Yet more Dissent over Descent
Oct. 1st, 2008 07:02 amGenerally speaking, ID is defended on the basis of what philosophers of science call "inference to the best explanation" for the plausibility of design over chance in nature. To be sure, the design inference has been strongly contested, but the dispute ranges over who bears the greater burden of proof: defenders of design or chance. Which general form of explanation is simpler? Intuitions have varied across history, but what comes through clearly in these debates is that some combination of chance and necessity of the sort associated with Neo-Darwinism are today presumed to be more plausible than Intelligent Design until shown otherwise.
Needless to say, Grayling has little difficulty in knocking back this embarrassing series of mistakes and misstatements:
I am, says Fuller, ignorant (sheerly so; this is the glaring deficiency in my case) of "ID's argument structure", which is - argument to the best explanation! Oh pul-eese! I ignored this bit in my review out of a kind of residual collegiality, for even among the toxicities that flow when members of the professoriate fall out, embarrassment on others" behalf is a restraint. But he asks for it. Argument to the best explanation! Look: there is a great deal we do not know about this world of ours, but what is beautiful about science is that its practitioners do not panic and say "cripes! we don't understand this, so we must grab something quick - attribute it to the intelligent designing activity of Fred (or Zeus or the Tooth Fairy or any arbitrary supernatural agency given ad hoc powers suitable to the task) because we can't at present think of a better explanation." They do not make a hasty grab for a lousy "best explanation" because they have serious thoughts about the kind of thing that can count as such. Instead of quick ad hoc fixes, they live with the open-ended nature of scientific enquiry, hypothesising and testing, trying to work things out rationally and conservatively on the basis of what is so far well-attested and secure. What looks like having a chance of being both an "explanation" and the "best" in a specific case turns on there being a well-disciplined idea of "best" for that specific case. But an hypothesis has no hope of becoming the best explanation (until a better comes along) unless it survives testing, is specific, and is consistent and conservative with respect to much else that is secure. This is a far cry from the gestural "best explanation" move that ID theorists attempt, which - and note this carefully - does not restrict itself to individual puzzles only, but applies to Life, the Universe and Everything. It has to, at risk of incoherence; and yet by doing so, it collapses into incoherence.
I don't think that Fuller's reply has done him any favours. As Wittgenstein said, in relation to verificationism but equally applicable to academic spats: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Yet more on Dissent
Sep. 5th, 2008 05:50 pm[I]f scientists disagree about something, if there is no consensus among them, perhaps you can slip an alternative — a god or two? a bit of putative intelligent design? — into the gap. But Fuller really is in a muddle here. He says there is no scientific consensus (in general? or only on a case-by-case basis in regard to some cutting-edge, currently researched problem?) but nevertheless that there is a "scientific orthodoxy" which, if you do not sign up to it, excludes you from access to its structures — presumably, to jobs and funding in science. Well: scientists tend to be clever people so I suppose they are capable of managing to have an orthodoxy without a consensus, though to me that sounds like a contradiction. But let's accept it momentarily. Is the universal agreement among scientists about the periodic table, the predictive power of quantum theory, the methods of testing efficacy of pharmaceutical compounds, and so on for a million such things, a mark of "orthodoxy" but not a fundamental "consensus" about basics, methods and the like? Or might it just be the case that the foundations of science are very secure, universally accepted, and the basis on which open questions, research and debate proceed, and in the light of which they make sense? No doubt ID types like to characterise the existence of as yet unsolved problems and the way research opens new questions for examination as "evidence" that science is in some sort of disarray and in need of appeal to deities to sort it out (scientists debate, they research, they sometimes disagree — so there must be a god!). But here is where Fuller is again in danger of going down his own plughole. If science is impugnable in the way that Fuller alleges, then his describing "ID science" as proper science — without consensus! with a constraining orthodoxy! — is likewise impugnable.
But Grayling seems to me to be too optimistic in his final conclusion that Fuller's book will drive the final nail into the coffin of ID. Rather, I think experience has shown that you don't need to say anything meaningful when you're preaching to the choir, you simply have to pause in the right place and they'll roar back their amen. Thus, I suspect, that in certain quarters, Fuller's book will be hailed as a great insight...
Dissent over Dissent Over Descent
Jul. 12th, 2008 06:31 pmFuller happily adopts ID's rhetorical tactics: speaking of biologists' "faith"; forgetting to mention (or merely being ignorant of) the wealth of evidence for evolution in modern biology that wasn't available to Darwin himself; and even muttering about the "vicissitudes" of fossil-dating, thus generously holding the door open for young-Earth creationists, too. The book is an epoch-hopping parade of straw men, incompetent reasoning and outright gibberish, as when evolution is argued to share with astrology a commitment to "action at a distance", except that the distance is in time rather than space. It's intellectual quackery like this that gives philosophy of science a bad name.
I guess this is what happens when you embrace relativism quite so absolutely: you start to believe your own crap...
Comments on social epistemology
Nov. 18th, 2007 09:02 pmTypical claims in the area include, e.g., that physical objects can't cause us to have beliefs, only other people can. So, roughly, if you're standing next to a tree, you can't come to believe that there's a tree there unless another person comes along and exerts social pressure on you to believe that there's a tree there. Trees can't cause beliefs about trees, but peer pressure can.
And concluding with this slap-down of a paragraph:
The major problem with the "sociology of knowledge" (more properly referred to as "the sociology of belief") is that it ignores the fact that sometimes the facts cause our beliefs. That is, sometimes we believe things because they are true, or because they are better supported by the evidence. In fact, it is something like an axiom of the strong version of such sociological views that our beliefs can never be explained by facts or evidence, but must always be explained by (non-rational) social forces. What you get, therefore, is basically a self-refuting view that begins with an axiom that virtually entails skepticism and then goes on to try to defend a positive (and very implausible and easily-refuted) theory of human belief-acquisition.
Ouch.
ID podcast
Nov. 21st, 2005 12:54 pmUpdated: It's actually quite an interesting podcast, although the two debaters seem to be talking at slightly cross-purposes. Fuller argues that it's better to teach a variety of theories using a dialectical method to assess the benefits of each one and that the value of ID comes from it's use as heuristic tool with which to investigate the world, Cohen argues that ID is the fundamental product of intellectual laziness and that it is basically equivalent to claiming, "we can't explain this, so it must have been designed by a supernatural power."
In general, I don't think the debate does Fuller any favours. He seems willing to justify teaching a theory that appears to be both scientifically and philosophically weak on the grounds that it's not entirely clear what constitutes an accepted theory and that it is useful for high school kids to debate the issues, even though he accepts that this is something that was explicitly ruled out by the Dover trial (the outcome of which, he claims, is "better than nothing").
Cohen acquits himself rather better, agreeing with Fuller that in a lot of cases the teaching of evolution is significantly out of date and talks in turns of a single species and period mutations, whereas he prefers the metaphor of a species as "a number of hand built cars, not identical model T's, each tuned to a similar specification" He argues against ID on the grounds that there probably isn't time in education to teach a theory with so few merits and that most of the arguments in favour of ID are simply lazy and introduce additional complexity.