Points for accuracy
What is it with Massimo Pigliucci and the dreaded Dawkins-Coyne Phalanx or whatever it is? Why does he keep…pinging at them? And saying things that are exaggerated at best?
…my problem with Dawkins and Coyne is different, but stems from the same root: their position on morality is indeed distinct from Harris’ (at least Dawkins’, I don’t recall having read anything by Coyne on morality), but they insist in applying science to the supernatural, which is simply another form of the same malady that strikes Harris: scientism, the idea that science can do everything and provides us with all the answers that are worth having.
Dawkins and Coyne don’t think or say or write that science can do everything and provides us with all the answers that are worth having. They say lots of things that are not compatible with that idea.
As for the Dawkins/Coyne stuff, I’m really baffled by so many smart people having such a difficult time wrapping their heads around it. I don’t want them to shout that philosophy is the greatest, I just want them to stop shouting that science is the ultimate arbiter of everything. That would be very decent of them, and then we could all get along nicely.
They don’t shout that. They don’t shout that at all, or anything resembling it. What is it with Massimo?
His new colleague is joining in the fun. Ew.
Atheist don’t apply science to the supernatural, basically because there isn’t a supernatural to apply science to. They do, however, apply scientific methods in assessing *claims* about the supernatural.
And Harris is pretty much in a minority in thinking that science can teach us much about morality itself rather than the best way to achieve moral goals – which is why he has provoked so much current debate among us.
Hear hear!
Dawkins speaks of the value of literature over and over again. He’s even campaigned (successfully) for an out-of-print book set in Africa to be reprinted. He’s a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He believes in the value of literary criticism (see his remarks on studying the Bible to truly understand English Literature). These are NOT the remarks of someone who blindly thinks that science has all the answers. I mean such a position is so stupid I’ve hardly met anyone who really thinks it. Though one of my lecturers did come close …
I know less of Coyne but I do know that he has written of the value of literary criticism – he positively reviewed a book of criticism written by an English prof. on his blog. Again, this is positive affirmation of the value of a humanities discipline.
Why on Earth must Pigliucci keep *asserting* these things without ever providing any direct quotes? This is hardly the sort of argument I’d expect from someone with three Ph.Ds when attacking so directly respected fellow academics over and over again.
Scientism is yet another example of labelling your foes in a way that vilifies them automatically. Never mind if you’re right or not.
I know a lot of Dawkins, and his position on the nature of science is as far as I can see, not too dissimilar to that of Susan Haack. They both seem to think that it’s founded on the same kinds of reasoning as everyday critical thought, just much refined. Support for this can be found in one of Dawkins’ essays in A Devil’s Chaplain, where he said that what we know in science is pretty much as well founded as the things we claim to know in everyday life.
Harris doesn’t endorse scientism, or at least not ‘heinously’ so. He’s repeatedly said that meditative experience is a valid way of exploring subjectivity. He’s also taken pains to go into philosophical arguments surrounding his accounts of the nature of belief. Perhaps the only place where Harris would merit the label scientism is with regard to his ethical approach, which may stray into that territory. But notice that people like yourself and Russell have gone into reasons why they disagree with Harris, rather than just saying ‘oh, the scientism’ and leaving it at that.
Generally speaking, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and all of the other people who are lumped in tend to see, in the phrase of Ayer ‘science as sovereign in our description of the world’. That’s an extremely defensible position, so long as other disciplines are admitted as being sovereign in their particular areas, like economics and history and literary criticism. And that’s EXACTLY what most of the writings of these people indicate.
Also I believe your birthday is soon? I am currently Facebook-less so I will wish you a happy Birthday here instead!
Just as a postscript, I appreciate that Pigliucci has gone into reasons why he disagreed with Harris’ ethics. I guess what I mean to say, is that it would be nice if he provided similarly indepth support for his attacks on Dawkins and Coyne.
It has been plain for a long while now that Massimo is a weak-kneed faitheistic godly-coddler.
I have asked him when he is applying for a Templeton Award.
I shall have to see if he even publishes my question, let alone responds to it.
If your question had that tone, Michael Kingsford Gray, I wouldn’t publish it either. Or I would publish it and mock it ruthlessly, and you would deserve it.
I disagree with Massimo – regularly, in fact. But in spite of my disagreements with him over matters atheistical and political – including the fact that I was the first to call him out in the comments on that blog post for the gratuitous cheap shot at Dawkins and Coyne – it is simply not accurate to call Massimo any sort of faitheist: He has no patience at all with describing faith as a different way of knowing (or indeed as a way of knowing at all), he has routinely slaughtered the intellectual pretensions of professional god-waffling nitwits like Stanley Fish and Karen Armstrong, and his position in no ways resembles that of, say, Nesbitt or Mooney. To accuse him of angling for a Templeton Award is especially ludicrous, since it’s only been three weeks or so since he was quoted at some length criticizing Templeton in an article Ophelia wrote for TPM, which is worth duplicating here:
These are not the words of a week-kneed faitheistic godly-coddler. I share Ophelia’s puzzlement and irritation with Massimo over his poorly supported hostility and the cheap shots inspired by it, but this is hardly an act of intellectual treason against science and reason. The only thing “plain for a long while now” – or at least plain right at this moment – is that you are engaged in some sort of atheist ideological purism. Border-patrolling “with us or against us” rhetoric is no less childish or more attractive coming from an atheist than it is from a Marxist or Catholic or whomever… so cut it out.
Something should be said on behalf of the fictional versions of Harris and Dawkins being criticized.
This “science-as-arbiter” position is essentially the position held by W.V.O. Quine, who was perhaps the greatest analytic philosopher of the late 20th century..
That we’ve reached a point where this position can be dismissed out of hand as somehow disappointing or obviously wrong reflects negatively on how the contours of the debate have been set, more than anything.
josef johann:
No, this strawman would have a wrong position.
Science (in the sense of evidence-based research) is not the arbiter of questions like whether you want wine or beer for you dinner, what Shakespeare wants to tell us in act III of Othello, whether Fermat’s theorem is true or if a flat tax is more just than a progressive one. There is no way that science can address any of these questions except if you define science to include every rational form of inquiry, in which case, however, the taste question would still be out.
The problem is simply that MP seems to be building a strawman, not that the strawman’s position would be correct.
Quine does define science in a sufficiently broad way that it includes most, if not all, forms of rational inquiry.
And matters of taste, depending on what you mean, are matters of subjective qualitative experience coupled with a subjective preference for certain of those experiences over others. That you want X rather than Y is embodied in a brain state. That you prefer X rather than Y is accounted for by the fact that you cultivated your interpretive capacities such that you get more pleasure out of X than Y, which is also a fact about your brain. (Though I’m uncertain whether Quine would put it that way).
Anyway, if you want to say that both you and MP are knocking down a straw man, I’m quite willing to agree with that. However a response that operated on the principle of charity would recognize that quineian epistemology isn’t utterly demolished by a casual reference to subjective tastes. Once we can accept this, we have to deal with something other than a straw man, and we’ve entered a better debate.
I say:
your interpretive capacities such that you get more pleasure out of X than Y
but replace pleasure with whatever else might give rise to the preference for X over Y, and it’s the same for my purposes.
I don’t know what motivates M.P. to continue to prattle about the “scientism” of Coyne and Dawkins, but I did appreciate the clarity of this (in Massimo’s latest analysis of Sam Harris’s arguments):
“[Harris] seems to be making a categorical mistake: what he calls values are instead empirical facts about how to achieve human wellbeing. But why value individual human wellbeing, or the wellbeing of self-aware organisms, to begin with? Facts are irrelevant to that question.”
And, Jeff, this is assuming that we can even agree on what well-being is. Is it subjective satisfaction with life? Pleasure? Health? Reproductive success? Preference satisfaction? Living a flourishing life by one of the many possible standards of “flourishing”?
Obviously we have some rough idea of what is meant, certainly enough to talk about it for many practical purposes and contexts. But I can’t see any prospect of us even getting an objectively “correct” conception of well-being, let alone deciding why anyone is objectively bound to maximise its global sum, or whatever it is we are morally bound to do.
Russell Blackford:
Exactly. I don’t understand what is so problematic about simply acknowledging that there might be no way to agree. Probably too unsatisfactory an outcome for some.
Josef Johann:
Okay, then we disagree on the definitions, and you (and Quine) have basically said that reason should be the arbiter of everything. Well done, no problem there, but utterly trivial. However, that is not what most people mean when they say science, and especially not in Anglo-Saxon countries, where it is usually even taken to only mean natural sciences as opposed to humanities. And that is not even mentioning logic and mathematics, where looking for evidence simply does not enter at any stage.
In that sense, restricting the word science to describe looking at evidence to find out more about the existence of objects and processes in the material universe (as opposed to, say, studying the properties of certain objects in 20-dimensional space without any reference to the question whether there is evidence for the existence of 20 dimensions anywhere in our actual world) is useful for our communication. And in that sense, science is the ultimate arbiter for questions about objects and processes in the universe, but not for some other things.
Whether you prefer high taxes and a strong state or low taxes and a minimal state, for example, depends at a minimum on your personal material interests (leaving irrational ideologies aside for the moment). Economics can perhaps in principle, though usually not in practice, tell you that if you implement policy A you will get result B, but whether you want result B is not a question to be decided by science, but by conflicting economic interests battling it out in the sphere of politics.
And come on, this
“And matters of taste, depending on what you mean, are matters of subjective qualitative experience coupled with a subjective preference for certain of those experiences over others.”
is just silly. That you can say something scientifically about a certain topic does not mean that it is already all that is useful to say about it.
Then again, if you want your philosophy to have some relevance to the real world, rather to an abstract world only, shouldn’t you somehow connect your philosophy with empirical science? IANAP, but it appears to me that philosophy is only useful as long as it forms a continuum with science, not when it is separated from it.
Even if philosophy was reducible to science, science might be the wrong level of abstraction or a sub-optimal notation for dealing effectively with philosophical questions.
To take taste qua taste as an example of this, taste is a concept with a definite socioeconomic history. It’s more about keeping the nouveau riche down than it is about mirror cells.
I guess I’m still missing the point, but I don’t see these as problems (so I’ll make one more pass). First, Jeff’s quote from MP:
And then Russell’s response:
I’m not sure that the question Why?, as in, Why value the wellbeing of self-aware beings?, always makes sense. This is a bit like, Why is there something rather than nothing? But, once we do value, that is, pursue, the wellbeing of self-aware beings, then, and not until then, the moral project can get off the ground. And that seems to me just a fact, in a fairly straightfoward sense.
But then, once the project gets off the ground, as Russell says, getting agreement on what wellbeing is is probably not going to happen. But does this really matter, so long as we acknowledge that wellbeing is what we want to pursue? After all, so long as we pursue wellbeing as differently understood – you in your small corner, if necessary, and I in mine – then trying to maximise this wellbeing, amongst all the relevantly situated individuals, whether the enjoyment of pushpin or poetry, is clearly what pursuing wellbeing is all about.
Perhaps I’m just blind or confused, but I don’t see where we have something as distinct as facts and values, categorically distinct ‘things’, involved here. And this is not because philosophy is just science, or science is just philosophy, but because both are pursuing critical understanding, which makes sense if you are really interested in pursuing wellbeing instead of just what you happen to think of as wellbeing. After all, scientists have to choose what they will study, and they won’t always get agreement as to the importance of this project vs. that, at least until the research is done. In the moral project individual lives are research projects, to a certain extent, and there’s a lot of evidence around as to which projects are likely to be more or less successful, though, like the Hellenistic and Roman philosophical schools, there may be structural disagreements involved as to what it means to be successful, since we are dealing to a large extent with subjective states, as well as objective ways of achieving them.
Very much the same applies here as in the freedom of speech model in On Liberty. To get to the truth we need to have the freedom to explore whatever appeals to us as the way in which to go in order to find it. Truth, or the closest approximation to it, is hopefully the result, but obviously some people are going to be of the same opinion still. That is, we’re not going to get 100% agreement here either, just as in the case of wellbeing. The best way to pursue it, other things being equal, which they sometimes aren’t, is to let people pursue wellbeing in their own way. We’ll not only be more likely to maximise wellbeing that way, but we’ll also have a fairly broad cross-section of opinion as to what wellbeing might consist in, and we’re not likely ever to get 100% agreement here either. In fact, we’re likely to get far less agreement here than on questions of truth, since wellbeing has a lot to do with subjective responses to things.
As to MP’s remarks about Coyne and Dawkins.. Why is it that people seem to miss the point, almost every time, about this? If scientism is believing that critical thought and evidence is relevant to every department of human thought and endeavour, then Coyne and Dawkins are scientistic, but MP really needs to define what he means, before he attacks people. That would be the philosophical thing to do.
G, yes, I saw your excellent comments there. I thought of adding one myself – telling Massimo “but they don’t say that, they don’t say anything like that” – but I figured the thread was too deceased. Massimo was very helpful about the Templeton piece, and I think he’s great and Rationally Speaking is great – except for this bizarre and really unpleasant vendetta against The Phalanx.
Honestly, it’s such bullshit. Jerry Coyne is interested in a million things that are nothing to do with science (and even a few that are nothing to do with food!). The same applies to Dawkins. They just don’t shout “that science is the ultimate arbiter of everything.” If that’s why he’s pissed off at them then he’s being…well, irrational; it’s like being pissed off at a poltergeist for burning your toast.
Perhaps Mr. Pigliucci simply feels threatened? I don’t say that in a mocking way. I sympathize, in fact. There can sometimes be a tone of arrogance and dismissal from those in the sciences to those in the humanities. I think Pigliucci is just projecting this science-supremacist view, which he may see elsewhere, onto Dawkins and Coyne.
I haven’t read anything by Coyne, but one thing I really appreciate about Dawkins is how he talks about his love for literature and art.
Exactly. Some people (well, one person that I know of) find Dawkins unconvincing on his love for literature and art, but I don’t – I’m damn well sure he means it. Just for one thing I don’t think he could write so well if he didn’t.
And as for Jerry Coyne – as I say, he’s simply interested in everything. One example: when he was about to go to Amsterdam last fall I thought of emailing to urge him not to miss the Van Gogh museum, with an explanation of how and why it’s so overwhelming, but I didn’t get around to it. Well a few days into Jerry’s trip there was a long post about the Van Gogh museum and how and why it’s so overwhelming.
Jenavir, I’d find your interpretation of Massimo’s attitude a bit more plausible if he had any reason to feel at all threatened. But since Dr. Pigliucci’s first academic career arc was as a successful evolutionary biologist – the PhD in Philosophy came later – he can hardly feel threatened in the sense you’re talking about.
Massimo does seem to feel territorial about the contributions of philosophy, and I can even sympathize to some degree: For example, I also feel that Sam Harris is WAY in over his head on the metaethical questions, glossing over important disctinctions and ignoring arguments with a long history, and thus that he probably ought to have consulted with someone with actual training in and understanding of ethical theory before writing a book on the subject. (His TED talk was intended as a preview of his forthcoming book, I believe.) But Harris’ less-than-competent blathering about ethics has nothing to do with the sloppy accusation of ‘scientism’ Massimo directs towards Dawkins and Coyne, and I’m not even sure Harris deserves it in any general sense despite his mis-steps in ethical theory. Given how often Richard Dawkins has specifically said exactly what definitions & conceptions of God he is aiming at – and those distinctly ARE definitions and conceptions which can and ought to be criticized from a scientific/empirical perspective, requiring NONE of the philosophical subtleties Massimo has expressed concerns about – Massimo’s territorial displays are simply mis-aimed.
That was the thing MP said that I found most baffling – that Harris on morality is exactly the same kind of thing as Dawkins and Coyne on religion. I just don’t see how that can be true. MP insists that religion is about the supernatural and the supernatural (in his version) is by definition entirely outside nature and thus beyond the reach of science.
But then, it’s effectively nothing, as far as humans are concerned. It’s just An Unknown. But if it’s just An Unknown, then there is nothing to say about it – and if there is nothing to say about it, atheists have zero quarrel with it.
But that doesn’t describe the religion we quarrel with – which never ever has nothing to say about it.
So I don’t understand what MP is talking about. I really don’t. He seems to be talking about some kind of abstract definitional religion that is nothing like the real-world in practice religion that we talk about. (“We” being vocal atheists.)
G., thanks for the info on MP’s background. I think you’re quite right that there’s mis-aimed territoriality here. That’s rather what I meant by “threatened”–that MP felt his identity/value was sort of at stake here. (Pure armchair psychoanalysis on my part, of course!)
He seems to be talking about some kind of abstract definitional religion that is nothing like the real-world in practice religion that we talk about.
This is a common problem for a lot of people who think of religion as an ideal rather than a reality, especially intellectuals. It’s rather depressing that MP doesn’t understand the distinction after several arguments on the subject.
Ah, is that it. I’ve just done a longish post trying to figure out what he means by this.
It’s doubly depressing since this misunderstanding fuels his really very snide vendetta against Dawkins and Coyne.
Russell (and Eric),
Russell wrote (in response to my quoting Massimo),
“And, Jeff, this is assuming that we can even agree on what well-being is. Is it subjective satisfaction with life? Pleasure? Health? Reproductive success? Preference satisfaction? Living a flourishing life by one of the many possible standards of “flourishing”?”
The members of a cultural or social group (if it’s “sufficiently” small in size) can often reach a rough consensus on what “well-being” and “flourishing” mean, even if they can’t spell “eudaimonics.” But I agree that “well-being” and “flourishing” are not “objective” concepts (whatever the heck that means) because the social or cultural consensus is contingent on the emotional states of the group members and the relationships between the members. The consensus can change (improve or degrade) over time as the members deal with each other and learn. This is why I don’t think that “values” are facts” and why I don’t want to spend my free time studying meta-ethics.
“The members of a cultural or social group (if it’s “sufficiently” small in size) can often reach a rough consensus on what “well-being” and “flourishing” mean”
I think even that, modest though it is, is saying too much – unless by “rough consensus” we just mean acquiescence or similar. It’s just assuming too much to assume that people’s interests dovetail that neatly (neatly enough so that they all mean roughly the same thing by “well-being”). One person’s well-being may partly depend on things that detract from other people’s well-being. This isn’t always the case of course, but there’s no magic mechanism that ensures it’s never the case.
One person’s well-being may partly depend on things that detract from other people’s well-being.
Certainly, but this doesn’t have to mean that the definition of personal well-being is different. It just has to mean that one person’s well-being is at odds with another person’s. Even if “well-being” always meant the same thing–say, subjective assessment of happiness–then one person’s might well be at odds with another’s.
‘”The members of a cultural or social group (if it’s “sufficiently” small in size) can often reach a rough consensus on what “well-being” and “flourishing” mean”
I’m not even sure that’s true of a family, let alone any social group of a larger size.
A sports team, maybe.
Quite; a family was one of the small groups I had in mind.
Jenavir, no, it doesn’t have to, but rationalization helps with privileging one set of wants over one or more others. Subordination of women isn’t called “a way to make life easy for men” – it’s called “what God wants” and similar. Same with definitions of well-being – not always or necessarily, but that’s part of the picture.
Jeff D: “The members of a cultural or social group (if it’s “sufficiently” small in size) can often reach a rough consensus on what “well-being” and “flourishing” mean.”
Ophelia: “I think even that, modest though it is, is saying too much – unless by “rough consensus” we just mean acquiescence or similar. It’s just assuming too much to assume that people’s interests dovetail that neatly.”
Yes, what I had in mind was acquiesence to general and fairly abstract definitions of well-being and flourishing. Members of a group can agree — and even rather formally affirm that they agree — with these general definitions. But there are slippages or lapses in performance, as individuals decide that their own well-being, their own private interests, impel them to do things that may decrease the well-being of others.
And slippages in the other direction too. People on the sharp end of these discrepancies may formally acquiesce in the idea that well-being is obedience to the will of Allah or God but then find that as that plays out as their inferiority, they don’t really acquiesce after all.
And then formulas of that kind already mean that well-being is different for different “kinds” of people. Obedience to the will of the deity is superiority and freedom for you, inferiority and submission for me.
So all this kind of thing has to be looked at with the utmost care before signing anything!
Re-reading some Dawkins, he does say that “Science is the only way to find out about the real world.” Which is false unless you’re using either a very narrow definition of “finding out,” or a very broad definition of “science.”
But then, that’s one quotation. Possibly a sloppy one, but Dawkins doesn’t seem to spend most of his time saying that science is the ultimate arbiter of everything.
Or both – along with a particular idea of “the real world.” But even then, as you indicate, finding out about the real world is not the same thing as being the ultimate arbiter of everything.