’ There’s a wealth of implication in that one nasty phrase, all of it unpleasant. And I’d much rather trust ‘my own humanity’ to an honest biologist than to a creeping hyperbolist like Kass.
Science seeks to know only how things work, not what things are and why. Science gives the histories of things, but not their directions, aspirations, or purposes…Science can often predict what will happen if certain perturbations occur, but it eschews explanations in terms of causes, especially of ultimate causes.
And religion doesn’t, and that’s because science understands the limitations of inquiry and religion doesn’t. The explanations that religion gives of ‘ultimate causes’ are worth precisely nothing, and the fact that it offers such explanations while science doesn’t is not a point in religion’s favor but on the contrary a demerit.
It’s a long piece. There’s a lot more of the same kind of thing – arguing from desired states to the truth of what is required for them to be true (Kass wants to feel dignified, therefore the selfish gene is all wrong; etc) and flinging epithets around the way the elephant’s child flung melon rinds. It’s got no connection with what the Manhattan Institute purports to be about, it’s wishful thinking mixed liberally with vulgar abuse, it’s tripe.
“Fucking typical of most US conservatives of the respectable stripe: they talk resounding bullshit but they line up obediently behind ‘ideas’ that ought to be anathema to them; in short, they’re just party hacks who make right-wing groupthink everything and careful rational thought nothing, while pretending to do something different.”
While I agree with your critiques of religion in general and with your point regarding Leon Kass in particular, I’d believe your implicit claim to not be a party hack of the left-wing stripe if you also turned your gaze towards the religious aspects of the environmental movement such as Al Gore’s hysterical “end of days” screed. Or maybe, it’s just natural to pick a side, so to speak, which either makes you a hypocrite or…maybe…human?
Kass: “Science seeks to know only how things work, not what things are and why.”
Well, if that’s the case, what are these folks so in a dither about? Poor little unpretentious science just tells us how things work, and having learned that, we can go ahead and discuss these great “why” questions as human beings are wont to do. How does science prevent that?
Oh, Kass and company will say, it isn’t science that prevents it, but “scientism.” But what’s this boogeyman “scientism”? I keep hearing about it, but no one, as far as I can remember, has ever come up with an actual living sample of it for our inspection.
“(Kass wants to feel dignified, therefore the selfish gene is all wrong; etc)”
First of all, they keep flinging the term “selfish gene” around, but obviously no one in this crowd has ever read the book, or if they have they don’t understand it, because Dawkins didn’t mean by the term what they think it means.
Secondly, what is keeping him from feeling dignified. Certainly science isn’t, or if it is, he’s a fool. I fully respect science and I feel quite dignified, thank you. And so do many other people. Again, it seems as though it’s this spectral boogeyman “scientism” that has him shivering in his boots. Guy needs to call Ghostbusters, it seems to me.
Well you certainly don’t have to believe my implicit or explicit claims, Mal, but I’m hardly a party hack of the left wing stripe. I would hate this article at least as much if it came from the left, and probably more, and I’ve been rude about effusions of this kind from the left very often indeed. I’m extremely hostile to Democratic party religiosity, including Gore’s. I don’t feel much need to address any particular item you may happen to suggest (and I don’t know anything about Gore’s ‘end of days screed’ so can’t address it). In any case the point here is not that Kass or the MI is right-wing, the point is that the MI’s mission statement doesn’t match Kass’s essay at all, so what do they mean by it?
I was about to say something snarky about how as a MD, Kass is more a bio-engineer a proper scientist but it turns out he also has a Ph.D in biochemistry!
Damn reality! Contradicting so cruelly my carefully built prejudices (along with bar staff, I’ve always counted biologists of all kind amongst the highest forms of life on this planet), but I guess that’s a problem we have in common Kass and me…
How can somebody be a “bioethicist” (whatever that is) and not realize that science is a method of inquiry not a body of knowledge; that all scientific results are provisory, transitory and that, therefore, these results are not The science he is talking about.
Oh and Mal? We are all very sorry for you that OB didn’t address your pet hates this month but I am sure that if you give her a list she will make a point to do it shortly…
(And yeah, I am still in a very bad mood! So what? Anybody looking for a fight?)
Hee hee. I like what you do with your bad mood, Arnaud.
How indeed. I’m sooo tired of this strawman ‘science’ that wants to reduce all of everything to blrgharkkxx.
As always, thank you G for providing a refreshing dose of reality!
G I am also not convinced about global warming,you mention rising sea levels because of increased temprature but would you not also get a coresponding rise in evaporation along with the rising temprature? also how is it posible that something like 7 ice ages came and went before Exon Mobile even existed? When I grew up the experts told us that a new ice age was comming and over population would make the U.K sink into the sea so why should I believe this bunch of experts?
Richard, increased evaporation just makes more rain. Did you think the water just *went away*?
You should believe them because the 1970s ice age scare was the view of a few scientists, based on incomplete and inaccurate measurements. Global warming is the consensus result of thousands of individual studies, using methods entire orders of magnitude more accurate than, and many techniques not even imagined in, the 1970s work.
That’s why you should take it seriously. It’s real science, not guesswork. Bear in mind, for example, that real evidence has led to a steady *increase* in predicted GW effects: the more we find out, the worse it looks. The precise opposite of starting out hysterically overwrought and only later meeting ‘reality’.
Dave but where does that rain fall? even if some land is lost would you not gain new arable land in return? I dont dismis global warming but I veiw it as just a theory.As for this concensus of scientists how many of these scientists are climatologists? is there a concensus in that field? my understanding is that opinion is more divided among them. Also isnt there an increase in solar activity at the moment couldnt that be causing warming.
Most of the rain falls right back into the sea, so, no, you wouldn’t. It takes thousands of years for an ecosystem to produce what we recognise as ‘fertile soil’ out of, for example, desert sands, which you seem to be thinking of. Meanwhile, previously-fertile regions, on which the lives of billions of people depend, are increasingly stressed by drought, and other intensifying climate phenomena. If you consider the melting of permafrost to be a gain for agriculture, you also need to consider that the tilt of the Earth’s axis has not changed, and there is still not enough sunlight up there to grow crops.
You need to stop listening to people who think that the work of thousands of independent scientific professionals in every corner of the world is a conspiracy, people who grasp at multiple, mutually-exclusive, and sometimes contradictory, straws to attempt to devalue real, measurable, tested scientific conclusions. Because the argument against GW is just that, a conspiracy-theory, one step up from tinfoil hats and aeroplane-shaped holograms flying into the Twin Towers.
Dave for what it is worth I dont listen to either side on this I try to keep an open mind, but I am just sceptical about this concensus of expert opinion, one thing about experts is that they are often wrong!another thing I find troubling is tht sensors for climate measurement have been placed in ludicrous positions near buildings airports and other heat sources and that this is not uncommon, so are these scientists even evaluating correct data?
Wasnt Israel a barren desert 50 odd years ago Dave.
Richard, here’s a hint: If you can come up with a few questions about global warming off the top of your head, maybe the thousands of working scientists who’ve spent a significant chunk of their lives developing expertise, gathering data, refining models, and arguing with each other about all of it might just have asked those questions as well. (Do you think climate scientists don’t account for evaporation in their studies and models, for Pete’s sake?!?) And they probably have a few answers, too. And those answers have led to more detailed and specific questions, which they have also answered, or are continuing to try to answer. And so on.
And guess what? If (1) you don’t participate in that process of asking and answering important scientific questions, and (2) you have not developed the expertise to do so, and (3) you have not even bothered to read what the actual experts have to say, then it quite naturally follows that (4) your “skepticism” is not in fact skepticism at all – it is pure, unadulterated ignorance.
Since any opinion on global warming you may have is based on near-total ignorance, why should anyone care whether or not you are convinced? More importantly, why do you care about your own opinion? Why do you feel entitled to have any kind of firm opinion on scientific theories and facts about which you know nothing whatsoever? (And possibly less than nothing, as your head may well be filled with falsities that prevent the absorption of new truths on this subject…)
Imagine you found a pretty crystal and said to an acquaintance, “Hey, look at this neat-o quartz I found!” In response, the acquaintance says, “Actually, that’s not quartz at all, it’s feldspar. As it turns out, I have a graduate degree in geology and I’m a licensed gemologist.” (You’d have known that if she was a friend, but she’s only an acquaintance.) Naturally, your first instinct would be to say, “I’m not convinced. I say it’s a quartz. It looks all… quartz-y!”
What? That wouldn’t be your first reaction? Of course not. Such a response would be perfectly ridiculous. So why isn’t it just as ridiculous for you to express doubts about the conclusions of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists based on a couple of questions you popped off the top of your head and a misremembered something-or-other you read thirty years ago about ice ages? I say “misremembered” because if you actually knew what you were talking about you would know that predictions about the next ice age are on a scale of thousands of years, whereas anthropogenic global warming is happening on a scale of decades. (Some journalists made an ice age scare out of those long-term climate predictions, not the climate scientists themselves.) Climate scientists are in UNIVERSAL agreement that the globe is on a warming trend right now, and in overwhelming (but not total) agreement that human CO2 production is accelerating that trend rather dramatically, but they all still think there will almost certainly be another ice age eventually. For some reason, most people think we should worry about the world our children and their children will inhabit before we get too concerned about our great-to-the-umpteenth-grandchildren.
I’m not picking on you in particular, Richard. (Or not much.) You are just joining Leon Kass as an exemplar of a ridiculously common phenomenon. Whether it’s evolution or neurobiology or climatology, when someone has some preconception or emotional obstacle to accepting some conclusion or implication of scientific investigation – that is, when they just plain don’t like it – they feel perfectly free to reject the conclusion for the flimsiest of reasons, or no reason whatsoever. This makes me angry, so I’m going to go on about it a bit.
Of course, I fully realize that rationalization is a human universal. (And as it turns out, rationalization is a trait we share with other primates as well – yet another finding of science people like Leon Kass will reject, circularly enough.) But the whole point of science – or at least one of the major features of science – is to serve as an artificial construct that filters out various sorts of prejudices and rationalizations as much as possible. Rationalization can’t stand up to the process where we do the math, do the experiments, subject it all to peer review (i.e. criticism by experts and rivals), and repeat endlessly. That’s pretty much the whole idea.
Yet, when it comes to some pet belief they don’t want to give up – some conclusion at odds with a vested personal interest or emotional conviction – a vast proportion of people feel free to just toss that whole process out and stick with the flimsiest rationalizations imaginable. Faced with the weight of all the evidence and arguments provided by all the experts who know a hell of a lot more than they do about a given subject on one side, and the weight of what they personally want to be true bolstered by some bullshit arguments generated by some guy on the internet (or even a whole “think tank”) who shares their prejudices on the other side – 99 people out of 100 seem to go with their wishful thinking and against all the expertise in the world every damned time. It’s a wonder I haven’t ground my teeth completely flat at the flimsy rationalizations people use to do this.
And speaking of flimsy rationalizations (and heading them off), nothing in what I’ve said here implies that science is flawless, perfect, or that its conclusions are always correct. Of course, science reaches wrong conclusions all the time, and fails to reach any conclusion at all on a given question even more often than it reaches the wrong conclusion. But errors and gaps in scientific understanding aren’t corrected in any way by people disagreeing based on their preconceptions, preferences, and feelings: They are corrected by MORE SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY! That’s how science works to correct itself, and that’s how human knowledge has expanded so vastly over the past few centuries.
If someone is not in any way engaged in that process of scientific inquiry – not even to the point of reading up on what’s said by science experts who do their valiant best to explain science to the lay public – then that person’s opinion is completely worthless. No, actually, “worthless” is too hasty: Such a person’s opinion does not merely lack value, it actually has negative value. The endless repetition of completely baseless, uninformed opinions is an obstacle to and distraction from the process of inquiry and growth of understanding in any and every field.
I don’t hold Richard particularly blameworthy for this, since he seems to repeat his uninformed opinions mostly in the comments at B&W, where he is not really an obstacle so much as a useful foil (although he is sometimes just a distraction). Leon Kass, in contrast, is quite well-informed. He does not have the excuse of ignorance. Kass has made an entire career out of being an obstacle to the process and progress of scientific inquiry because he is personally repulsed and/or frightened by the truths about humanity and the world we live in that science reveals. I alternate between loathing and pity for Kass and his ilk. Today, loathing is definitely winning.
Oh, and Richard? No scientist anywhere in all of space and time has ever said that overpopulation would cause Britain to sink into the sea. (Go read your first post in this thread. You actually said that!) I’m pretty sure you meant to include overpopulation panic as a separate prediction that didn’t stay the same over time, like your (mis-)interpretation of the ice age predictions. (And incidentally, the vast majority of population panic buttons have been pushed by economists – who are not scientists, except in their own deluded fever dreams.)
Also, the deserts of Israel were made to bloom by massive exploitation of deep groundwater reserves that are now running low because they have been exploited much faster than they can recharge, just like the famous Ogalalla Aquifer under the central U.S. And the greening of Israeli deserts was a massive public works undertaking that really has fuck-all to do with climate change in any case. Also, climate scientists are well aware of potential sources of error in weather data, which is why they use dozens of different sources of data and why expensive satellites have been launched at massive expense to further improve data. In short, you’re clutching at straws in a haphazard fashion to support your preconceptions on a subject where your ignorance is nearly complete. Stop it.
More important than your straw-clutching is the way you cling to this “experts are often wrong” and “they keep changing their minds” line of argument. Or at least, it’s more important to me, given the general problem I’m trying to address.
Even if you hadn’t completely bollixed up the ice age point by not accounting for different time scales, a change from predicting ice ages to predicting global warming, like any other change in scientific opinion over time, would not in any way represent a reason to reject the new scientific consensus. All scientific findings are provisional, but that doesn’t mean you have any justification for rejecting a given scientific finding out of hand. Experts are indeed sometimes wrong: And who else but other experts – and sometimes the very same experts at a later time, with more data or better methods – gathers the evidence to show where and how experts are wrong? To say that a scientific claim is “provisional” means that we have sufficient justification to accept it as true until some further evidence and reasoning comes along which overrides the evidence and reasoning we’ve used to date. “Provisional” most definitely does NOT mean “I don’t have to accept it as true if I don’t want to ‘cuz it’s just provisionally true anyway! So there!”
Look at it this way: People used to think that the sun moved around the earth. Presumably (because you are not stupid or mad), you look at the change to a heliocentric model of the solar system – a change in scientific opinion – as part of the progress of knowledge. So how can you possibly justify rejecting other changes in scientific opinion simply because opinion has changed? Even if climate scientists were in fact predicting short-term global cooling thirty years ago and global warming now (they weren’t, the operative phrase being “short term”), don’t you think three decades of advances in measurements and computing power and all that jazz – not to mention three more decades of ongoing climate data – might just make the basis for current scientific opinion a little stronger than the basis for the former opinion? Any argument with the same general structure as yours – “When I grew up the experts told us…” [one thing, and now experts say something else] “…so why should I believe this bunch of experts?” – is the most anti-scientific, illogical nonsense imaginable. Such an argument can only be made based on the assumption that changing conclusions based on new evidence is a bad thing!
If you’re going to start asking tough questions, Richard, you might want to start by questioning that rather peculiar assumption you seem to have made. While it is certainly foolish to place more trust in your own uninformed opinions than in the hard-won knowledge of masses of experts, it is even more foolish to go around thinking that experts changing their minds is a sign that experts shouldn’t be trusted at all. Surely the people whose claims ought not be trusted are those who never change their minds no matter how much evidence they are confronted with!
Great comment (couple of comments) G. I think O should promote them to a post to make them easier to read (maybe minus the ref’s to Richard, who appears at least to be intelllectually curious, which is more than you can say for 99% of the population).
Richard, the only bit G missed out is that if you want to understand such issues, you should NEVER EVER take any notice of the mainstream press. I don’t just mean the Daily Mail (you aren’t a DM reader, are you?) I mean the broadsheets and the BBC as well, and I include TV documentaries. It is a waste of time. MOST of what they produce is tripe, because the people producing it have no understanding themsleves and in any case their main concern is to produce something which fits into a certain space, looks pretty, and is con-truh-ver-shul whether or not intelligent controvery actually exists. I’m sure there are honourable exceptions to all of this, but ‘bad money drives out good’; it is too time-consuming to sift through the dross.
Actually, G, now I think of it, the above makes your criticism of Richard re experts slightly harsh. If an “expert” is (as is the case for most people) a talking head labelled with a PhD held up to say something sound-bite-y on the sort of “documentary” I mention above, then not blindly believing them is a good thing.
It is, in fact, quite difficult to get access as a layperson to real expertise. Much easier now the internet exists. And publications like New Scientist and Scientific American are better than nothing.
BTW, can anyone tell me what the phrase “human dignity” actually means?
Is Leon Kass a friend of Mary Midgley’s?
Kass: ” . . .biomedical science and technology . . . may soon be used to transform human nature itself.”
Is that a threat, or a promise?
“‘soul’ need not be conceived as a ‘ghost in the machine’ or as a separate ‘thing’ that survives the body, but can be understood instead as the integrated powers of the naturally organic body—the ground and source of awareness, appetite, and action.”
First, he offers us a metaphor; next, he reifies it.
“BTW, can anyone tell me what the phrase “human dignity” actually means?”
See Wiki: Human Dignity. “At the philosophical level, following Kant,…
Also see: Human Dignity as a Normative Concept. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=95198212
I’m ahead of you, p – well, vertically ahead of you at least; I was deciding I wanted to post part of G’s comments (the non-specific-to-Richard parts) on the main page before I got to your comment saying I should. (You’re temporally ahead of me, but then the UK is temporally ahead of the US west coast. Heh.) In other words, snap (again).
“Kass has made an entire career out of being an obstacle to the process and progress of scientific inquiry because he is personally repulsed and/or frightened by the truths about humanity and the world we live in that science reveals.”
Exactly. He’s infuriating.
The phrase ‘human dignity’ – I certainly can’t tell you what it means; as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the classic examples of resounding but meaningless verbiage that decorate so much mainstream discourse. (Googling doesn’t help, because the question is whether people mean anything real when they use it, and I think the answer is no; it’s basically bullshit.)
Don’t think so, Mr. Tingey: Midgely, for all her flaws, occasionally has something sensible to say and is capable of putting premises before conclusions sometimes (though not when addressing Dawkins or other matters biological). As a professional philosopher and a non-Christian, I don’t imagine she would be too terribly fond of Leon “The Wisdom of Repugnance, or How I Learned To Embrace My Knee-Jerk Prejudices and Call It Ethical Reasoning” Kass.
But I could be wrong.
OB: This evening I’ll save you the editing and reframe those comments as a general argument without the focus on specific examples from Richard. After all, it’s not like Richard is alone in this sort of reaction to science: If anything, his honest curiosity and (occasional) willingness to reflect on whether he might be wrong about something puts him light years ahead of the eminent Dr. Kass…
G – Oh, okay – I just finished editing them! You want me to wait?
Well I’ll answer for you: how about I wait and then post the reframed version as an article.
Well, we already know that we are twins separated at birth (at least….I’m 44..?) (Sorry, how rude – ignore).
Another snap; I entirely agree with you about human dignity. The two ref’s kindly provided by MTL say (i) that is a semi-technical term in relation to Kantian ethics (which I had never heard before, and which seems to me somewhat otiose, and also dubious as a claim since K was writing in German) and (ii) that it must mean something because it is in the UN Declaration of Human Rights und so weiter, which is an enthymeme with an extremely dubious unstated premise.
I do think something real underlies it; the fact that people hate to look silly. Why this should be elevated to the status of a moral sacred cow, however, seems unobvious.
Here in the US we just say separated at birth – the idea is so familiar now that the twins don’t even have to be spelled out. That amuses me somehow. (I’m more than 44…)
I think another thing that underlies the human dignity idea is probably a lot of recent history of degradation – systematic, careful degradation. But I don’t really think trying to erect the idea into some kind of sacred label is the way to solve that particular problem – I suppose because I think it’s so obviously untrue. I mean, who’s going to be fooled? The génocidaires? I hardly think so.
“Oh dear. We seem to have a global warming denialist popping by to say “Hi” and introduce his over-heated rhetoric (pun intended) to B&W. And off-topic to boot!”
It seems I have been branded a heretic…sound religious to anyone else? For the record I don’t deny global warming; however, I do find Al Gore’s hysteria dressed up as “science” to be apocalyptic in the vein of those that carry signs that say “Repent! the end is near!” “But the end is near; our prophet has spoken,” I hear some of the commentators saying…true believers anyone? I prefer the cool reasoned analysis of Crichton, Furedi, and Lomborg.
Anyway, I was just challenging the author on this part of the original post:
“Fucking typical of most US conservatives of the respectable stripe: they talk resounding bullshit but they line up obediently behind ‘ideas’ that ought to be anathema to them…”
The Manhattan Institute should be called out for putting out something by Kass; however, its a huge assumption that everyone on staff (including the atheists like MacDonald) agree with him. I guess Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a well known atheist, being on retainer at AEI supposedly makes your point about most US conservatives, too? Believe it or not, there is internal debate among conservatives and libertarians.
If you aren’t a party hack, which I gather you are not, then let’s see more criticism of religious wackos like the woman who sterilized herself out of a Malthusian desire to not offend mother Gaia.
Mel, you were the one who tossed an off-hand, off-topic ad hominem at Al Gore which I challenged with evidence – evidence to which you did not respond except to repeat the insult. I also called you a denialist because you were using rhetoric I associate with denialists after long and repeated experience. If you’re not a denialist, good for you! Maybe you ought not quote their rhetoric so faithfully, though…
As to your challenge, so far all you’ve done is toss around rhetoric that doesn’t really establish whatever point it is you’re trying to make. For example: Is the woman who sterilized herself for earth mother religion reasons – whoever she is, I never heard of her – influential in public policy? Does she work at a well-funded think tank? I suspect the answer to both questions is “No,” so why is it you think she’s a good example of someone Ophelia ought to criticize?
See, OB’s rant-y passage you’ve quoted twice now is a critique of common behavior among prominent and influential conservative leaders and opinion-peddlers. Your response seems to be “But some liberals do the same thing you’re criticizing conservatives for doing!” Ignoring the whiff of tu quoque, I’ll be charitable and take you to mean that OB is not being balanced because she isn’t criticizing the lefty muddle-heads who do the same thing she’s criticizing Kass for. But there are problems with that criticism: Firstly, it’s just not true. OB has made something of a career of criticizing bullshit arguments of all sorts from lefties as well as self-styled conservatives. Secondly, you keep offering crappy examples. The evidence doesn’t support your characterization of Gore, and the random hippie woman you criticize hardly counts as a prominent leader of the left.
Here, let me help you out: Arianna Huffington is an utter muddle-headed twit, offering exactly the same feeling-driven rejection of science from a supposedly progressive perspective that people like Kass offer from a supposedly conservative perspective. Why don’t you pick on her, OB!
Oh. Because PZ already did.
Oops. Sorry, Mal, not Mel.
G great series of posts (even though I got ripped in them) you would think that these guys would know simple stuff like I raised but I listened to a couple of on line lectures one pro and one con and the pro g.w guy said nothing at all about increased evaporation all he talked about was melting ice caps rising sea levels as though all this water was destined to flood our cities,rather than just increased rain fall that could have mixed effects.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/11/warm11.xml G this is a short piece on solar activity, I loved the people will go with their own predudice and some guy on the web everytime screed by the way.
Crichton, Crichton… I thought I recognized that “argument” of global warming is a religion…
You will excuse me if I don’t have much time for the “cool, reasoned analysis” of somebody who brands people pedophiles when they disagree with him on the subject of the weather.
G. My general point is that because lots of experts say g.w is a reality that is no reason to acept it,the reason I used the example of z.p.g. because a whole generation believed this tosh and changed their behavior acordingly (this along with other factors has led to a crisis of under population)the western world is being asked to change its behavior with regard to g.w because a lot of experts say the same thing this seems like a formular for handing the future to China and India to me? Even if g.w is a reality what apart from limiting our own impact on the planet as individuals can realisticly be done to stop this proces? If any real impact is to be acheived the soloution has to include the developing world and nothing like that is even on the table.
Dave Next time I have a heating or plumbing problem I will fix it myself because that is my field of expertese, but then again like all experts I am sometimes wrong.
Yes the guy was giving a lecture it was aprox 90 minuites long and he had stacks of time to mention evaporation he just didnt.Also others I have read and seen on t.v make no mention of it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/05/eapacific105.xml The soloution to all our problems?
“BTW, can anyone tell me what the phrase “human dignity” actually means” — potentilla
“as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the classic examples of resounding but meaningless verbiage that decorate so much mainstream discourse.” — OB
That’s pretty funny. Scary, but funny.
Oh, good, Jimmy Doyle again.
Don’t be too scared, will you. I think it’s obvious enough (at least to people who monitor B&W closely, as you mystifyingly appear to) that I’m no enemy of human rights and no fan of treating people in degrading ways. (I assume that’s what you mean by ‘scary.’) But that doesn’t preclude thinking ‘human dignity’ is a pompously rhetorical and, yes, basically meaningless phrase.
But go on – tell us why it’s not meaningless. Just dropping by occasionally to deposit acid little turds of disdain is not all that dignified.
“G. My general point is that because lots of experts say g.w is a reality that is no reason to acept it”
I think I finally understand. Richard am posting from Bizarro World, where experts know less than regular people.
Seriously, if climatologists can’t be trusted, who can? Are you alleging that there is some kind of world liberal conspiracy to cripple the Western economy, and they’ve chosen global warming as the way to do it?
dzd: Nah: He’s just doing the good ol’ “nah nah nah I can’t hear you” thing. :)
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/whos-afraid-of-soulless-scientism/
Kass gets another go at the link, but what is REALLY good are the comments. They appear to be written by adults.
Eh. I don’t blame Richard… much. It’s the ignorance-enablers who manufacture and spread the b.s. who really tick me off, not the little mushrooms of ignorance that sprout from their efforts.
Michael Crichton is an excellent example: He feels perfectly comfortable dismissing the findings of climate science based on his knowledge of… writing mediocre science fiction novels filled with whiz-bang nonsense bearing little or no resemblance to actual science? I fail to see how his area of expertise applies to climatology.
Of course, his career as a bad fiction writer does explain his replacement of the perfectly plausible reality of scientists discovering alarming facts with a wildly implausible fantasy of a vast global conspiracy of environmental fanatics making up alarming “facts” because they’re trying to scare the rest of us into, I dunno, something bad. It all makes sense if you drink the kool-aid, I’m sure.
You shouldn’t need me to explain why “human dignity” isn’t a meaningless phrase. One doesn’t need to be a Christian, or even a theist, to be extremely alarmed at some of the directions that secular ethical thinking seems naturally inclined to go in – especially in its common utilitarian and more generally consequentialist forms. See, for example
http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/11/apr93/jenny.htm
The concept of human dignity is central to any attempt to articulate the strong feeling shared by many (including many atheists) that something has gone badly wrong with this sort of ethical thinking. In this context dignity is not something one has more or less of; it’s something all human beings have in virtue of being human beings. It’s difficult to say what’s wrong with necrophilia (if anything is wrong with it), or with leaving one’s mother’s corpse out for the garbage collector, without appealing to this concept or something very like it. One important function of the concept is to avoid reducing all our ethical thinking to the satisfaction of wants and preferences; such a reduction is suggested by your remark “Humans just shouldn’t be degraded, that’s all, because they don’t like it,” in your most recent post. Someone might well like being degraded. But their liking it makes their degradation, if anything, worse rather than less bad. So the concepts of degradation and dignity aren’t connected with what people like or want in the way this remark suggests.
Imagine someone, a religious agnostic, hovering between Christian and humanist worldviews, who’s (understandably) worried about the Singer-like tendencies in secular ethics, and who comes to this weblog to assess the merits of a secular outlook. What does she find? An unbelievable amount of self-righteous sneering. A categorical claim, presented as no more nor less than common sense, that there’s no such thing as an unborn child (September 29), accompanied by the denunciation of anyone who denies this as guilty of semantic trickery and “denialism.” Won’t our agnostic – however ‘pro-choice’ her convictions – immediately think of the history of attempts to reclassify people as ‘non-persons’, and shudder? She reads on, and finds a post that says, roughly, “What’s all this stuff about human dignity? Isn’t it all really just a load of superstitious mumbo-jumbo?” I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to call these attitudes ‘scary’. How reassured will our agnostic be about the implications of a secular outlook? I imagine her closing her browser and picking up the New Testament. I don’t think that’s the effect you’re aiming for.
As for my comments being “undignified,” I believe that the first interlocutor to make an unprovoked reference to defecation has already lost that particular competition.
Oh – gee – that’s a thought. You’re right – any hovering agnostic who for some reason comes to this website (not weblog) to assess the merits of a secular outlook will be turned sick and faint by the unbelievable amount of self-righteous sneering – I should have thought of that long ago. That’s very persuasive – your perception is of course universal; everyone will see it the way you do; naturally. (Mind you, I get the odd email from people who don’t see it that way, but never mind.)
I would engage with your substantive points, which are interestingly Kass-like, but you’re too uncivil, so I can’t be bothered.
This is amazing. Do you really have no conception of how your constant and deliberate mockery of what they hold (literally) sacred would come across to (eg) believing Muslims, Jews and Christians? Not that I’m criticising you for that; but that you should now complain about incivility — that is, take offence — is really beyond belief.
Of course I have. But I don’t make nasty (or mocking) comments on the websites of individual believing Muslims, Jews and Christians. Do you really have no conception of the difference between general comments and personal ones?
And if you’re not criticizing me for that, what are you doing? In truth that question looks to me like a classic example of the kind of discussion-closing coercive rhetoric that enriches so much public discourse these days. What is your point? That it is morally suspect to write anything that would be likely to upset believing Muslims, Jews and Christians? That writing things likely to upset believing Muslims, Jews and Christians amounts to a standing request for personal chastisement? Do you really have no conception of how many subjects and opinions and ideas and arguments have the potential to upset believing Muslims, Jews and Christians? Do you really think the potential upsettability of religious believers ought to be a criterion for what one should or shouldn’t write? Do you really think believing monotheists should have a tacit or moral right of veto over all of public discussion? Many believing monotheists are very upset by talk of evolution, many are infuriated by the mention of human rights or equality or women’s rights or gay rights, many are upset to be told that the earth is six billion years old. So the fuck what? And who are you to talk about self-righteousness? What are you asking me that inanely self-righteous question for if you’re not riddled with the stuff yourself?
Climatology/ Physics comment needed. Re: The “evaporation”/ cloud cover topic. As I understand it, the High Cirrus clouds are as “greenhouse” as CO2 whereas the active energy-pumping moisture recycling system is dependent on low clouds and especially the phase change from H2O (gas) to H2O (vapor) and then to liquid to get rain. In the USA Southwest Sonoran Desert region it is observed that the “clouds produce rain” and then the rain “dries up” before it reaches the ground. There must be a sort of threshold of conditions that puts the water on the ground and keeps the high-albedo clouds working for us. I’m an old geologist and quite unqualified for the topic. That’s why I askin’ for expert help. I c’n speculate on a “relative humidity” scaling that might work but I can’t put numbers to “adiabatic cooling” with respect to the energy transfer involved ‘tho I have some appreciation of “hygroscopic nucleae of condensation” produced by deserts and high velocity winds.
Bail me out!
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