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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: RE:  Weird Science (response)
Message-ID: <540@spar.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 13:40:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.540
Posted: Tue Sep 24 13:40:59 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Sep-85 07:16:45 EDT
References: <45200019@hpfcms.UUCP> <1724@pyuxd.UUCP> <460@ecsvax.UUCP> <1753@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 156

>> Rich, I find your rhetoric about science disturbing, if not dangerous.
>> There is nothing more dangerous than a human's claim to knowing the
>> "objective truth."  When you say that science is the objective and
>> methodical search for facts, you are sadly ignoring the scientific
>> method's limitations.  And I would argue that science is only useful
>> when its limitations are kept firmly in mind.  [GARY SMITH]
>
>The rhetoric I find disturbing AND dangerous is that of people like Michael
>Ellis, who would shirk scientific study in favor of wishywashy mystical
>wishful thinking to "get" a world model to his personal satisfaction
>(i.e., "giving" him free will, ...)  

    Oh, I see -- ignoring the evidence of modern science is shirking
    scientific study!

    As a strict determinist in my early days, I only came to my present
    conclusions AFTER the study of evidence that you clearly must ignore
    in order to uphold your wishful opinion.

>The fact remains that the repeated
>failure of people who criticize "science" to delineate what they find
>wrong with science tells me that they are willing to discuss what "science"
>is all about, that they have no desire to explain what they feel
>the limitations of the method are, or (worse) they boldly proclaim their
>own pet demarcation points as the point of limitation for the scientific
>method, beyond which science CANNOT go.  (They'll post guards if necessary:-)
>You may not like science (or you may, it's hard to tell), but to suggest
>substituting for it a set of methods that have repeatedly given us lies,
>bogus assumptions, and frauds, seems unconscionable.

    I hardly criticize science. Rather, I respect science so deeply I
    am appalled by its abuse.
    
    However, your future submissions are warmly encouraged, as you
    invariably underscore my points by your personal example.

>> I believe it was Charley who tried to convince you of the subjectivity
>> of science.  Let me try my hand at it.  Put simply, the work of a
>> scientist, no matter how honest and noble a scientist he is, in large
>> part always reflects his preconceived notions and assumptions.  Why?
>> The reason is that the questions a scientist asks govern the results
>> of his work.  Asking questions is a very subjective activity; it
>> always reflects what concerns the asker.  To the degree that some
>> questions are asked and others are NOT asked, science is therefore
>> subjective.  Add to that Heisenberg's insights, and science is no
>> longer the objective and value-free endeavor that you want it to be.
>> It seems highly dishonest to ever claim objectivity.  It is an
>> impossibility.
>
>Before QM became a popularized method of "debunking" science, determinism,
>or whatever pet peeve one might have, the use of a word like "impossibility"
>was condemned by the mysticalists and wishful thinkers:  "How dare you
>claim that that is impossible?"

     Then how can we avoid the intrinsic problem that humans interpret
     empirical evidence? If we deny this subjective bottleneck, we will 
     forever be vulnerable to the hubris that derives from our essential
     human nature.

     Anyway, I have only offered arguments from QM to support the notions
     below:

     (1) Deterministic arguments can no longer be used as a convincing
         scientific argument against spontaneous behavior (what you
	 call `free will').
     (2) Nonlocality provides conclusive proof that the events are
         not determined by temporally and spatially impinging
	 causes.
     (2) QM supports the contention that empirical evidence implies
         limits to scientific knowledge (should future advances
	 change this, I will gladly accept change my mind).

      If anyone here is discrediting science, it is fools like you who
      pretend to be supporters of science. The truth is you are as
      compulsively anti-science as any anti-evolutionist.
      
      I do not claim that determinism is impossible. But the arguments
      against classical causal determinism are RIGOROUS, and consist
      of far more than the empirical evidence for randomness.

>Nowadays, now that a bastardization of
>Heisenberg is so popular among mysticalists and wishful thinkers as a means
>of proving themselves right, it seems to be "O.K." to use the word.

     Apparently, to you a `mysticalist' is anyone who does not accept
     your astoundingly small minded concepts about philosophy and science.

     Furthermore Heisenberg seems to represent the limits of your knowledge
     of QM.  What about Bohr, Von Neumann, Bohm, Bell, etc?

     Correlations in the data have been rigorously demonstrated to be
     unexplainable by antecedent causes (ie - temporally and spatially
     propagated hidden-state information)?

>When science is deemed to support them, it proves something they don't like
>as "impossible".  But if science shows the flaws in a system of thinking
>that makes the consequences of that system "impossible", the word is being
>misused.  Let's get serious:  do you throw out a system that offers us
>facts about the universe because you feel it can never be "objective" in
>favor of a system that introduces so much more subjectivity and presumption
>into the mix as to destroy any hope of acquiring knowledge from such a
>system?  To do this is to bring us back to an age of know nothing wishywashy
>mysticism.

     Only someone who is ignorant of the scientific facts would say such a
     thing. In what way have your opponents `thrown out' science? At worst,
     you are fighting against efforts to understand and unify the wisdom
     acquired by generations of human experience. It is only YOU who wish to
     discredit the philosophical heritage of this planet, except for that
     which agrees with obsolete 19th century determinism.
     
     The modern indeterminism you abhor does not simply say "we cannot
     know, so we'll let the mystics decide". 

     Modern nondetermistic theories rather supply new and powerful models
     that describe reality in ways that, though in conflict with the
     classical modes of thinking, far outstrip the descriptive power of the
     older deterministic approach.

     Your error is that you assume that science must, at all costs, destroy
     the ancient nonscientific systems, and therefore you refuse to
     accept advances in science that do not clearly serve your dogmatic and
     destructive aims.

     You would rather reject powerful theories if they do not serve your
     hateful partisan purposes. Is that search for truth?

     In conclusion I offer a quote a favorite author of mine, who
     incidentally, neither accepts free will, nor believes that science has
     any limits. He does, however, view science as a threat to our freedom
     comparable only in magnitude to religion:

	 Are we to admit that we live in an illusion, that the truth is
	 hidden and that it must be discovered by special means? Or should
	 we not rather assert the reality of our common views over the
	 reality of some specialist conceptions? Must we adapt our lives to
	 the ideas and rules devised by small groups of intellectuals
	 (physicians, medical researchers, socio-biologists, `rationalists'
	 of all sorts) or should we not rather demand that intellectuals
	 be mindful of circumstances that matter to fellow human beings?
	 
	 Can we regard our lives on this earth and the ideas we have
	 developed to cope with the accidents we encounter as measures of
	 reality, or are they of only secondary importance when compared to
	 with the conditions of the soul as described in religious beliefs?
	 These are the questions that arise when we compare commonsense 
	 with religious notions or with abstract ideas that intellectuals
	 have tried to put over on us ever since the so-called rise of
	 rationalism in the West... We decide to regard those things as real
	 which play an important part in the kind of life we prefer.

       - Paul Feyerabend, "Realism, Rationalism & Scientific Method"

      Carry data, chop logic!

-michael


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