Pseudo-Science: the reasonable constraints of Empiricism

Reporter: Professor Russell, is it true that you do not believe in the Supernatural World?

Bertrand Russell: My dear fellow, I do not believe in the Natural World.

Russell, in his reply to the reporter, rejects a traditional distinction, natural-supernatural, that has nowadays reappeared as grist for both religious and anti-religious patty-cake bakers plying their wares to a public undereducated and generally uninterested in the history of thought.

So it is that in this 21st Century it has become very modish for pundits, introducing themselves as aficionados of Science, to invoke scientific research to make sweeping statements, and to concoct sleight-of-mind distinctions about the Universe, its structure and its contents.

For example, we find Robert Shermer, writing in Scientific American (March 2003, p. 47) citing psychological studies which, he claims, "are only the latest to deliver blows against the belief that mind and spirit are separate from brain and body."

Mind (Spirit) is no more than brain and body. Perhaps that is so. But what kind of empirical science presumes to conclude that its own narrow, Earth-time&space-bound investigations apply across time and space? What kind of empirical evidence can be offered for such a claim?

Such presumption has long been indulged in: for example,

1. The sole motivators of human behavior are pain and pleasure.

2. Love is the hyperevaluation of the sex object.

3. Animals are mere mechanisms lacking feeling.

4. There are no non-environmental determinants of behavior.

These propositions, later revealed as very probably falsehoods, were held and promulgated even by those considered to be the intellectual giants of their era.

Note that they all presume to talk about "all" of some category of things, without indicating limits on where and when to look for evidence disconfirming them. (This "synecdoche fallacy," "Some X is Y, therefore all X is Y" drives not only a lot of commercial promotion, but provides a foundation for much of the impetus for so-called Educational Reform.)



This is not to say that such claims ought to be rejected out of hand as false. Rather, they should be recognized, practically-speaking, as non-empirical, because they are unbounded, i.e. they go beyond what their advocates can produce a critical test for.

Note well: the considerations given above are intended to offer neither aid nor comfort nor rebuttal nor rebuke to the many (often well-intentioned, even if benighted) enthusiasts of esoterica, occult or otherwise.

To examine these issues further, see Religion, Intelligent Design and the Public Schools: serving God to Mammon?

Also relevant is Questionable Assumptions in Social Decision Making. Identifying Trans-ideological Epistemological Presuppositions.


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--- EGR

Are Terrorists Such as Suicide Bombers, Nazi or Khmer Rouge Killers Crazy? Is Evil-Doing Clearly Irrational?

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. - Socrates as quoted in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers

What are we to say about madness when it takes hold of an entire society? How are we to conceptualize madness that becomes normative within a particular culture?-- R. Koenigsberg ((March 3, 2014)) Social Madness/Collective Delusion [1]

Is Evil-Doing Madness? Underlying much comment on the horrendous genocides that continue into the present day appears to be the assumption that rationally acting persons could not deliberately choose to behave "evilly," no matter what we might take to be their values.

Thus, if, as many believe, God is the model of goodness and rationality -- The Book of Job notwithstanding -- then when people pursue "evil," they must be "mad," or "irrational," at least. This assumption that "rational" people never -- by definition, as it were -- consciously, deliberately pursue evil is a "fantasy" which derives much earlier than from much faulted Enlightenment philosophers. (See Koenigsberg to the contrary, cited.)

Is Irrationality a Mental Condition? If you take something like "all carefully considered action is rational" to be something like Newton's First Law of Motion, then it is not so much descriptive of actual but of ideal behavior. Newton's laws were applied to objects which are idealized as single point masses. They were meant to provide possibilities for investigating deviations from the (axiomatic) ideals postulated. The identification of Good with Rationality is part of a long tradition and is reflected in the Goya etching reproduced to the right of this text.

For example, we may say upon finding out a friend has started using heroin, "How is that going to solve anything?" In doing so we have already formulated a hypothesis "explaining" his behavior: he is trying to stand up to stress, perhaps; or, to forget what bothers him, etc. We try to understand the drug-user's behavior at somehow rational, even if ineffective in the long run. But if we find he lives a generally unproblematic life, full of happy occasions, we might wonder at the "irrationality" of his action. Perhaps he "needs help," whether he thinks he does or not!

There's a real issue. People thought to be "really irrational" risk losing their freedom and even, their possessions. For example, many people advocate compulsory supervision of the homeless, particularly when the weather is cold. To these would be controllers -- generally described in the media as "saviors" or "helpers" -- it is irrational to sleep out under a bridge in a cardboard box, when offered the hospitality of a "shelter." (See also Are Humans Rational? What’s At Stake?)


Can We Agree on What is Good? In order to bypass a long controversial discussion about what "really" is good, we adapt a framework such as that suggested by Paul Ziff [2], i.e. "good" means "answering certain interests." Thus, we can understand how a person who advocates strong control of firearms can still discriminate between, say, a "good gun" and an "inferior gun." More important, we can understand how a rational person can pursue evil. This is nothing new or startling. We all understand someone making a choice for the least evil of offered options. And we don't normally regard such as "irrational." (See Choosing The Lesser Evil: a Moral Failure?)

(Idealists will likely find Ziff's analysis bothersome. It gives up on trying to discover what is "really" good, focussing on how people actually use the word in practical situations. It does not try to disregard the existence of conflicting "goods" since it concedes the existence of possibly conflicting interests.)

Our modern hope, (fantasy?) is that the spread of knowledge, i.e. the near universal acceptance of certain privileged sources of belief -- e.g. Science, less likely, Religion -- will forestall conflicts caused by the rational pursuit of dominance which can favor a minority of individuals, families, classes, tribes, without necessitating the extirpation of those less powerful.

Evil-Doing is not, per se, Irrational. The Nazis were generally not insane; nor were their enthusiasts or followers. Nor are the many people we deign to call criminals, perverts, and the like. And it does not follow purely logically that "evil-doers" ought to be punished. This takes additional commitments to values -- some of which great many adhere to -- to make such infliction rational. (See Nassir Ghaemi (2011) A First Rate Madness p.245.)

The attempt by Koenigsberg and others debating this issue is their trying to address -- and even "solve" -- moral problems while disavowing commitments to anything more substantial than a "scientific" pursuit of practical knowledge. But moral issues may not be sufficiently "objective" to permit of such solution.

The Really Basic Problem. Koenigsberg and others professionally concerned with mental health suggest that "irrationality" be redefined from a characteristic of individuals to one of collectivities. But "redefining" irrationality as a group madness is hardly going to make a great dent here. It would most probably only mask the basic problem.

What is this basic problem? Maintaining and recognizing for a selected cadre of professionals the ownership of certain human behavior -- and its treatment rights -- despite their lack of consensus on fundamental ethical warrants, terminology and therapy.

For examples and to examine these issues further, see Can Criminal or Immoral Behavior Be Dealt With Objectively?

See also, Is it Reasonable to be Logical?


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REFERENCES

[1] Richard A. Koenigsberg, Ph.D (March 3, 2014) Social Madness/Collective Delusion. LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

[2] Paul Ziff, "On the Word Good" in Semantic Analysis (1960).

Are Humans Rational? What’s At Stake?

..(we) retained utility theory as a logic of rational choice but abandoned the idea that people are perfectly rational choosers. -- D. Kahneman , (2011) Thinking: Fast and Slow, p.314

Reason is not a Tribe --Circle of Reason

…the growth of organizations themselves may create conflict where no previous consciousness of conflict existed. -- K. Boulding, Conflict and Defense: a general theory. (1963, p. 145)

What’s at stake? The dream of almost every “leader” in the history of mankind: subjugating others without feeling guilt, or without provoking moral opprobrium. Adding to the many god-given missions, we find: cultural superiority, Manifest Destiny, tribal primacy, economic efficiency, saving democracy, mental-physical health, Critical Thinking, beauty, racial purity and school reform. Throughout history these ideas have been used to separate people as worthy or unworthy of respect, social acceptance, or, even of life itself.

Into this crowd of ideological slogans struts Rationality, of ancient and solemn pedigree. Rationality has been recently refurbished as a touchstone of practical and moral dominance for a new crusade, which like many of its predecessors, will identify those to be privileged and those to be subjugated.

Many of Rationality's present enthusiasts pursue the dominance of a “Tribe of Reason.” This tribe is presently a loose confederation that, once achieving dominance, will likely struggle among themselves to createa hierarchy of "professions" -- with the usual assymetrical distributions of privileges and obligations. (A good deal of this sorting out and privileging has been done already in higher education.}

Every organization, every profession in our society has a stake in being perceived as a member of the Tribe of Reason in order to safeguard its economic opportunities, if not its moral status. (See, for example, America’s Interfaith Structure ) Rationality makes intolerance of so-designated Irrationality morally acceptable.

Even the most-focussed human minds encounter major impediments, both psychological and social, to rationality, the optimal pursuit of what they value. And theorists have long hoped to clarify rational action by seeking to mathematize notions of rationality. But they have met with mixed success. (See Kahneman, cited in epigraph and also, Is It Reasonable to Be Logical?)

The ephemerality of thought and the oscillations of taste and mood seem to offer no small reasons why thought processes appear more or less random and why decision appears to decay away from standards of optimality, e.g. utility theory(!) But is apparent randomness really irrational decay? Or, actually, a manifestation of values pluralism? Why must cultural variation or mental vicissitude diminish the status of persons or organizations to the point of being in need of, or open to, subjugation?

For references and to examine these issues further, see Pluralism and Rationality: the Limits of Tolerance


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Institutional Realities vs. "De-Biased" Realities

The limits of your language are the limits of your world. -- Wittgenstein

What is a language? A dialect with an army. -- Old joke among linguists.

Bias is an instrument of institutions to control depictions of reality.
(See Institutionalization) Bias is pervasive. We can’t escape it completely. Even our nervous system biases our perceptions at fundamental levels.

Source: https://goo.gl/images/9xnvjl

Bias is also relative. But this need not be a constant concern. We should only worry about bias when it favors or disfavors those who are making decisions for us. This is why we look to find “disinterested,” “objective,” “unprejudiced” judgments to support our decisions.

Of course, people who are unprejudiced in one situation may be highly biased in another. It is we, ourselves, who need to discriminate when this is so. That is the problem.

Every organization that persists through changes of leadership or mission becomes an “institution.” As an institution it imposes ways of perceiving and thinking on its participants. The benefits of membership, you will be told, outweigh the costs of the conformity expected of you. You may have to subordinate your own judgment to that of the traditions, practices, etc., i.e., residues of former and present leaderships. You will have to learn which “elephants in the room” are to be ignored. Institutions seldom invite the examination, much less the mention, of “de-biased realities.”

An important point: what we imagine to be our "natural" languages are highly institutionally reconstructed means of communication. As we grow out of the sole influence of family and neighborhood, especially as we go through schooling, our languages become refashioned to meet the demands of the institutions we go through. We subordinate our dialects to our institutional languages for the promise of support and protection.

Scientists, even, sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that their professional pursuits purge their working language of institutional biases, that their speech is a neutral medium of communication. This can stifle research by restricting both theory and practice within the boundaries of passing academic or corporate philosophical preferences. (See for example, The Functional Analysis of Human Behavior.)

Just as radical forms of Behaviorism and Empiricism of the last century impeded progress in psychology and economics, (see The Mathematics of Behaviorism: an informal examination), so it is that naive "natural language" notions of conceptualization and abstraction undermine progress in applicational development in AI. To examine this further, see More Related Issues

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Yearning for a Benign Dictatorship: a rational, yet delusional pursuit?

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator. -- Richard Branson

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or Tragedy; or, perhaps, both.--- James Madison

Rational Pursuit. One traditional, widely accepted notion of rationality indicates our tendency to maximize what we cherish while minimizing what we dislike. (This is expressed more technically as "maximizing expected value," i.e. the total sum of the individual probabilities of each event times the value of same event, whether positive or negative.)

It is far from irrational, or rare, to hope to find, at long last, a benevolent dictator, i.e. someone who will maximize for us those goods we desire while saving us from the evils of working for them ourselves. A restful thought! (See Are Humans Rational? What’s At Stake?)

To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub... -- Hamlet.

But Whom Can You Trust? There's the critical rub. We should amend our simple characterization of rationality to allow for individual differences, rather than pretend that it automatically yields a consensus on what is desirable and what, repugnant. We are, let us say, rational as individuals, if our actions pursue what we perceive as a positive value while gainsaying what we believe to be of negative value.(See Values and Valuing)

But, will any dictator we find, and believe to be benevolent, share our personal conceptions of positive and negative values? How could we be sure of this before making a commitment of submission? As history abundantly -- but apparently vainly shows -- it will be too late afterwards, if he or she is truly a dictator. (See Bestowing Trust)

Organizational Dynamics vs. Personal Concerns But maybe we shouldn't be so sanguine, so lazy. Perhaps we have to participate in our political life and governance, instead of sitting back and sneering at what we all too easily dismiss as the "narcissism" and "avarice" of politicians.(See Thank Your Politician For Carrying the Burdens of Democracy)

It appears that what is needed is not benevolent dictatorship but cautious, yet willing support of reasonable, albeit directive, organizational leadership. But can the concerns of two, much less, millions of, individuals be maintained through time and change? Perhaps they can, to some degree, if during the institutionalization process, those concerns reach high enough priority during goal-setting activities. (See Institutionalizing Wisdom)

But irrational optimism should be stifled. Many institutions in education (see GoodSpin: the basic rules of public school hype.) as well as others in commerce, law and government tend to favor goals generating exclusively institutional and incumbent benefits, rather than those they celebrate publicly as their social “mission.”

Are Institutions Dispensible? Many people notice this discrepancy between an institution’s purported mission and the normal results of its activities. It’s great sport to pick a scapegoat for school, government and corporate misadventure: it counteracts apathy; it generates headlines; it flatters egos. Most important it generates an often irrational, therefore lazy, hope for change. (See Dreams, Luck and Too Many Cooks.)

But the outrage is often cavalierly underexamined; and, therefore, misaimed. For example, very many people if asked, want to reduce highway fatalities (or hunger, or cancer, or the number of TV commercials, etc.) to zero. But few want to have to pay to achieve such goals. (Tax the other guy! Or let “the market” -- hocus, pocus -- handle it!)

But what if any kind of technologically advanced, culturally diverse, generally peaceful society requires some degree of collectivization? If so, it also likely requires the subordination, the subjugation, even of some individual aspirations. (And risks a dictatorship hardly benevolent.) Institutions, collectives, not only preserve societies, they define individuality, and help, with cautious public involvement, to support individual freedoms and responsibilities.


For examples and to examine these issues further, see Institutionalization



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Some Beliefs Are Neither True Nor False.

I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong. -- Bertrand Russell

This is a strange statement coming from a philosopher, an English Lord, who went to jail because he openly opposed Britain's involvement in World War I. (Conceded, imprisonment is still not a death sentence.) Surely, he knew -- perhaps not at that time -- that there are beliefs that cannot be said to be true or false. They may be judged to be unworthy, precipitous, or unwise, perhaps, but not true or false.

The crucial difference is between "believing that" and "believing in." Believing that is a matter of truth or falsity. Supporting evidence is a relevant consideration

Believing in is a matter of commitment, of faith, or of hope. One may persist in such commitment in the face of strong evidence that it is wrongheaded. We may question the wisdom of such a commitment, but we do not ask for supporting evidence. One can believe in something, without believing that something else relating to it is true or false.

For example, you may insist on believing in your brother's honesty, without believing it is false that he has stolen something. Or, you can believe in being kind to all persons without believing that they personally merit such consideration.

False beliefs are beliefs that something is factually true, when it is not. A judgment that someone's belief is false depends on the authorities one invokes to claim that one knows something to be a fact belying the belief (a belief that) judged to be false.

The most one can say about beliefs in some thing, in some commitment, in some person is that this faith, this commitment, presumes the truth of facts needed to support that faith. To the extent that such facts are lacking, the faith may be at best a forlorn hope.

So it is that one may believe in a god without knowing that a god exists; or one may believe in a way of life, i.e. pacifism, Animal rights, without knowing that such a way of life is ultimately feasible. There is a lot of room between "not knowing that X" and "knowing that not-X" that permits belief in X to retain some credibility, some honor, even.

A religious belief may be foolish, -- many have died or caused others to die for such foolishness. But religious belief in, trust in, commitment to a god is not disestablished by facts based on the authority of empirical science, any more than, say, brain research can inform me that I am mistaken in believing that chocolate I am tasting at the moment tastes good, if I judge the chocolate I am tasting to taste good to me.


To examine these issues further, see Pseudo-Science: the reasonable constraints of Empiricism


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--- EGR