I’ve felt for a long time that the right wing here in the US puts too much faith in religion (Yes, that’s a deliberately ironic word choice). Christianity becomes a means to solve all kinds of social problems, and perhaps some of those problems are better fixed through non-religious social institutions–governments, the economy, family, and so on.
However, more recently I’ve also started to feel that some on the left have put too much faith in science and by extension the academy. Now given that I am a “social scientist” (the kind some folks think are not real scientists) and an academic, this is a fairly controversial position. It’s not that I do not think science and education are valuable, but it seems like some people on the left lose track of the fact that science is evolving (Once again, a deliberately ironic word choice), and we forget that claims of objectivity frequently have underlying assumptions and biases. For example, even the choice of a particular subject for scientific inquiry reflects some subjectivity. Moreover, the scientific method itself may be limiting our thinking at times. I’m not going to give any thorough critique of the scientific method or objectivity in this post, but what I am curious about how people feel about the relationship between the social/political left and science/the academy.
What do you think?
I know I said much more about the left having too much faith in science and the academy, and that’s because I would like to focus on this since Alas is a progressive site and most commenters will likely agree with my statement about the right and religion. However, I also don’t want to go into too much depth about my personal opinions on the second proposition because I’m open to persuasion on this topic.
The comparison is specious. I support, for instance, the theory of evolution because it is based on the scientific method and thousands of independent peer-reviewed publications showing that work has been done in proving it right. Whereas a religious faith is just that – taken on faith, from whatever religious texts you deem (for whatever reason) to be correct.
They are not comparable. We non-americans find the US to be religious to a frightening degree – the fact that someone like you can be robbed of any confidence in her discipline is evidence of that.
I think there are two main flaws in the lefts focus on science.
The first is bias. I think that the left likes science because it’s telling them what they want to hear. For instance if the ‘solution’ to global warming weren’t something that lefties already wanted to do I don’t think they’d be as devoted to it. For another example look at the resistance to much of what economics has to say for instance.
The second is too much faith in science. Science is best as s deductive tool. It’s less useful for predicting what’s going to happen next. Especially as next becomes a unique event. Also, science deals only with the physical world. It doesn’t give us any tools to do what’s ‘right’ or any tools to make evaluations on trade offs.
Religion is pretty much useless.
Joe,
That statement about global warming is pretty silly. I assure you that I as a leftist have no particular desire to see the environment wrecked. I’m also fairly amazed at the 99% agreement rate among scientists who actually know the field, given that they’re apparently making it all up.
Rachel S. the other,
I agree with both you and Helen. Which is to say, I don’t think the two biases are comparable in any meaningful fashion, but I would agree with you that there are flaws to the cultural interpretation of science that we would do best to keep in mind.
My evidence and feeling based position is that while science as a method of understanding the world is pretty unbeatable, any given statement or theory of science should be met with skeptism as they are often wrong. However, if you’re going to postulate something that is contrary to the current state of scientific knowledge, you’d best have some evidence to back your claim, at least if you want to convince me. Theories backed by massive amounts of evidence, for example evolution or global warming, require greater amounts of contrary evidence to make one disbelieve them than statements with relatively little to back them. And yes, of course, there is significant subjectivity in science. That’s what controls and peer review are for: to try to minimize the amount to which people decieve themselves with their data.
I don’t think Rachel is suggesting that science is not believeable or useful, nor that it is in comparison to religion. I think she is suggesting that while the right holds up religion as the cure all… the left holds up science as the cure all and both positions are flawed because they are too narrow in scope. At least, that’s what I assumed she meant – she can correct me if I’m wrong.
I also don’t think Rachel is “insecure” about her discipline. I think she is pointing out that science, and the scientific method, while the best tool we currently have at our disposal for getting close to objective knowledge and understanding of the physical and social world, is still flawed. It’s the best we’ve got, so we use it and that is a GOOD thing. But in a world of sound bites and extremism, the worship of science is a little dangerous. MOST, people are not educated enough on the consumption of data and when you get your science through mainstream media reporting, it’s often less than perfect reporting. I think it needs to be met with skepticism exactly as Dianne said – when you have relative consensus and overwhelming evidence with such things as evolution or global warming, I think it’s appropriate to generally trust it as about as close to objective fact as possible and move forward from there, but that’s not to say that we should automatically shut down anyone who discovers flaws in previously known “facts.”
Whenever I teach introduction to Sociology, I spend a good bit of time in the beginning of the semester talking about data and basic methods. I try to impress upon my students that ALL data is flawed in some way – it doesn’t make it useless of course, but it means that everything we talk about is open to improvement, new information, etc. I encourage them to learn basics in how to CONSUME statistics so as not to be fooled by “the stats are always right” I think “Damned Lies and Statistics” should be required reading for everyone. I can’t spend a ton of time on it because it’s not a stat or methods course, but I try to make certain they understand that they have the right to ask questions such as: “where did that stat come from?” “what might they have forgotten to figure in?” etc. For me, this is the problem.
When you consider that not even half the population has a college degree (and even those that do are not necessarily educated in science consumption), it’s diffocult to expect people to be well educated enough to be skeptical consumers of science. Given the lack of education on how to understand the science that comes about, the general worship of science as an end all be all is a little dangerous. People are having faith in the numbers and data as they are reported without any understanding of how it came to be – which is similar to people’s faith in religion…The difference of course is that at least SOME people do have the understanding of how the science works, but I guarantee it’s not everyone.
Let me be clear. Science has it’s place and I “trust” it more than, say, religion, but I DO think that until we have better educated scientific consumers, we have to be careful just how much we rely on it.
Hope that makes sense.
Challenges to science from the left–or right–often misconstrue what “science” really is, as a process. Used properly, science gives is the best available information where it’s applied.
The general misunderstanding comes from both sides.
Some people misrepresent “best available” as “infallible.” This is incorrect, and not scientific. Science is almost always fallible in the test itself (nobody gets a p value of 0); moreover, the best available data often changes as scientists develop new procedures or theories.
Other people misrepresent “best available” as “imperfect, thus untrue.” This is also incorrect. Well, it’s incorrect as applied, because people who do this inevitably seek to provide an alternative to the best available data, and to support their alternative as being correct. That, too, is mistaken: as Dianne aptly puts, if you want to provide an alternative it must be at least as well supported as the theory you wish to attack.
Both those problems are used by the left and the right, and aren’t isolated to one political cause.
What sailorman said. I would also note that when someone says, particularly in the context of a political argument, “Science tells us X.” my BS meter goes off. One classic example is the pro-life mantra that “science tells us that abortion causes breast cancer”. First off, correlation does not equal causation. Second, one rather poorly designed study suggested a link. Later, better studies found no link. Finally, “science” doesn’t tell us anything at all. The data tell us things. Sometimes the data are “lying” (i.e. results with a p-value of 0.05 are due to coincidence 5% of the time). Sometimes we don’t understand what they are saying. But at least using data allows one to base a policy on something other than faith and intuition, both of which are highly unreliable.
I agree with some of the things said on here about the necessity of having a proper understanding of what science is and is not, and I think a significant portion of the population lacks this understanding. However, I think the real problem that’s being addressed here is not necessarily science, as in the scientific method, but the claim of objectivity itself. I’m also a social scientist, but being engaged with particularly theories developed by cultural theorists and subaltern scholars, I reject the claims of ‘objectivity’ almost as a default, because of the fact that even good physical scientists (as some have mentioned here) acknowledge that science can only bring us a likely answer or the best possible answer, not some concrete truth. I think the real problem is the over-reliance on science as some sort of ‘objective’ measure of human experience, and the tendency of some scientists (though certainly not all) to try to categorize all types of phenomenon, from movement at the subatomic level to interpersonal human interactions, using the same arguments, philosophies and methodologies.
The study of human beings requires a much broader set of methods and assumptions, and the claim of objectivity when studying human behavior is what particularly leaves me cold. As Dianne points out, whenever someone tries to make an objective claim, particularly about human beings, my b.s. radar goes off – Chomsky tackles this question in his work on objectivity and liberal scholarship and shows precisely how this over-reliance on the idea of objective truth has led scholars to some rather heinous and ultimately indefensible actions. As Rachel says, claims of objectivity do have underlying assumptions and biases, so what I consider to be really good scientific work that engages with questions of human behavior and social phenomenon is work that acknowledges and admits to those biases at the outset – only then can we get at any kind of ‘truth’ that merits the name.
The issue with “science” in two sentences.
Science can tell you what’s likely to happen if you jump out a 2nd-story window. It can’t tell you whether it would be a good idea.
The problem with the “science isn’t objective” argument is that it tends to be used as per my second example. IOW, the claimed lack of objectivity is generally used to show that something else is “truer” than the presumably nonobjective scientific data. And, of course, that runs into the “best available data” issue head on.
Scientific proof always has limits; extrapolations from a limited proof always involve assumptions that may or may not be correct. Objectivity rarely comes into it.
This is a really good discussion everyone.
But let me pose a question…Do you think there are social issues or problems that science simply cannot solve?
For example, I think there are certain morality questions that science cannot solve. I don’t think science can tell us the meaning of life (whatever that means).
Science doesn’t “solve” ANY morality problems. It merely provides information that can be used to solve problems.
There are all sorts of decisions that science can’t address. Should someone abort, raise a child, or give it up for adoption? Science can give her predictions regarding what is likely to happen in each scenario. It can explain the limits of and assumptions of those predictions. It can affect the predictions itself (by making abortion safer; by making delivery less painful; by getting accurate data regarding future predictions.)
But science can’t actually make those decisions for her.
Science can, indeed, provide answers. But only in the context of certain non-scientific assumptions: “If we want to prioritize minimizing deaths related to HPV over ensuring gender equality, how should we vaccinate boys vs. girls, if at all?”
You’d get different responses with
“If we wanted to prioritize treating all people identically”
or
“if we wanted to prioritize any reduction in premarital sex, death rate be damned”
etc.
Change the assumption, change the answer. And science can’t provide the assumptions.
I think the concept of a single or objective “meaning of life” is, itself, meaningless.
I do not think science can solve any optimization/trade-off problems. It can explain what the trade-off is; it can over time eliminate the trade-off; but as long as there is a trade-off, it’s impossible for science to answer the question, “What SHOULD be done?”
For example: (this ties into the UHC discussion)
Babies born with the severe form of sickle-cell anemia (hereafter, SSSA) usually die before they are a year old unless they are given prophylactic antibiotics.
Science can answer:
1) How much will this use of antibiotics increase drug resistance in the germ population?
2) How much will it cost to provide medical care to someone with SSSA?
3) How likely is that cost to change?
4) What kinds of disability/discomfort will someone with SSSA face?
And so on.
There is no “scientific” answer to the question, “Should we give babies with SSSA antibiotics or not?” And it doesn’t really matter how many scientific facts your answer includes–it is still a value judgment, not a scientific one.
There is no “scientific” answer to the question, “Should we give babies with SSSA antibiotics or not?”
Science can, however, provide answers that change the question to the point that the original moral dilemma becomes less problematic or even disappears altogether. For example, I would argue that one potential answer to this question is “yes, until the bone marrow transplant is done and the new immune system completely integrated with the host (and the kid off immunosuppressants).” This answer makes some of the dilemmas of giving chronic antibiotics (resistance, cost, pain faced by someone living with SSSA etc) simply irrelevant because the antibiotic use is no longer indefinite and the SSSA cured. (BMT itself is neither cheap nor risk free, but that’s another issue…One that future medical advances may also make irrelevant, but is currently still active.)
I would also argue that this is one way in which science beats religion: Suppose that a person of true faith can pray and their hemoglobin be converted from sickle to normal. Great, that person is cured. But that doesn’t help the next SSA patient in the least. Whereas even a partial cure or progress made through science helps not just the beneficiary, but also all SSA patients who follow him or her.
Science can, however, provide answers that change the question to the point that the original moral dilemma becomes less problematic or even disappears altogether.
Right. That’s what I was intending to convey with “[Science] can over time eliminate the trade-off”; you said it more clearly than I.
Mandolin, My point was only that the left embraces science partly because it supports what they wanted to do anyway. I think this is also why the right likes economics more than say anthropology. Economics often produces the answers they wanted anyway. (Global Warming jumped into my head from a comment I’d heard earlier in the week) Another example would be opposition to GM foods. There’s very little data to show that it’s dangerous and plenty of data to show that it isn’t. But some people on the left (not implying you) are pretty strongly opposed.
Basically it’s a form of selection bias. It usually takes more evidence to “overwhelming” if the person doesn’t like what it says.
I combine religious conviction with a couple of scientific degrees and have had to work this one out. It seems to me that the key is that there are questions each answers, questions each doesn’t, and the two are complementary, not contradictory. However, as has been pointed out above, people are often more interested in using limited or carefully chosen portions from one or the other to support their assertions than in trying to reach the truth.
Selection of limited or out-of-context Scriptural references to do this is called “proof-texting”. And there’s lots of examples of people taking scientific studies of limited scope and claiming that they “prove” a much broader point (often completely ignoring the actual scientific authors in the process). All sides to controversies are often guilty of this. I must say that the MSM are often horribly guilty of misinterpreting scientific work. Sometimes you wonder if there’s anyone in the media that has any kind of scientific background at all, and if they are actually allowed to report/edit on science-based issues.
Science can tell you how to safely abort a fetus. It does not tell you if that’s right or wrong; it cannot, it never will.
Science can tell you that a fetus has no consciousness.
There is no secular argument against abortion that holds water for consistency and lack of misogyny.
While science does not offer opinion, obviously, I think you could pick a stronger example.
Science can tell you that the newborn has no consciousness.
The (secular) argument that a fetus is not a person until it takes a breath on its own isn’t a scientific but a legal fact.
Science can tell you that the newborn has no consciousness.
It could, but it doesn’t (unless you are using an extremely strict definition of consciousness). The reason for this is that it is probably not true. True, the definition of life and death are, to some extent, culturally determined. But our culture currently uses brain function or lack thereof to make that determination, at least at the end of life. And if at the end, why not also at the beginning?
Incidently, “science”–or at least a series of fairly well done and definitive experiments–also tells us that elephants, some non-human primates, and dolphins have consciousness. Does this change your views of, for example, the ethics of ivory trading?
I’m using an extremely strict definition of consciousness.
I’m against the ivory trade because of the predictions of game theory, not because of a postulated consciousness of elephants.
I’m against the ivory trade because of the predictions of game theory, not because of a postulated consciousness of elephants
It’s not just ‘postulated’. So are you interested in decreasing the suffering of all sentient beings or just your species? And if the latter, under what justification?
Dianne,
I’m just reading the article linked to; thank you.
Yes I am a speciesist; apart from that, I think that the decreasing of the suffering of all (sentient) beings is a laudable goal – which benefits humans the foremost. I’m sure that you’re aware that cruelty against animals (pets etc.) in children is the best predictor of (extremely) antisocial behaviour in adulthood.
May I recommend to you Valentino Braitenberg’s “Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology”? I would have provided a link to Amazon if I would know how to make one.
Gaaa. I was trying to stay out of fights involving abortion.
But the last several comments make my point well.
“Science can tell you that a fetus has no consciousness” is true, but it doesn’t answer any good/bad question.
Is consciousness the right criterion for legal protection? Or should it be species? Or maybe pain-avoidance? Or aliveness? Or value to others? Those are questions that science can’t answer.
I don’t mean to equate religion and science, but to compare the role that these two sources of authority play in people’s efforts at self-justification. I suspect people embrace whatever authorities support their preferred conclusions; that is, in our efforts to find justification for our preferences we reason from conclusions to the premises that support those conclusions, not the other way ’round.
To what extent do men differ from women? Some regard this as an empirical question, some regard it as a question of world view, and it is not obvious to me that liberals are more open to empirical analysis of this matter than conservatives. Feminists living in a society that emphasizes the differences between men and women might embrace addressing this question empirically. Any finding of similarity, no matter how small, might help undermine the (noxious) dominant world view. On the other hand, feminists living in a society that emphasizes equality and individuality might oppose an empirical analysis. Any finding of difference, no matter how small, might help undermine the (agreeable) dominant world view. Thus my embrace of science may depend on what I have to gain and what I have to lose.
I have a progressive colleague who becomes agitated around discussions of genetics. She seems offended by suggestions that some traits are inheritable, or that different ethnic groups can have different propensities, or that a study of genetics can indicate a person’s lineage. Recently I suggested to her that there is greater genetic variation among humans in Africa than in S. America, and that this variation helped support the idea that humans have lived in Africa longer than in S. America. For a moment I thought she’d explode. In her world view, the whole idea of genetics lends dangerous support to Nazi ideology. Because Nazi ideology is dangerous, anything supporting it must be wrong. (Or so I surmise; honestly, I don’t sense that she’s open to discussing her views on the subject with me.)
A thought exercise: What empirical propositions are so offensive to your world view that you’d reject studies that tended to support them? It’s easy to pick on fundamentalist rubes for refusing to face reality, but don’t we all have sacred cows? So if the journal Science published a peer-reviewed study showing that the production of skin pigment detracts from the production of brain cells, leading to a causal link between intellectual capacity and white skin, how deep would your commitment to science be then?
There, but for the grace of Darwin, go I….
Interesting question, nobody.really. Certainly we all tend to cherry-pick the evidence that supports our worldview, often without even thinking about it; that’s how prejudice works. I would like to think I’d accept scientific findings no matter how challenging to my views.
The question of what you do with the scientific findings remains, though. Suppose (desperately trying to frame this in a not-too-inflammatory way) a well-done scientific study showed that, on average, brunettes were slightly smarter than blondes, as measured by SAT and other test scores. How should that change public policy? (My answer would be not at all: everyone should still have equal rights, access to education, and opportunity.)
On a slightly different tangent, I would like to ask Ron, and anyone else who’s interested: do you think morality can exist apart from religion? Do you think, to put it crudely, religious people are more moral than atheists?
Do you think morality can exist apart from religion? Do you think, to put it crudely, religious people are more moral than atheists?
Those are two VERY different questions.
I’d say that defining religion broadly, as an unproveable belief which defines proper actions, morality can’t exist apart from religion; they are very nearly the same thing. In my understanding, there is no way of getting to “should” that is proveable. (Note that I’m including (e.g.) Buddhism and Humanism as religions in this definition.)
That doesn’t say anything useful about whether, given a set of “shoulds”, religious people do better at living in accordance with them.
I agree about the provability part, Sam, but I’m not sure I agree that atheism/secular humanism is a religion, since it prescribes no specific (or even general) set of moral tenets. An atheist can believe that since you only get one shot at it, you should do as much as you can to leave the world a better place; or she can believe that since there’s no eternal reward or punishment, it makes sense to grab whatever you can and to hell (as it were) with everyone else; or she can believe anything in between.
I have run into Christians who caricature atheists as perpetual hedonistic teenagers, “hey, Dad’s not home? Party!!!”, but the atheists I know aren’t like this; they simply find it impossible to believe in God.
The answers are yes to the first question and no to the second. There are many ways to define morality that have nothing to do with religion. The “is-ought” problem can be ignored if morality is defined as an axiomatic system; one simply accepts the axioms of a system and uses the system to decide the morality of an act. Additionally, humans – and even other animals – are born with an innate capability to learn the moral rules of a culture. It’s an evolutionary advantage for social animals to have a system of morality because it helps them cooperate effectively. Moral judgments, in practice, are a lot like aesthetic judgments. It’s hard to objectively define what makes one artistic or literary work better than another, but in practice, people usually agree that The Shawshank Redemption is a better movie than Plan Nine from Outer Space. Both aesthetic and moral judgments seem to lie somewhere between objective facts and completely subjective preferences; in both cases, we really are referring to something that goes beyond arbitrary personal taste, but it’s not clear what that is.
As for whether religion promotes morality, I might suggest considering that atheists are underrepresented in U.S. prisons and that the religiousness of a countries’ population is inversely correlated with many secular measures of well-being. Largely secular Europe tends to be a lot richer, more democratic, and more egalitarian than largely religious South America and Africa. Among rich nations, the United States ranks abnormally high in both religion and measures of ill-being such as infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, and so on. (Also, don’t get me started on the morality of specific religions…)
Lu: You will probably like this link
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/whymoral.html
Nobody.really: that is the heart of the “are you a real scientist?” question. Ideally, the answer would be “I accept all new data to the degree it is reliable.” I suspect that in reality I would have difficulty for some things, but I can’t think of which off the top of my head.
Also, that this mulishness is easily confused with the rational tactic of viewing new, unusually different, results with skepticism. Absent a compelling explanation for a differing result (a new experimental technique, for example) then it is reasonable to suspect the new results until they are more proven. Good science is built on repeatability.
Lu,
When I say “my definition of religions would include Humanism,” I’m not meaning “secular humanism,” as another term for undifferentiated atheism/agnosticism, but the whole set of beliefs that something like the “Humanist Manifesto III” endorses, or that someone like Doug Muder advocates. It includes tenets like:
“We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity.”
“Humanists long for and strive toward a world … where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence.”
Science can tell you that a fetus has no consciousness.
Perhaps (although that’s been debated since your post). But so what? That just brings us to the question of “Does human life begin prior to a fetus gaining consciousness?” That question is not one that science can answer.
There is no secular argument against abortion that holds water for consistency and lack of misogyny.
You are welcome to your opinion. I do not share it. And it would be a wild hijack of the thread to start to debate it here.
While science does not offer opinion, obviously, I think you could pick a stronger example.
I’m not trying to prove the morality or immorality of abortion here though either scientific or religious means. My point was to show that there are questions that science cannot answer not because of a lack of knowledge (which might be solved in future years as science advances) but because of the nature of science itself. I think the example is adequate for that.
On a slightly different tangent, I would like to ask Ron, and anyone else who’s interested: do you think morality can exist apart from religion? Do you think, to put it crudely, religious people are more moral than atheists?
Hm. Incipient thread hijack. I’m trying to behave myself these days, but I’ll take a shot. As Sam points out, these are in fact two different (although related) questions.
There are systems of morality that exist that do not posit the existence of a supernatural force or plane of existence. That seems clear to me. Are they of equal value to what I will broadly call religious systems? I don’t think so. They can approach them, but I don’t think they get there.
Overall, that is. There are religous systems out there that are quite amoral. The current strain of fascism that is cloaking itself in Islam these days claims to be a religous system. I suppose it is. The participants seem to sincerely believe that they are carrying out God’s will. But I’d hardly hold it up as an example of supreme morality.
So some religous people are certainly less moral than atheists – I’ll posit that the average atheist isn’t active in beheading people and engaging in general slaughter of innocents to gain a political or philosophical point.
That’s an example of “religious” people whose religion doesn’t meet the standard of what any sane person would call moral. But they are acting in a fashion consistent with their religion; thankfully they seem to be a minority among religions across the world. But there’s a second group of people to think about; people who are at least nominally a member of a religion but don’t act in accord with the tenets of their religion. For example; a Catholic gets/pays for/assists with an abortion. They are knowingly not acting in accord with their religion. Their religion has consistently held abortion to be evil, a serious sin and at variance with the word of God. The people in charge of their religion say that they have just separated themselves from their religion and are no longer Catholic. Is a person who acts at variance with the tenets of their religion (include theft, etc., any sin you choose) and is unrepentant (a key point) really a religious person?
What’s a religious person?
There are systems of morality that exist that do not posit the existence of a supernatural force or plane of existence. That seems clear to me. Are they of equal value to what I will broadly call religious systems? I don’t think so. They can approach them, but I don’t think they get there.
Why not?
The atheists I know (I don’t consider myself quite an atheist, but I’m not exactly a theist either, and I certainly don’t subscribe to any monotheist doctrine) aren’t atheists because subscribing to the moral tenets of a religion would interfere with their hedonistic lifestyle, but because they can’t believe in God. Asking my husband to believe in God, certainly in the Judeo-Christian God, would be like asking him to believe that the trees in our yard are out to get him: he can’t do the necessary mental gymnastics. Is he therefore morally inferior to a Christian who tries to live according to God’s will as she understands it? If you judged him only by his behavior, I think you’d say he’s a pretty good guy. (Of course I’m biased, but I picked him because I know his behavior and motivations better than I do anyone else’s.)
Before i inevitably misinterpret and reply to something you didn’t mean ;) can you elaborate a bit on the bold part?
Edit: Never mind. The argument I had here doesn’t hold up. “A is more likely if B” and “B is more likely if C” does not necessarily imply “A is more likely if C”. (I worked out a counterexample on paper.)
“The first is bias. I think that the left likes science because it’s telling them what they want to hear. For instance if the ’solution’ to global warming weren’t something that lefties already wanted to do I don’t think they’d be as devoted to it. For another example look at the resistance to much of what economics has to say for instance.”
Joe, economics isn’t a hard science. Economists are to economics what family counselors are to raising a family, roughly.
That said, economics is a diverse field, with many differing opinions (particularly in countries besides America). Could you be more specific?
“But let me pose a question…Do you think there are social issues or problems that science simply cannot solve?
For example, I think there are certain morality questions that science cannot solve. I don’t think science can tell us the meaning of life (whatever that means).”
Rachel, by ‘science’, do you in fact mean humanism? Or any atheistic belief system in general? Because I have a suspicion that we’re blurring the line here between science proper and ‘scientific world view’, a catchall term for people who don’t believe that biting an apple and talking to a snake led to eternal damnation for all.
I value your question regarding the academy and institutions of science. I just don’t think saying the same about science itself leads us anywhere.
I also think that when some people question the limitations of ‘science’, their objections could be better worded as questioning the limitations of ‘reason’. I don’t know why, but many seem unwilling to voice the latter.
“On a slightly different tangent, I would like to ask Ron, and anyone else who’s interested: do you think morality can exist apart from religion? Do you think, to put it crudely, religious people are more moral than atheists?”
Does all morality come from God? Does that mean anything that God does is moral by definition, and anything he condemns is immoral? So the capture and rape of Canaanites in the Old Testament – not to mention some more offbeat ones such as Lots’ daughters’ drunken incest rape, or God sending bears to maul children who make fun of the prophet Elisha’s baldness – moral by definition, because God did it? Morality is then reduced to 100% obedience, 0% rational faculty.
Because if anything God does *isn’t* moral by definition, then you’re setting an independent system of morality using your human reasoning, emotion, experiences, learning, etc. – what else are you using to judge what God does? (Think about it.) And if you’re doing that, what you’re doing is no different from what any atheist does.
And I realize your comment was about religion, not God per se, but if we can discount God, I don’t see what sets religion apart from secular organizations, secular belief systems, secular culture, secular traditions, etc.
“For example, even the choice of a particular subject for scientific inquiry reflects some subjectivity.”
This, I think, is an excellent point. Logical positivist types who positively seethe with hatred of messrs Kuhn, Derrida, etc. I think should be objects of such comments. But if we’re debating philosophy of science, limiting the foil to merely religion is too restrictive.
So if the journal Science published a peer-reviewed study showing that the production of skin pigment detracts from the production of brain cells, leading to a causal link between intellectual capacity and white skin, how deep would your commitment to science be then?
My comment on Science (the journal) would be what it has been in the past: that they (ie their editors and reviewers) sometimes get carried away by either the prestige of the author or the newsworthiness of the finding and forget about little things like making sure the data are valid*. It is perfectly true that I would be more likely to tear apart an article that proported to demonstrate a finding that I did not like than one I did like, but I hope I am honest enough to face the facts if either a finding I disliked proved to be well documented or if a finding I did like was based on clearly inadequate evidence and accept the first and reject the second. On the other hand (back on the first?) I would also caution against over interpretation. If, for example, the paper in your example looked like it was very clearly accurate and there were a negative correlation between brain cells and melanocyte size. Would that mean that whites are smarter? Not necessarily. There is no clear correlation between brain size and intelligence within a given species. For example, I’ve heard it claimed (from a second hand source, I must admit) that Einstein’s brain was rather small on autopsy.
*This has clearly happened in the past and I’ve made nasty comments about Science’s editorial standards in the past because of it, so I wouldn’t be inventing a new skepticism just for a result I didn’t like.