My comment on Science (the journal) would be what it has been in the past: that they (ie their editors and reviewers) sometimes get carried away by either the prestige of the author or the newsworthiness of the finding and forget about little things like making sure the data are valid*. It is perfectly true that I would be more likely to tear apart an article that proported to demonstrate a finding that I did not like than one I did like, but I hope I am honest enough to face the facts if either a finding I disliked proved to be well documented or if a finding I did like was based on clearly inadequate evidence and accept the first and reject the second. On the other hand (back on the first?) I would also caution against over interpretation. If, for example, the paper in your example looked like it was very clearly accurate and there were a negative correlation between brain cells and melanocyte size. Would that mean that whites are smarter? Not necessarily. There is no clear correlation between brain size and intelligence within a given species. For example, I’ve heard it claimed (from a second hand source, I must admit) that Einstein’s brain was rather small on autopsy.

*This has clearly happened in the past and I’ve made nasty comments about Science’s editorial standards in the past because of it, so I wouldn’t be inventing a new skepticism just for a result I didn’t like.

Joe, economics isn’t a hard science. Economists are to economics what family counselors are to raising a family, roughly.

That said, economics is a diverse field, with many differing opinions (particularly in countries besides America). Could you be more specific?

“But let me pose a question…Do you think there are social issues or problems that science simply cannot solve?

For example, I think there are certain morality questions that science cannot solve. I don’t think science can tell us the meaning of life (whatever that means).”

Rachel, by ’science’, do you in fact mean humanism? Or any atheistic belief system in general? Because I have a suspicion that we’re blurring the line here between science proper and ’scientific world view’, a catchall term for people who don’t believe that biting an apple and talking to a snake led to eternal damnation for all.

I value your question regarding the academy and institutions of science. I just don’t think saying the same about science itself leads us anywhere.

I also think that when some people question the limitations of ’science’, their objections could be better worded as questioning the limitations of ‘reason’. I don’t know why, but many seem unwilling to voice the latter.

“On a slightly different tangent, I would like to ask Ron, and anyone else who’s interested: do you think morality can exist apart from religion? Do you think, to put it crudely, religious people are more moral than atheists?”

Does all morality come from God? Does that mean anything that God does is moral by definition, and anything he condemns is immoral? So the capture and rape of Canaanites in the Old Testament - not to mention some more offbeat ones such as Lots’ daughters’ drunken incest rape, or God sending bears to maul children who make fun of the prophet Elisha’s baldness - moral by definition, because God did it? Morality is then reduced to 100% obedience, 0% rational faculty.

Because if anything God does *isn’t* moral by definition, then you’re setting an independent system of morality using your human reasoning, emotion, experiences, learning, etc. - what else are you using to judge what God does? (Think about it.) And if you’re doing that, what you’re doing is no different from what any atheist does.

And I realize your comment was about religion, not God per se, but if we can discount God, I don’t see what sets religion apart from secular organizations, secular belief systems, secular culture, secular traditions, etc.

“For example, even the choice of a particular subject for scientific inquiry reflects some subjectivity.”

This, I think, is an excellent point. Logical positivist types who positively seethe with hatred of messrs Kuhn, Derrida, etc. I think should be objects of such comments. But if we’re debating philosophy of science, limiting the foil to merely religion is too restrictive.

RonF Writes:
July 17th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
There are systems of morality that exist that do not posit the existence of a supernatural force or plane of existence. That seems clear to me. Are they of equal value to what I will broadly call religious systems? I don’t think so. They can approach them, but I don’t think they get there.

Before i inevitably misinterpret and reply to something you didn’t mean ;) can you elaborate a bit on the bold part?

The atheists I know (I don’t consider myself quite an atheist, but I’m not exactly a theist either, and I certainly don’t subscribe to any monotheist doctrine) aren’t atheists because subscribing to the moral tenets of a religion would interfere with their hedonistic lifestyle, but because they can’t believe in God. Asking my husband to believe in God, certainly in the Judeo-Christian God, would be like asking him to believe that the trees in our yard are out to get him: he can’t do the necessary mental gymnastics. Is he therefore morally inferior to a Christian who tries to live according to God’s will as she understands it? If you judged him only by his behavior, I think you’d say he’s a pretty good guy. (Of course I’m biased, but I picked him because I know his behavior and motivations better than I do anyone else’s.)

Hm. Incipient thread hijack. I’m trying to behave myself these days, but I’ll take a shot. As Sam points out, these are in fact two different (although related) questions.

There are systems of morality that exist that do not posit the existence of a supernatural force or plane of existence. That seems clear to me. Are they of equal value to what I will broadly call religious systems? I don’t think so. They can approach them, but I don’t think they get there.

Overall, that is. There are religous systems out there that are quite amoral. The current strain of fascism that is cloaking itself in Islam these days claims to be a religous system. I suppose it is. The participants seem to sincerely believe that they are carrying out God’s will. But I’d hardly hold it up as an example of supreme morality.

So some religous people are certainly less moral than atheists - I’ll posit that the average atheist isn’t active in beheading people and engaging in general slaughter of innocents to gain a political or philosophical point.

That’s an example of “religious” people whose religion doesn’t meet the standard of what any sane person would call moral. But they are acting in a fashion consistent with their religion; thankfully they seem to be a minority among religions across the world. But there’s a second group of people to think about; people who are at least nominally a member of a religion but don’t act in accord with the tenets of their religion. For example; a Catholic gets/pays for/assists with an abortion. They are knowingly not acting in accord with their religion. Their religion has consistently held abortion to be evil, a serious sin and at variance with the word of God. The people in charge of their religion say that they have just separated themselves from their religion and are no longer Catholic. Is a person who acts at variance with the tenets of their religion (include theft, etc., any sin you choose) and is unrepentant (a key point) really a religious person?

What’s a religious person?

Perhaps (although that’s been debated since your post). But so what? That just brings us to the question of “Does human life begin prior to a fetus gaining consciousness?” That question is not one that science can answer.

There is no secular argument against abortion that holds water for consistency and lack of misogyny.

You are welcome to your opinion. I do not share it. And it would be a wild hijack of the thread to start to debate it here.

While science does not offer opinion, obviously, I think you could pick a stronger example.

I’m not trying to prove the morality or immorality of abortion here though either scientific or religious means. My point was to show that there are questions that science cannot answer not because of a lack of knowledge (which might be solved in future years as science advances) but because of the nature of science itself. I think the example is adequate for that.

When I say “my definition of religions would include Humanism,” I’m not meaning “secular humanism,” as another term for undifferentiated atheism/agnosticism, but the whole set of beliefs that something like the “Humanist Manifesto III” endorses, or that someone like Doug Muder advocates. It includes tenets like:

“We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity.”

“Humanists long for and strive toward a world … where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence.”

Nobody.really: that is the heart of the “are you a real scientist?” question. Ideally, the answer would be “I accept all new data to the degree it is reliable.” I suspect that in reality I would have difficulty for some things, but I can’t think of which off the top of my head.

Also, that this mulishness is easily confused with the rational tactic of viewing new, unusually different, results with skepticism. Absent a compelling explanation for a differing result (a new experimental technique, for example) then it is reasonable to suspect the new results until they are more proven. Good science is built on repeatability.

On a slightly different tangent, I would like to ask Ron, and anyone else who’s interested: do you think morality can exist apart from religion? Do you think, to put it crudely, religious people are more moral than atheists?

The answers are yes to the first question and no to the second. There are many ways to define morality that have nothing to do with religion. The “is-ought” problem can be ignored if morality is defined as an axiomatic system; one simply accepts the axioms of a system and uses the system to decide the morality of an act. Additionally, humans - and even other animals - are born with an innate capability to learn the moral rules of a culture. It’s an evolutionary advantage for social animals to have a system of morality because it helps them cooperate effectively. Moral judgments, in practice, are a lot like aesthetic judgments. It’s hard to objectively define what makes one artistic or literary work better than another, but in practice, people usually agree that The Shawshank Redemption is a better movie than Plan Nine from Outer Space. Both aesthetic and moral judgments seem to lie somewhere between objective facts and completely subjective preferences; in both cases, we really are referring to something that goes beyond arbitrary personal taste, but it’s not clear what that is.

As for whether religion promotes morality, I might suggest considering that atheists are underrepresented in U.S. prisons and that the religiousness of a countries’ population is inversely correlated with many secular measures of well-being. Largely secular Europe tends to be a lot richer, more democratic, and more egalitarian than largely religious South America and Africa. Among rich nations, the United States ranks abnormally high in both religion and measures of ill-being such as infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, and so on. (Also, don’t get me started on the morality of specific religions…)

I have run into Christians who caricature atheists as perpetual hedonistic teenagers, “hey, Dad’s not home? Party!!!”, but the atheists I know aren’t like this; they simply find it impossible to believe in God.

Those are two VERY different questions.

I’d say that defining religion broadly, as an unproveable belief which defines proper actions, morality can’t exist apart from religion; they are very nearly the same thing. In my understanding, there is no way of getting to “should” that is proveable. (Note that I’m including (e.g.) Buddhism and Humanism as religions in this definition.)

That doesn’t say anything useful about whether, given a set of “shoulds”, religious people do better at living in accordance with them.

The question of what you do with the scientific findings remains, though. Suppose (desperately trying to frame this in a not-too-inflammatory way) a well-done scientific study showed that, on average, brunettes were slightly smarter than blondes, as measured by SAT and other test scores. How should that change public policy? (My answer would be not at all: everyone should still have equal rights, access to education, and opportunity.)

To what extent do men differ from women? Some regard this as an empirical question, some regard it as a question of world view, and it is not obvious to me that liberals are more open to empirical analysis of this matter than conservatives. Feminists living in a society that emphasizes the differences between men and women might embrace addressing this question empirically. Any finding of similarity, no matter how small, might help undermine the (noxious) dominant world view. On the other hand, feminists living in a society that emphasizes equality and individuality might oppose an empirical analysis. Any finding of difference, no matter how small, might help undermine the (agreeable) dominant world view. Thus my embrace of science may depend on what I have to gain and what I have to lose.

I have a progressive colleague who becomes agitated around discussions of genetics. She seems offended by suggestions that some traits are inheritable, or that different ethnic groups can have different propensities, or that a study of genetics can indicate a person’s lineage. Recently I suggested to her that there is greater genetic variation among humans in Africa than in S. America, and that this variation helped support the idea that humans have lived in Africa longer than in S. America. For a moment I thought she’d explode. In her world view, the whole idea of genetics lends dangerous support to Nazi ideology. Because Nazi ideology is dangerous, anything supporting it must be wrong. (Or so I surmise; honestly, I don’t sense that she’s open to discussing her views on the subject with me.)

A thought exercise: What empirical propositions are so offensive to your world view that you’d reject studies that tended to support them? It’s easy to pick on fundamentalist rubes for refusing to face reality, but don’t we all have sacred cows? So if the journal Science published a peer-reviewed study showing that the production of skin pigment detracts from the production of brain cells, leading to a causal link between intellectual capacity and white skin, how deep would your commitment to science be then?

There, but for the grace of Darwin, go I….

But the last several comments make my point well.

“Science can tell you that a fetus has no consciousness” is true, but it doesn’t answer any good/bad question.

Is consciousness the right criterion for legal protection? Or should it be species? Or maybe pain-avoidance? Or aliveness? Or value to others? Those are questions that science can’t answer.

I’m just reading the article linked to; thank you.

Yes I am a speciesist; apart from that, I think that the decreasing of the suffering of all (sentient) beings is a laudable goal - which benefits humans the foremost. I’m sure that you’re aware that cruelty against animals (pets etc.) in children is the best predictor of (extremely) antisocial behaviour in adulthood.

May I recommend to you Valentino Braitenberg’s “Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology”? I would have provided a link to Amazon if I would know how to make one.

It’s not just ‘postulated’. So are you interested in decreasing the suffering of all sentient beings or just your species? And if the latter, under what justification?

I’m against the ivory trade because of the predictions of game theory, not because of a postulated consciousness of elephants.

It could, but it doesn’t (unless you are using an extremely strict definition of consciousness). The reason for this is that it is probably not true. True, the definition of life and death are, to some extent, culturally determined. But our culture currently uses brain function or lack thereof to make that determination, at least at the end of life. And if at the end, why not also at the beginning?

Incidently, “science”–or at least a series of fairly well done and definitive experiments–also tells us that elephants, some non-human primates, and dolphins have consciousness. Does this change your views of, for example, the ethics of ivory trading?