On taking a religious view of science
In a topic about nihilism Wayfarer stated:
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm interpreting this "cultural malaise" to be rationalization (or McDonaldization), the replacement of traditions, values, and emotions as motivators for behavior in society with rational, calculated ones. And by a "religious view of science," I assume he means scientism.
What is unclear is how scientism contributes to rationalization.
Quoting Wayfarer
You (and billions of others) are suffering from a cultural malaise, from the pernicious effects of taking a religious view of science, as others here are saying.
I'm interpreting this "cultural malaise" to be rationalization (or McDonaldization), the replacement of traditions, values, and emotions as motivators for behavior in society with rational, calculated ones. And by a "religious view of science," I assume he means scientism.
What is unclear is how scientism contributes to rationalization.
Comments (47)
It doesn't; ironically it's more of an emotional appeal to rationality based on given cultural circumstances. The enlightenment championing of reason and scientific progress is ultimately what lead to faith in science; the underlying belief manifests itself in technological innovation that's now devoid of the "ends" that the enlightenments growing means originally suggested. The result is an increasingly mechanized society which doesn't have any telos, any ends for the ever increasing means. So now, rationalization of all of life becomes the only threads of a rope left to hang unto in order to avoid the plunge into nihilism. And so, hence rationality as an emotional appeal based on given circumstances.
Note the allusion to the 'death of god' in the final sentence. There is also a reference to the Frankfurt school's critique of the 'instrumentalisation of reason' and Habermas' late-in-lilfe reappraisal of the role of religion in culture.
In his discussion of, or even defense of, scientism, Steve Pinker has this to say:
This expresses one of the main tenets of the European Enlightenment and also Comte's 'historical positivism' - that culture develops or progresses from religious belief to scientific knowledge. That is a massive subject in its own right. But the outcome is that, as Pinker says, science now acts as the kind of 'arbiter of belief' in the way that religion used to; it 'hems the possibilities' for the kinds of ideas one is prepared to entertain.
The problem being, that science is primarily, or only, concerned with what can be measured or quantified. The 'domain of the qualitative', so to speak, is then regarded as a matter of private belief, tantamount to a matter of opinion. And the consequence of that, is that it obviates the Platonic distinction between 'mere opinion' and 'real knowledge'; in respect of values, we can only have real knowledge of what we can measure (which is the source of the 'is/ought' problem. There is of course more to say but duty calls....)
Science attempts to quantify any quality, though there are qualities which cannot be quantified. That's just the nature of reality, not all qualities can be reduced to quantity. This is most evident in the top quality, good, though attempts have been made, such as utilitarianism, to quantify the good.
The average person's knowledge of "science" comes from superficial encounters with its products, which are things that have gone through a large filtering process before they reach the front headlines or the store shelves. When most encounters with science are these positive, progressive moments, it is no wonder scientism is on the rise.
I am by no means trying to diminish science and replace it by some traditional religion. But the fact is that, when one actually does science, or when one actually reads real scientific papers, it becomes very obvious that the popular notion of science is wildly skewed. For one thing, most of the time science is incredibly boring - the science that is shown in a documentary or a magazine is only a small portion of the wider ocean of research, most of which is rather unimportant, repetitive, and disappointing.
Another thing is that scientists are human beings too, and have biases and irrational thinking patterns. Some of the research papers I personally have read were obviously bent in some direction, or the conclusions derived did not follow from the data. Science is not perfect - everyone agrees with this - but not everyone realizes just how imperfect it actually is, just how shoddy a job some scientists do. And just like before, this quality of science is obscured by a confirmation bias - nobody wants to read about the failures of science. So only the successes are filtered through - which makes science seem like some magic methodology that provides answers to everything we want to know.
A third thing, and one that I've increasingly found to be true of myself, is that scientism seems to depend on a naive Cartesian worldview, the duality between the res cogitans and the res extensa. The res cogitans acts as some kind of "unexplained explainer" - which is precisely how things like eliminative materialism crop up. And it literally makes science out to be like some sort of magic, and scientists as modern wizards and miracle workers. Even if a theory is outlandish and implausible, stamping the label "science" on it automatically makes it the next big thing. It puts science on a pedestal, and some of its crazy theories start looking like magic tricks - the magic is "because science." It sounds like it explains things but it really doesn't at all.
Finally, I think modern phenomenology has made a convincing case that there are some things that cannot be studied by the common notion of "science" but which require us to think philosophically, or to do phenomenology. The unexplained explainer, the "god's eye view", is a complete myth that is impossible to attain.
We are now enjoying the "ends" that the enlightenment afforded us:
And it is unclear what you mean by "faith in science." I have faith in science and technological innovation to supply the next iPhone, but I have no faith in it whatsoever to save humanity from itself or to supply essential meaning.
Quoting Noble Dust
What was the "ends" prior to the enlightenment?
Hopefully you'll follow up on this is/ought teaser when duty permits.
Autonomous thinking is a tool, not an end. It's just the first step. What's autonomous thinking for, exactly? It serves no purpose (end) in itself. You have to show exactly why it's better than relying on "guidance from another". Showing why it's better will/would reveal the ends; critical thinking in and of itself reveals no ends.
Quoting praxis
In that context I was using it to mean scientism; "taking a religious view of science", as you put it.
Quoting praxis
Generally the afterlife that Christianity offered.
It's a positive feedback loop or a vicious cycle depending on what one's attitude is. Rationalization leads to science and science leads to rationalization.
The classic formulation of the problem is from Hume, as I'm sure you know; there's a decent summary of it ]on wikipedia.
I take it to be the initial recognition of the divorce of facts and values that is one of the basic problems of modern philosophy. It's a consequence of the fact that scientific analysis must be grounded in quantitative measurement, along with the abandonment of the traditional sources of morality, which were previously assumed to provide the basis for 'oughts'. The book of nature, as Galileo memorably said, is written in mathematics, and his grasp of that fact is an essential foundation of the modern scientific method, but one that has consequences beyond simply science.
Quoting praxis
If I may hazard a reply - for example, in Buddhist philosophy, one of the cardinal abilities of the Buddha is designated 'yath?bh?ta?', which means 'to see things as they truly are'. In the Buddhist view, the ability to 'see things as they truly are' is inherently virtuous, or salvific, even. That is quite alien to the modern mentality, insofar as for the modern, 'how things really are' is essentially value-free; it simply adds up to the net sum of a vast number of molecular, energetic, and chemical reactions, which give rise to the varied phenomena that are studied by the sciences. I think the Buddhist view is plainly similar to other traditionalist philosophies to which 'the vision of truth', as a kind of holistic grasp of the totality, is central. I even think science itself has in the past sought something similar.
I believe that, originally, philosophy likewise was grounded in a the 'vision of the Good', in Platonist terminology, which has analogues in many other types of philosophy. And that was what underwrote traditional morality, insofar as to be wise, was to know the good. It is that which has fallen away due to the 'reign of quantity'.
An opportunity for one of my all-time favourite quotations:
Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 bookBeyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.
I think that this concept evolved as one possible branch, but if we were to go back to origins, I would say philosophy was primarily concerned with: 1) observations that could provide practical explanations and advice about life as it was being experienced, and 2) some ideas about the connection between life and death.
Daoism, for example provide very particular ideas and advice about medicine, evolution, spirituality, relationships and was relatively neutral in concepts such as good and evil.
I do agree that science, by driving stakes in the ground with unassailable facts and installing themselves installing themselves as the final arbiter of the right way to think, did create their own brand of religion which itself morphed into a self-perpetuating industry that is wholely dependent on a belief system of infallibility.
The essential benefit of autonomy is freedom, and in this context, freedom from ignorance. To offer an extreme example, there's a 0% chance that I'll be burned at the stake by the government for being a warlock. It isn't just fairies and pixie dust in Weber's "great enchanted garden," demons live there too.
Prior to the enlightenment, was the separation of church and state possible?
Quoting Noble Dust
I was quoting Wayfarer. Personally I find his phrasing somewhat misleading.
"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42." ~Douglas Adams
"On page 42 of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jonathan Harker discovers he is a prisoner of the vampire. And on the same page of Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein reveals he is able to create life." ~Anonymous
Stay tuned for the sequel to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. An AI program named Mary Shelly will give birth another AI program that will retell the story of Frankenstein. You will no longer go to the cinema or read a book for this new mandatory telling. You'll preform in the cinema for an otherworldly set of authors. Don't worry, it will be a choose your own adventure version (unless you unluckily enough to encounter page phase 42).
On page 42 you must commit to some regretful or promising mistake. You might be imprisoned by a monster or have given birth to one (or 42).
(Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas Adams and Daniel Dennett, by marriage of neural happenstance)
(The strangeness of this post is principally the effect of psychological compensation and other mostly predetermined stuff.)
On the Cartesian Anxiety of Our Times and What Faith Can Offer
Charles Pope is seriously NOT helping.
I still need to study Weber's theories, but with just scratching the surface it occurs to me that scientism may be an expression of rationalization. Today rationalization appears to apply widely, even to religion.
Right. But freedom in general still isn't the ends. Freedom is a state of being. It's another prerequisite for something else. It's possible to live a meaningful life in a state of ignorance; it's possible to live a meaningful life without political freedom or social freedom.
Quoting praxis
I doubt it, but I'm not sure why you're asking?
Quoting praxis
How So? Is this what your initial comment in the op referred to?
It's possible to live a meaningful life without religion. We're free to find our own ends rather than, for example, the afterlife that Christianity offers.
Quoting Noble Dust
I apologize for answering a question with a question, but if you don't mind, what does taking a religious view of something mean?
And what if we're unable to swallow this pill?
It means many things, but in this context, it means taking something a source of moral authority or a basis for normative judgement.
Perhaps your confusion lies here? I don't think anyone in this thread is making an argument for religion; personally I repurpose the word religion to illustrate the irrational dependence on rationality and science found in scientistic and even some less severe materialist positions. The goal is to make those folks evaluate their assumptions and underlying beliefs. It's an ironic use of the term for the sake of provocation. The notion that mankind is freed from the religious mindset is bogus, and reusing the word religion seems like an effective way to illustrate this. Take the underlying principles of religious belief and apply them to prevailing materialistic views. The problem is that most materialists ive encountered don't even seem to be equipped to try this out. That's the depth of the inherent assumptions and hubris involved.
By "religious mindset" do you mean an irrational dependence?
No.
You claimed:
Quoting Noble Dust
I pointed out that the enlightenment allows us to find our own ends.
What do you mean by "The notion that mankind is freed from the religious mindset is bogus"?
I need to study these theories more on my own, so I'll limit further questions before doing so. Thank you for your patience.
I'm not sure your series of quotes before this statement follow each other.
As to having the freedom to find our own ends, I think it's an illusion. I hear this claim often, but what exactly does it entail? It's usually an appeal to comfort or pleasure, which is a poor, pale comparison to religious or spiritual ends; this is ironic considering how the enlightenment championed this new found freedom. Enlightenment freedom seems inherently materialistic, which undermines the entire concept in my view.
Quoting praxis
Basically what I wrote above.
Quoting praxis
Of course, you have good questions. I'm studying them as well.
You assume nonspiritual or religious ends when that is not necessarily the case at all. And there is overwhelming evidence that people can find their own spiritual "ends," as you call it, even prior to the enlightenment. A quick google search estimates 4,200 religions in the world. Are all these religions illusory except for yours?
Hold on, you keep moving the goal posts, I think unintentionally. You're initial statement in your OP was:
Quoting praxis
And my first comment here was a direct response to that statement; that statement appeared to be the only thing you wanted to discuss in this thread, because the rest of your OP was an introduction to that topic.
From there, all of your responses have veered off into other directions for the most part, based on things I said in my initial response, and I played along because I thought the additional topics were interesting, and some of them tangentially related.
Now you're doing that again, and I'm not sure where you're going. What are you arguing for here? Are you mainly just asking questions?
Quoting praxis
No, I didn't assume that, I was specifically critiquing scientism, or any belief system that places so called "blind faith" in science; that was the topic of your thread. As I already said, my references to religion here are an analogy used to provoke thought about the topic.
Quoting praxis
Ironically, I'm one of the practitioners of a personal spiritual practice that you felt the need to alert me to here. I'm not a member of a religion. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to have assumed so simply because I'm not critiquing religion here, and I'm using it in a neutral way as an analogy. All the critiques I'm making here are primarily historical, rather than rational or religious.
But the feedback loop is missing. We rationalize religion but the converse isn't the case. Isn't religion about faith, the suspension of rationality?
Rationalist philosophers such as Leibniz, Spinoza, and Descartes, to name a few, were religious. Thomas Aquinas' works are scrupulously rational. There is a tendency in religion called 'fideism', which is taken to mean that 'faith trumps reason'. But that is a minority view. I think the idea that religion amounts to the 'suspension of rationality' is the kind of thing that only pathological haters of religion, such as Jerry Coyne, would say.
No!
On the other hand, rationalization in science has produced undubitable results. These in turn bolster our trust in rationalization. It's a two-way street, each supporting the other.
Couldn't you make the argument that religion gave birth to rationality? The historical thread of Greek myth -> Greek philosophy, and similarly, Christianity -> modern rationality via the Enlightenment? Edit, it would be Greek philosophy also pointing to Christianity and modern rationality as well...
I'll mention again that I need to study the theory of rationalization more, but offhand I'm skeptical of the idea that scientism (or an irrational dependence on science) is responsible for it. Generally the finger points to the enlightenment, as you seem to have done yourself when stating: "Enlightenment freedom seems inherently materialistic,..." McDonaldization is the expression of a materialistic value system or culture.
Is it the claim that science somehow shifted values towards the material rather than the spiritual?
Clearly scientism is not the cure for our Cartesian Anxiety.
Who is saying scientism is responsible for rationalization? I don't think anyone, including Wayfarer, was saying that. It's the other way around, or rather, the birth of scientism comes from rationalization, among other things.
That's what seemed to be the case to me, and I said as much earlier.
I'm referring to this:
I understand Wayfarer to mean that a religious view of science is a cultural malaise. I think the three of us are in agreement here, ironically. Seems we've wasted some breath here!
I'm not sure what these principles are in your view. Everyone talks about this stuff as if the details are obvious. Maybe this is evidence of epistemic hubris (something religious beliefs and behaviors can be criticized of).
Is epistemic hubris a principle of religious belief? It is a charge leveled against religion (or theory) on the basis of trying to conserve tradition (or sell a theory), from an outside view. Faith conserves itself, whereas any scientific doxa that supports and guides prevailing theory changes in the pursuit of testing hypotheses.
[quote=John Hendryx: "Reformation Theology" (blog)]Is not this assertion that "we cannot know" itself a dogma with affirmations and denials? Is not this itself a statement of knowledge? Is "we cannot know with certainty" not itself an assertion of KNOWLEDGE (a dogmatic assertion) as THE WAY to interpret Scripture? Whether conscious of it or not, this is what is called "double-talk" and those who believe this are doing the very thing they claim to despise, even in the very speaking of it. Its like Oprah stating on national television that it is arrogant to think Jesus is the only way, and then turning around and telling us the ONLY WAY is to believe that all religions lead to the same God. Is this not itself an arrogant claim ... a claim which must have a bird's eye view of knowledge to state it with such certainty.[/quote]
It would be great if Wayfarer could expand on this. I can't quite wrap my head around the idea of science as a source of moral authority.
By the way, and not that it's important, I was perusing the Get Creative! topic in the lounge and noticed some of your artistic expressions.
It's a case of fundamental belief. Science is and should remain an inquiry into how the physical world works. It shouldn't be the basis for fundamental belief. It obtains a "religious" character when it becomes the foundation for someone's philosophy instead of a tool for apprehending the material world. Materialism is essentially scientific religion; materialism by definition precludes any possibility of truth that exists outside of itself; There's no argument against materialism unless the materialist is willing to think outside of the confines of materiality. Similarly, there's no argument against religious dogma if the adherent isn't willing to think outside of dogma.
It's not... I'm not still not sure where the misunderstanding here is...
Quoting praxis
Fair enough, there are religious references in my music, which is on purpose, just like how I'm referring to it in this discussion.
There are two basic senses of Materialism. One is generally to value material possessions and physical comfort over spiritual values. We've touched on this in this topic. The other is basically a philosophical position. Neither of these is necessarily religious in nature, or to my mind contain the "underlying principles of religious belief."
Maybe it would help if you explained what you believe the underlying principles of religious belief are. They must be more than just dogmatically holding to a particular philosophical view.
Maybe underlying principles is the wrong term. I come from a more or less fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and so I've seen first hand the mindset and way of seeing the world that this view entails. These days I have materialist friends and co workers, and I see the same mindset and way of viewing the world as those fundamentalist Christians, just with a different set of beliefs. They get mad or stand-offish, for instance, if I try to question these beliefs, and they generally revert to moving the goalposts when their views are threatened. A typical response of fundamentalist Christians. These materialist friends of mine tend to be influenced by the new atheist crowd, so whether those actual philosophers are scientistic in their beliefs or not, I've seen their influence lead to scientism generally in the mainstream. You also see it in pop journalism headlines like "science just explained why we all do this!"
You mean things like this?
More like this.
The language of the headline suggests this study is the reason for American obesity. The underlying zeitgeist is that studies like these give us the definitive reasons, the absolute truths, for things.
I'm skeptical of this divorce or Hume's Guillotine. Don't we evaluate everything? These evaluations may be based on personal values, or values which are selfish and shortsighted (materialistic) in nature, but they are values nevertheless. In the absence of an overarching telos or collective purpose perhaps we default to baser interests and goals.
I listened to a CliffsNotes version of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber while at the gym today. It seems to strongly suggest that ideas can significantly influence cultural and economic change. From what I understand he believed that, though difficult, it's possible to escape our iron cage. How though?
Indeed we do - but what I'm talking about is looking to science to provide a normative basis for values, which is often beyond it's legitimate scope. So, what do we 'default' to? Political and economic power? Self-interest? They're big questions, and not trivial.
Weber is worth reading in long form, to appreciate the rigour and erudition of his writing. I found him very challenging reading. But he was a sociologist first and foremost, indeed regarded as one of its founders. He was 'anti-positivist', i.e. he resisted reductionism; but his analysis of religions was still mainly concerned with the way that religious ideas influence political and economic systems. I picked his phrase, 'the disenchantment', because it sums up many of the issues around this topic.
Allen shows how Weber's work was motivated by his personal political agenda. He contrasts that reality with the popular image of a value-free founding father of sociology.
If that is the roots of sociology, maybe it is no wonder that a lot of sociology today seems like people, feminists for example, advancing a political agenda rather than being objective investigators trying to find the truth.
There seems to be a subtlety, or fundamental understanding, that I'm missing. Maybe if you could give a practical example.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm sure. Because my profession demands that I be in front of a computer screen all day I try to avoid additional eye strain and consume books in audio format when possible. Unfortunately Audible only has two Weber offerings, both short form.
While learning about The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism it crossed my mind, and WISDOMfromPO-MO's post reminds me of it now, the possibility that the polarity between liberal and conservative may parallel the Roman Catholic/Protestant split? Is there a conservative/liberal polarity in the East?
Clearly we don't want to give power back to magicians, and we don't want to remain in the iron cage. So what can we do?