Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2000 14:44:53 -0500
From: Doug Porpora <porporad-AT-drexel.edu>
Subject: BHA: Re: Life, the universe, and everything


Hi all,

I'm glad to return to a continuingly lively conversation.  I have
concessions to make all around, but as I drone on for a while, people may
want just to check by the capitalized names.

TOBIN:  Colin may see this differently, but I don't have a problem
conceding that scientific questions must concern themselves with empirical
content.  As Colin suggests, this is almost tautological, but, I don't
think, in an empty way.  There are conceptual questions and empirical
questions.  The conceptual questions that mathematics treats do not require
any empirical input.  For that reason, though, pure mathematics does not
tell us anything directly about our empirical reality -- and could be said
therefore not to be a science.  As soon as we address ourselves to
empirical reality, we ask empirical questions. So for empirical questions I
would say empirical content is necessary.

However, and this takes back, Tobin, much of what I just gave, I don't see
this as what we we are talking about when we ask about criteria for theory
selection.  Since for science's empirical questions, empirical content is
necessary for a theory to be even in competition, I would assume that all
contenders at least address the empirical in some form. So it is a rather
minimal criterion.  If you take that as an admission that there are after
all some universal criteria, okay.  As I think Colin agrees, for us the
universality of criteria was never the primary issue but the determinacy of
the choice such criteria give.

RUTH: As a Taylorist like you (Note, others, not the Winslowian variety), I
have no problem crediting Aristotle.  I didn't know Aristotle instructed us
"to follow the object." Could you direct me to the relevant passages?

Your other point catches me a bit.  As I wrote what I did, it made me a bit
nervous too, but I was hoping for it to get by.  Not so lucky, I see.  You
write:

>in terms of the reintroduced
>"intransitive object" doing epistemological work, I can't help but want to
>emphasize the caution that has to be exercised if you are going to link
>ontological realism to strictly epistemic concerns in this way.  You (we,
>one, whatever) have to be really careful not to fall into what RB calls the
>"ontic fallacy" -- the idea that knowledge (or even epistemic criteria, if
>you're going to insist on going all meta on us!) can be read off of being.

Okay, I'm just thinking through this now so let's see how it goes. The
first thing to say is that what I meant can potentially all be interpreted
in the transitive dimension.  If we make a truth claim, then it is the
nature of the claim and of the objects to which it refers that informs the
criteria that should be brought to bear on deciding its truth.  So we will
use some (but not totally) different criteria to decide on an
interpretation of Hamlet than we will to decide whether or not gravity
waves exist.

You will now say then it is the transitive rather than the intransitive
object doing the work.  For now, as far as my bold comment went, let me
say, "Yes, okay."  I think, though, even put this way, the formulation
takes us to a place different from where we expected.  What do you think?

But let us not be too hasty. The next point takes us to one of Mervyn's
non-theological points to me. (My view, Mervyn is that as long as you argue
about God with me, you are already doing theology.  Welcome to our order :)

NONTHEOLOGICAL MERVYN: You make two points, one of which I heartily want to
accept, and one I want to take issue with.  You write:

>I would locate the explanatory power rule, not within a
>Lakatosian problematic, but within the epistemological dialectic (or
>logic of scientific discovery) Roy adapts from Hegel (which has a
>Lakatosian moment among many - a Feyerabendian one too!):when the
>scientific community goes over to a new theory it does so on the basis
>of an assessment of greater explanatory power (the assessment being
>made, as you say, in a very complex and context-specific way; it would
>of course include addressing any 'conceptual problems').  I find it
>interesting that this dialectic hasn't figured in the present
>discussion. I wonder whether you were perhaps thinking of it, Doug, when
>you said we haven't fully realized all that CR gives us?

The point I accept relates to Ruth's query:  The dialectical nature of
knowledge.  Yes, it has gotten short shrift.  It was not what I was
thinking of in the context you ask about, but, like you, I consider it
tremendously important.

I see knowledge as a dialogue with the world. The scientific community puts
questions to the world in the form of experiments or experiment-extensions.
The world speaks in reply but often ambiguously.  The scientists then go
back and try to refine what they ask.  Like a game of twenty questions.  So
there definitely is a dialectic there.  And -- against the social
constructionists, I would say the world or the object is one of the
interlocuters.  Our data is the world -- specifically, the object --
speaking to us.  And the nature of the data also informs the subsequent
questions we ask, dialectically as in a dialogue.

Okay, Mervyn, the point I disagree with.  You say that when scientists opt
for one theory over the other, it is because of the victorious theory's
greater explanatory power.  Yes, if you interpret explanatory power broadly
enough but not necessarily if you interpret it more narrowly. Let's switch
to:

SUVIR:

>The concept of explanatoy power is absolutely confusing in the light of the
>fact that justification and eplanation are interwined. It is not the stories
>of justificatio that we attach to a theory that increases its aceptability
>but the number of predictions it can make that does so.

I think this is an excellent point.  Imagine two theories.  Theory A can
account for everything in its own terms -- but only after the fact.  It has
little or no predictive capacity.  In contrast, theory B is not so global
in its scope but where it overlaps with A, it has the advantage of novel
and successful predictions.  Which theory do you choose?  It is hardly
clear to me that I would choose A.  In fact, I think eventually behaviorism
stood in relation to a more purposive account as theory A stands in
relation to theory B and that this, too, was one of the reasons behaviorism
was rightly discarded.  So, again, I would resist explanatory power in any
narrow sense as the ultimate epistemological trump.

But now I have to defend Suvir against Marsh.

MARSH:

Predictiveness comes in different varieties.  I totally agree that the
predictiveness associated with the nomothetic covering law model is a
hopeless way to understand causality in a causally open world.

But that does not mean predictiveness has no purchase outside the
laboratory.  Certain elementary particles were predicted by theory, and
then they were subsequently found empirically.  That is a kind of
predictiveness.  Similarly, although our society loves to point to Marx's
failed predictions, there are many Marxian predictions now borne out.
These are not nomothetic predictions, but to the extent that a theory can
successfully predict, both Lakatos and Laudan consider it highly creditable
to the theory, even more so in fact than just the ability to explain
results in the theory's own terms.

THEOLOGICAL MERVYN: Mervyn, I have to admit, you gave me pause. I had to
wonder (1) whether I do operate on at least some faith; and (2) whether
theology is a different way of knowing.

But, then, I rallied.  Well, how much I'm not sure.  I respond but am still
thinking about what you say.  We'll see what comes out here.

You write:

>The sticking point for me is that theology sometimes asserts the
>existence or reality of domains that imo by definion can never be
>validated by personal experience let alone tested for in some sense
>scientifically e.g. the existence of an afterlife or the one I have
>already mentioned, that the principle of order in the universe(s) is the
>love of God. If God exists one could of course experience Its love, but
>I don't think one could experience the love of God holding the universe
>together any more than one can experience one's own death in advance of
>it.
>
>It seems to me that, if we don't accept them on authority, we can only
>arrive at such notions by intuition or faith - and this is what Roy does
>in EW. Transcendental arguments are of course offered or implicit, but
>my point is there's no way of grounding them  empirically. This is very
>different from the gravity waves case which are not in principle
>insusceptible to empirical demonstration - or if they are, we have
>arrived at ontological limits for science in virtue of the limits of our
>powers of observation.
>
>But since you yourself explicitly renounce faith and (critically) trust
>in your personal experience and in 'scientific means', I take it that
>you do not make such claims. In which case, your theology is not an
>essentially different way of knowing from some of the other fields of
>inquiry you mention. Other theologies are...
>
>I take your point re 'demonstrable results' qualifying the element of
>faith in science itself.

I'm wondering now whether I truly deserve what you've generously granted
me. You mention two examples in particular:  the after life and love as the
cement of the universe.  I am agnostic (but hopeful) about the first, which
Porporian theology has always considered a side issue. I would not quite
formulate the second as Roy does.  Yet, as a Christian, I do think love --
yes, I suppose, unconditional love -- is the Alethic reality behind the
universe.

Let's begin with the after life. As Tobin and I agreed a while back, we can
always make inferences to the best explanation.  Sometimes, as in this
case, the empirical evidence both ways is weak.  Our inferences then will
be tentative.  But there still are empirical and conceptual matters to
consider.

Like what?  Well, a nonreductive materialism has taken out much wind from
the sails of the kind of ontic dualism that posits a soul.  If not
decisively, that  at least counts against an afterlife. But there are other
kinds of weak sorts of evidence to consider.  Near-death experiences.  I am
not convinced these demonstrate an afterlife, but nor am I convinced of the
neuropsychological explanation ordinarily afforded them.

There was even an interesting experiment done a while back on this issue.
People with near-death experiences report hovering at the top of the room
and looking down on everything.  One researcher placed a sign high up where
it could only be read from the ceiling.  Unfortunately, near-death
experiences are infrequent enough that the experiment concluded before it
could be tested.  In principle, however, here is a way to adjudicate even
experimentally about our claims concerning the after life.

Finally, I had mentioned to Colin a disconcerting book I just read:  _Old
Souls:  The Evidence for Reincarnation_.  It was written by a Washington
Post reporter and is quite creditable.  It is about his coverage of a Duke
University researcher who has been investigating reported cases of
reincarnation.  Now, I tend not to believe in reincarnation -- at least
literally, and the cases reported were as always challengeable.
Nevertheless, they were rather impressive.

The point is not that reincarnation really does take place but that there
is empirical evidence, however weak, we can choose to examine to adjudicate
the issue.

Love as the cement of the universe.  Well, I agree we cannot test this in
the same way as we look for confirmation of gravity waves.  I think too
that Roy must mean this somewhat metaphorically and not that love is on par
with gravity as one of the physical forces of the universe.  But, as I
said, with all such qualifications, I would agree on the Alethic importance
of love. Is it just faith that makes me think this?  No.  For me, it comes
from the emotional reaction I have to JC.  Could this emotional reaction be
guiding me wrong?  Yes.  Is it at all open to public evidence?  A bit.  We
can at least conduct the Biblical criticism necessary to see if anything
like the Christ of faith matches the Jesus of history. If there were no
correspondence at all -- which seemed likely in the mid-twentieth century,
then that would at least count against my emotional reaction.

Perhaps I do rely on faith to some extent.  I have faith that this
emotional reaction of mine is telling me something important about reality
even if not what I now think it is telling me. So let me concede to a bit
of faith.  It is not a faith, however, based on nothing and impervious to
argument. In fact, I am constantly questioning it.

So do religious questions require different ways of knowing than science?
It depends on what you include as science.  Religion certainly requires
approaches to the truth different from physics or chemistry, and, again, I
would not say that religion is a science.  I more meant that like
literature or other domains, one could be scientific in one's approach to
one's religious beliefs or disbeliefs, very definitely including concern
with the empirical. Even explanatory power of different views must be
compared.

In the end, Mervyn, I don't know where this leaves us, but I suppose I must
admit to believing in theological claims of my own. I just tend to be a bit
more quiet about them.

That's enough for one time, no?

doug


doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad-AT-drexel.edu




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