But of course we don’t have enough empirical data to justify our ethical beliefs. What would it be to justify—and I mean really justify—moral beliefs by empirical data? There is a gap between “is” and “ought”. One can describe the empirical world down to the last jot and tittle and not say a single thing about what is right and wrong. So whatever moral justification we have cannot simply come from empirical data. And if all one can use to justify something is empirical data, then morality will never be truly justified.
But once again this has nothing to do with faith, it has to do with the simple logic of justification.
If moral beliefs are to be justified they must at least partly be so on their own terms. Those terms, of course, may be argued for (and perhaps justified) by reference to metaethical principles. But hey, the claim that we can justify our factual beliefs based on empirical data is itself a metaphysical principle, so these are on all fours.
Hi Doug,
Really? There is no way to say that ‘Free Speech’ is justified, or that laws against discrimination based on gender/age/ethnicity/sexual orientation are justified? And, you don’t think there are at least a few people that would say that they ‘have faith’ that these laws will be for the betterment of society? These beliefs seem too ingrained in our society to say that they are not widely accepted, and I think we would have a hard time finding too many people that could derive them. And, personally, I just ‘have faith’ that they will work.
I guess we could do a survey and see, outside that, I think we perhaps have different uses of the word, perhaps from how we grew up using the word.
Baloo, you will have to re-read what I wrote. What I said is that moral claims cannot be justified solely by empirical data. I said they must be justified at least partly on metaethical principles.
One can take John Rawls’s claims about justice, for instance, as justifying laws against discrimination. Rawls believed that justice is fairness, and that discrimination is fundamentally unfair. He gave any number of methods for determining unfairness, most specifically reference to the “veil of ignorance”. If that sort of thing interests you, you can read up on it.
An easy example, is parenting. There is a ton of information as to what not to do, and all the ‘bad’ consequences that come as a result of many, many different factors. That said, even the books that have some very good ideas have enough logical fallacies that its easy to tear them apart. So, where does that leave parents. Well, with the choice to make something up or try to figure out what they do believe and hope for the best. Science in a good day is able to provide parents with a nice set of probabilities as to the estimated results of a number of different actions. Its really not much better than that, and yet, I can’t exactly stop the growth of my kids as they grow up, nor do I think I’m doing all that will be possible someday when we do learn how to re-work a moral framework within to raise a family. Until then, we do what we can.
Baloo,
All these books have nothing to do with science. That is why they are not to be found in the science section in your local bookstore. I am not really sure why people feel the need to write (and read) the books on parenting, but that’s a different story. Again, science can tell us, for example, that your children share 50% of your genes and 50% of your wife’s genes. It’s up to you to decide what to do (if anything) with this information. I consider Pinker’s Blank Slate (which can be found in science section) more valuable when it comes to parenting, than any of those know-it-all self help parenting books. I must repeat: science doesn’t tell us how to live our lives.
We need to be aware of what is science based on empirical data, and what is cheap philosophy pretending to have the right answers.
I was thinking of starting a new thread to talk about it. Something that came up at the Beyond Belief was an idea that this problem is not only a myth but we can look at the “is” as far as “happiness” and gather an “ought” from there. It was Sam Harris that proposed this idea and even though he didn’t say it I think he had in mind studies on meditater’s where they study brain activity and their reported self contentment. Problem there I know is the self reporting, but this idea intrigues me.
Well, I sympathize with what he’s saying, and he’s right to a point, but it still doesn’t get rid of the fundamental problem. The problem is still whether happiness is a good (or whether we “ought” to like happiness).
Once you agree on the fundamental posits of the ethical system you’re dealing with, then of course the gap may close. And you must argue for the posits on metaethical grounds, of course.
Are you guys talking about the is-ought problem in a way?
I am not. I’m not talking about anything as subjective as morality, God and happiness.
I am talking about people accepting something as true on the basis of AUTHORITY even though it is nonsense. which be scientifically resolvable by any person that COMPREHENDS SOME SCIENCE for himself.
I don’t know, but I keep coming back to this idea that what really needs to be done is a focus on developing a critical thinking course that is taught in schools. I have been thinking of Dan Dennett’s idea of having a mandated religious studies program and Harris’ reminders of dogma and I can’t get away from the idea that what were really talking about as a goal is a form of scientific skepticism. Though, the “critical thinking” label seems to have wide acceptance but not a lot of foundational work.
You have to be careful what you ask for.
Schools in our area popularized something called
[ CHOICE THEORY] a few years back—
One tautological way of interpreting this is that you want students to learn to think for themselves (make rational choices rather than go with the crowd).
I’ve always liked the logical twist of thinking for yourself because someone else tells you to..
When I was in high school we had a course called “Current Civilization” and one semester the teacher arranged for us to visit a synogogue, a Quaker meeting house, a Bahai’ faith community, and I forget what else. It wasn’t a bad idea but it probably depends on the particular teacher (like so much)
There have been tremendous advances made in the sciences, and the basic science that went into the questions asked to make these advances as well as the answers derived for these questions, and I think there is a fair amount of data that religion didn’t show an equal and opposite effect of this all. As such, I’m inclined to think they they are not opposing forces.
Well, science and religion are not always opposed, certainly. But there are plenty of cases in which the questions science wishes to ask, about human evolution, sexuality, the possible neural basis for religious faith itself, etc, are forbidden to the religious because their faith requires they accept the revealed truth and don’t ask whether it might be wrong. So these folks oppose the very asking of these questions. Now science may provide information which challenges the dogma of religion, but it doesn’t forbid the asking of questions about the natural of reality. It may denigrate questions it sees as stupid or meaningless, and this isn’t always fair or correct, but I still see a fundamental difference between how science approaches knowledge and how religion does that make your equation of the two as both invoving a similar kind of “faith” misleading.
Hi Brennen,
The use of a single word two describe two distinct types of events does not equate the two events. Faith is not the only word to have a multitude of similar but distinct meanings. As mentioned above, Davies is not the only one that has used ‘faith’ in a word play like way in the title of an article. Personally, this doesn’t bother me much, but could see how it might upset someone.
mckenzievmd - 05 December 2007 10:12 AM
I don’t think that I have any right to tell someone else that (since I’ve come to the conclusion that the examined life is my best hope at a meaningful life) that they should now be dependent on science, as well as the questions of science. What gives me this right? What would give anyone this right? Does not the freedom we enjoy allow us to choose the path we want, then why not allow others to choose their own path? How do we know that their evolutionary instincts are taking them in the wrong path, and how are we even defining the wrong path?
Well, i’m free to define what seems to me the “wrong path,” and I would include religious belief in this, but I absolutely agree I’ve no right to enforce that belief on anyone else. Now everyone has the right to tell others how they see the world, and to try to convince people of the rightness of this view. But frankly, it is most often the religious who wish to enforce their point of view by law or social sanction or physical force, rather than the scientist. So while I agree that we should all be free to follow our own understanding, I don’t see that has much to do with the point we’re discussing, about the difference between faith and provisional belief, and I certainly never implied I have any right to force others to hold my beliefs.
So, ok, if we define faith as a state of ‘unquestioning’ and you define the pursuit of science as ‘questioning’, and perhaps if you go the next step by defining the pursuit of religion as ‘faith’, then clearing we could come to the conclusion that you could never be in the pursuit of both science and religion because you could never be in a state of both questioning and unquestioning.
Again, the problem I have here is that I think the evidence is pretty clear that both religion and science have made great strides in the past few centuries, and this would not be possible under the above model. Since science is clearly a state of unquestioning, then the definition that must be incorrect is that religion is a state of unquestioning. In fact, why not say that all the progress that religion has made in the past few centuries is due to the questions which has been posed by people participating in religion?
So while not all believers are unquestioning in their faith, faith as applied to religion is the valuing of unquestioning belief and the proscription of questioning.
Now, for some fun..
So, I could get in a lot of trouble here, but since we like questions, here’s one.
Why is valuing questioning inherently better than valuing unquestioning? I can’t help but think of the hedgehog principle in that there are a vast number of species that have survived for a very long time but doing very little in the way of cognitive questioning. We are really the first species to test the theory of asking questions. What if all the evidence pointed to the conclusion that species that asked the fewest questions survived the longest, would we still value the asking of questions? And, oddly enough, isn’t this what the evidence is? With all the cognitive abilities that we have, are we really happier than honeybees and hummingbirds?
Ok, and now for the flavor of the week argument, memes. If all ideas are memes, then any idea is a meme. Thus, any belief in an idea would also be the belief in a meme. Memes exist for their own survival, but depend on the existence of a host to survive. The most persuasive memes are those that increase the appearance that our genes continue to exist. The most pervasive memes will be the one that are most effectual. Both the valuing of questioning, and the dis-valuing of questioning are memes. Both require the continued existence of a host to survive. Both exist because our genes believe (have faith in an unknown actuality) that its choice meme will increase the likelihood of its survival. While the value of questioning seems to be the more persuasive, the value of unquestioning seems to be more pervasive. Does that suggest that unquestioning is is the more effectual?
Ok, so, clearly I’m getting bored with the topic and my brain is shooting off in a different direction......
mckenzievmd - 05 December 2007 10:12 AM
So, what parts of the Multiverse Theory are demonstrable, understandable and knowable by the everyday person? What parts of the theory of relativity? Of, string theory? Or, how a car’s transmission works, or how a DVD works? Either most people don’t believe in how these work, or they believe what they do believe ‘on faith’. But, clearly understanding and knowledge are out of the question for the vast majority of people.
I’m not saying that Science doesn’t use questions as its key driver of advancement, but underived belief at the personal level is clearly present.
Here ios the core of our disagreement, I think. Ultimately, as Doug has said quite clearly, the absence of individual direct experimental confirmation of every possible scientific fact is not an argument that science relies on the same kind of faith or on belief in the unknown in a way analagous to that of religious faith. Provisional acceptance of previously well-demonstrated facts that appear to be clearly functional in practical terms (as in the working of one’s DVD player or transmission) is different from acceptance of revealed truth in scripture or in personal prayer. The truth of a scientific nature are demonstrable, and have been demonstrated, and can be demonstrated again in reliable and objective ways. The truths of revelation cannot. They can only be communicated and sanctified, not demonstrated. So faith in these revealed truths requires an acceptance not only that one doesn’t have evidence directly before one, but that the only possible evidence is testimony and personal internal experience. And that only those who believe can see the “proof” because it requires faith to see it. “Jesus Christ is my personal savior without whom I cannot achieve salvation” cannot be demonstrated in the way that “a laser beam playing across a reflective material can encode digital information translatable into sound waves” can be. So the belief that the first statement is true is qualitatively different from the belief that the second its true.
Yes, I get your point. No, scientists do not go through life believing nothing for which there is not incontrovertable evidence they have seen with their own eyes. But this does not mean that “faith” as used in the context of religion is appropriately applicable to the way scoentists accept previously demonstrated knowledge.
As for theories that have not, and perhaps cannot be demonstrated (multiverse, string theory), they are great starting points for scioence, but they will die if proven false or if not useful for prediction and empirical testing. If science were fundamentally liek religion, they would stand forever as revealed truths regardless of whether they are demosntrable in any empirical sense.
And, I get your point as well.
I think it just goes down to how you define faith, and if you define faith as a ‘meme of unquestioning’ or as a distinct electro-chemical behavior in the brain. As noted above, clearly you can’t be pursuing both questioning and unquestioning, and if science is questioning, and you are pursuing it, then you can’t be pursuing unquestioning.
If we discover provisional belief/faith to be close cousins in the electro-chemical behavior department, then I think we’ll find it present in any number of other human activities where information is uncertain, and yet, there is hope. Including religious activities and scientific pursuits.
Before saying anything on this topic, I would like to make the disclaimer that when I mention religion, I have in mind the 3 religions that I believe most of us have in mind as we discuss faith.
Some of these discussions on this topic are getting caught up on how the average person understands science, and I think that has contributed to the conversation jumping all over the place. The false parallel in the usage of faith is better illustrated when considering the people really doing science and religion, the scientists and the theologians.
Do we all agree that there is a difference between:
1 - a scientist tentatively ‘accepting’ string theory, working on the equations behind it, studying alternative views, and collecting empirical data
2 - a theologian who accepts the trinity (3=1) based on biblical writings, the writings of the Church Fathers, and tradition
The scientist knows that his pet theory might be wrong. Yes, the scientist will often fight to reconcile his pet theory with contradictory empirical data, but he is also ultimately ready to modify his theory when proven to not fit the data and when a more consistent model with better predictive abilities is developed.
The trinity theologian, on the other hand, will do away with all contradictions with the magic words ‘Mystery’ and ‘faith’.
We should also remember that the new testament presents faith as a virtue defined as confidence in things unseen. In contrast, science tries to actually see things. The illusion of a bible type faith arises when we look at the theoretical work that deals with what we can not yet observe. Nevertheless, experience tells us that it is useful (and fun) to develop the models as we wait for better ways to observe. We can also generate predictions from our cutting edge models that can be used to disprove or confirm them. More significantly, scientists work under the expectation that someone, many years down the line, will come up with a better explanation that theirs. They expect that they missed some element. They also look for the flaws in their model to adjust it. This is nothing like the faith of classic Christians or Muslims in the inerrancy of the proclamations of Jesus, Paul, and Mohomed. This is nothing like the faith that allows religious individuals to remain firm in their religious convictions despite so much disconfirming empirical data.
I will agree that there are many people who do strongly proclaim beliefs in the name of science that they accepted on faith, but I think focusing on those who bastardize science is not the issue. I also think that many liberal religionists can get a free pass here, as many of them are not much more than deists and aren’t actually subscribers to Paul’s faith.
The Big Bang vs Steady State argument was a great example of science possessing the illusion of Pauline faith. Even Einstein was incredibly stubborn, but eventually gave in when the evidence showed that he should accept the Big Bang model over the model he tentatively endorsed publicly for so long. Of course, one could point to Hoyle’s unwillingness to change his view until his death and his criticisms of data that disconfirmed the Steady State Theory as evidence of his Pauline type faith, but the slow adoption of new theories by old scientists due to their years of interpreting data a certain way is quite different from maintaining faith in absurdity like the Trinity despite historical and textual issues.
Also, I would agree that to believe “someones and somethings” despite evidence to the contrary is unscientific, the question really is, what is it when there is no evidence and you have a limited window to take moral action, and do.
I would hope, in general, that moral actions be based on good sound reasoning (of the scientific sort that you are referring to), and not up to the whim of fixed “faith” based values based on unreasoned judgment. With a “limited window,” as you put it, I would only expect people to try the best that they can to be reasonable. Which specific situations are you be referring to?
Hi Erasmus,
I think there are a number of cases where the assumed result of non-action is not preferred and the time until that not preferred result is limited. Again, parenting is like this, you can’t exactly take 6-months out to try and decipher what the best course of action is when your teenage kid wreaks the car. There is a huge range of actions that one can take, and its very hard to know the final result of any of it. Yet, non-action is not good either.
Science is pretty good at finding out how consistently we can expect a given result, that said, it doesn’t work very well with humans, as humans aren’t all the consistent. Our values change all the time, and they are often very relative to all the many other considerations/costs/results both seen and unseen that go into action and/or non-action.
People often say that hindsight is 20/20, but very few of them have ever tried to do any serious multivariate regression.
But, i agree with you, we can hope for the best of people, and do what we can to encourage sound reasoning.
I don’t think that I have any right to tell someone else that (since I’ve come to the conclusion that the examined life is my best hope at a meaningful life) that they should now be dependent on science, as well as the questions of science. What gives me this right? What would give anyone this right? Does not the freedom we enjoy allow us to choose the path we want, then why not allow others to choose their own path? How do we know that their evolutionary instincts are taking them in the wrong path, and how are we even defining the wrong path?
Well, i’m free to define what seems to me the “wrong path,” and I would include religious belief in this, but I absolutely agree I’ve no right to enforce that belief on anyone else. Now everyone has the right to tell others how they see the world, and to try to convince people of the rightness of this view. But frankly, it is most often the religious who wish to enforce their point of view by law or social sanction or physical force, rather than the scientist. So while I agree that we should all be free to follow our own understanding, I don’t see that has much to do with the point we’re discussing, about the difference between faith and provisional belief, and I certainly never implied I have any right to force others to hold my beliefs.
So, ok, if we define faith as a state of ‘unquestioning’ and you define the pursuit of science as ‘questioning’, and perhaps if you go the next step by defining the pursuit of religion as ‘faith’, then clearing we could come to the conclusion that you could never be in the pursuit of both science and religion because you could never be in a state of both questioning and unquestioning.
Again, the problem I have here is that I think the evidence is pretty clear that both religion and science have made great strides in the past few centuries, and this would not be possible under the above model. Since science is clearly a state of unquestioning, then the definition that must be incorrect is that religion is a state of unquestioning. In fact, why not say that all the progress that religion has made in the past few centuries is due to the questions which has been posed by people participating in religion?
Clearly there is questioning of (other people’s) interpretations in most religious groups. We can see sects fighting all the time over interpretations of the same books they each accept on faith.
We can also see more liberal Christian groups that question even the value of a literal understanding of the Bible. These groups are doing away with faith, and this is encouraging. They see that empirical evidence and textual criticism are hard to reject on faith, so they narrow the domain of where acceptance through faith seems reasonable.
So while not all believers are unquestioning in their faith, faith as applied to religion is the valuing of unquestioning belief and the proscription of questioning.
Now, for some fun..
So, I could get in a lot of trouble here, but since we like questions, here’s one.
Why is valuing questioning inherently better than valuing unquestioning?
I don’t know if it is better to question, but it clearly isn’t faith. Faith is setting aside the questions and accepting anyway. Who knows? Faith might be healthier for humans. But this is irrelevant to the discussion of the role of faith in science.
I think the core question here, is does the word ‘faith’ get used outside the “faith in the resurrection and the blood of Christ” use of the word by either people in science or by people in religion, I think so, but I’m open to discussion here.
As I said before, one can find usages of “faith” along the lines you suggest: “faith"/"Faith". My dislike of this sort of usage is that it is liable to confusion and misinterpretation.
Understand.
So, walk me through the second part here, ‘confusion and misinterpretation’ to what end?
dougsmith - 06 December 2007 05:48 AM
Baloo - 05 December 2007 10:38 PM
Would you say that deriving principles of morality from the writings attributed to Moses/Paul/Joseph just as valid a method as deriving principles of morality from utilitarian, Kantian, Aristotelian beliefs?
The question of which moral claims are valid goes back to how they are justified, and whether they hang together consistently. It has nothing to do with where the beliefs are from. Utilitarian, Kantian and Aristotelian moral beliefs are justified within their own framework, and you are then left with the posits of each theory, which may be justifiable metaethically. (E.g., in utilitarianism, that what is good is to avoid pain for the largest number, etc.)
The problem with Moses, Paul, Joseph, etc., is that they did not have coherent, justified moral claims. They simply posited a few shoulds and shouldn’ts here and there, some of which seem relatively reasonable (not to murder), and others of which nobody believes are moral (that if you pray to false idols you will be punished to the third generation). One looks for justification of manifestly immoral claims, such as that condemning homosexuality, and only finds it in the assertion that these were laws given us by God. But that is no justification at all, first of all since nothing is made moral or immoral by command, and secondly because these words did not come from God.
So, clearly they got a number of things wrong. But, I wonder if this wasn’t an important step forward in the evolution of our culture. As bad as they may seem today, what is it that they were replacing? I mean if people thought that a rule to ‘not murder’ is a great rule, you have to wonder at what level everyone was at at the time. Also, how long is it really going to last? In evolutionary terms, even if they go the full 7k years, this is a split second beyond where we were when we lived in caves.
That said, i think we would be incorrect in saying that religion doesn’t change overtime, and change is not what you’d expect from a set of writings that have changed very little, written by a very strict unchanging god, read by people that question very little and believe it to be written by god, and have so much at stake if they choose to change. Given this I would expect a much higher resistance to change than we see.
dougsmith - 06 December 2007 05:48 AM
Baloo - 05 December 2007 10:38 PM
The way I was taught was that faith was the next step in the desire to know something. Once you had faith, you ran an experiment. Once you run the experiment, you learn something. Once you learn something you lose your faith. Not sure this is the same and the ‘unquestioning faith’ of other sects.
I am not intimately familiar with Mormonism. If, as in this quote, “faith” in Mormonism simply means “taking such-and-so on hypothesis” then it would certainly be different from the standard faith of the western monotheist.
But then when these Mormons do their experiment and don’t find this alien being on that planet, what do they do? Do they discard their Mormonism? When they find out that Joseph Smith faked his revelations, what do they do? Do they believe that his books are manmade?
Or instead do they take it all on faith and implicitly reject the evidence given them by experiment?
In fact, I believe you will agree with me, they do the latter. And if so, then their actions demonstrate that they are, in fact, using the same sort of “faith” (that which is impervious to evidence and reason) as any other monotheistic religion since early Christianity.
Its actually a very hard test to run, because the survey set is anything but random.
a) mormonism has a lot of practicality in it. (They didn’t exactly survive the trek to utah and survive utah for all these years because they resisted science and learning.)
b) much of the way out there stuff is not testable, or actionable in any way.
c) thus most tests are run on some pretty practical things. (going to church on sundays, reading/pondering various writings, quiting drinking/smoking, giving up gambling/porn, getting a higher education, going on a mission, paying tithing, getting married/having kids, etc)
d) What also makes the question of ‘do they discard mormonism’ hard to answer is that people who question the religion, and come to the point of discarding their belief in mormonism, have a tendency to stop calling themselves mormons, and have a higher tendency to stop going to church.
As such, if you just go to a church house and take a survey, you will in all likelihood be surveying people a heavily biased sampling group.
If you wanted to really know how many people tested and left, you’d have to run a survey across a much wider group. That said, I suspect that as you describe, for many at the church house ‘faith’ has a good chuck of ‘unquestioning if that’s what it takes to endure’ within it. But, the number of people who used to go and now do not may be higher than you’d expect.
On a personal note, it was this culture of testing the teachings that lead me to continue to run my own test until I came to the conclusion that I did. Also, I’ve somewhat replaced by optimism in humanity due to my beliefs in mormonism, with optimism in humanity due to my beliefs in science, and I find many cognitive similarities.
I think there are a number of cases where the assumed result of non-action is not preferred and the time until that not preferred result is limited. Again, parenting is like this, you can’t exactly take 6-months out to try and decipher what the best course of action is when your teenage kid wreaks the car. There is a huge range of actions that one can take, and its very hard to know the final result of any of it. Yet, non-action is not good either.
Science is pretty good at finding out how consistently we can expect a given result, that said, it doesn’t work very well with humans, as humans aren’t all the consistent. Our values change all the time, and they are often very relative to all the many other considerations/costs/results both seen and unseen that go into action and/or non-action.
People often say that hindsight is 20/20, but very few of them have ever tried to do any serious multivariate regression.
But, i agree with you, we can hope for the best of people, and do what we can to encourage sound reasoning.
Sounds like we’re on the same page here. There are situations in which people are forced to, and/or unknowingly don’t find occasion to, act before they have time to think things out. This point illustrates the need of training our intuitions to respond rationally before situations arise, and un-training bad “faith-based” impulses. It is remarkable how many of such “faith-based” impulses I have discovered in myself over the years, despite having never been genuinely superstitiously theistic, simply as a result of enculturation.
So, walk me through the second part here, ‘confusion and misinterpretation’ to what end?
Well, it’s the sort of confusion that got this thread started, isn’t it. It’s the false claim that science is just like religion in that both are forms of faith. They aren’t. (Or if they are, they are forms of relevantly different sorts of faith, which amounts to the same thing).
Baloo - 07 December 2007 12:59 AM
So, clearly they got a number of things wrong. But, I wonder if this wasn’t an important step forward in the evolution of our culture. As bad as they may seem today, what is it that they were replacing? I mean if people thought that a rule to ‘not murder’ is a great rule, you have to wonder at what level everyone was at at the time. Also, how long is it really going to last? In evolutionary terms, even if they go the full 7k years, this is a split second beyond where we were when we lived in caves.
Well, our moral intuitions are largely biologically based. I am sure that the people who were alive before the Bible was written were just as ethical as the ancient Israelites. For one thing, that isn’t saying very much, since the people of the Old Testament were notoriously brutal, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and all.
