A little epistemic humility would go a long way
Jerry Coyne quoted Tom Clark the other day; I want to quote another passage from the same article, ‘Reality and Its Rivals: Putting Epistemology First’.
Of course, many non-empirically based convictions are relatively harmless as guides to behavior so long as they’re confined to our private lives. Beliefs in god, astrology, psychic powers, cosmic consciousness and so forth can be the epistemic equivalent of victimless crimes. But the presumption of such beliefs – that there are reliable alternatives to empiricism – isn’t so benign when carried into the public arena…To imagine that one’s worldview, whether religious or secular, is beyond disconfirmation helps to license an absolutism which brooks no dissent and countenances the demonization of those with different ideas…A little epistemic humility would go a long way toward reducing the ideological tribalism underlying the culture wars. (What’s ironic is that populist suspicion of bi-coastal know-it-alls gets it precisely backwards: empiricists are just those who realize they don’t know it all.
The whole article is an excellent antidote to all the muddle about naturalism and supernaturalism and methdological versus philosophical naturalism that’s been splashing around lately, ever since Chris Mooney got the urge to lecture Jerry Coyne on civility to theists. Enjoy.
Yes. Well, kind of, but maybe no, full stop. I’m really persuaded by Austin Dacey’s argument in The Secular Conscience that we have fooled ourselves into believing such beliefs usually remain private. I think he’d argue that they usually don’t, or that we needn’t pay attention to the instances when they genuinely remain private. Because, way more often than not, they don’t really remain private. They become the basis for public claims that should be interrogated, or contested, but we label them “private.” It’s a wink/nudge that liberal secularists indulge in, often haplessly. Then they flail about, unable to comprehend the damage to the public discourse when (as shouldn’t be surprising) the believers base public claims on what secularists naively think are private beliefs.
He goes much further of course, arguing that we all need to stop pretending that belief systems that inform our decisions can ever really be private, or that they should be, or that we can put that genie back in the bottle. He also asserts that we secularists need to reclaim the right to state our moral claims of conscience just as forthrightly as those who make moral claims they attribute to revelation.
I keep meaning to write an essay about Dacey’s ideas in the book, and I keep putting it off. At any rate, it’s more timely than ever, and I’d love to see a piece on Dacey’s ideas at B&W, and see the conversation that develops. I’m sure I remember you at least linking to Dacey’s stuff, O, but it deserves more attention. Esp. in light of L’affair Bunting .
” . . . we have fooled ourselves into believing such beliefs usually remain private.”
Josh, I’m not sure the article is making a claim as to how OFTEN such beliefs remain private. Going only by the paragraph reproduced by Ophelia, the claim seems to be simply that non-empirically based beliefs are, by nature, potentially dangerous WHEN carried into the public arena.
However, I think maybe you have a point in that it is hard to see how private beliefs can ever really be private (perhaps if someone is a complete and utter hermit and never interacts with anyone else at all). So I think overall I agree with you.
Heh – thanks G.
And here I was, treating Ophelia like she was the hired help, like she was the typographical equivalent of a scullery maid! Thanks G – sometimes I’m very, very stupid. I could have cleaned up the italics myself. Let me slink away in ignominy. . .
No you weren’t, you just thought it was an inside job, that’s all!
Go shout at the people on the Eagleton thread at Dawkins’s site for calling Eagleton a cunt – make them slink away in ignominy. I’ve done my bit.
I think I shall, but my views are little tamer on this, though my sympathies are with your point of view.
Commented on Dawkins’ site. Would be curious what you think, O.
Good stuff.
How irritating the boys’ club stuff gets though. Guys who think sexist humour is funny, at this late date…jeezis.
Too tired to get involved in another internet battle (see my latest blog post), but I do wish that some of the posters on RD’s site were less prone to thinking it helps the cause of freedom and reason by flinging around words like “cunt”. I wince every time I see it.
OB: Thanks for the link to Tom Clark’s ‘Epistemology’. It is excellent.
He says at the end:
“Making the case for science-based naturalism as a viable worldview is of course a long-term project of cultural education, one that’s just begun. As it advances, naturalists and their allies – humanists, secularists, atheists, free-thinkers and skeptics – must conduct themselves in light of naturalism itself and its epistemic foundations: with cognitive humility born of understanding our fallibility, and with empathy born of knowing that, but for the luck of the draw, we could have been the supernaturalists struggling to defend our beliefs against the rise of empiricism. So naturalists shouldn’t get on their high horse about naturalism, nor should they feel contempt for its competitors. They should simply feel grateful for being on the cutting edge of empiricism, the human version of nature coming to know herself, arising in this particular corner of the galaxy.”
Like horses, the skeptics referred to there come in many colours and dispositions. And just like the donnybrook at CiF over MB’s take on your previous CiF piece pertaining to your new book, there has been the parallel battle over the claims of the climatologists of the IPCC and their supporters, with opposing correspondents commonly identifying themselves as ‘climate-change skeptics’. Their opponents automatically become non-skeptics, and gullible ‘alarmists’. The grab for the mantle of skepticism is a charge for the moral high ground in this particular epistemological battle.
I am presently writing a piece on Ian Plimer’s new anti-IPCC book ‘Heaven and Earth’, for which the Clark piece is most relevant in a number of ways.
So thanks once again.
Once again, I have no objection to the word being used as it is throughout Lady Chatterley’s Lover, i.e. simply as an unpretentious term for the female genitalia and/or pubic area. It’s the use in one way or other as a misogynist insult that I object to. Hmmm, maybe I’ll say something on the RD thread after all.
I stopped, long ago, making frequent visits to the comments on the richarddawkins.net discussion threads. Pretty childish stuff a lot of the time, and very few of them are worth reading. So, I tend to take note of the news and some of the really great things that are linked (I listend to the interview with Peter Singer this morning – bracing stuff), and leave the discussion alone. The threads really need some kind of moderator to keep things on track, and tell off commenters when they’re badly off topic. However, I went over there and made a brief comment a moment ago about the use of epithets. I don’t think it will make much difference. It’s largely a boys club, very childish litle boys who think that using words like ‘cunt’ really does mark them out as having broken through some kind of mythical thought barrier, when really they are like lower form boys talking in secret about prefects.
Welcome Ian – Tom Clark is great value. He has a whole slew of these articles, all beautifully lucid and helpful.
Russell, yeah, exactly. It’s interesting that no one thinks it’s hip and cool and rebellious to patronize people of Other Races, but when it comes to women, ooh, that’s a whole different story.
Eric – I know…I never read comments there any more, for the reasons you mention. This time I somehow got drawn in, I guess by curiosity about what people think of Eagleton. Stupid of me.
I think I’ll be “slinking away in ignominy” too. I feel like all the comments I’ve ever made here have been worthless. I tried to run with the big kids but failed. Think I’ll just lurk and learn. Sorry for filling up so much space with laboured irrelevancy.
What?! Rose, don’t do that! Nor don’t be sorry for anything, neither!
Rose: Please don’t go. My comments here are no more ‘relevant’ than yours, and are probably more laboured, because all this mind stuff has never come easily to me.
I am sure I will have a horde of regulars here backing me up on the contents of both the above sentences. Well, most of it anyway.
Thanks guys you made me feel so much better, I guess I was just having a “no-body loves me think I’ll eat some worms” moment *flush of embarrassment*. I changed my name from Rose to Parrhesia: I thought of calling myself Parrhesiastes but I really don’t think I can live up to that yet. I can aspire to the ideal of parrhesia but I can’t feel comfortable claiming the title of Parrhesiastes.
Whew, that’s better.