Science is NOT faith-based!

[JamesDillon]

Sol, you're completely misunderstanding my point. I'm not erecting any straw men, you simply aren't getting it. First of all, by "uniformity of nature" I mean what I said in my first post in this thread: that like causes create like effects over time; i.e., future futures resemble past futures. That is exactly synonymous with what Phil said (though the formulation I used, though not original to myself, is more precise) and it is hardly controversial that this is not only an underlying premise of the scientific method but of inductive reasoning generally.

What more rationally defensible reason could you possibly ask for beyond impressive success after impressive success?

Again, you're trying to justify inductive reasoning by using an inductive process-- this is a classic example of circular reasoning. "Induction works because it has always worked in the past!" So? Unless the premise that past experience is predictive of future experience (i.e., that nature is uniform in the sense I explain above) is rationally justified, that fact is utterly irrelevant. And you can't justify the premise by pointing out that past futures have resembled past pasts, because, again, that's completely circular.

 

[sol invictus]

First of all, by "uniformity of nature" I mean what I said in my first post in this thread: that like causes create like effects over time; i.e., future futures resemble past futures. That is exactly synonymous with what Phil said

It's certainly not synonymous.

Let me give you an example: suppose the fine-structure "constant" is actually changing with time. If so, many other physical quantities in our world will be changing as well, and the future will have different laws of physics than the past. Or take the example I gave in my post - that the laws are totally chaotic, changing all the time.

Either of those scenarios is perfectly amenable to the scientific method and satisfy Phil's condition - they both have "rules" which one could figure out from observation - but neither meets your criterion.

Again, you're trying to justify inductive reasoning by using an inductive process-- this is a classic example of circular reasoning. "Induction works because it has always worked in the past!" So?

There's nothing circular about it. It works, but I'm not using that to conclude anything. I'm just not going to change my behavior unless it stops working - why should I?

 

[articulett]

Aren't mathematical models built upon axioms pretty much like math...? Aren't there inductive and deductive properties in those... and in logic itself. Is math a "faith" or "philosophy"? I don't understand JD's premise. I guess I could call it a faith... but it's a faith that works... a faith based on evidence. You don't need to "believe" in it for it to work. I'd call that trust... a scientific theory is the framework... the best explanation for the observed facts-- a road map for finding out more... a framework to the puzzle we are getting the pieces for.

I think of faith as belief without or despite evidence. You make up the picture you want and force the pieces of the puzzle you have into some configuration of what you want. I think of faith as the opposite of skepticism... of science... an opposite/ false way of achieving knowing or understanding of anything objectively true.

I follow Phil fine, and I agree with him. Unless you want to water the term faith down until it's meaningless, I find the scientific method the opposite of a faith based system of "knowledge".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Skeptigirl, my point (or the point, which is hardly mine originally and is well recognized in philosophical circles) goes deeper than you apparently realize. Evidence is relevant to truth only to the extent that the process of inductive reasoning based on empirical observation is a logically rational way of acquiring knowledge or rationally-founded beliefs. Induction, as I point out above, relies on the premise of the uniformity of nature, but that premise is itself an assumption that cannot be proven in any non-circular manner. That's really the rub of the point. So Phil is wrong to say that science does not rely on unprovable axioms-- it does. Is there a way to distinguish that from "faith" in the pejorative sense which involves believing something simply because you really want it to be true? I wish I knew, but that's a problem that has stumped philosophers at least since Hume and I don't have any great personal expectations of resolving it definitively.

But you keep missing the follow up step. That is testing the hypotheses and finding the underlying premise is correct.

If philosophers are stumped, send them to me, I'll straighten them out.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sol, you're completely misunderstanding my point. I'm not erecting any straw men, you simply aren't getting it. First of all, by "uniformity of nature" I mean what I said in my first post in this thread: that like causes create like effects over time; i.e., future futures resemble past futures. That is exactly synonymous with what Phil said (though the formulation I used, though not original to myself, is more precise) and it is hardly controversial that this is not only an underlying premise of the scientific method but of inductive reasoning generally.


Again, you're trying to justify inductive reasoning by using an inductive process-- this is a classic example of circular reasoning. "Induction works because it has always worked in the past!" So? Unless the premise that past experience is predictive of future experience (i.e., that nature is uniform in the sense I explain above) is rationally justified, that fact is utterly irrelevant. And you can't justify the premise by pointing out that past futures have resembled past pasts, because, again, that's completely circular.

I'm pretty sure we "get it". I'm also pretty sure we don't all agree with your logic.

To state what Sol did in my words, we act on these principles. We don't need "faith" that they are correct because should they turn out not to be, we adjust accordingly. These are principles you act on, not principles you have faith in.

 

[arthwollipot]

Skeptigirl, my point (or the point, which is hardly mine originally and is well recognized in philosophical circles) goes deeper than you apparently realize.

I don't understand JD's premise.

I do. Anything can be reduced to solipsism if you want to apply reduction ad absurdum, and this is exactly what JD is heading towards.

JD, sure. If you really want to take it far enough, then there are unproven assumptions underlying everything. Do you really exist? Does this forum really exist? Maybe not, but who cares? Solipsism is a philosophical dead-end. You haven't taken your argument quite that far yet, but you may as well have.

I'll come right out and say it. There are unproven assumptions underlying the scientific method. Science accepts these assumptions (Phil pointed them out in his article) and moves on as though they don't matter because they really don't. Questioning these underlying assumptions is counterproductive, because if we question them, science couldn't proceed. So we take it as read that the universe obeys natural laws, and we take it as read that these laws can be determined through observation - because there is no other way that we can find out about the universe.

Yes, these assumptions are unproven. But they work. And that's all that matters.

 

[TheLoneBedouin]

I disagree. Ever heard of Paul Feyerabend?

Feyerabend preferred to use another – more famous – example from the history of science: Galileo's work on geostaticism. His reductio consisted in three stages, designed to critique naïve empiricism, Popper's falsificationism and Lakatos' Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes in turn – each being an instance of a rationalist approach to science (in the case of the latter two, the most common even today). For the first of these, he considered the famous Tower Argument, a circumstance relied upon by Aristotelians to discount the possibility of a moving Earth. Its proponents pointed to the fact that a stone dropped from a tower lands at its base.

Edited by Darat: 

Breach of Rule 4 removed link to article quoted: http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43838

...snip...

 

[QED]

I disagree.

With what exactly? That science isn't faith-based?

Let me see whether I can get it right. You (or rather Feyerabend) argue that it's not OK to accept a theory on the basis of evidence, because this evidence could be false or incomplete. Naive empiricism can be wrong, because of this.

The naïve empiricist has no means of deciding between these two rival theories and hence any choice made by Galileo would violate this form of empiricism.If our methodology insists that only those decisions made on the basis of evidence can be called rational then Galileo and the Aristotelians alike were irrational to prefer geokineticism or geostaticism respectively.

So it is a question of what level of evidence is required to distinguish between competing models, or which hypothesis it is more reasonable to believe in. Does this imply that faith is required to justify one theory over the other? I don't think so. Faith, as I see it, is unjustified trust. In science you accept a theory based on the amount of evidence for it.

I don't quite understand what Feyerabend wants to say about falsification. It would be great if someone could clarify this part, so that a non-philosopher like me can understand it. As I understand it, he says that falsification can lead to situations where both suggested models of explanation can be considered equally predictive, thus as a methodology, it fails to provide a basis for distinguishing the two.

But aren't these special cases? Certain situations were there isn't enough data to make a decision? Science is an ongoing process, so of course there are times when the strength of a hypothesis cannot be decided, but over time these problems (Aristotle vs. Galileo for example) were settled in the context of justification. Feyerabend seems to focus too much on what our knowledge is at a certain point in time and misses that we will conduct further experiments to test these theories and hypothesis.
Over time this will lead to knowledge that is strongly supported. We know that DNA carries genetic information. It's an established fact.

 

[Beausoleil]

It's been a while since I read Feyerabend's books, but as I recollect an overview of his approach might be that, whatever rules you try to apply to how science should be done, you will find some example where science made progress by breaking exactly those rules.

As an example, he provides an account of the Galileo affair and argues that falsification should have led to Galileo's theories being rejected.

From Feyerabend's point of view, it would be a bad thing if all scientists adopted some set of prescriptive rules about how to go about their business, since science profits from, for instance, people continuing to work on theories that have been falsified.

 

[Beausoleil]

But you keep missing the follow up step. That is testing the hypotheses and finding the underlying premise is correct.

If philosophers are stumped, send them to me, I'll straighten them out.

The premise is "testing a hypothesis is a good way to find out if the underlying premise is correct".

Your solution is to derive a hypothesis from this premise and test it. But that only works if the premise is in fact correct. That's where the circularity comes in. The best you can do is demonstrate consistency (which should not be undervalued).

From what I can see, though, the original article takes the wrong tack. It isn't that science makes no assumptions whereas religion does. It is that everybody who isn't insane lives their lives using inductive reasoning, religious people in some way or other evoke a God to explain why it works. So there is no "my untested assumption vs yours", it's "my untested assumption vs your acceptance of exactly the same premise but creating a justification for it that is untested".

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

Folks--

I put up a blog entry today called "Is Science faith-based?" because I am good and sick of hearing the definition of science abused by the willfully (and woefully) ignorant.

I'm curious about peoples' thoughts on this. I hope this is useful.

The scientific method makes one assumption, and one assumption only: the Universe obeys a set of rules. That’s it. There is one corollary, and that is that if the Universe follows these rules, then those rules can be deduced by observing the way Universe behaves. This follows naturally; if it obeys the rules, then the rules must be revealed by that behavior.

When science believes in ideas which violate said rules than that is not, by your words, science. It is faith.


BTW, Do you think science is a noun or a verb?

 

[The Bad Astronomer]

Sigh.

As I pointed out, science makes one assumption: The universe obeys rules, and by observing its behavior we can deduce those rules.

The thing is, we've shown this to be true, so it's no longer an assumption.

That's why science wins. It's not faith-based. It's based on evidence.

 

[Beausoleil]

Sigh.

As I pointed out, science makes one assumption: The universe obeys rules, and by observing its behavior we can deduce those rules.

The thing is, we've shown this to be true, so it's no longer an assumption.

That's why science wins. It's not faith-based. It's based on evidence.

I suspect there's a lot of sighing.

Rule: "The universe obeys rules, and by observing its behavior we can deduce those rules."

How did we show this rule to be true? By observing the behaviour of the universe. And what principle did we use? We used the principle that "The universe obeys rules, and by observing its behavior we can deduce those rules." But that was what we were trying to establish.

You can only show a general principle to be true from evidence if the universe obeys rules. So you can't use evidence to confirm the general principle that the universe obeys rules that can be determined using evidence. The best you can do is show that your approach is consistent.

But it's a non issue. Everyone assumes that the universe obeys rules. The difference is that (some) religious people invent a God to "explain" why the universe obeys rules. It's just another example of "explaining" the existence of the universe by postulating a God that created it, but not having an explanation for how the God came to be.

 

[Beausoleil]

I don't know about this Jerome person

But does anyone seriously think that the universe can be understood by observing it, which is itself a feature of the universe, can be established by observing the universe? Isn't the circularity obvious?

 

[arthwollipot]

Yes, but the circularity is meaningless when you consider that that's the only thing that we can do.

Edited by Darat: 

Personalised content removed.

 

[Acleron]

I don't know about this Jerome person

But does anyone seriously think that the universe can be understood by observing it, which is itself a feature of the universe, can be established by observing the universe? Isn't the circularity obvious?

That will only cause a problem if the observing interacts with the observation.

Observing a planet such as Saturn in its orbit doesn't affect the observed object.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I somehow ended up posting to an old Pharyngula blog entry before I realized it was a year old. I don't want what I wrote to go to waste so I'm posting it here even though it is redundant for what has already been said. It addresses god beliefs as well as science but bear with me, I left that in for context. You need to look at what faith based beliefs really are in order to see that evidence based beliefs are not that.




It was in response to the following:

...[snip]... Science isn't scientism.

"So how did a method for investigating the four dimensions of physical, material, reality we experience become an absolute epistemology where my insistence that god is more than the reality of tables and chairs, become some kind of definition of my psychiatric condition ?"

Because it is about what we can observe and it works. The abstract of religion, and much of its practises, doesn't.

...[snip]...

Science is about observations. During its history dualisms like machanical sprits or souls have been dropped since they have no explanatory power. It wasn't an a priori suggestion.

"But as Stephen Jay Gould insisted, "the natural sciences simply cannot adjudicate on the God question. If the sciences are used as the basis of either atheism or religious beliefs, they are misused.""

Gould proposed a dualistic view - dualisms have always yielded to science. The proper view is that science is secular, without accepting Gould's dualism.

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | April 28, 2006 10:55 PM

Gould, IMO, was expressing an opinion that will eventually fade in the natural progression of the collective human conscious. There is an evidence based belief system and a non-evidence based belief system. Non-evidence based beliefs are often given labels such as 'faith' based, as if there was something unique about faith vs other forms of non-evidence.

Likewise there are a number of additional rationalizations for why god beliefs are 'special'. "Science looks at how and religion looks at why". "Religion provides morality". "Science cannot answer the 'god' question".

Nonsense! The 'why' question supposedly answered by religion falls apart with closer scrutiny. What kind of purpose to life is worshiping some ego-maniacal tyrant? If I need a purpose I think I'll find one a little more beneficial to humanity and my heirs.

That people depend on god beliefs for their morality can be discredited by a simple look at the evidence. There is no evidence the vast majority of human morality decisions are influenced by such things as the threat of burning in hell for all eternity. Evolution of a gregarious species explains primate morality quite sufficiently. Moral behaviors are observable in non-human primates and predictions such as, children will exhibit a sense of morality without having been taught, have been tested. Such test outcomes verify the hypothesis morality is as much nature as nurture.

The "science cannot test for gods" is another fallacy that even most scientists believe is true. The only gods science cannot test for the existence of are gods which either cover their tracks or which don't interact with the Universe. First, I doubt you could find any early god beliefs describing such a god. And second, if a god really met the definition of not interacting with the Universe, then there would be no reason for humans to have any awareness of such a god.

It boils down to a semantics argument. If you define god as untestable, well, d'uh, you cannot test for such a god. But a god defined that way is by definition irrelevant. Other than specifically defining god as untestable, no other god beliefs are consistent with such a god. But whatever one claims one's god does, is testable.

But let's take that science methodology argument one step further. Proper methodology is to follow the evidence to its conclusion, not start with the conclusion (in this case that gods could or do exist), and fit the evidence to it. If you follow the evidence you find the best explanation for god beliefs is that as humans evolved, they created god beliefs as a way of explaining and attempting to control the natural world. And, there are a few additional complex social consequences of group religion which the evidence supports as the reason god beliefs developed. But the one thing the evidence does not support is the hypothesis that god beliefs developed because early humans actually encountered real gods.

Getting back to Gould and my statement his ideas are a step along the way to a true rational collective human conscious, I think history in the far distant future of the human species will show that. Not just Gould, but many other rational thinkers today are close to letting go of gods. But they still find the need to accommodate something that is still so pervasive among people in the world. How can you say the vast majority of the humans on the planet are wrong and you know better? And there's the issue of 'accommodate or lose god believers altogether' when you try to increase rational thinking in a society. On that one even I can put up a facade of accommodation of faith beliefs alongside evidence based beliefs.

Gould may have believed what he said about the importance of god beliefs, or he may have just taken that position to avoid confronting theists head on. Progress in science, however, is unlikely to cease as long as the human species survives. The arguments for maintaining god beliefs are fallacious as I have pointed out above. The arguments for accommodating god beliefs, while likely to be long term, should still be temporary. The evidence for the natural Universe remains at the end of the day. There is no other outcome probable than that eventually the evidence will resolve the god question. How can I say that? Because science based, aka evidence based beliefs, lead to successful outcomes. Faith based, aka non-evidence based beliefs, other than uniting people behind a cause, do not. And we have overwhelming evidence that evolution favors success.

 

[HghrSymmetry]

String theory cannot work without 11 dimensions of spacetime, as you rightly point out. But there is another thing that string theory cannot work without - Supersymmetry (this is why string theory is properly called superstring theory). The details aren't important, but supersymmetry predicts that each kind of fundamental particle has a superpartner, which we have not detected yet because they are too massive for our current generation of particle accelerators.

The LHC comes on line this year. It may be able to produce superpartners that we can observe. This will not be direct evidence for superstring theory, but it will be strong circumstantial evidence that we are on the right track. There is no need for supersymmetry in the standard model. If superpartner particles are found, it will indicate that the universe respects supersymmetry, and there's no reason for it to do that unless something like string theory is correct.

SuperSymmetry also has some very compelling aspects including the ability to remove the infinities in string theories, solves the glitches in GUT theory, and explains the strength differences in quantum forces.

The forces (electromagnetic, weak and strong) in our present low energy universe have greatly different strength levels.
When the clock is "wound back" they tend to almost equalize in strength near the big B. They are close, but not quite equal. Add in SuperSymmetry and lo and behold...they become exactly equal in strength.
True, that's not proof of its validity, but it is an interesting mathematical result.
If the LHC could discover some sparticles, it could indicate that SS (and strings) may be on the right track.

 

[HghrSymmetry]

Yes, but is faith science based?

Perhaps that would be a more appropriate question.

Not a bad article in the Newsweek piece.
Added bonus for a JREF reference.

It does take the old "skeptics are just trying to feel like a special group railing against the crazies" angle, but that is to be expected. Shermer reinforces it at the end of the article as well.

The belief that minds are not bound to bodies, and therefore that ghosts and other spirits exist here in the physical world, reflects a deep dualism in the human psyche. No matter how many times neuroscientists assert that the mind has no existence independent of the brain, "we still think of our essence as mental, and of our mind as being independent of body," says Fordham's Guthrie. "Once you've signed on to that, existence after death is really quite natural." This dualism shows up in children as young as 2, says psychologist Paul Bloom of Yale University: kids readily believe that people can exchange bodies, for instance, and since ghosts lack material bodies but have minds and memories, belief in dualism makes them perfectly plausible. At the even more basic level of perception, the brain is wired for faces, says Northwestern's Reinecke. "Even in the first weeks of life, infants tend to perceive angles, contours and shapes that are consistent with faces," he says. There's Mary on the potato chip again.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/165678/page/1

 

[LarianLeQuella]

Dr Plait,

May I copy/paste this blog entry onto my local newspaper's site?