Keeping your brains in the boggle loop …

Design proponents often try to distinguish themselves from both creationists and Darwinists by arguing that they alone are faithful to empiricism — “following the evidence wherever it leads” — whereas both creationists and Darwinists interpret the evidence through the lens of some a priori conceptual framework, a metaphysics.   (I take it to be false, and importantly false, that one can only hold metaphysics in a dogmatic fashion, and that empiricism is the enemy of metaphysics — though of course empiricism is the enemy of dogmatism, if one’s empiricism does not itself become dogmatic.)

Crucial to the design proponent move here — and one can see something comparable in creationism — is the following line of thought (call the “Teach the Controversy” argument):

(1) good scientific methodology requires that we distinguish between observable entities and posited entities;

(2) If the same observations can be explained by two different sets of posited entities, observation cannot tell which ones to prefer;

(3) so all posits are equally ‘metaphysical’ or ‘speculative’;

(4) and the liberal state should be neutral with regard to metaphysics (subject to certain caveats);

(5) so it is an unjust exercise of state power (and contrary to the tenets of political liberalism) for public schools (including state-supported universities) to refuse to allow a public space for different metaphysical doctrines.

Now, I accept (4), and I also accept (1) and (2).  So why don’t I accept (5)?  It’s because I deny (3) –  that all posits are equally metaphysical or speculative.

The line from science to metaphysics is not crossed when one goes from observables to posits — and it is a deep flaw of any empiricism which holds this.  (Holding this view leads to an instrumentalist philosophy of science, which makes scientific progress a mystery — as we’ve discussed here elsewhere — and it also leads to phenomenalism and, if left unchecked, to either Berkleyian idealism or Humean agnosticism.)

For it is true that introducing posits is a central and ineliminable feature of scientific reasoning — what Peirce nicely called “the abductive leap”.  But merely introducing posits is, while necessary, also insufficient for scientific purposes.  We need also some way of testing the positing, wherein we say, “we observe x, y, z, and we posit that there is some unobserved entity A which is causing x, y, and z.  But if A were the case, then we would also expect to observe t, u, and v.  So let us look for them!”   If we do observe t, u, and v, then that bolsters our confidence in the existence of A; if not, it weakens that confidence.

So it is not the case that all posits are equal — some can be tested, and some can’t be, and some posits fare better on some tests than on others, and so on.  And this means that the real distinction between science and metaphysics isn’t based on what is observed vs what is posited, but between testable posits and untestable posits.  And if this is correct, then the empiricist epistemology taken for granted by creationists and design proponents is fundamentally flawed.

 Source: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=4066

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Science presupposes the validity of logic.

Metaphysics accounts for logic itself.

Science presupposes that perception will give us a window into reality.

Metaphysics accounts for perception itself.

Science presupposes that objects outside of us will reveal something about themselves upon their interaction with us.

Metaphysics accounts for the relationship between people and objects.

Science presupposes that nature will be consistent, even if there are aspects of it that we do not understand.

Metaphysics accounts for the nature of consistency.

Science presupposes that any observed phenomenon will have a natural explanation (methodological naturalism).

Metaphysics examines the nature of methodological naturalism.

Science is full of presuppositions.

Metaphysics accounts for the presuppositions.

(Source: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/19526)

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Excerpt from: Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore

Tagore: Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals; it is the impersonal human world of Truths. Religion realizes these Truths and links them up with our deeper needs; our individual consciousness of Truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to Truth, and we know this Truth is good in relation to our own harmony with it.

Einstein: Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack — no primitive beings even. We attribute to Truth a super-human objectivity; it is indispensable for us, this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind — though we cannot say what it means.

Tagore: In the apprehension of Truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, in our ethics. In any case, if there be any Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

It is not hard to imagine a mind which experiences the sequence of things, not in space but in time, like the sequence of musical notes. For such a mind the conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind the moth possessed, which eats that paper, literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for Man’s mind literature has a greater value of Truth than the paper has. In a similar manner if there is some Truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will remain as nothing as long as we remain human beings.

Einstein: Then I am more religious than you are!

Tagore: My religion is in the reconciliation of the Super-personal Man, the universal human spirit, in my own individual being.