Yet There Is Method In It

I encountered a blog posting about the “myth” of the underdog against scientific dogma.

We love stories like this; in our culture we love the underdog, who sticks to his or her guns, in spite of heavy opposition. In this narrative, we have heroes, villains, and a famous, brilliant scientist proven wrong.

I’m sure you could pick out instances in science history where this story is true, but more often it is not. You wouldn’t know this from the pages of our major news media though; in fact you’d probably get the impression that the underdog narrative is the way science works. Michael White

Not to say that it never happens. The first example of an underdog that occurs to me is John Harrison and his solution to the longitude measurement problem. Interesting though.

In related news, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti was quoted by the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano suggesting seven new and updated deadly sins. I have only seen the list of sins and not any iterpretation, which would be probably more revealing… But this list was:

• Environmental pollution
• Genetic manipulation
• Accumulating excessive wealth
• Inflicting poverty
• Drug trafficking and consumption
• Morally debatable experiments
• Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

I mention this because aspects of science appears at least twice. I will just make a few comments on exceptions and contradictions in these guidelines.

Environmental pollution: I hope they don’t mean all environmental pollution as that would be rather – - fatal. For thousands of years we have been using fire, and later power stations to cook and heat our homes. This all releases CO2 which, in a naive reading, would be sinful. We may excuse this one of they mean excessive pollution – but who defines excessive? (Technically breathing releases CO2 – do we have to stop breathing?)

Genetic manipulation: This one falls into the same trap as environmental pollution – selective breeding is arguably a form of genetic manipulation. Presumably cats, dogs, cows, etc have morally acceptable origins. If we want to assume unawareness of genetics excepted these activities, we might ask could creation of new domestic species using genetics be moral? Why are the methods of selective breeding and genetic modification treated differently when they both lead to the same outcome?

Drug trafficking and consumption I assume they do not mean all drugs – since wine is used in Catholic ceremonies. What drugs do they mean? Illegal drugs? Slight problem: different countries have different laws and also laws change.

Morally debatable experiments A few possibilities -
Hwang Woo Suk faking his results (this probably breaks one of the ten commandments but not of the original deadly sins)
various governments and companies experimenting on unwilling or unwitting human subjects.
animal vivisection is objectionable to some people.
experiments involving pregnancy or death – I expect this is the churches primary concern.

I don’t have an automatic objection to this point except perhaps its vagueness.

Anti Citizen One

PS I am just off to finish my genetic/psychotropic drug/massively polluting mad science project that is going to make me a ton of money….

Pro-intelligent design activists are attempting to seek protection of their views in the classroom.

The institute also has been pushing an Academic Freedom Petition, which pushes for an academic freedom act, which says that evolution should be taught with its “strengths and weaknesses” discussed and that teachers should have the “right and freedom to present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution.” Orlando Sentinel

What they seem to miss is the intelligent design is certainly a view but not a scientific view.

Not that all religious movements are clock stoppers. It appears that the Vatican’s new best buddy is Galileo: they plan to erect a statue in his honour. They could have been more contemporary and erected a statue of Darwin but I guess they still get (occasionally unwarranted) criticism for the Galileo affair.

I was reading in the IT news site The Register, “Malaysian woman jailed for worshipping teapot” – you might wonder what the IT angle is on this story? To quote them: “Who cares? You get one chance in your career to write the Malaysian teapot-worship headline, and by the Lord Harry and Saint George this hack wasn’t going to let it pass.”

On my recent theme of happiness being a cause or an effect (or perhaps neither), a study conducted by Edinburgh University concluded that happiness is largely determined by genetics. Remember that if you are into hedonism.

Lastly, not a news item but a quote (and perhaps a motto for naturalists)

“Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Groucho Marx

Anti Citizen One

I’m guessing the previous post to be in part a response to my thoughts on the current bioethics debates. And alas I feel myself being drawn into a debate that normally I would prefer to keep at the office or within the academic environment. Anyway I will try to respond to some of your points.

You describe the Pope’s writings as betraying “Arbitrary Reasoning” – well besides the obvious arbitrariness of the accusation you are entitled to your opinion. Certainly if one were to read his works in isolation or out of order then his reasoning probably could seem arbitrary. On the other hand if you read his works from the 60′s onwards (a gargantuan task) you would probably get a feeling for the reasoned consistency of his arguments (though by no means should this deter you from your disagreements).

You criticise his view for being speciesist and this topic has been written on at some length, so I will move over that one. Other than to say that he could be regarded as necessarily speciesist – consistent with the anthropic thrust of Christian philosophy – as opposed to being arbitrarily so.

You dislike the appeal to tradition and again there is little more I can say on this matter other than it is a self-justifying position for the office he holds as the successor to Peter. Appeals to tradition are tautologically a traditional way of building arguments in philosophy. It can become a logical fallacy if the tradition that is being appealed to is given unquestionable authority. But a simple overview of pontifical literature shows that unbending adherence to tradition is not the modus operandi, for example in the days of St Thomas Aquinas “life” was assumed to begin some days after conception and at variable times for boys and girls. Now, informed by medical science this view has been rejected and a life begins at conception theory has been adopted. Before I explain this a little further, just one cautionary note your opposition to the appeal to tradition (without qualification) has a similarity to the fallacy of the appeal to novelty.

It seems that you also oppose the assumption to a universal right to life. Now we have discussed the idea of natural rights before and satisfactorily concluded that the notion is ridiculous. But is this what he is arguing for? In the snippet of text you quoted he talks about unconditional respect this is appeal to cultivating a respectful attitude not an appeal to natural rights.

Biomedical ethics has engaged in an important debate concerning “life” and its “beginnings”. Personally I adhere to a theory that is called “longitudinal form.”

From conception through conceptus, blastocyst, embryo, fetus all the way to birth there are no singular definable and isolatable boundaries of transition. One could take pictures of the developmental stages and label them as seperate stages of being – but this is an artificial seperation for these stages in action or process are inseperable and belong to a single continuity of cell division and growth. One could talk about the first beat of the heart, the first signs of mental life, the development of the nervous system or even birth as “the beginning of life” but these are parts of an organic continuum.

This longitudinal view of life is generally adopted post-natal by all of us. Although we differentiate between tot, child, teen, young adult, middle-age and the elderly there are no objective or singularly definable moments that one can point to and declare with any certainty that there was a particular moment of transition.

Similarly so then by extension even birth is a process rather than a straightforward before/after event. The child in the womb in the days preceding birth is virtually indistinguishable from the child immediately post-birth – generally we talk about viability at this stage. But as medical care for premature babies improves yet more boundaries in viability are smashed and it is not uncommon to hear of 26 week old survivors. But being “born” and taking one’s first breath of air by ones self (or being capable of doing so) is not the deciding factor (usually) in discerning whether the child is “alive”, “vital” or “viable”. It is important, but not singularly so.

We can understand various moments of embryonic development by taking them in isolation and comparing them with other stages – but these stages are not independent of each other and only become totally meaningful when considered as part of an organic process. Thus it is possible to talk about life or the process of growing-life beginning at conception without having recourse to notions of the soul or the direct action of a divinity.

Now than having rejected ‘natural rights’ we still acknowledge artifical or assumed rights. The difference in view is that natural rights are somehow inherent whereas the other type of right is in the gift of human discourse. This latter is a fairly democratic way of operating. By consensus most of us wish to avoid being murdered thus a social taboo has arisen around the act of murder. Similarly the vast majority of us engage in a primitive form of social contract by choosing not to murder each other – quite often on the selfish context that if I dont kill you hopefully you will extend the same courtesy to me!

But what qualifications does one require in order to be eligible for certain rights? Obviously I cannot extend the right to life to a dead body, nor the right to vote in free elections to an embryo. Clearly there are circumstances where we consider one or other of our species invalid to certain rights.

What then about the right to life? Well generally we extend the gift of this right to all living people, exceptions are made in some societies for capital crimes where the right to life is supposed to have been negated by criminal action. Similarly some cultures have begun to diminish the primary status this right usually enjoys by defining it as in competition with the right to die, or more pertinantly the right to choose the means and time of ones death. But even in this case the right hasn’t been completely abrogated, rather a realism has descended upon certain ethical views, a realism that rights are in the gift of society and are not endowed by a supernatural power or inherent in our natures. And of course even the right to die is qualified on the grounds of voluntary decision making, such a right is gifted to those who are autonomous and capable of making an informed and consensual decision. Unique cases exist such as permanent coma’s and brain death (or persistant vegitative states) but thats a seperate issue.

So what about the unborn child, are they qualified to recieve the gift of rights? This is the crux of the debate. There are those who use the language and imagery of parasitical life to negate the qualification of the unborn child to recieve rights so long as they are dependent upon the host (mother). But what about the child who has just been born? Although breathing and living independently, they are still vulnerable and incapable of sustaining their own fragile lives, in other words they depend on the kindness of others. Consequently infanticide has become an extraodinary social taboo, particularly if the motivation for murder is selfish and not the result of some unfortunate psychological illness. What difference in moral ‘status’ then is there between the child who has just been born and who is dependent on their mother/carer, and the child in the womb who is viable? And as longitudinal form asks, what difference then in moral status is there between a full-term but as yet unborn child and one that is yet to have become fully developed?

The argument then proceeds that rather like the artificial nature of viewing the stages of developmental growth independent of the whole process from conception (to death), so too certain divisions in moral status and eligibility to the right of life are artificial too.

If we understand that the right to life is a gift, and we choose to remove that right from the unborn child, then if we are to be consistent and not ageist or hypocrital then we must concede that the same right to life may be removed from any one uf us at any time if society (in whose gift the right belongs) defines us as somehow ineligble.

And if society can define the unborn child, the elderly or disabled as being ineligble candidates for the right to life, then what is to prevent society from deciding arbitrarily that our eligibility to that right can be questioned on the grounds of race, gender, sexuality, religion, profession, political opinion etc.

And this is not just the apocalyptic ravings of a hypothetical slippery slope argument – one need only look to recent history to observe governments assuming the power to gift rights and to take them away. We all know (hopefully) of the Holocaust, but let us remember also the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge who decided that amongst others those who wore spectacles were enemies of the state and ineligible to posess the same rights as anyone else simply because eye spectacles were considered a sign of education.

You also ask about the “natural time” of death when nowadays that time may be elongated or shortened by medical intervention. This is an important question, but surely the concept is analytical and self-defining, the natural time of death is that which occurs without direct medical intervention. Although you dont say as much your begging of the question seems to imply that because medical science can elongate our lives we ought to make use of their services. Why should this be so? It is known in medicine and medical ethics as “vitalism” the attitude that one must avoid death at all costs. The individual is not compelled to take advantage of the medical services available to them, indeed it is one of the fundamental tenets of medicine that they should seek to help those who come to them for assistance.

One could also define the “natural time” of death as being that which occurs without “extraordinary” medical intervention (and this is indeed the position of the Catholic Church). The question one should ask then is what is “extraordinary” and what reasons does an individual have to want to sustain their life artifically beyond its self-sufficient viability?

You’re second major objection is concerning the “annoyance” of religious groups imposing their view on society with regards ethics (for example abortion). I hate to say it but this just seems to confirm your abhorrence to all things religious and highlights the fragile relationship many people have to the idea of ‘free-speech’.

If there was a situation where roving bands of Catholic militiamen were arresting pregnant women and imprisoning them until they went full-term in order to prevent an abortion, then I may accept that they were imposing their views on society. But this isn’t happening and nobody is suggesting that it should. Those instances (more prevalent in America) where acts of violence are perpetrated against those who facilitate abortion are not acting in religious interests, no matter how badly they protest that they are or how much those who hate religion may try to smear them. It is a sad reality that there are those who allow their personal prejudice to cloud their judgement and who voicably use religious belief as a justification for wholly non-religious means. These people are hypocrites and should be judged as such. In much the same way that we would judge and condemn all forms of hypocrisy in all walks of life.

Now you may argue that anti-abortion lobby groups who would desire a change in the law whether it be greater restrictions or complete illegalization are, albeit through non-violent means, trying to impose their morality upon society as a whole. While this is true to an extent if you genuinely are arguing that this “annoyance” is wrong, anti-social or somehow contrary to your libertarian ethic, then you are painfully naive and certainly not a libertarian in any sense of the word.

How else was abortion legalized in the first place, without the lobbying of a pro-abortion interest group, to legalise the practise on the grounds of free-choice and medical safety? Was this not the imposition of one viewpoint onto the rest of society? Is this not what all human laws are? Is this not what democratic governance is about?

You ask “Isn’t it enough for them to live virtuously (by their own standard) and well away from politics?”

I assume by this you are suggesting that a religious point of view has no place being involved in political debate. If so I can think of no greater assault on the libertarian ideals of free-speech and freedom of conscience that John Stuart-Mill wrote about in chapter 2 of his work On Liberty on the liberty of thought and discussion.

Surely your request that the “annoying” religiously minded people who oppose abortion for example (although I know plenty of atheist pro-lifers also which further highlights the tyranny of your proposition) could be inversely applied to yourself and the ‘non-believers’? Isn’t it enough for you to live virtously by your own standard and stay well away from politics?

If we maintain a system of democratic governance that permits the participation of the people within the organon of power – a system that has the authority to rule over everybody – what ‘right’ have you to deny the freedom to voice an opposing view on any given matter of legislation?

Lets forget abortion, religious belief and non-belief for a moment and apply your maxims to another issue altogether. I oppose the hunting of foxes with hounds, I consider it abominably cruel and unfair and an activity more about sport than pest control. I detest those who support hunting and who consider it to be making a sport out of a “necessary” pest-control activity. But they are entitled to their different point of view and they are entitled – no matter how “annoying” they are and no matter how unlikely it is that I will ever change my mind on the issue – to voice their opinions and to seek a change in legislation.

And so to the final point, in a participatory democracy, that it is alleged we belong to, we can never have any justification in attempting to silence the views of others no matter how objectionable they may seem, when the desired outcome of our participatory democracy is to enact laws that govern us all.

If the law applies to us all – then the oppurtunity to oppose that law must apply to us all. Therefore in the case of abortion, if one group opposes it, on the grounds that it is a violation of the unborn childs right to life (a right that they consider to be either inherent or in the gift of society) then this view may be validly expressed as equally as those who believe that the right to choice overrides the rights claims of an unborn child.

To oppose a law (any law) and to hope that someday it may be changed whilst admitting equally that it may not – depending on the vicissitudes of prevailing opinion is the fundamental axiom upon which liberty is built. To demand that anyone cease from voicing their opposition or from trying to enact change is nothing less than tyranny.

The Pope recently voiced concerns on certain areas of biotechnological research.

As people grapple with the moral questions that arise from the advances in the bio-medical field, the Holy Father offered two “fundamental criteria for moral discernment.” The criteria are: “unconditional respect for the human being as a person, from conception to natural death; and respect for the origin of the transmission of human life through the acts of the spouses”. Pope Benedict XVI

I find it hard to dissect many of the Popes statements due to their arbitrary reasoning. However, I find them speciesist, an appeal to tradition and assuming universal natural right to life is workable.

Also I find the idea of a “natural” time of death curious when we often artificially extend and sometimes shorten lives using medicine. Who can say when is the natural time of death?

Another annoyance are religious groups that want to impose their views, for example on abortion on non-believers. Isn’t it enough for them to live virtuously (by their own standard) and well away from politics?

Perhaps they should listen to this observation made back in the 1830s:

‘In France’, he [Alexis de Tocqueville] said, ‘I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions’, but in America they walked hand in hand.

[... American] religious leaders were careful never to get involved with party politics. They knew that politics is of its essence divisive. And if religion got too involved with politics, it too would become divisive. Dr Jonathan Sacks

For “big” governments, we still need to make value judgments so religion and the state cannot easily be separated. Who should have the final say in contentious issues? Another option is to have “small” government, for example libertarianism.

Back to bio-ethics, we may want to debate the possibility of artificial human same-sex reproduction. The New Scientist has an interesting article on that possibility (subscription required – sorry).

Science seems to broaden human possibilities. Perhaps the larger issue is if someone gave us near infinite power, what is morality? “But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking–humanity itself?”

Anti Citizen One

by John C. Lennox

I have fixed feelings about this book. His two central arguments are:

1) Science is not incompatible with God.
2) Scientific evidence supports the existence of God; this is the Intelligent Design argument.

I have limited agreement with the first point and I disagree with the second.

The book is an interesting read and covers a great deal of material. It also attempts to address common criticisms such as God of the Gaps and Occam’s Razor (in the chapter “The complexity of God: a fatal objection?”). On the negative side, the explanation of science is hopelessly biased to ensure the author gets the desired outcome – straw man attacks abound. The most controversial chapters are near the end of the book, including those addressing ID and criticism of ID. Presumably he hopes the reader is worn down in earlier chapters to accept things without question. He also constantly confuses the issue of the origin of life and Darwinism. Darwinism is not concerned with the origin of life!

From my experience, you will find the core argument of most ID books, including this one, to be:
1) Either natural selection is correct or there is an intelligent designer.
2) Natural selection is false.
3) Therefore an intelligent designer (God) exists.

First off, statement 1 is a false dilemma. I could equally say “natural selection or pan-dimensional mice did it” or “natural selection or the brain in a vat scenario”. Both are more likely from a scientific view.

Secondly, this is an argument from ignorance. Lack of evidence to support evolution (or “gaps”) is not disproof of evolution. Personal disbelief is not disproof of anything. If there was empirical disproof of evolution, that does not automatically provide support for any alternative theory.

The author does argue scientific evidence points toward the existence of God. The argument is something like (forgive any straw men): A cell containing DNA is like a computer with a program. The program runs in a deterministic way and cannot itself produce any novelty (“information”) that is not already expressed in its DNA. Since DNA is passed from generation to the next, no new information is added and no progress is possible. This argument is relatively new to me.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this argument. The most obvious one is cells (or life forms) do not exist in an empty world – their survival is dependent on the cells characteristics in context with their environment. Natural selection transfers information from the environment into DNA by the process of elimination i.e. those less adapted do not have their DNA transferred into their offspring. The DNA itself is not the selection mechanism!

Another dubious point is this argument is a based on information theory which is mathematical in nature. Mathematical knowledge is a priori. Empirical knowledge is a posteriori. You cannot say physical process X is impossible because of mathematical theory Y! It is only through observation that we see mathematics sometimes reflects physical reality. If we choose the wrong mathematical model, it is not applicable to reality. I already outlined about why this model does not apply to natural selection. (The author also seems to think science is inductive – which I find a bit weird. See the section on perpetual motion.)

Finally, his rebuttal of Occam’s razor:

“The deeper down you probe into the ultimate nature of the structure of the universe, the more complex it becomes.” “If Richard Dawkins objects to the complexity of God as an ultimate explanation in terms of concepts like ‘energy’ since we do not really understand them”

First, tu quoque! If particle physics is “complex”, what has that to do with the “simplicity” of God? Secondly, the idea that fundamental particles (e.g. quarks) are more complex that compound materials (e.g. atoms) is nonsensical: atoms contain quarks! Therefore individual quarks are more simple! Third, he does nothing to address my point that God is the maximally complex hypothesis.

To conclude: a fun read … but the reader should beware! If I had to point out every fallacy, we would be here for the rest of our natural lives.

Anti Citizen One

PS I think I will read Nietzsche to unwind… I need the cobwebs removed lol

Following on from AC1′s really stimulating post on the search for the “now” I thought i’d post a series of short articles on freedom and determinism within the context of Philosophy of Religion and ‘Eternalism‘.

Eternalism is a theory that models ‘time’ as a dimension in physics with a similar ontology to space. In other words there is no objective flow to time, no past, present and future, in the sense that future events are “aready here”. It is also called “Block Time/Universe” theory. Anyway I can’t do justice to the full theory in this short post so please follow the above link and wiki the term for more information.

This theory has implications for our views of free will, for if the future is “fixed” and unalterable in much the same way as the past is then the events we experience as being within “time” are to a degree determined.

By no means does this theory by itself imply a creator God, or posit any divinity at all. But this theory is compatible with a theistic/deistic eternalism. St Augustine apparently wrote about God being outside of time – a model that would suggest he views the universe as a “Block Universe”.

In this post I want to consider Liebniz’s (1646-1716) view. His view was that God was an eternal and infinite mind who saw and determined everything in the created order and who had chosen to make the world exactly as it is. This is not creationism by the way, the theory could/should fit with an evolutionary mechanism – indeed a theistic “Block Universe” theory would necessitate such a view. Looking at the world as a “whole” Liebniz argues that because one thing may be incompatible with or dependent upon another, a change in any one individual thing ion the world would require that everything else be changed as well. In other words, there may be a number of possible worlds, in which things are quite different from those we find in this one, but within this particular world, everything has to be as it is. In addition, since he believed that it would have been possible for God to have created any sort of world, he argued that – since God chose to create this one – it must be the best possible. There follow two things from this.

1- Within this word we cannot predict exactly what will happen, since we do not have God’s infinite mind and therefore cannot see the way everything works together. Therefore, not knwoing that we are completely determined, we actually experience ourselves as free. In other words (not Leibniz’s) freedom is not knowing all the reasons why you do what you do.

2- A world within which there is human free will, and in which ther can therefore be the evil and suffering that come from its misuse, is to be judged better than a world which lacks freedom but is free from its evils. He argued this on the grounds that a perfect God would create the best of all possible worlds.

But notive here that there is still a great difference between what is experienced (freedom) and what is actually the case (a world totally determined by the mind of God). How can these be related in such a way that the one does no undermind the other? Kant attempts to respond to this and I will save this for another post.

Thanks to Mel Thompson for the above ideas, extracted and adapted from his book “Religion and Science”.

Some things strike me about Liebniz’s form of eternalism/block universe theory. Particularly a radical re-evaluation of the problem of evil is required. God’s good is not our good. Or more accurately human concepts of good and evil are subjective and relative notions that arise from our being within space-time and our inabiity to process all the facts (all in the infinite sense).

It is also interesting to note that Leibniz influenced Einstein. He suggested (independent of Newtonian calculus) that “an object’s ability to do work was proportional to the square of its speed, rather than its speed alone” thus of course squaring an objects speed was a vital part of Einsteins thinking.

A keen and very bitter debate is underway that highlights the dangers of overlapping language games and misinformation and misinterpretation.

A statement by certain scientists has attacked the Catholic Bishops Conference for spreading lies and misinformation in order to promote their opposition to animal-human hybrid experimentation. The controversy centres around an information pack published by the Bishops Conference for use in each parish and includes within it a statement that in some cases has been read from the pulpit decrying the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos.

According to the scientists there are blatant inaccuracies being reported misrepresenting both their position and their intentions. In specific the scientists argue hybrid embryos which have been designed to provide stem cells to treat human diseases are not half-animal half-human hybrids as has been suggested. Nor does it involve the cross fertilisation of a human egg with animal sperm as it is claimed the Bishops statement declared. Rather an animal egg with its nucleus removed and replaced with that from a human cell will create an embryo that possesses 99.9% of human DNA. And of course the embryos once harvested would be terminated and will not be allowed to gestate and develop full-term.

On a superficial investigation of the competing documents it would look to my opinion as though some form of wilful misinformation has been propagated by the Bishops Conference and clearly despite the ethics of the issue (which I am deliberately avoiding discussion of) such misinformation serves no good to anyone.

However if we scratch under the surface it would appear that the scientists reaction has been hasty and perhaps unfair. According to a spokesperson for the Church the documents prepared by the Bishops Conference are intended to highlight along with ethical objections overall to the research also specific problems with the scope of the proposed legislation. Thus talk of half-human half-animal hybrids express the fears of a procedural deterioration – a sort of slippery slope argument (a rhetorical device) that speculates on the extreme scenarios that ambigous legislation can entail. Particular attention is focused on clause 4 of the legislation that allows licenses to be given for the creation of hybrid and “interspecies” embryos which the bill defines as “an embryo created by using human gametes and animal gametes” – this according to the Bishops spokesmen includes half-animal half-human.

Reaction to this controversy has been mixed, with some editorials criticizing the scientists for getting wound up over challenges to their authority “This reflects a growing tendency to demonise anyone who doesn’t buy into their brave new world”. (Daily Mail editorial).

If a genuine and wilful misinterpretation has taken place then it must be condemned as a rhetorical gambit in an ethical debate. If on the contrary the Bishops statement is a more general attack on the idea of embryo research and a speculation as to teleological consequences – including extreme outcomes (which is consistent with their long-term view) then any criticism is misguided.

Is this a free-speech issue as some journalists are proposing? Could scientists say in all honesty that they would not if the legislation permitted at some point in the future push the boundaries of their research and create half-human half-animal hybrids – and thus fulfil the doomsday scenario that the Bishops present?

Clearly it would be unfair to expect those scientists currently engaged in the research – who explicitly claim this is not their intention – that they would not go that far – to commit or restrict their colleagues future research programmes in this way.

In my opinion then the “crime” here then has been twofold. The Bishops have been wilfully ambiguous – whilst expressing a valid range of concerns and objectionable scenarios imlicit in the text of the legislation – they have done so at the cost of directly discussing the current research proposals. Consequently the scientists involved in this research feel that their specific intentions have been ignored and they have been accused of doing something that they are not. A valid self-defence without a doubt but an overly sensitive response to a broader critical review.

This provides an interest insight into the differing ways in which science and religion work. Science is particular and reductionist, whereas Religion is general and holistic. These researchers have a specific aim and method and require legislation to allow them to proceed. The Bishops object not only to the specifics of this research but to all such research and thus refer to any number of potential undesirable outcomes.

It seems to me therefore that this is fast becoming less of an ethics issue and more about rhetoric (for both sides). Which alas if it is the case raises up the spectre of misinformation and false propaganda. And in the long run when we consider the financial and political interests that are closely connected with what we may call ‘institutional science’ the recourse to rhetorical argument and name calling by both sides will only damage the liberty to open debate that allows ethicists of whatever opinion to freely state arguments for and against any given area of research. And that scenario where informed debate becomes wholly stifled is a very worrying one indeed.

I attended a talk by Oliver Pooley on time and our understanding of it in light of relativity and quantum mechanics. I will try to outline some of the themes although the quantum mechanics part is probably beyond my grasp.

As usual, there is terminology problems as several different views are contained in two terms.

Presentism: the view that the present is real. Some presentists hold that the past is also real. The present is metaphysically special and shared with all observers and is objective. This is the common sense view of time.

Eternalism: the view that the past, present and future are equally real. The present time is a subjective part of the greater whole of what is real.

When we start introducing modern ideas of science into our understanding of time, we begin to find some things that seem counter intuitive. For example, the speed of light is finite. If we see a light bulb being turned on in our house, we might say “I just say the bulb being switched on” – although this is only an approximation to the truth. We are used to what we see as being the state of the world at the present time – rather like Berkeley’s view of perception giving things reality. Of course, since we are separated by some distance, we each perceive objects at different times and the present time becomes subjective.

What about stars? Since light from the closest star (apart from the sun) takes 4.37 years to travel to the Earth, what we see certainly is not in the present time. It is necessary to add this time delay to our statements. If the star exploded, when we saw it we might say “that star exploded 4.37 years ago”.

Things start getting confusing when we have observers with different relative velocities. Imagine we have a train passing through a station. At the moment the train in the middle of the station, a light at the mid-point of the train is turned on. This light travels away from the source like an expanding sphere. An observer on the train sees it arrive at the end of the train at same moment as it arrives at the start – this is as we might expect.

What is unexpected is an observer on the platform sees the light travel from the middle of the train towards the first and last carriage. BUT the end of the train is moving toward the observer AND the front of the train is moving away. This makes the light appear to reach the end of the train before it reaches the front!

The conclusion is that simultaneity is only relative to each observer, if they are moving with different speeds. It is unsurprising that this theory is called (special) relativity! Since we cannot agree what events are simultaneous, we cannot then say there is an objective “now”.

The general theory is too lengthy to go into here but it also hints at Eternalism. Quantum Mechanics is too mind boggling to attempt to describe. I regard QM as a work in progress. QM suggests many different possibilities ranging from Presentism to the reality of Past/Present and All Possible Futures! Since QM and relativity are incompatible, work is actively being done on this subject.

As they said in the computer game Half-Life 2:

I trust it will all make sense in the course of.. well.. I am really not at liberty to say.

Anti Citizen One

One of Feyerabend’s themes is that there is no common structure to the sciences; individuals may assert that there is, but an analysis of the history of science shows how impressively ad hoc the development of science has been. This is not exploited as a criticism of science, per se, but rather identified as a strength: it argues against placing restrictions and limits on the spirit of open inquiry that underlies science:

His relativistic “meta-methodology” was summarized thus:

“(A) the way in which scientific problems are attacked and solved depends on the circumstances in which they arise, the (formal, experimental, ideological) means available at the time and the wishes of those dealing with them. There are no lasting boundary conditions of scientific research.

(B) the way in which problems of society and the interactions of cultures are attacked and solved also depends on the circumstances in which they arise, the means available at the time and the wishes of those dealing with them. There are no lasting boundary conditions of human action.”

Thus he criticises the view:

“(C) that science and humanity must conform to conditions that can be determined independently of personal wishes and cultural circumstances.”

And also the assumption:

“(D) that it is possible to solve problems from afar, without participating in the activities of the people concerned.”

Finally, Feyerabend pointedly distinguishes between abstract traditions and historical traditions:

“Historical traditions cannot be understood from afar. Their assumptions, their possibilities, the (often unconscious) wishes of their bearers can be found only by immersion, i.e. one must live the life one wants to change. Neither (C) nor (D) apply to historical traditions… my main objections against intellectual solutions of social problems is that they start from a narrow cultural background, ascribe universal validity to it and use power to impose it on others. Is it surprising that I want to have nothing to do with such ratiofascistic dreams? Helping people does not mean kicking them around until they end up in someone else’s paradise, helping people means trying to introduce change as a friend, as a person, that is, who can identify with their wisdom as well as with their follies and who is sufficiently mature to let the latter prevail: an abstract discussion of the lives of people I do not know and with whose situation I am not familiar is not only a waste of time, it is also inhumane and impertinent.”

Furthermore:

I say that Auschwitz is an extreme manifestation of an attitude that still thrives in our midst. It shows itself in the treatment of minorities in industrial democracies; in education… which most of the time consists in turning wonderful young people into colourless and self-righteous copies of their teachers… it shows itself in the killing of nature and of ‘primitive’ cultures with never a thought spent on those thus deprived of meaning for their lives; in the colossal conceit of our intellectuals, their belief that they know precisely what humanity needs and their relentless efforts to recreate people in their own, sorry image… in the lack of feeling of many so-called searchers for truth who systematically torture animals, study their discomfort and receive prizes for their cruelty.

As far as I am concerned there exists no difference whatsoever between the henchmen of Auschwitz and these ‘benefactors of mankind’ – life is misused for special purposes in both cases. The problem is the growing disregard from spiritual values and their replacement by a crude but ‘scientific’ materialism, occasionally even called humanism: man (i.e. humans as trained by their experts) can solve all problems – they do not need any trust in and any assistance from other agencies. How can I take a person seriously who bemoans distant crimes but praises the criminals in his own neighbourhood? And how cna I decide a case from afar after seeing that reality is richer than even the most wonderful imagination.”

From the concluding chapter of Farewell to Reason.

Feyerabend was once labelled the ‘greatest enemy of science’ a title that in his later life he took pride in (he was an iconoclast by nature), but which midway through his career threw him into an enormous depression. The roots of his depression and the crass insults he had to suffer for daring to challenge the orthodox view of science were based substantially upon the misunderstanding of his work. One of the ‘problems’ with his writings is the speed with which he moves from clear point to reductio- thus without a careful reading his supporters and detractors often (myself included) end up reading the reductio as though it were his point of view. Consequently since his death with the major retrospective his work is enjoying – one philosopher going so far as to say that minus the iconoclasms he has been wholly rehabilitated – there has been a scramble to make sense of all of his work in its complexity. Subsequently a great deal of focus has been attached to the interpretations of his best students (themselves now noteworthy academics). What follows are some thoughts of Gonzalo Munevar – a one time student of Feyerabends – and now a Proffessor in his own right.

What are Feyerabends greatest contributions?

- Contrary to being an enemy of science Feyerabend showed how complex and humane science is and ought to be. Of his many contributions, perhaps the most important is that there is no method or rule that can capture science completely. The most excellent idea about the nature of science has to allow exceptions. When we look at the history of science, we discover not only that the great scientists violated the methods proposed by the empiricists, but that they had to violate them, otherwise they would not have secured the great successes through which we know them today.

- Until Feyerabend and Kuhn it was supposed that scientific rationality adhered to certain methodological rules. That science was a shining beacon of rationality. Those rules were inductive. The philosophical problem was that even though we “knew” that such scientific method produced knowledge, we could not prove it. Karl Popper argued that the problem came from thinking erroneously that induction was the method of science. We just needed to realize that science was based instead on the method of trial and error. But Feyerabend’s analysis of the history of science demonstrated that adherence to all proposed methods, from Francis Bacon’s to Popper’s, would impede the progress of science. To progress, then, science needs to act against method from time to time.

- The reason is very simple. All varieties of empiricism assume that experience determines the worth of our scientific ideas. This assumption is presumably justified because through experience scientists learn directly what is written on the book of nature. For example, if all observers see a stone fall vertically, the vertical motion of the stone is an immediate or direct truth given by observation – an immediate truth with which our most profound hypotheses about the world must agree. If a hypothesis implies that the stone does not fall vertically, our observations, our experience will then refute it. Unfortunately for empiricism, as Feyerabend reminds us, the Copernican hypothesis claims that the earth rotates on its axis to give us the day-night cycle, and this claim is refuted by the vertical fall of the stone.

- Munevar goes on to explain why this isnt a problem in the end for Galileo. We rejoin it after the explanation.

- These considerations do not imply that scientific hypotheses or theories always defeat the verdict of experience, but they do imply that such victories by theory are possible. This result implies in turn that all empiricist methodological rules must have exceptions. The reason is that such rules assign a higher priority to experience (over theory).

- Feyerabend rescued Galileo from the preposterous role of being the first and greatest hero of empiricism. By doing so, he allowed us to understand science very differently

What were Feyerabends errors?

- He erred in his proposal that all traditions or ideologies should have equal standing. But eventually he realized that, as Marguerite von Brentano had argued, the Nazis and the Quakers would then have equal access to pursue their goals, even though one of the Nazis’ main goals was to exterminate other cultures.

- He also acknowledged, though reluctantly, my criticism to the effect that a society has the obligation to teach its young the skills and the views they need to survive, and that in a world that depends on science that is what students will have to learn, not astrology or voodoo. He thus came to see that there were drastic limitations to his notion of the separation of science and society.

What influence did John Stuart Mill have?

John Stuart Mills essay On Liberty was a great influence to Feyerabend, Munevar explains how so, and why it is essential we see Feyerabend as part of this libertarian tradition (the better to understand his conclusions).

- Feyerabend points out that we are often unable to even discover important evidence against our favorite theories unless we consider seriously alternative theories that can propose and make sense of counter-evidence… No matter how certain we may be of a theory, a scientist who fails to accept it and develops instead a different theory is doing science a favor. For as Feyerabend says, “We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit (and which may actually just be another dream-world).”

- Feyerabend also acts against the important tradition of Plato and Descartes, whose obsession it was to discover the correct path to unique truth. Mill was the first important philosopher who rebelled against the goal itself. In his essay On Liberty, Mill argued that it does not favor society to force its members to accept the official point of view – no matter how certain it seems to be. By allowing the development of different points of view society profits, for if the official point of view is false, we gain the opportunity to replace with another that might be at least partially true. And if the official point of view turns out to be true anyway, comparing it with alternative points of view allow us to understand it better. Feyerabend’s accomplishment in this area comes from extending Mill’s philosophy to science.

- Feyerabend’s ironic sense of humor led him to proclaim anarchy in the philosophy of science and to suggest that “anything goes.” But he never offered anarchy as a sort of anti-method method. Anarchy is the description that a traditional rationalist would give to the way science should be done according to Feyerabend, and particularly the description that rationalist would give of pluralism. It is that rationalist who finds it obvious that rationality consists in behaving in accordance with the rules of the method of empiricism. And it is that rationalist who recoils in horror at the “anything goes” attitude in science a la Feyerabend.

Interview extracted in paraphrases from here.