belief vs science

[hiyymer]

Michael Shermer has his "Skeptic" column in the back of Scientific American magazine. This month he demonstrated the illusion of rationalism. The title is "The Believing Brain" with subtitle "Why science is the only way out of belief-dependent realism". (I would put the whole article here but I believe you have to subscribe to get access to it on line.) First he outlines what he means by belief-dependent realism, and then points out the following neurologically verified aspects of "belief".

"Once we form beliefs and make commitments to them, we maintain and reinforce them through a number of powerful cognitive biases that distort our percepts to fit belief concepts. Among them are:

ANCHORING BIAS: Relying too heavily on one reference anchor or piece of information when making decisions.
AUTHORITY BIAS: Valuing the opinions of an authority, especially in the evaluation of something we know little about.
BELIEF BIAS: Evaluating the strength of an argument based on the believability of its conclusions.
CONFIRMATION BIAS: Seeking and finding confirming evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignoring or reinterpreting disconfirming evidence.

On top of all these biases is the in-group bias..... [and] the blind-spot, or the tendency to recognize the power of cognitive biases in other people but to be blind to their influence on our own beliefs......

The dependency of belief and its host of psychological biases is why, in science, we have built-in self-correcting machinery....

This why skepticism is a sine qua non of science, the only escape we have from the belief-dependent realism trap created by our believing brain."

What he fails to acknowledge is that in real life the set of decisions that can be reduced to scientific rationality are extremely limited and simplistic and do not include anything that one could call a "life decision". (See "Descartes Error" by Antonio Damasio). It is only the "blind spot" which leads rationalists to believe that "humanistic" goals are somehow "rational" and "scientific" and not just their particular version of belief-dependent realism.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/ted_shermer_m_2005.mov

[FBM]

hiyymer, what do you think of the idea that the scientific approach is based on an unfounded beleif that the human mind/brain is capable of conceptualizing or even accurately apprehending reality? Is that not an assumption that cannot be proven?

[hiyymer]

hiyymer, what do you think of the idea that the scientific approach is based on an unfounded beleif that the human mind/brain is capable of conceptualizing or even accurately apprehending reality? Is that not an assumption that cannot be proven?

that was another article in the same issue; an interview with the physicist Leonard Susskind. One interesting response was to the question "In the midst of all this remodeling is there room for such a thing as an objective reality?". His reply starts out:

"Every physicist must have some sense that there are objective things in the world and that it's our job to go and find out what those objective things are. I don't think you could do that without having a sense that there is an objective reality. The evidence for objectivity is that the experiments are reproducible. If you kick a rock once, you'll hurt your toe. If you kick a rock twice, you'll hurt your toe twice. Do the same experiment over and over with a rock, and you'll product the same effect.
That said, physicists almost never talk about reality. The problem is that what people tend to mean by "reality" has more to do with biology and evolution and with our hardwiring and our neural architecture than it has to do with physics itself. We're prisoners of our neural architecture. We can visualize some things. We can't visualize other things.
... so I say, let's get rid of the word 'reality'.... It conjures up things that are rarely helpful. The word 'reproducible' is a more useful word than 'real'."

I guess my answer is do you believe that there is an objective reality whether you can visualize it or not? And if there is an objective reality is it fundamentally rational and causal even though there is no way we will ever be able to even begin to quantify the real causes and reasons for anything that happens in real life? Does "reproducible" imply that things exist exclusive of our experience of them, even though they are not exactly the thing we experience? I think that science is based on the belief that the answers to those questions are yes, even though we will never be able to accurately apprehend reality. The latter is not what science is based on. Science is not based on the idea that we will eventually have all the answers/reasons/causes, but only on the idea that there are answers/reasons/causes. And there are certainly large chunks of the scientific version of reality that can be visualized. Do the truths of quantum mechanics and string theory and the fundamental nature of matter really impact what we know about the evolution of life on earth and the nature of our experience?

[Pappa]

It's inevitable that a 'rationalist' will resort to those biases too, they're just part of being human. Very few people could analyse every detail they encounter at every point in their life. And regarding authority bias, it's not possible for even a person of above-average intelligence to be well versed in all areas of science, and even if they were capable of understanding everything, they simply wouldn't have enough time to check the validity of every original piece of research. Sometimes we have to trust the judgement and conclusions of experts. But science does have a powerful ace card in that we know the scientific method is set up to weed out errors. If an expert in a certain field is wrong, it's likely that their error will be corrected soon enough. I think that allows enough trust in the system to let authority bias not be too much of an issue for science. Even if scientist themselves are prone to in-group biases, confirmation biases and others, they do also like to compete with each other for kudos, ensuring no pedestal is left unchecked.

[Jason]

Pappa makes a very good point, but I think hiyymer missed FBM's lead-in completely, though I may be mistaken.

It is, however, highlighted by Susskind's example of the experiment of kicking the rock - it depends upon induction. There is a problem with induction - it cannot be logically justified. To conceptualize or accurately apprehend reality we must have sound logical framework from which we work. We necessarily rely on induction, and it serves us well, but is it not, at the heart of the matter, essentially 'an assumption that cannot be proven'?

[FBM]

Pappa makes a very good point, but I think hiyymer missed FBM's lead-in completely, though I may be mistaken.

It is, however, highlighted by Susskind's example of the experiment of kicking the rock - it depends upon induction. There is a problem with induction - it cannot be logically justified. To conceptualize or accurately apprehend reality we must have sound logical framework from which we work. We necessarily rely on induction, and it serves us well, but is it not, at the heart of the matter, essentially 'an assumption that cannot be proven'?

I agree with Pappa, but wrt my first post you hit the nail on the head. There's no known solution to the problem of induction. No matter how many times you kick the rock, you can't claim certainty that it will always and everywhere be so. Similarly, a fundamental assumption of science is that the laws it discovers are universal; that they apply everywhere in the universe. It may or may not be true, but we really can't honestly claim this as knowledge. As a fundamental assumption, it is ultimately faith-based, though not in a religious way. It's faith, but of a different order from that which fuels religion.

[Hermit]

do you believe that there is an objective reality whether you can visualize it or not? And if there is an objective reality is it fundamentally rational and causal even though there is no way we will ever be able to even begin to quantify the real causes and reasons for anything that happens in real life? Does "reproducible" imply that things exist exclusive of our experience of them, even though they are not exactly the thing we experience?

The most powerful aspect of scientific theories pointing to an objective reality is its power of prediction. When the theory of gravity was applied to our planetary system certain irregularities were observed in planetary orbits that could only be accounted for by the existence of another - as yet undiscovered - body affecting those paths with its own gravitational force. Astronomers used the orbital irregularities to calculate the size and location of the hypothesised body and finished up discovering Pluto. Similarly, the theory of relativity resulted in a number of predictions that have been confirmed by observation.

As for induction and causality, I feel no need for proof. (In fact, I think at least by the time David Hume was through with the discussion of both it has become crystal clear that no such proof is possible.) It suffices that the former works in conjunction with correlation, and that will just have to do.

[Tero]

Why would we assume the laws apply everywhere in the universe? Mostly we measure them ona relatively stable rock, mostly under Newtonian mechanics.

Some people do make all kinds of calculations. I don't have to believe them. I'm not even sure the universe is expanding or contracting.

I won't stop them making the calculations. None of it is much use to me. I live in a world where atoms are little ping pong balls and don't do any weird stuff. I weigh them out in grams and the grams are much the same every day. Even the ones that change identity are well known.

Even if gravity varied, it would not change fast enough to mess up my weighings.

[FBM]

As for induction and causality, I feel no need for proof. (In fact, I think at least by the time David Hume was through with the discussion of both it has become crystal clear that no such proof is possible.) It suffices that the former works in conjunction with correlation, and that will just have to do.

And most of the time it does quite well, at least, much better than religious faith. I think most careful scientists these days are careful to steer clear of dogmatism, anyway, and recognize the provisional nature of their claims.

[Brian Peacock]

Pappa makes a very good point, but I think hiyymer missed FBM's lead-in completely, though I may be mistaken.

It is, however, highlighted by Susskind's example of the experiment of kicking the rock - it depends upon induction. There is a problem with induction - it cannot be logically justified. To conceptualize or accurately apprehend reality we must have sound logical framework from which we work. We necessarily rely on induction, and it serves us well, but is it not, at the heart of the matter, essentially 'an assumption that cannot be proven'?

I agree with Pappa, but wrt my first post you hit the nail on the head. There's no known solution to the problem of induction. No matter how many times you kick the rock, you can't claim certainty that it will always and everywhere be so.

I agree too, we cannot logically infer the repeatability of the experience of kicking the rock to be always and only ever the same everywhen (as it were), but we can reasonably infer it to be the case in similar circumstances - that reason in part comprising of broken toes and bruises.

Similarly, a fundamental assumption of science is that the laws it discovers are universal; that they apply everywhere in the universe.

Again yes, but the proviso of science-base epistemic claims is that though we might work on the assumption that this-or-that is the case, in so much that it is held to be the case it is only the case as far as we can tell at the moment. The proviso thus identifies that this-or-that is the case until it isn't, and positively encourages any and all rational scrutiny and sceptical challenges. It is only an ideologue that claims if A then always and only ever Y, therefore end of.

It may or may not be true, but we really can't honestly claim this as knowledge. As a fundamental assumption, it is ultimately faith-based, though not in a religious way. It's faith, but of a different order from that which fuels religion.

As a wise King once implied, "We just can't help believing..." but the supported, demonstrated, evidence-based, rigorously acquired, rationally and sceptically scrutinised, validated belief about this-or-that, what we rightly call knowledge, is far better than the alternative,

[Atheist-Lite]

I don't think the rules governing the universe are consistent. Singularities, voids and extreme states of ordinary matter all hint at a inconsitent set of universal rules and then there's dark matter, dark energy what ever they might be? along with the quantum universe behaving suspiciously like it doesn't give a shit about reality at all.

[hiyymer]

Pappa makes a very good point, but I think hiyymer missed FBM's lead-in completely, though I may be mistaken.

It is, however, highlighted by Susskind's example of the experiment of kicking the rock - it depends upon induction. There is a problem with induction - it cannot be logically justified. To conceptualize or accurately apprehend reality we must have sound logical framework from which we work. We necessarily rely on induction, and it serves us well, but is it not, at the heart of the matter, essentially 'an assumption that cannot be proven'?

I agree with Pappa, but wrt my first post you hit the nail on the head. There's no known solution to the problem of induction. No matter how many times you kick the rock, you can't claim certainty that it will always and everywhere be so. Similarly, a fundamental assumption of science is that the laws it discovers are universal; that they apply everywhere in the universe. It may or may not be true, but we really can't honestly claim this as knowledge. As a fundamental assumption, it is ultimately faith-based, though not in a religious way. It's faith, but of a different order from that which fuels religion.

All true. But science is a lot more than a single rock and foot. There is a vast array of scientific knowledge about all kinds of phenomena and it's all pretty internally consistent. The impression becomes overwhelming that we're on to something.

[FBM]

Pappa makes a very good point, but I think hiyymer missed FBM's lead-in completely, though I may be mistaken.

It is, however, highlighted by Susskind's example of the experiment of kicking the rock - it depends upon induction. There is a problem with induction - it cannot be logically justified. To conceptualize or accurately apprehend reality we must have sound logical framework from which we work. We necessarily rely on induction, and it serves us well, but is it not, at the heart of the matter, essentially 'an assumption that cannot be proven'?

I agree with Pappa, but wrt my first post you hit the nail on the head. There's no known solution to the problem of induction. No matter how many times you kick the rock, you can't claim certainty that it will always and everywhere be so. Similarly, a fundamental assumption of science is that the laws it discovers are universal; that they apply everywhere in the universe. It may or may not be true, but we really can't honestly claim this as knowledge. As a fundamental assumption, it is ultimately faith-based, though not in a religious way. It's faith, but of a different order from that which fuels religion.

All true. But science is a lot more than a single rock and foot. There is a vast array of scientific knowledge about all kinds of phenomena and it's all pretty internally consistent. The impression becomes overwhelming that we're on to something.

I largely agree, don't get me wrong, but the wole of science is that it is an axiomatic, overwhelmingly mathematical system... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del ... s_theorems

[Pappa]

This is the "all swans are white" argument. We can only be sure of the truth of empirical knowledge to a certain degree, and the scope limited to the section of the universe available to us. As it turned out, some swans are actually black. The same could apply to the physical properties of parts of the universe we don't have access to, but based on what we know and can infer about the physical properties of the area of the universe we have access to, I'd be willing to make a small wager that the universe works the same way in all places and times.