Reductionist scientists called out in public arena

Those we might call public intellectuals often seem alert to the over-reach of science. They point out cases where conclusions are extrapolated from data that cannot bear the weight. For example, James Wilson, a British writer and researcher, has this to say:

James Wilson

"Compared with the last crop of scientists who dominated the airwaves, [that is] the New Atheists – who kept picking philosophical fights they couldn’t win, and scolding the rest of us for being so stupid – the giants of Silicon Valley are not only awe-inspiringly brilliant, but appear refreshingly positive and optimistic." 

However, in speaking about Silicon Valley’s engineers, Wilson admits that “the vision of the future to which they are leading us terrifies me” (Read more here). He means the futurists are making the familiar mistake of viewing the person in terms of mechanical reflexes. 

On that point, Adam Gopnik, writing in the New Yorker, speaks out about how scientific reductionism cannot scale the heights of a person’s hopes or desires, for example. With a mocking tone, he writes:

The language of behaviourism and instinct can be applied to anything, after all: we’re not really falling in love; we’re just anticipating sexual pleasure leading to a prudent genetic mix.

The reductive mindset cheats the person of due recognition as being in possession of a range of capabilities that transcend the material.  That mindset is a disabling factor when it comes to recognizing reality, as examined in a previous post.  A final word:

We need to see the secular materialist epistemology [the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion] not as the ground of truth, but rather a “take” on truth. It is a powerful epistemology, one that can do great things, especially in science. But it is not and cannot be a complete way of knowing. We need to be careful not to let the cultural hegemony that secular materialism enjoys in our post-Christian culture gain the upper hand. Respect it for what it can tell us, but don’t give it more credit than it deserves. (Read more here)

                                     – Rod Dreher: journalist and author 

Dawkins, Pinker can't avoid critical peer review

 This blog has previously examined the ideas of both Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins because they have been among those with high status in the world of ideas in the last couple of decades. However, their thoughts are wide in reach but limited in value because both are in the thrall of a reductionist view of reality, blinkered by a science that stunts rather than expands our understanding of the world that people experience in fact.

But here I’m not going to deride their atheism, but to point out that in the world of ideas their views generally can be met with a great deal of skepticism. In fact, critics of equally high status can be scathing. One such instance is contained in the book Homo Deus (2018) by Yuval Noah Harari. He ridicules “Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and the other champions of the new scientific world views” for holding that each person has free will, and that “individual free choices provide life with meaning”. They are “delusional” in playing a “double-game” pitting the findings of the life sciences - we are merely "an assembly of biochemical algorithims" - against modern liberalism where an individual’s freedom to choose is the central concept. Harari continues:

After dedicating hundreds of erudite pages to deconstructing the self and the freedom of the will, they perform breathtaking intellectual somersaults [my emphasis] that miraculously land them back in the eighteenth century, as if all the amazing discoveries of evolutionary biology and brain science have absolutely no bearing on the ethical and political ideas of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson.  [The writings of these three gave rise to the liberal tradition.] (p307)

Of course, Dawkins and Pinker are no strangers to criticism in the public arena.  Their speeches and writings always attract attention. However, Dawkins is unlikely to have been happy with the 2015 headline “Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation?”, in The Guardian to boot.

The point is that these “champions” are just as likely to be challenged over perceived gaps in logic as any other polemicist. Likewise, British academic John Gray was very direct in finding fault with Pinker’s handiwork: “Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war”, once again from The Guardian, which highlighted this:

A new orthodoxy, led by Pinker, holds that war and violence in the developed world are declining. The stats are misleading, argues Gray – and the idea of moral progress is wishful thinking and plain wrong

Harari’s own work will be examined in a later post. His own views on whether there is any source of “meaning” for each individual is so flawed that it is worth delving into.

Consciousness and the search for scientific humility

I like the humility of one cognitive scientist and philosopher about the state of knowledge as to how consciousness arises. His admission that despite all the attention the subject is getting there is much still to understand is at stark contrast with the declarations made by the likes of Steven Pinker or Sam Harris.

Professor David Chalmers

I’m referring to David Chalmers, University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is also Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He has had a long interest in the philosophy of mind (especially consciousness) and the foundations of cognitive science, as well the philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology.

In a 2017 broadcast Chalmers said: “I see consciousness as one of the fundamental data of our existence, it's just a manifest fact where consciousness is possibly the most familiar thing in the world to most of us. At the same time, it's one of the things that is really the hardest to explain…" He went on:

This is for me what makes it such a fascinating problem I think for any scientist, for any philosopher, for anyone who is contemplating the human mind or the world, and I think we're at a very interesting point right now in 2017 where the field is becoming mature and there is a developed science and philosophy of consciousness, but still that moment you just step back and say, wow, this is really puzzling and something we are just beginning to come to grips with.

This willingness to be tentative in response to the complexity of that field of study can be compared to the pontificating seen in much that comes from the likes of Steven Pinker, Sam Harris or John R Searle, who in 1990 published The Mystery of Consciousness, but in 1997 berated Chalmers for his view that there was not enough evidence to decide that consciousness was completely a product of the brain. However, on this point Searle did offer a bifocal view of the issue. First he states, “Consciousness is above all a biological phenomenon, like digestion or photosynthesis. This is just a fact of nature that has to be respected by any philosophical account.” Then he takes a step back and qualifies the degree of certainty by concluding that work still needed to be done “in the project of understanding how the brain causes consciousness.”

Chalmers in 2017 was still looking for ways to bridge the gap between the brain’s processes and consciousness. He put the issue this way:

For me, there's any number of questions you can raise about consciousness but for me the big one has always been how can you explain it? Why does it exist and how can we give some kind of scientific theory of it. Absolutely it's got something to do with the brain. At least in humans you need a brain to be conscious, and activity in the brain is going to lead to consciousness. Change the activity in the brain and you will typically change the state of consciousness.

There's any number of correlations between the brain and consciousness, but nothing about that yet yields an explanation. So for me the hard problem of consciousness is how is it that all this physical processing in the brain should somehow give rise to conscious experience. Why doesn't it all go on in the dark without any consciousness? Why aren't we just giant robots or what philosophers sometimes call zombies, doing all this processing, behaving, walking, talking, but with the lights off inside, with nothing going on.

For me there is actually conscious experience here and I suspect very strongly that for all of you, you are undergoing something like the same thing. But how can we explain that fact, how can we give an account of that in terms of the physical processes of the brain?

Associate Professor Olivia Carter

In that broadcast Chalmers’ view of the uncertainty in the field was corroborated a fellow researcher into consciousness. Olivia Carter is Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and was executive director of the International Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness. In explaining the state of play of the neuroscience of consciousness she said:

"So within the biology, if we say it's something about a brain, what is it about the human brain that allows consciousness? It's not inherent in the biological structure, it's something about the way this brain is working."

She described how certain types of neurons might be a factor. However, “… It's still unclear, absolutely unclear.” She goes on in a likewise tentative manner: “One big theory of consciousness is that basically… magically consciousness happens when…” Another telling aspect of where the science of consciousness is at comes with this statement:

It seems to be that the sorts of things, like visual perception and emotional processing, that these types of loops do exist and they seem to be important in working memory, whether or not you need working memory as a component of consciousness and such is not clear either.

Having discussed three areas of study, mainly to do with neurons and their behaviour, Carter says: “There's a lot of complex stuff happening in the brain. It seems to be coordinated, [and] one component of those things may or may not be the critical step to consciousness, or maybe it's the three things all together.”

Whether one is talking about consciousness, or the mind or the spiritual beliefs of most of humanity – Pinker had this to say in 2004: “the universal propensity toward religious belief is a genuine scientific puzzle” – what is needed is a little more accuracy on what the state of the scientific knowledge is and a little less of a readiness to marginalize those who see the facts about brain processes pointing to a compelling conclusion of a countercultural kind - that humans have capabilities that transcend the nature and nurture elements of their existence. 

Scientists' prejudices dismay Harvard astrophysicist

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb expresses dismay at the unwillingness of many fellow scientists to even look at his evidence for the existence of aliens in space. He told the UK newspaper The Observer that when he published papers presenting the reasons for his theory the science community showed little curiosity and in many cases mocked him at once for a stance that was considered outside the boundary of serious science. 

In Professor Loeb’s just published book Extraterrestrial, as The Observer’s account relates, he found that his theory...

“put me at odds with most of the scientific establishment”, even though, as a tenured Harvard professor on various academic boards, he worked at the core of it. […] Colleagues turned their noses up. Some thought it was ridiculous, others damaging to the community. Whenever he shared his theory, “Ninety-nine per cent of the time, I’d get this silence,” he says. On Twitter, one scientist described the hypothesis as insulting. Another said: “Next time there’s another unusual object, let’s not tell Avi!” – a petty swipe, Loeb’s theory reduced to a punchline. 

“That made me upset,” he says. “It’s like kindergarten. Let’s just talk about the science!” The reactions still bother him. “If someone comes to me and says, ‘For these scientific reasons, I have a scenario that makes much more sense than yours,’ then I’d rip that paper up and accept it,” he says. “But most of the people who attacked, they hadn’t even looked at my paper, or read the issues, or referred to the items we discussed.” 

Professor Loeb’s experience is of importance to everyone, inside and outside the field of direct scientific investigation. The consequences for us all as to any neglect of vigorous investigation into reality and truth could be severe, both materially and in understanding our human situation.

Professor Loeb

In some ways, Loeb sees the argument around ‘Oumuamua [an interstellar asteroid Loeb had been studying] as a proxy for a larger debate about the scientific process. Of his colleagues, he thinks: where are the progressive, exciting ideas? Where are the scientists making bold hypotheses without worrying they might damage their careers? He is convinced conservatism is ruining science, to the point where a hypothesis can now be dismissed outright just because it seems silly or outlandish or unfashionable, even when it is as theoretically plausible as any other theory available. Of ‘Oumuamua, he says: “The only reason I was courageous enough to come out was because people privately told me, ‘Yes, this object is something quite unusual.’ They say it privately because they’re afraid to make a public statement. But I’m not afraid. What should I be afraid of?”

Professor Loeb blames the antagonism on “conservatism”. But this is not a political or religious conservatism as in the American context, but the ingrained filter that affects a person over what is regarded in their society or community of what is “silly”, “outlandish” or “unfashionable”. “There is a taboo on the subject,” Professor Loeb says.

Once, Loeb went to a seminar on ‘Oumuamua at Harvard. As he left, he got chatting to an astronomer who’d spent his entire career studying objects in the solar system. “He tells me: ‘This object looks so weird, I wish it never existed,’” Loeb recalls, disapprovingly. To him the comment was scandalous. “As scientists we should accept, with pleasure, whatever nature gives us. Science is a dialogue with nature, it’s not a monologue. And what people don’t realise is, nature isn’t supposed to make us happy, or satisfied, or proud of ourselves. Nature is whatever it is.”

He goes on, “I find those instances when the data gives us some uneasiness, when the evidence doesn’t line up with what we expect, I feel these are the most exciting moments. Nature is telling you, ‘Your thinking on this is wrong.’ That’s what I’m here for, to learn something new. I’m not in it to feel good about myself, to get likes on Twitter, for the prizes. I’m in it to understand. So a colleague telling me, ‘I wish it never…’” He shakes his head. 

The filters or barriers to being open to what is socially acceptable, also slam into place because of the “cancel culture”, generated especially by society’s elite of academia, the media and corporate leaders, giving rise to real fear even in these same spheres. 

“You know, I’ve noticed a chilling effect on some people who have worked with me,” he says. “The moment there is backlash from the scientific community, they stop.” I ask why. “Because people at this stage – students and postdocs – they worry about their careers.” Loeb is convinced that, every now and then, a collaborator of his will be told that working with him could damage their hunt for a faculty position, as though it were an ugly blotch on an otherwise stellar CV. “I think that’s the part that is unhealthy here,” he says. “Science is supposed to be without prejudice, open to discussion. Not the bullying.”

All of this dogs Loeb. “My point is, how dare scientists shy away from this question, when they have the technology to address it, and when the public is extremely interested – while at the same time you have theoretical physicists talking about extra dimensions, string theory, about the multiverse? The multiverse is extremely popular in the mainstream. You ask yourself, how can that be part of the conservative mainstream” – but not the search for extraterrestrial life?

In his book, Loeb writes that throughout his career he has worked hard to approach problems with childlike wonder, often in defiance of conventional thinking. “If you speak to friends of mine, people from my childhood, they’ll tell you I haven’t changed much,” he says. “That’s on purpose. You might think of me as naive. But when people say, ‘As you get older, you need to abandon risk taking, become more rigid,’ I don’t accept that!”

Unfortunately, many, many people credit the world of science as being pure, untainted by prejudices, and fully devoted to discovering reality and the truth. From what we can see from Professor Loeb’s experience, scientists are bedevilled by the typical human weaknesses, as well as blindspots typical of their own profession. 

After centuries when the Western world’s top scientists were Christians,  it is sad that these days those who have experienced in their life the spiritual world in any of its many astounding forms are regarded as primitives left behind by the explosion of scientific findings in the last 100 years. But the mind view that is generated by scientism and an atheism that is so much more aggressive than healthy skepticism, is of that same type that gives rise to all that Professor Loeb has encountered. Science is not of benefit to us if it is not open to investigating all that is plausible.