What is the worst idea in philosophy?

[Mercutio]

I'm also wondering, in his more recent books and also on his website (www.sheldrake.org) he is strongly encouraging laypeople to get directly involved with scientific research. Could this be a contributing factor to other scientists ignoring him?

In my opinion, it is certainly a contributing factor to both his claims of success (in, for instance, the staring studies and the "dogs who know when their owners are coming home" studies), and to the quick dismissal of his findings by mainstream researchers.

One of the more amusing findings in parapsychology is the "shyness effect", which basically states that psi effects are "shy", and that as you increase experimental controls, they hide. Of course, the other thing that decreases as you increase experimental controls...is error. Sheldrake's eagerness to include laypeople is both brilliant (mostly from a PR standpoint) and foolhardy; the concepts of "double-blind", "random assignment to conditions", "randomization of stimulus events", among others, are not immediately understood and appreciated, and yet are absolutely crucial if we are going to trust our results. In the staring experiments, for instance, I would argue that laypeople would be far more likely to be lax about conditions (thus considerable variability in terms of sensory leakage may be introduced), and far more succeptible to motivated reporting of results (much more inclined to report their results to Sheldrake if they find positive results than if they find nothing). Those would be two systematic sources of error; there could be others, of course. Sheldrake (if you saw his "7 experiments" video) appears to simply pile all the experimental results together, resulting (inappropriately) in a huge sample size, which (because statistics are sensitive to sample size) in a very low probability (or high significance) result.

Anyway...this is already longer than I have time for this morning...Bottom line, Sheldrake is ignore by maintream science because of methodological issues (although he does respond to criticism and adjust his methodology in response, to give credit where it is due), and because his morphic field explanation is so vastly different from, and less parsimonious than, our current understanding of visual perception.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Despite these negatives, I still find many of his ideas compelling and am not yet ready to dismiss his claimed results in some of his staring and animal telepathy experiments. I still have more reading to do before I dismiss everything he has to say.

Thats the correct attitude, IMO, and I wonder, why is not everybody like that? Instead of trying to "prove" that what they believe is "true", people should be open to see if the "compelling" data they find is sufficiently congruent, or not, to embrace it in their conceptual frameworks.

 

[Throg]

Thanks, the Spiderman example was great! Of course, now I still need to understand why Sheldrake's theory does not fit in with the real world... Any help in this area (suggested readings perhaps?) would be greatly appreciated...

I wasn't trying to show that it doesn't, I was just trying to provide an example to show that merely because a theory fits with materialism doesn't mean it necessarily fits with reality. I am only vaguely familiar with morphogenetic field theory and not at all with Sheldrake specifically, so I wouldn't want to guess how well his theories fit with the real world just yet.

The large steel divider was suppose to completely block the ants known senses. I don't have enough of a background in this area to know if that is correct

Doesn't seem likely that a steel divider could accomplish this unless the whole experiment was conducted in a vaccuum which would kill the ants. I can't remember exactly how good an ant's sense of "smell" is but for insects, typically, it's hundreds to tens of thousands of times more sensitive than our own.


edited for utter drivelling nonsense.

 

[RandFan]

One could come up with a logically coherent morphogenetic/morphic field theory which was materialistic but coming up with one which was a fit logically with the empirically derived understanding of the real world in which we live is another matter.

I like the way you talk. --Karl

 

[Throg]

I like the way you talk. --Karl

Yeah, I talk real purdy. My dancing's another mater. We don't all have dancing feet. JC has dancing feet.

 

[Iacchus]

John will always exist. But just as john does not exist at alpha centari, he also does not exist in the year 2538 or the year 1853. His existence is mearly limited to a certain space, and a certain time. John will always exist in the year 1999.

Unless of course the entity of John were transcendent.

 

[Z]

Unless of course the entity of John were transcendent.

For which there exists no evidence.

 

[Mercutio]

For which there exists no evidence.

Remember, this is the "worst idea in philosophy" thread...

 

[EvilSmurf]

Dangerous and bad idea:
Peter Singer's "Disabled children and animals are morally equivalent".

 

[Kaylee]

Originally posted by Shera
... now I still need to understand why Sheldrake's theory does not fit in with the real world...

I wasn't trying to show that it doesn't, I was just trying to provide an example to show that merely because a theory fits with materialism doesn't mean it necessarily fits with reality. I am only vaguely familiar with morphogenetic field theory and not at all with Sheldrake specifically, so I wouldn't want to guess how well his theories fit with the real world just yet.

OK, I read too much into your post, sometimes I do that!

Doesn't seem likely that a steel divider could accomplish this unless the whole experiment was conducted in a vaccuum which would kill the ants. I can't remember exactly how good an ant's sense of "smell" is but for insects, typically, it's hundreds to tens of thousands of times more sensitive than our own.

Well I looked this up in one of my favorite online resources: <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ants> Wikipedia </a>.
Basically it seems that ants smell a scent trail left behind by other ants. So I can see why a steel divider would have been thought to be able to prevent the ants from successfully matching up the two halves of the ant's nest when rebuilding. I neglected to mention in my earlier post that the ants studied were one of the larger ants that build complex and extremely tall above ground nests. Sheldrake did say that to his knowledge no one else had tried to replicate this particular experiment -- which is obviously not a bonus. When I get a chance I hope to find the original study and see if Sheldrake summarized it accurately. (So much to read, so little time. )

I also find it fascinating that ants, even the extremely large ones with brains that surely can be no larger than a nail head, are able to accomplish so much. Where and how do they store the information and process it? It just made Sheldrake's hypothesis of morphic fields that much more compelling to me. Of course, I'm obviously not a biologist and the answers to these questions may have all been worked out by them to their satisfaction.

Other reasons why I find Sheldrakes theory of morphic fields interesting is because he used it to explain why certain experiments have shown that people learn heavily used languages more quickly compared to lightly used or artificially created languages of the same complexity. He also used it to explain why successive generations of rats would learn how to use the maze more quickly than their ancestors, or even rats in an earlier generation from a different gene pool (but same type) and different lab. This <a href=http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-moreonmorphgnicflds.html> link </a> summarizes some of the experiments he had described in his books (Specifically exps. 1, 2, 3, 6 & 7) (For the record, I have no comment on the hosting site, I didn't not read or review anything they have to say except for the descriptions of the 5 experiments I listed above, which looks like an accurate recap of how Sheldrake summarized them.)

When I have time, I'd like to be able to read about the quoted experiments from another source.

BTW, I do suspect from other threads I've read here, that among some JREF posters, Sheldrake's hypotheses might qualify for the worst idea in philosophy...

 

[Robin]

Dangerous and bad idea:
Peter Singer's "Disabled children and animals are morally equivalent".

Have to agree.

I was going to say the host of alternate-materialisms like idealism, dualism, pluralism, transmission theory etc which are supposed to provide unspecified solutions to indistinct questions.

But Peter Singer does indeed take the cake for the worst philosophical idea ever, in the face of very intense competition.

 

[Throg]

I also find it fascinating that ants, even the extremely large ones with brains that surely can be no larger than a nail head, are able to accomplish so much. Where and how do they store the information and process it

I remember reading about an artificial intelligence program that supposedly replicated ant behaviour with just eight rules. I don't know any of the details of the study but I cannot imagine that it replicated the the sensory abilities of the ant. Nevertheless, the claim was that when you put several of these AI "ants" together you got emergent complexity in their group behaviour far beyond what you would expect from just eight rules. Here's a link to a website with "interesting facts" website about ants, including the fact that they have 250 000 brain cells, which is more than I would have guessed.
Interesting Facts About Ants

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Mercutio said:
But what I really wanted to point out, before I forgot to, was that Sheldrake appears to be shunned by the mainstream of the parapsychological researchers as well.

Richard Wiseman made this same observation at TAM3.

I think Sheldrake devises shoddy protocols and then does not describe them well enough to find all the problems. I pointed out a problem with his telephone telepathy experiments and he agreed that it was a problem, although he said it didn't affect the results.

~~ Paul

 

[ReFLeX]

Dangerous and bad idea:
Peter Singer's "Disabled children and animals are morally equivalent".

... why? What does he say about how animals should be treated? Does he not agree with Mill about sentient beings?

 

[RandFan]

I would offer eugenics but I'm curious to know more about the movement. First, what is the relationahip of Nietzsche, Nazi ideology and Eugenics if any? Yes I could google but I thought someone here might have a quick answer.

 

[Throg]

I would offer eugenics but I'm curious to know more about the movement. First, what is the relationahip of Nietzsche, Nazi ideology and Eugenics if any? Yes I could google but I thought someone here might have a quick answer.

I don't recall anything directly related to Eugenics in Nietzsche. I always took his Ubermensch concept to be a matter of moral and intellectual evolution than anything physical. One of his formulations of the Ubermensch, if I recall correctly, was "a warrior with the soul of christ". It was all about moving beyond conventional morality, though I did not understand it to be about abandoning morality despite the fact that he appears to literally say this in places. Reading Nietzsche is almost as difficult as reading the Bible - there's an awful lot of poetry wrapped around his ideas. Anyway, he really didn't seem particularly interested in tall, blond-haired paragons of physical virtue.

The Nazis, who co-opted bits of Nietzsche's work, some of it heavily doctored by his sister, were very interested in eugenics. Not so much in the soul of Christ. They had some very deliberate policies aimed at perfecting the Aryan race through selective breeding. Most obviously, they made it illegal for Aryans to have relationships with non-Aryans and encouraged the "genetically inferior" such as those with disabilities to give up their lives for the fatherland - there are various propoganda films of the time on the subject; the one that sticks with me is the story of a wheelchair-bound man who heroically commits suicide at the end for the sake of the fatherland. They also actively encouraged members of the Hitler youth and SS to screw around and had kind of "sex camps" where the cream of the genetic crop were sent now and again to have sex with as many partners as possible, all in the hope of producing a whole new crop of uberkinder (without the soul of course).

I recall reading that a number of states in the U.S had eugenics laws in the thirties, forties and possibly as late as the fifties, particularly relating to the sterilisation of people with certain disabilities. My recollection is vague, however so I am sure someone else can do a much better job of talking about those laws than I can.

 

[Gestahl]

I would offer eugenics but I'm curious to know more about the movement. First, what is the relationahip of Nietzsche, Nazi ideology and Eugenics if any? Yes I could google but I thought someone here might have a quick answer.

Absolutely none, w.r.t. Nietzsche. His ubermensch concept is one of personal evolution and overcoming ones own limitations, not some selective breeding toward a genetic super-man.

Nazis believed that they already were the superior race, and that simply breeding that race would be good. A mild form of eugenics.

A note: Eugenics is selective breeding, not in vitro genetic alteration.

 

[Gestahl]

Worst idea ever: the idea of teleology, or that things have a purpose intrinsic to their nature.

 

[Gestahl]

I don't recall anything directly related to Eugenics in Nietzsche. I always took his Ubermensch concept to be a matter of moral and intellectual evolution than anything physical. One of his formulations of the Ubermensch, if I recall correctly, was "a warrior with the soul of christ".

I highly doubt that last statement. Nietzsche abhorred Christianity. If he did say that, he meant it in the entirely opposite sense of what it implies at face value. Nietzsche was all about overcoming Chrsitian morality, concepts of good and evil, and servitude toward a greater concept than one's self (which is at the core of Christian beliefs).

 

[Gestahl]

Dangerous and bad idea:
Peter Singer's "Disabled children and animals are morally equivalent".

Singer has quite a few unorthodox and on the surface very odd beliefs.

I think his statement there was more of an attempt to say we should treat animals as we treat mentally deficient humans, not the other way around. However, it is a dangerous idea if used in the other direction.