Well this was too hard to pass up. Wow. This is fascinating if only for the reason that it tells us so much about Mr. Pinker and his prejudices. News flash: There is not now, nor has there ever been, a time when science was thought an enemy by those in the humanities. Yes, there has been animosity toward scientism from those quarters, but scientism is a philosophy, whereas “science” is a method and practice. What Pinker has done is conflate the two. This is poor philosophy and poor science. A good scientist and a good philosopher should, at the very least, know when one is talking science and when one is talking philosophy.
The fact the criticism is coming from all sides is significant. When you have someone from the National Review and the likes of PZ Myers somewhat agreeing, and all points in between, wow, you really have something.
I see this as a very good sign. Perhaps there is a wide consensus now developing (or has been there all along) that scientism needs to go the way of the logical positivists. If this happens, we might see a, “move forward, enlightening as we go along, in all areas, physical, philosophical, psychological.”
Enlightenment, progress, and any sort of new renaissance of spirit is hampered by scientism. Scientism, or the philosophy of secular fundamentalists, is a barrier to learning and communication. Science is wonderful. Science is a gift and a treasure. Scientism is neither. It is simplistic, immature, anti-humanistic, and completely blind to its own limitations.
These writers critiquing Pinker are all coming from different points of the compass and agree with some points and disagree with others. However, they are unanimous in noting the “big picture” problems with Pinker’s defense of scientism.
Many of those points have to do with the very things I was trying to get across in my posts on “Truth.” Here are a few examples:
“Part of this misappropriation comes from thinking that, since science is so good at providing explanations, explanations are all that matter.” –Adam Frank
“If this is scientism then obviously no sensible person should have a problem with it. But the “boo-word” version of the phenomenon — the scientism that makes entirely unwarranted claims about what the scientific method can tell us, wraps “is” in the mantle of “ought” and vice versa, and reduces culture to biology at every opportunity — is much easier to pin down than Pinker suggests.” –Ross Douthat
I would recommend one read all the linked critiques from the main essay. I wonder if the readers of this blog (the tiny few) agree or disagree with Pinker, just in the over-all sense. Pinker says some things even I agree with. I mean in his over-all comprehensive defense—do you agree or disagree? I have to be honest- many of the responses I see to my posts seem to be coming from the same place Pinker is defending.
If so, what do you do with all these same critiques from such varied and different sources?
Byzantine Dream 
Hi, Darrell-
I think Pinker's quote of Leon Kass makes it abundantly clear what he is talking about.. that there is a conflict and the stakes are high. There are plenty of infelicities on both sides, and cheap shots, but your RD author in his conclusion makes the same -Kassian- point yet again..
“We have a few thousand years of evidence that faith and revelation can be powerful, useful, and nuanced sources of knowledge, especially when yoked to other kinds of inquiry. To dismiss them entirely from human affairs would be impractical, unintelligible, and certainly imprecise—in fact, downright unscientific.”
.. which is as wrong as can be, unless he is speaking in a purely artistic psychological sense … which is not at all clear, in my estimation. And right after accusing Pinker of not being “explicit”. This stuff shouldn't be classed as knowledge at all, by my prior arguments.. artistic insight has its great virtues, but can not be called “knowledge”.
And “revelation”? What is the philosophical status of that, pray tell? Pinker has it completely correct.
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Hi Burk,
Well, you forget that your “prior arguments” have all been disputed and have found little agreement, probably for the same reasons all these varied people are criticizing Pinker.
You clearly have a narrow and uncommon view of what counts as “knowledge.”
And yes, there is a conflict as to scientism, but there isn't one as to science. Huge difference.
I think the quote you give us here, rather, has it exactly right.
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Hi Darrell
This seems to be one of those debates that lends itself all too readily to strawmen. Yes, there is certainly a brand of scientism that is plain silly, but it's not clear to me that Pinker is promoting any such thing. Perhaps if you were to provide a specific example of something Pinker believes that outrages you, we could get a discussion going.
Bernard
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Hi Bernard,
Do you mean to say you read each critique and didn't find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with anything? And there is no outrage, but wasn't my post clear? I noted that I agreed with the various critiques in principle–did you not understand what the critique was? I thought each writer quite clear. They provided direct quotes and specific example after example. What else do you need?
A constant refrain I keep hearing on this blog is not that anyone agrees or disagrees, and here is why, but that they don't seem to understand anything anyone is saying.
Perhaps it would help if you explained to us what brand of scientism you think silly and how it differs from Pinker's.
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Hi, Darrell-
Let me pick this apart again, just to be completely clear:
“We have a few thousand years of evidence that faith and revelation can be powerful, useful, and nuanced sources of knowledge, especially when yoked to other kinds of inquiry. To dismiss them entirely from human affairs would be impractical, unintelligible, and certainly imprecise—in fact, downright unscientific.”
Evidence.. The evidence is that people believe things, and that they will believe countless things that you know very well are false. Whole religions consist of large corpi of beliefs that you regard as false. Take reincarnation, for example.
Powerful.. Here he is spot-on. We see demonstrations in the Middle East on a daily basis how “powerful” beliefs can be, whether they are wrong or right. And we see them elsewhere as well. Power is not very strongly associated with correctness, going by the historical record and the evidence.
Useful.. This is obviously open to interpretation. If you think it useful to powerfully motivate people to kill each other and do other moralistic things out of beliefs, whether those beliefs are correct or false, then useful is a proper word to use. It is a propagandist's usefulness.
Nuanced sources of knowledge.. Here, obviously, is where I draw the line. Revelation gives people strong motivation and strong belief. It does not give people knowledge. The two are not at all related, and the evidence shows this to be the case. Are the revelations of Joseph Smith accurate?
At best, revelation provides an amplified bit of intuition. Perhaps that people might get along better if they all believed in the same god, or if they quit killing each other, or perhaps if they killed everone off who is of a different religion. Are these “truths”, or “knowledge”. Not really. They are perfectly valid social intuitions. But that is not the same as knowledge, in my estimation.
Yoked with other… This was a weasely admission that revelation does not, in fact, provide knowledge of an empirical, accurate durable sort. We need science for that.
Dismiss them entirely.. Pinker doesn't want to dismiss entirely from human affairs anything. The idea is to treat revelation as we do Greek myth.. as expressions of intuition, our mythical unconscious, etc. But not as sources of knowledge, other than of our unconscious motivations and creativity. The Christian corpus is a rich cultural artifact. It should just not be paraded around as “knowledge” about the things it purports to be knowledgeable about.
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Hi Burk,
Evidence: There is plenty of evidence that people also believe things that you know very well are true. Things like, we should care for the environment, or, things like, we should care for the poor.
Powerful: “We see demonstrations in the Middle East on a daily basis how “powerful” beliefs can be, whether they are wrong or right.” But that is the whole problem: Scientism cannot address “right or wrong”; it can only address what “is” not what “ought” to be. We also see every day the power to do good things like build hospitals and orphanages, to feed and care for the poor, and to strive for a just society.
Useful: “This is obviously open to interpretation.” Ummm, all of this is open to interpretation—every category you name here. I do think it very useful to motivate people to love and accept each other, even our enemies. Scientism hasn't been very good on that score. In reality, it has nothing to do with usefulness and everything to do with doing the right thing regardless. If someone wants to call that “useful” that is fine with me.
Nuanced sources of knowledge: “Revelation gives people strong motivation and strong belief. It does not give people knowledge. The two are not at all related, and the evidence shows…” What evidence? Nonsense. Knowledge is more than information; in fact, we have a word for it and it’s called “wisdom.” Knowledge without wisdom is dangerous. The two are obviously related. The awareness of, and practice of, loving our neighbors as ourselves is true knowledge. The factual and informational knowledge of building the best extermination methods for killing Jews by the Nazis was knowledge without wisdom, revelation, meaning, or compassion. It was all very scientific, empirical, pragmatic, and cost effective however.
I can’t think of single thoughtful non-fundamentalist person who would want to separate knowledge from these other areas of “truth” or revelation—the areas that cannot be proved simply and only empirically. No one. And that is the one of the basis for all these critiques of Pinker. Critiques he rightly deserves.
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Hi Darrell
I think that often we end up with groups talking past each other, as in the case of Pinker's essay and its critiques. I part this is Pinker's fault, his penchant for rhetoric leaves much of what he says open for interpretation.
The brand of scientism I would regard as silly would be that which holds that we understand things only by reducing them down to their more fundamental constituents. So, while we might see children playing in a swimming pool, we can't really understand the scene until we consider the quantum nature of the sub-atomic particles making up the scene. That's nuts. But then again, I've never heard anybody express this view, and in this case Pinker in his essay, despite the flourishes, explicitly rejects it.
The version of scientisim that is eminently defensible is that which says any phenomenon can be better understood if we also understand the behaviour of its constituent parts, so neuroscience does have something to tell psychology, and psychology does have something to tell theatre criticism. Then again, I've never heard anybody argue against this. The most generous interpretation of Pinker, his pugnacious style aside, is that this is all he's saying.
So we end up with people attacking false positions. Which is why careful, clear definitions are so very important in all of this.
Much of the disagreement we might have about what constitutes truth is simply a function of the way we define truth in the first place. There may be no substantive disagreement, beyond which words are best applied to which phenomenon.
Bernard
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Hi Bernard,
“I think that often we end up with groups talking past each other, as in the case of Pinker's essay and its critiques.”
I think you are missing something quite significant here however. These varied sources, all of whom are continually and normally talking pass each other, have come to agreement in their critiques of Pinker’s position. I would think you of all people would be happy to see some agreement for once.
As to the rest, I think you are making the same mistake Pinker does. What you are describing as a defensible version “scientism” is really a description of science, which no one has a problem with. You are conflating science and scientism. They are not the same.
“The brand of scientism I would regard as silly would be that which holds that we understand things only by reducing them down to their more fundamental constituents.” (I agree, which was my entire point about Betty’s biological mother “reducing” motherhood to biology)
But that is exactly what Pinker does, no matter how hard he tries to say in other places he doesn't want to do so.
“They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe; religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value…Unfortunately, this entente unravels as soon as you begin to examine it…
And earlier in his piece he gives us an example of this unraveling:
“The processes of life, for example, used to be attributed to a mysterious élan vital; now we know they are powered by chemical and physical reactions among complex molecules.”
He is basically saying we can dismiss this concept because we have “reduced” what “life” is or means to the chemical and molecular level. This sort of thinking runs through his whole piece. The scientist who also happens to be a Christian or even just your run-of-the-mill average scientist, who doesn't hold to the philosophy of scientism, knows that one can know that life is chemical, physical, molecular, but that it doesn't simply “reduce” to that. Further, they would understand that statements about that physical/chemical life, such as “Life is sacred” can be just as true, just as accurate, and regarded as knowledge even more so than the physical/chemical facts or information.
So, I think the consensus here (and I know how important it is to you to sort of side with consensus—and tend toward those things accepted and believed by most) is on the right track and I think they read Pinker with the better understanding. I think there is good reason they do not read Pinker as generously as you do.
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Hi Darrell
I think you are giving Pinker a very ungenerous reading here. He specifically states that we can not reduce understanding to making sense only of the constituent parts.
Now, the example you use with regard to elan vitale is interesting. Are you saying there is more to a jellyfish being alive than it having those chemical characteristics that make growth, reproduction etc possible? Elan vital was employed to explain exactly these lifelike characteristics and he is now saying that explanation is now redundant. I agree with him.
Are you saying that chemistry alone does not explain, for example, growth? I'd be interested for you to expand upon this rather novel theory if you do indeed hold to it.
By the way, I'm not at all attracted to consensus. my position is that we might take as our starting point those stances that appear as forced moves. Which is quite a different proposition. Often the great majority of people are quite wrong.
Bernard
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Hi Bernard,
Well this is interesting. So all these different perspectives, atheist, conservative, liberal, moderate, and religious just all happen to be ungenerous readers. Only some here among us are generous. Hmmm…I sense a selective generousity here. I think a generous reading would had at least recognized the validity of some of Pinker's critics' points. Not if it had just come from one obvious source (like the I.D. source), but since it came from all points of the compass. I would think that would give one pause. I guess not.
I think the most generous reader was Mr. Schulson. And after recognizing Pinker’s valid points he noted:
“And if he’s talking to everyone, then Pinker has a serious problem. We have a few thousand years of evidence that faith and revelation can be powerful, useful, and nuanced sources of knowledge, especially when yoked to other kinds of inquiry. To dismiss them entirely from human affairs would be impractical, unintelligible, and certainly imprecise—in fact, downright unscientific.”
Here is the quote from Pinker he is specifically addressing:
“Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma…are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge,”
If you are unable, because of generosity, to recognize that such an assertion is the very definition of scientism, including the “silly” type, then I think you would be prevented from recognizing anything as scientism.
There are two huge problems (among many others!) with Pinker’s statement that any philosopher, and most good scientists, would recognize. First, he doesn’t realize that scientism itself is a belief—and faith. That is what he can’t see. That is the charge he needs to address. Second, he is assuming that knowledge is one thing, like 2+2=4, and only that one thing. Why? Because he thinks that something can only be knowledge or true if it can be empirically verified or mathematical. But this all just begs the question. Those are all the issues already disputed. It would be like me saying he’s wrong because God exists!
And any view of knowledge such as Pinker’s is a result of a reductive materialism. If you know of some other way he has come about it, please tell us.
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Hi Darrell
I absolutely agree that there's hyperbole in Pinker's essay. His opening reframing of the Enlightenment philosophers is a clear case, and there are many others.
But, rather than just slinging mud about, isn't it much more interesting to look at where the substantive disagreement might lie? So much of this discussion is bedeviled by tribal instincts, and leaves no one any the wiser.
And, we do appear to have a substantive disagreement over the role of elan vital. Pinker dismisses it as a prior non-scientific concept replaced by a much stronger explanation. I agree with him. You don't seem to. Hence my question to you about jellyfish. So why not engage on the substantive issue?
And here's another one. If we look at the generator of error comment you provide, then it rather depends upon what one calls knowledge. If Pinker is claiming, as I suspect he is, that faith, revelation, dogma et al do not generate objective knowledge, then I agree with him wholeheartedly. My evidence is simply that they consistently produce contradictory knowledge claims, and hence somebody must be in error, unless we are talking about subjective knowledge.
Now, maybe you would include things that are subjectively true in your definition of knowledge, and if so, then I doubt you and Pinker would disagree at all. I imagine you might also wish to raise the objective truth of moral claims, but you are well aware that the existence of objective moral truths is a hotly disputed area within contemporary philosophy, so even there intuitions appear to be error generators, in Pinker's terminology.
Bernard
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Hi Darrell,
I've read Pinker's essay and, frankly, I don't quite see what all the fuss is about. Sure, one can criticize his tone and his strategy but, as fas as content is concerned, I don't see it as deserving the bile it got – from all sides, as you enjoy pointing out.
You see, it is possible to make anybody looks like an idiot by caricaturing what they're trying to say and it is certainly seems easy to do that with Pinker. But, although it may amuse some readers, this is not serious criticism. The point of making a “charitable” interpretation of a text is not to do justice to the author (this is irrelevant) but to make sure we're not missing something important.
Take the value of revelation as source of knowledge, from the Pinker's quote you use in your last comment: Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma…are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge.
You dismiss this out of hand as utterly absurd. But is it really? I take it Pinker uses “revelation” in the religious sense of “the divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence or the world”. I also assume “knowledge” is taken in its usual sense of “true, justified belief”.
Then, Pinker can be read as follows: “divine disclosure to humans of facts about the world cannot be counted as a reliable source of knowledge”.
Are you really claiming that this claim is so preposterous that it should be dismissed out of hand? We can perhaps discuss whether it is true or not, but it is certainly, to my view, a very sensible thing to say.
In your dismissal, you conveniently redefine knowledge to include “wisdom” to make Pinker say something he didn't. Playing with words may be fun but it's not really conducive to serious conversation.
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Hi Bernard,
Except for PZ Myers, none of these writers were slinging mud. That is hardly a generous reading. Again, the selective generosity here is very telling. Further, their criticism wasn’t simply directed at hyperbole or tone—they all made substantive charges. Why not address those?
“So much of this discussion is bedeviled by tribal instincts, and leaves no one any the wiser…”
Again you miss the significance here. All these writers are certainly normally bedeviled, just as you say, except in this case they are not. Why is that?
I didn’t address the role of “elan vital”, because it wasn’t relevant. The point was that if we reduced everything like Pinker suggests, to chemistry and molecules, there is nothing left except the material. You seem to be making the same mistake as Pinker. Or, perhaps you do believe that all can be reduced to such? If so, isn’t that the “silly” type of scientism?
Right, contradictory knowledge claims, in metaphysics, does not equal both being false. And no one is claiming that faith generates objective knowledge in the sense of knowing how to get to the moon, so…Pinker’s point? Pinker is building an obvious straw-man there and was another thing he was called out on.
That was my whole point with the Betty example. Betty’s claim is subjective, but it is the truer more meaningful claim. Her biological mother’s claim is based purely in biology and is objective—something everyone could agree upon. It is a clear example of where a subjective claim would be consider truer, more significant, and more meaningful than the objective assertion based in pure biology and science.
As to objective morality, again, contradictory claims or disputed claims, doesn’t mean an objective morality (or its possibility) is false. It simply means it’s disputed. So what?
Pinker would certainly agree that there is subjective knowledge, but he would place within the fact/value distinction, which again, just begs the question as those are the very areas disputed in these critiques.
I don’t see how your defense of Pinker stands up to all these critiques from all these different sources. There is good reason for the consensus. A good question to ask at this point is who are the moderates in this discussion? And given the comments, where does this place some of us? Food for thought.
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Hi JP,
I disagree; I think the great majority of his critics did make serious criticisms. I also disagree with your view of a charitable interpretation, which I think is to do justice to the author and the “intent” of his writing, even if we disagree. Whether or not we miss something is up to us.
I disagreed with Pinker’s claim for the same reason the writer did. Can you address his quote and tell me exactly what you think he got wrong?
Are you asserting that knowledge should not include wisdom? I’m not playing with words. I am addressing, like these other writer’s, Pinker’s truncated and simplistic view of what counts as knowledge or “truth.”
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Hi Darrell,
In his critic, Schulson is using a different definition of the word “knowledge”.
While Pinker's seems to correspond to the standard dictionary definition (“justified, true belief”), Schulson's seems to include a lot more (like you do). This is called equivocation: by using a different definition of “knowledge”, Schulson is addressing a position that Pinker does not state at all. I think it's very clear what Pinker means. I don't know why Schulson would (willingly?) misinterpret him.
Here, of course, I am making a charitable reading of Schulson. If we use the standard definition (above), his claim that “we have a few thousand years of evidence that revelation can be a nuanced source of knowledge” does not make much sense to me. What evidence, I wonder.
Furthermore, you ask: Are you asserting that knowledge should not include wisdom? There is no “correct” definition in the abstract: a definition should be above all useful, clear and shared. I'm using “knowledge” as above. If you want to talk about wisdom, there is a perfect word for doing just that.
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Hi JP,
Do you mean to say that you don’t think Pinker knows that the definition is quite wide and varied, depending entirely upon context and other factors and that he is basing his entire case here upon one simple dictionary definition? I find that incredible. Even from a site like Wikipedia we get this:
“Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It can be implicit (as with practical skill or expertise) or explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject); it can be more or less formal or systematic. [1] In philosophy, the study of knowledge is called epistemology; the philosopher Plato famously defined knowledge as “justified true belief.” However, no single agreed upon definition of knowledge exists, though there are numerous theories to explain it.
Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, communication, association and reasoning; while knowledge is also said to be related to the capacity of acknowledgment in human beings.”
No philosopher or even a scientist would counsel the rest of us acting as if there was only one agreed upon definition or one that didn’t include what knowledge would encompass for the very people one is addressing, those in the humanities.
Understanding the wide and varied perspectives on what counts as knowledge is not an equivocation, it is simply recognizing a fact, which is rather ironic don’t you think?
Why can’t some aspects or definitions of knowledge include wisdom or meaning? Remember, Pinker is not addressing engineers or mathematicians who want to know what he thinks is the best way to the moon.
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Hi Darrell
Clearly we're reading Pinker very differently here, which is slightly puzzling. He explicitly states that meaning can be found in higher level analysis:
“No sane thinker would try to explain World War I in the language of physics, chemistry, and biology as opposed to the more perspicuous language of the perceptions and goals of leaders in 1914 Europe.”
Hardly the words of a reductionist.
What the difference appears to be, is a difference over what we mean by knowledge, and if all this critiquing is really about conventions of word use, then it amounts to very little.
If the elan vital example is irrelevant, then where, I wonder, is the relevant point upon which you disagree. As before, if by his assertion of error generation, Pinker means that revelation etc tends to produce conflicting truths for which no means of resolution is known, then we all agree with him, don't we? Science is quite different, in that a means of resolving difference does exist. I suspect this is all he's getting at, and put in these terms, I also suspect that you would agree.
You're quite right, conflicting intuitions don't imply all intuitions are therefore false. But it does imply, in the absence of some generally accepted means of adjudication, those that are false may persist. and this is the mechanism by which error is, loosely speaking, generated.
This is the key difference between the scientific convention of hypothesis testing, and the conventions he mentions (dogma etc). And the weird thing is, you probably agree this difference exists, and yet would wish to attack Pinker for saying else, something to do with reductionism, despite his explicit rejection of this approach.
I just don't think that sort of straw man analysis is the way knowledge advances.
Bernard
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Hi Darrell,
Pinker's paper is concerned with the role science, or more generally, a the scientific mindset plays (or does not play) in the humanities. It may be true that those in the humanities do not see science as an enemy. But it may also be true that this holds as long as scientists mind their own business and don't start treading on humanities' turf. I can't tell myself – I don't live in Academia – but I've heard comments from friends who are that make me think that Pinker may be on to something real.
In any case, it seems clear to me that Pinker's target audience is humanities (and perhaps other fields) as part of Academia. His paper should be interpreted in this context.
Now, the “revelation” quote is part of a larger paragraph in which Pinker argues that acquiring knowledge is hard: The world does not go out of its way to reveal its workings […]. It should be abundantly clear the knowledge he talking about is academic knowledge about the “workings of the world”.
Given this, his quote makes perfect sense. Revelation, dogma, conventional wisdom, and so on, cannot be considered as reliable sources of knowledge (as defined above). Or, do you say they are?
You may think that this kind of knowledge is only a small, relatively unimportant, part of what it takes to be human. Fine, but this is clearly not what Pinker is talking about.
Is Schulson just a lazy reader or is he consciously misrepresenting Pinker? One wonders.
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Hi Bernard,
You note one quote, which is made in passing and gives us no clues whatsoever as to the importance he may attach to “perspicuous” language. He means history, economics, socio-cultural, and those factors tell us something too, but remember, he thinks all those areas are still under the purview of science ultimately.
You then fail to note his clear assertions that qualify his entire essay including his observation regarding World War I, which makes very clear that even “perspicuous” language must ultimately be interpreted and come under the authority of science. And while you fail to address this, which is clearly not a straw-man, his other critics took note and dealt with his main and substantive assertions. Here they are:
“The mindset of science cannot be blamed for genocide and war and does not threaten the moral and spiritual health of our nation. It is, rather, indispensable in all areas of human concern, including politics, the arts, and the search for meaning, purpose, and morality.”
“To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken.”
So not only is science “indispensable” to areas of meaning, purpose, and morality—science has declared that the belief systems of ALL the world’s traditional religions, which includes their beliefs about meaning, purpose, and morality are all “factually” mistaken.
This is nothing but complete and utter nonsense, ridiculously and hopelessly incorrect–wrong in so many ways. It is laughable.
“Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma…are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge…”
Both Pinker and people in the humanities know that, outside fundamentalism, no one asserts that the Bible or the Christian tradition is a source of knowledge for getting to the moon or devising the next generation computer software. If Pinker doesn't know that, he has no business writing these type essays and no business in the academy. It is he who is making the straw-man argument here and you seem to be buying it.
The “elan vital example” is only relevant to the point I made that he thinks life can be reduced to chemistry and molecules.
Do you believe life can be reduced to chemistry and molecules? Do you agree with his above quotes?
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Hi JP,
“Now, the “revelation” quote is part of a larger paragraph in which Pinker argues that acquiring knowledge is hard: The world does not go out of its way to reveal its workings […]. It should be abundantly clear the knowledge he talking about is academic knowledge about the “workings of the world”.”
He is talking about ALL knowledge, including purpose, meaning, and morality.
Pinker makes it very clear what he is talking about:
“[science] is, rather, indispensable in all areas of human concern, including politics, the arts, and the search for meaning, purpose, and morality.”
And the greater majority of people both within academia and on the street believe Christianity and many of the world’s religions have given us “knowledge” in the areas of meaning, purpose, and morality.
And here:
“In which ways, then, does science illuminate human affairs? Let me start with the most ambitious: the deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, and how we define the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the traditional territory of religion, and its defenders tend to be the most excitable critics of scientism. They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe; religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value.
Unfortunately, this entente unravels as soon as you begin to examine it. The moral worldview of any scientifically literate person—one who is not blinkered by fundamentalism—requires a radical break from religious conceptions of meaning and value.”
If you can read that and think he is simply talking about “academic” knowledge regarding the way the “world works”, then I don’t think you are reading as closing as his critics.
Schulson is not misrepresenting Pinker in the slightest; in fact, he was one of the few most moderate in his comments.
Do you believe knowledge should include aspects of wisdom, meaning, and purpose with those aspects being as or even more important than the factual information?
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Putting aside all the issues here regarding the substance of Pinker’s essay and his critics’ responses, I find another aspect fascinating.
The supposed “generous” readings of Pinker’s critics include the accusations of mud-slinging, laziness, and misrepresentation.
Pinker’s critics include those from all points of the political and religious spectrum, from the extreme to the moderate. However, they were all unanimous in their criticisms of the substance of his essay.
I wonder if it is possible that the defensiveness of Bernard and JP arises from realizing that it is also their own position that is being critiqued as well.
Most of us like to think we are moderate voices. If I were to find myself defending a conservative, even slightly fundamentalist pastor or theologian, it would be rather shocking to me. A true wake-up call. It would reveal to me that perhaps I wasn't as progressive and moderate as I thought. I had been kidding myself.
I know that at least Bernard (not sure about JP) likes to think he is more moderate than Burk. I think this defense of Pinker reveals the moderation is simply in tone and not in substance. I know Burk has thought the same for some time now. Now, I think he is right.
Burk, at last, we agree upon something!
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Hi Darrell
With regard to elan vital, I think those aspects of life that puzzled our forebears to the extent that they created the notion of elan vital (so growth, movement, reproduction for example) are perfectly well explained by chemistry.
You quote Pinker with regards to the errors of theories of human origins (and he's quite right, none of them hit upon the mechanism of evolution, and all had to be adjusted to accommodate this discovery) and then accuse him of saying something you can not find in his essay, that conclusions regarding 'meaning' are factually mistaken. Indeed, I'd be happy to wager that were you to confront him with this, he'd point out, as you also acknowledge, that one shouldn't think of meaning as a 'fact' at all (although it may well be, by your wider definition, a truth).
So, what is the thing Pinker actually says that you object to, as opposed to those things you would like him to be saying? This is why these sorts of arguments founder, because we don't attend to the expressed argument, but rather to what we'd prefer the other was saying.
Bernard
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Hi Darrell,
Perhaps you misunderstood what I'm trying to do here: I am not trying to defend Pinker at all. In fact, I have very little interest in “Pinker” as subject matter. Ideas expressed in the text are of interest, not the person himself.
In general, when I read that kind of text, I assume that the author is not a complete fool and I try hard to understand how the text must be interpreted to do justice to the author. Hence, my interpretation of the “revelation” passage. I have given reasons why I believe this paragraph concerns “academic” knowledge and, therefore, makes a lot of sense. In any case, would you agree to the revelation statement, if formulated as follows: Revelation, dogma, conventional wisdom cannot be considered as reliable sources of academic knowledge.
Another case in point is the quote you present to Bernard and on which he comments above. Let me repeat the actual Pinker's quote: “To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken.”
Note that Pinker specifies “factually” mistaken (he means “facts”, not values) and he is also very careful to define what he means: “their theories about the origins of life, humans, and societies”. And, if this is not enough, the rest of the paragraph is an enumeration of what he's talking about, from our african origin to the vastness of the cosmos.
Nevertheless, as Bernard points out, you immediately have him meaning that “their beliefs about meaning, purpose, and morality are all “factually” mistaken”. As should be obvious, this is precisely NOT what he's talking about.
If Pinker's text is that bad, you should not have to so blatantly misrepresent him to make your point.
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Hi Bernard,
I gave you all the quotes, which make up the substance of his essay, that I disagreed with just like all these others did as well. Here is more:
“In which ways, then, does science illuminate human affairs? Let me start with the most ambitious: the deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, and how we define the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the traditional territory of religion, and its defenders tend to be the most excitable critics of scientism. They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe; religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value.
Unfortunately, this entente unravels as soon as you begin to examine it. The moral worldview of any scientifically literate person—one who is not blinkered by fundamentalism—requires a radical break from religious conceptions of meaning and value.”
Further:
“To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken.”
As to the above, he is not just including theories of the origins of life, he includes their entire “belief systems.” This is exactly what gives him the audacity to then claim that science should trump every other area of knowledge when it comes to addressing meaning, purpose, and morality as well. And, by the way, the Christian narrative or doctrine of creation has nothing to do with nor speaks to the “mechanism” or any of the natural processes. That is just another straw-man constructed by Pinker.
When he is not over-reaching he is building straw-men. This is the reason, rather, that these arguments “founder.”
Do you agree with his quotes above? Do you believe that to disagree with Pinker (like all his critics did) is to make one “blinkered by fundamentalism”?
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Hi JP,
Does what Pinker is asserting here mean he is addressing not just academic factual knowledge but also those areas normally addressed by religion and philosophy?:
“In which ways, then, does science illuminate human affairs? Let me start with the most ambitious: the deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, and how we define the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the traditional territory of religion, and its defenders tend to be the most excitable critics of scientism. They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe; religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value.
Unfortunately, this entente unravels as soon as you begin to examine it. The moral worldview of any scientifically literate person—one who is not blinkered by fundamentalism—requires a radical break from religious conceptions of meaning and value.”
If so, then I think you read him incorrectly. Do you agree with him?
####
“Another case in point is the quote you present to Bernard and on which he comments above. Let me repeat the actual Pinker's quote: “To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken.”
“Note that Pinker specifies “factually” mistaken (he means “facts”, not values) and he is also very careful to define what he means: “their theories about the origins of life, humans, and societies”. And, if this is not enough, the rest of the paragraph is an enumeration of what he's talking about, from our african origin to the vastness of the cosmos.”
Pinker has already told us that science also gets the last word as to moral meaning and value. And the “belief systems” of all the world’s religions address more than just origins. Even if he is only speaking to origins, it matters little, because, again, he has told us science speaks to everything, not just the empirical.
I think it interesting that all these writers are misrepresenting, lazy, and slinging mud while you and Bernard alone know exactly what Pinker is saying and representing. Fascinating.
Still wondering if you believe knowledge should include aspects of wisdom, meaning, and purpose with those aspects being as or even more important than the factual information?
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Hi Darrell,
To be sure, I'm not saying Pinker is without fault – I'm simply responding to comments you have made on specific quotes from his text. I picked up the revelation quote, and the last one on belief systems, because they don't seem to mean what you claim they do.
Take the last one again… The guy takes the trouble to state explicitly what he's talking about. The bit of text between dashes is a clarification of what he means by belief systems in the context of his statement: their theories about the origins of life, humans, and societies.
This is as clear as it gets. Nevertheless, on the basis of something else you find in his text, you insist in saying that this is in fact NOT what he means – despite his explicit definition. No, not at all, you say: what he means is something completely different. What he means is their beliefs about meaning, purpose, and morality.
I mean, words are important. What should he have written to make his meaning plainer? The guy writes A but you say “no, in fact, he means something completely different, B, and look how foolish he is!”
This is becoming silly.
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JP,
Only Mr. Pinker can tell us whether he meant “all beliefs” or just those dealing with origins as it is hard to tell from the quote. Too bad his entire essay had nothing to do with origins. So let's talk about what is clear.
What is not clear about this and his many other assertions that qualify the one quote- the only one you seem to think is important?
“In which ways, then, does science illuminate human affairs? Let me start with the most ambitious: the deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, and how we define the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the traditional territory of religion, and its defenders tend to be the most excitable critics of scientism. They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe; religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value.
Unfortunately, this entente unravels as soon as you begin to examine it. The moral worldview of any scientifically literate person—one who is not blinkered by fundamentalism—requires a radical break from religious conceptions of meaning and value.”
Do you agree with him here? I would still be interested to know if you think knowledge can accommodate more than just information.
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HI Darrell
The quote you provide regarding Pinker's assertion that the 'non-overlapping magistrata' argument unravels upon examination is very important, and is perhaps at the heart of this dispute. So, what could he mean by the entente unravelling?
Here's what I'm guessing he is getting at. If we take a traditionally religious question like life after death, it is very hard to think of this as separate from scientific questions about the way the physical brain correlates with brain activity, and what implications this has for various theories of consciousness. He could be saying, that in oder to understand death (and hence the meaning attributed to life after death), we must understand consciousness, and that science is part of that process. Hence the magistrata do indeed overlap.
Similarly for morality. If we take evolution as the process by which human nature developed, then to believe we have a mainline to moral truths requires some mechanism by which evolution gave us this capacity. Did God meddle in the process to ensure we turned out with the intuitions we did? At what point did this happen? Were the neanderthal, for example, subject to the same meddling, or did they not have access to the divine moral compass? Perhaps the universe is such that moral intuition confers survival advantage… I'm not sure what the various religious doctrines propose here, you'll have a clearer idea of the mechanisms they have in mind.
These are, in principle, questions that science can help us address. This is not to say science has refuted all religious claims, but it is to say that science has a part to play in helping us dig deeper into them. Hence, an overlap. As he puts it, the entente unravels.
I don't think that's an outrageous claim.
Bernard
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Hi Bernard,
I agree with you that such, as you outline it, is not an outrageous claim.
I just think it is clear he is claiming more than that, which is probably what has caused so many to be critical.
I certainly appreciate your thoughts here. Perhaps all these different people have misunderstood Pinker.
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