Saturday, November 06, 2010

 

Methodically Philosophizing


I really do intend to say more about the paper, "How Not to Attack Intelligent Design Creationism: Philosophical Misconceptions About Methodological Naturalism," by Maarten Boudry, Stefaan Blancke and Johan Braeckman.

An unfortunate lack of infinite time and energy has prevented me from clearing this whole subject up for everyone.

In the meantime, however, Sean Carroll, at Cosmic Variance, has weighed in on the subject, in reply to Chris Schoen's "Is "Dark Matter" Supernatural?," with what Chris rightly calls “a thoughtful (and goddamned civil) response.”* Jerry Coyne largely agrees with Carroll, so I thought I'd spend some time on Carroll's conception of the problem.

I don't think Carroll's attempt to classify the potential effects of the supernatural into three categories (the “silent,” the “hidden” and the “lawless”) is particularly helpful for reasons that will have to await a further deposit of time and energy into my account.

Instead, I'd like to focus on what actually would happen if, as Carroll contends, “the best explanation scientists could come up with for some set of observations necessarily involved a lawless supernatural component.”

Chris has already answered this and I agree with him that “studying lawless phenomena (whether chaotic or capricious) with science is logically insensible.” But I'd like to take it from a slightly different angle.

In passing, I'd note that it is hard to imagine just how we'd ever get to the situation that Carroll proposes. The point I believe Chris was making about dark matter is that we have no particular reason to believe it exists, except that it is a natural explanation for the phenomena that we observe that would explain the phenomena and that suggests ways that science could further study the cause or causes of the phenomena.** In short, it is an example of the operation of what the supporters of IMN would call the a priori assumption in science that natural phenomena have natural causes. Carroll acknowledges this but calls it a “preference.” That just raises the question of what we should call something that is universal among scientists and the violation of which is consistently deemed not to be scientific, outside philosophical discussions such as these.

After all, an objection to Newton's theory of gravity that was raised immediately was that it proposed an “occult” force that acts at a distance with no known mechanism. For some 300 years we have been looking for a mechanism that enables gravity to do that, without success, but that has not stopped us from continuing to try. At what point does the scientific community throw up its collective hands and say that any phenomena is “supernatural”?

More importantly, what would happen if they did? Would the normal routine of science -- further observations and experiments, the publishing of results and peer review and criticism – continue? Would scientists propose Goditons and quantum spirituality and try to test them? If so, then they would fall afoul of PZ Myers' criticism that they would then be proposing “natural, repeatable, measurable, and even observable…properties” that can no longer be thought of as “supernatural.”

And if the scientific community didn't do those things – if it agreed that the cause of the phenomena is supernatural and nothing further can be said by science about it – how could we characterize the situation other than as science having “stopped,” at least as far as the causes of that phenomena are concerned?

The real question, then, is how we should characterize the decision to call a halt to scientific investigation of a phenomena. Those supporting PMN would say it is a “scientific result.” Those who support IMN would say that, no, it is a metaphysical conclusion that, at least in this particular instance, science does not and cannot work, not an actual result of a scientific investigation, which, after all, has been called to a halt.

Another way to put it is that, a priori, we know that the only way to conclude that the cause a phenomenon is supernatural is by calling a halt to the scientific study of that cause.

That sounds like IMN to me.

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* Incidentally, Massimo Pigliucci and Jerry Coyne have made up and promised to stop sniping at each other and I too will try to restrain my snide side ... at least when it comes to this subject.

** See my discussion of the two objectives of science in my previous post on this subject.

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Update: For another, slightly different, take on this issue, see Steve Novella's description of why "anomaly hunting" is not science in his article, "Ghost Hunting Science vs Pseudoscience."
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Comments:
Good, you found the non-firewalled link.

This is more or less what I was getting at in my Einstein/field equation discussion in my follow up post, though I think you say it more clearly here.
 
Carroll: "The silent: things that have absolutely no effect on anything that happens in the world.
The hidden: things that affect the world only indirectly, without being immediately observable themselves.
The lawless: things that affect the world in ways that are observable (directly or otherwise), but not subject to the regularities of natural law."

There's much one could add:

The Mistaken: Supernatural claims about the natural world that are more about ignorance of how the natural world works than any real evidence of the supernatural.

The Concurrent: supernatural occurrences that fall within the natural probabilities of an event, allowing a natural explanation for those who assume it, and a supernatural explanation for those who believe it.

The out-of-bounds: Supernatural claims that cannot be studied with today's scientific methods because they happened centuries ago and no physical evidence remains.

The supernatural: A word that some define in such a way that it's meaning can be disregarded while others define it so its meaning is central to their lives. See also "Dancing With the Stars."
 
Sorry about the double post - hit the wrong spot on my iPhone and thought I caught it.
 
Sorry about the double post

Taken care of. Blogger has been multiplying posts itself of late.

See also "Dancing With the Stars."

Heh!

I like your additional categories and will have to give some further thought as to whether there are any more. One thing I noted was Carroll's dismissal of the "silent" as removing the concept from "the realm of interestingness." And yet the idea that God "sustains" the universe from microsecond to microsecond is a major part of Catholic theology and other faiths. His personal disinterest is, of course, a philosophical choice. His scientific disinterest is, on the other hand, a reflection of the fact that a major element of theology is beyond science.

Good, you found the non-firewalled link.

Yeah, I had it before from when Larry posted about it but didn't include it because Springer was allowing access at that time. I'll go back and change the link in my last post. But if anyone saved a copy of the final article when it wasn't behind the paywall, I'd appreciate a copy sent to jtpieretATgmailDOTcom.

This is more or less what I was getting at in my Einstein/field equation discussion ...

I know. As I said, just a slightly different angle.
 
Another way to put it is that, a priori, we know that the only way to conclude that the cause a phenomenon is supernatural is by calling a halt to the scientific study of that cause.

I am dreadful at philosophical discussions but this didn't make sense to me.

So we have established that a supernatural course exists, by excluding any sensible natural cause, but this cannot be claimed as a scientific result?
I would say that science cannot proceed to study the supernatural itself, but the demonstration of its existence is still scientifically proven, no?

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Elementary, dear Watson ;-)
 
So we have established that a supernatural course exists, by excluding any sensible natural cause, but this cannot be claimed as a scientific result?

But have you established that? After all this time, what sensible natural cause have we established for gravity working at a distance? All you have done is stopped looking for one.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Which is, presumably, why Arthur Conan Doyle came to believe in fairies.
 
But have you established that? After all this time, what sensible natural cause have we established for gravity working at a distance?

Well, I assumed this was a given hypothetical future scenario.
So you are saying that we never need to invoke supernatural explanations, because we lack complete knowledge of the natural world? That means that IMN and PMN are indistinguishable for the moment, but not in principle right?. If I had a complete scientific description for a given natural phenomenon, I could recognise supernatural events as observations that do not fit in.

Which is, presumably, why Arthur Conan Doyle came to believe in fairies.

LOL
 
If I had a complete scientific description for a given natural phenomenon, I could recognise supernatural events as observations that do not fit in.

And how are you able to determine that such a description is "complete" except by virtue of the fact that there are no conflicting data?
 
And how are you able to determine that such a description is "complete" except by virtue of the fact that there are no conflicting data?

Good point. The only rebuttal I can think of is that there was no observable cause for my observation within "the spatiotemporal realm of impersonal matter and energy described by modern science" (as the authors of the paper define it), which would lead me to conclude that the cause came from outside.
Of course, I would have to be sure that I can actually observe every natural cause, which brings us back to your point.

This is really going to bother me.
 
But the "the spatiotemporal realm of impersonal matter and energy described by modern science" keeps changing (ala quantum mechanics). This ability to keep expanding its knowledge of the "natural" world (aided by the assumption that any suficient natural explanation is the correct one) is one of the reasons we value science in the first place. There's no point at which we can ever say we have exhausted the entirety of the natural world.

This is really going to bother me.

I don't see why it should. The most it tells us is that we can look forward to an indefinite future of fun exploring nature.
 
The only rebuttal I can think of is that there was no observable cause for my observation within "the spatiotemporal realm of impersonal matter and energy described by modern science" ... which would lead me to conclude that the cause came from outside.

We're fortunate that Copernicus, Einstein, and so many others, did not think this way (or of they did, that they later thought better of it.) Imagine if Heisenberg, faced with incontrovertible evidence that classical mechanics (to which he was originally committed), was flawed, chose to assume that some "supernatural" effect was the cause of his observations (/calculations). Quantum mechanics might have been delayed by decades.

This is really going to bother me.

Or you could choose to see it as evidence for hope and (gasp) faith in science's ability to create new descriptions of reality based on available data.
 
@John and Chris

Don't misunderstand me. I am not bothered by the fact that we will never stop exploring (That's my job and I thoroughly enjoy it). What bothers me is that, if you are right, we could never recognise a supernatural event for what it is. That just seems weird to me.

Anyway, thanks for the brainfood
 
What bothers me is that, if you are right, we could never recognise a supernatural event for what it is.

Not through science alone. Religious people are inclined to "recognize" miracles. If we disagree, it's a matter of metaphysics, not science.
 
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