Shaun McGonigal

Despite my repudiation of the claim, Jerry Coyne continues to argue that I think that there are “ways of knowing” other than science. I have said, and will say again, if it’s any use, that the locution ‘way(s) of knowing’ is not clear. The point of using it seems to be to rule out certain claims to know, or to be able to establish some things as items of knowledge, and others as mere subjective suppositions, but no one, so far at least, has proposed a definition of what a “way” of knowing might be. In fact, as earlier commenters have pointed out, we know all sorts of things which do not obviously come within the ambit of science, stretch the meaning of the word ‘science’ in whatever way you please. Indeed, the argument that knowledge is confined to what can be confirmed scientifically, broadly construed, is merely a way of settling the disagreement over scientism by fiat. Let’s take some of the uses of the word ‘know’ that Tim Martin Harris suggested some weeks (or is it already months!) ago: knowing how to ride a bike, knowing how to play an instrument, knowing a language, knowing someone (as against not knowing them), knowing a character in a novel or in a play, knowing what it is like to be in an accident, or to have the special knowledge that only those who have been there can have, of fighting in a battle, say, or knowing what it is like to live in poverty, or being told that you have only two weeks to live. It does not seem to me that any of these describe “ways” of knowing, a such, though each of them, in a reasonable sense, may be said to delimit spheres or items or realms of knowledge that are very different and to the achievement of which very different types of experience are necessary. And nothing very useful regarding the nature or the limits of knowledge have been determined once we have done this.

First of all, it seems to me, we must try to understand why it is that some people want to restrict knowledge to the scientific “way of knowing,” whatever that is, and so far no one has given a very satisfactory definition of why people want to make this restriction, and what making it accomplishes. This is especially true if the qualification is added about the scientific way of knowing, broadly construed. This looks very much like an effort simply to stretch the meaning of the word ‘science’ in such a way that any claim to know will automatically be entered under the column labelled “Science.” And the advantage of doing so is presumably that science, given the remarkable and admirable achievements of science over the last four centuries or so, gives a special “cachet” to the claim to know. Thus, when neuroscientists bruit about the claim to have detected, in the brain, the moment of decision — as in the famous experiments by Libet (and successors), which have been taken to prove that we make decisions before we become conscious of them — it is taken as settling, once and for all, the very contested philosophical issue of free will, even though there is as yet no reason to identify brain events as detected by neuroscientists with conscious decision making. What would support this much desiderated identification? So far, the answer to that question is unclear, which hasn’t detained neuroscientists for very long in their rush to judgement. It’s a bit like those neuroscientific experiments designed to locate the centre of spirituality in the brain, by using nuns as experimental subjects, because they, it is apparently assumed, are — if anyone is — more likely to be having religious experiences than others who do not wear their religion on their sleeve. The presuppositions underlying these assumptions are obvious, but I have yet to see a justification for making them. This is not, to be frank, much more reliable than taking individuals’ introspective accounts of their experiences as somehow above question, but so long as the label “Scientific” can be applied to the results, we are somehow lulled into the questionable belief that the results are more reliable than asking people what their experiences are like.

But the problems are much deeper than this. For instance, most of those who use the locution ‘ways of knowing’ are prepared to acknowledge that history produces reliable results, results reliable enough to be taken under the protective wing of “science,” broadly construed. And while there is doubtless a lot to be said for the contribution that science can make to history, by (to mention only one such contribution) providing reliable dates for artifacts discovered in the field, it simply does not follow that other aspects of history are reasonably thought to come conveniently under scientific controls, even broadly construed, for there is an element of interpretation of the data available to the historian which is ineliminably creative and interpretive, and for which no scientific controls are available. Yet it would be unreasonable to suggest that, failing such controls, the historian’s claim to knowledge is specious. The same goes for the philological recreation of ancient texts, and the consequences which flow from such decisions. Certainly, there are elements of perfectly objective standards of interpretation, but again there is an ineliminable element of the subjective and interpretive upon which are based historical judgements which are reliably thought of as items of knowledge. Like any of our knowledge claims, these are always subject to revision on further evidence, or further interpretive consideration, but their failure to measure up to the kinds of empirical testing required by science (although in the higher reaches of physics empirical testing, and perhaps even the possibility of such confirmation, is perhaps also in doubt) should not spell doom for the claim to objective knowledge of the content and meaning of ancient texts.

Some people have suggested that the fact that the content of Jerry Coyne’s blog is fairly evenly distributed amongst science, food, boots, cats, music, the criticism of religion and other interests shows that scientism is not the restrictive tendency that it has been claimed (by myself and others) to be. This is not to the point. That Jerry’s interests are fairly extensive says nothing that is germane to the question whether his restriction of ways of knowing (supposing this terminology to be a useful epistemological taxonomy) to science alone is either valid or helpful. This is more in the nature of a philosophical or epistemological claim that can be dealt with on its own. Nor, may I add, is my status as an atheist or a religionist manqué pertinent to the issue either. Indeed, I find it a bit odd that this should even arise in this connexion. I am not opposed to scientism because I find the universe cold and impersonal in the absence of religious faith. Bertrand Russell found the universe far more forbidding than I, yet no one that I know of has accused him of wishing to return to the comforts of his childhood faith. I do say, and will continue to say, that the continued claim that the propositions of science exhaust what may be known about ourselves and the world makes scientistic atheism far less congenial than it need be to the many people for whom religion is a solace and a comfort in the face of sickness, death, injustice and loneliness.

As for Jerry Coyne’s latest question as to why I do not find humanism more attractive than I do, all I can say is that the people who have commented on choiceindying.com have more or less scorned my repeated suggestion that some form of humanism is a necessary replacement for religion, and have generally held that life is simply what we make of it as individuals, and we should not expect there to be any replacement for the kinds of community and belonging that religion has provided in the past. Given the fact that, in the past, whether for better or for worse, religion has provided a unifying element to entire cultures, it seems to me to be quite unempirical to suggest, without further evidence, that societies can productively exist and flourish without some kind of unifying myth; and it would not be an exaggeration to suggest, I think, that the present development of global capitalism, and its lack of care for individuals or the flourishing of communities, is indicative of a breakdown in the structure of social mythology that has provided, in the past, the foundation for the flourishing of individuals within living communities – which, while having a serious downside, are still the only mass movements of social belonging on offer. While I deprecate the lack of alternatives, I am not at all surprised, in light of this, that religious fundamentalisms are making something of a comeback, for, whether believable or not, they provide social compacts within which people can feel that they count. Religions have always provided a sense of social belonging to the most vulnerable and most alienated members of society, and with the untrammelled growth of global capitalism and the inequalities and injustices that are the immediate product of that growth, the growth of fundamentalist varieties of ancient faiths with their promise of strong social bonding, even at the expense of life, should come as no surprise.

So, I think we need to get away from and perhaps beyond the misleading expression “ways of knowing,” and seek for an understanding of knowledge that is more applicable to the realms of knowledge at hand. While I agree that what we claim to know must be, at the very least, compatible with what we can reliably know by the use of scientific methodology, that methodology cannot, without begging the question, define the limits of knowledge itself. In this respect the supernatural claims of the religions are plausibly thought to be one and all empty. This does not mean that the religions do not know a lot about human nature, about the finiteness of human nature, its tendency to go personally and morally awry, and its need for community and consolation. By reducing what we can be said to know to the propositions of science, it is not so much that it leaves us with a cold impersonal universe which we must face without the comforts of supernatural reward, but that it leaves us with a cold and impersonal humanity, which is about as attractive as Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984. And merely saying that science leaves art, music, literature, and so on, as it is, which will remain for our enjoyment, is really not leaving art, music, literature and so on as it is, but is hollowing it out in such a way as to diminish their usefulness as ways of understanding ourselves and coming to know more intimately the nature of being human, the sensitivity and complexity of which is not accessible to science and may never be.

To end with, let me just say that it seems peculiar to me that an orthodoxy regarding the scope of science, or the limits of knowledge, has begun to form itself around the development of what has come to be known as the new atheism. This development was (to me at least) quite unexpected. Indeed, when the accusations first started to be made about scientism and the new atheism, I took the Oxford Companion to Philosophy at its word when it stated, quite bluntly, that while pejorative, the term ‘scientism’ did not refer to an existing philosophical trend. A revision of that entry seems now to be in order. However, before revising it we should perhaps try to determine, without any sense of parti pris, what it is that we are trying to discern. Is the new atheism ready to undertake the kinds of meticulous philosophical study that will provide it with both a metaphysics and an epistemology, and is it prepared to enter fully into the fine-grained philosophical reasoning that is necessary in order to provide this? A few anodyne phrases about science, its methodology and success is not adequate to the sheer complexity of the material that we need to deal with. Science is beautifully reductive, and on the scale on which science operates, fairly definitive conclusions can be reached. But they are definitive precisely because abstracted away from a much more complex whole to the knowledge of which, as a whole, scientific methodology is not obviously applicable without reservation. Jerry Coyne has often expressed his scepticism regarding sociobiology in precisely these terms. Yet surely E.O. Wilson, who argues on the basis of group selection (an issue on which I am not qualified to speak), is surely addressing the higher levels of complexity to which I have just referred, and trying to find ways of dealing with this complexity in a scientific way by applying the mechanisms of evolution to it. And then, of course, there are doubtless higher levels of complexity still to come, complexity which is now dealt with by history, economics, sociology, psychology, political science, anthropology, philosophy and other disciplines which slowly shade off in the direction of the humanities. The question for me, at this moment, is where, on this continuum, do we place the transition from science, broadly construed, to the humanities, broadly construed, and what confidence we should have that sufficiently fine distinctions are being made to distinguish between those realms of inquiry which provide that to which we are prepared to grant the accolade knowledge, and those realms of activity which do not qualify for this distinction? I do not think enough thought is being given to making these much more fine-grained distinctions, upon which alone a reasonable account of what constitutes knowledge, and what methodologies are appropriate for the different realms of inquiry involved in order to achieve it. By pretending that the line of demarcation between what constitutes a genuine field of inquiry is clear, when it is not, religions unfortunately can take great comfort — and in fact do, for they are past masters at the art of playing in the borderlands of knowledge, and retain enough credibility that they can go on doing it without having to provide the kinds of clarification which their opponents are also unwilling and unprepared to do. This kind of back and forth squabbling about the nature of knowledge is not only unedifying, it is dangerous, because it conceals the real indeterminacy of much that passes for knowledge, in both the sciences and the humanities, and leaves a sufficient number of cluttered back alleys and dark corners for the worst to do their worst. I see very little point in the ideological to-and-froing of which the present post is an installment. If we can define the limits of knowledge, as well as the different realms of inquiry in which knowledge can be achieved, then that is what we should be doing, instead of speaking telegraphically about “ways of knowing,” which has no cash value in terms of a clear definition of what is meant. ‘Science’, despite its rhetorical value, is not a magic word or a talisman. It is a human activity, and in that respect it joins a host of other human activities in the project of understanding both the world and our own subjectivity. I see no evidence whatever so far that it is sufficiently well-defined to be able to delimit, without further extensive clarification and analysis, what can be thought to constitute knowledge, and without that epistemological refinement it serves more to confuse than to clarify the points that are at issue here.

by Frederick Sparks

After gutting the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act, sending the Texas Affirmative Action case back to the lower court with instructions that almost surely guarantee a ruling against the University of Texas’ diversity admissions program, and raising the bar for demonstrating workplace discrimination, today the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case lacked standing, leaving in place the lower court ruling invalidating California’s ban on gay marriage. Now same-sex couples can marry in California, and same-sex couples in states who recognize their marriages will now receive equal federal benefits as other married couples.

Yet sadly I think a colleague of mine is correct when she says that these “disparate” rulings will inspire more black vs gay resentment, in a way that of course marginalizes black gays and lesbians. When perhaps the more cogent analysis is that marriage equality doesn’t threaten the oligarchy in the way that full voting, employment and educational access do.

Now it is important for the (white) LGBT community to stand with communities of color and other marginalized people on the broader issues of social justice.

 

I’ve never watched a single episode of Doctor Who, but I know that many readers love this series, which I think has been on television for nigh on five decades.  Here are a series of cat photos related to the show, and your job is to guess the relationship.  These were contributed by Who-loving reader Grania.

There is no prize except your satisfaction in getting the right answer.

In a New York Times op-ed, T.H. Luhrmann, professor of anthropology at Stanford, and author of the book When God Talks Back, suggests that there are ample grounds for a meeting of minds between sceptics and believers (see “How Skeptics and Believers can Connect“). Since the op-ed has been up on the NYT page for a couple of days, someone must think it has something of substance to contribute to the discussion. I think it is a shallow, misleading piece of work, so it is worthwhile saying why. Most of the article is irrelevant, though it is uncertain exactly what it is she wants to say, or what her position is in saying it.

She begins by recounting her experience on a Christian radio show where the host tried to convert her to what appears to be a fundamentalist form of Christianity, from her – well, from what? That is the first question. Here’s what she says:

The in-your-face confrontation makes it that much harder to connect. The more my interviewer pressed me, the more my faith – such as it was – grew strained. I had come to live (theologically speaking) in a messy in-between. My interviewer wanted clarity. The more he put me on the spot, the more I wanted to say that I shared nothing with him and that his beliefs were flimsy dreams.

I know the feeling. I used to say quite seriously that the reason that I did not very often use the name Christian was because I did not believe what most Christians seemed to believe. I don’t know that I occupied a messy “in-between” state. I thought that Christian faith was quite adaptable, and could be used as a more generalised type of humanism with a mythical religious gloss. It wasn’t so much that I had faith, as such, or at least what my faith consisted in was a storied context in which I could live out my concern for other people.

Luhrmann then goes on to discuss in more detail where she thinks the religious-anti-religious debate stands at the moment. She makes use of what, I assume, is an anthropology term of art, ‘schismogenesis.” I’m not at all sure what the word contributes to the discussion. Yes, there is a conflict, and a pretty intransigent one, between believers and unbelievers:

The last few election cycles [she writes] have made it clear that many evangelicals think that those without religion are dangerously wrong on many issues. A crop of equally committed atheists and agnostics have reciprocated, with vigor.

And then she goes on, rather surprisingly, to suggest that what she calls

schismogenesis is responsible for the striking increase in the number of people who say that they are not affiliated with any religion.

She seems to misunderstand what is going on here. The split, surely, is not responsible for the increase in the religiously unaffiliated. If anything, more and more people do not find the language of religious faith particularly germane to their lives. She points out that most people still believe in a “higher power,” and that even so people are not willing to associate themselves with a religion.

They’ve seen that line in the sand [she writes, a bit puzzlingly], and they’re not willing to step over it.

To me, this seems an odd way of putting it, especially when she goes on to say that “believers and nonbelievers are not so different from one another” — “news,” she continues, “that is sometimes a surprise to both.”

Now she is making it up as she goes along. The strange thing is that she seems not to be aware of the function of doubt within religion. She visited one church thinking that she would stick out “like a sore thumb.” But then she found that lots of people, even in faith communities, share her confusion and her doubts; and then she began to rethink what seems to have been her understanding of “faith”.  (It has to be said that it is never clear where Luhrmann herself stands.) As she says:

I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected in those around me. People were willing to utter sentences – like “I believe in God” – that I was not, but many of those I met spoke openly and comfortably about times of uncertainty, even doubt.

The trouble is that she doesn’t put this kind of language in context. Certainly, religious people express their questions and doubts from time to time. Indeed, there is, in the spiritual life, something that is known by various names, from “dry periods,” to “the dark night of the soul,” when prayer and ritual seem empty and pointless, and God is unresponsive and distant, perhaps not “there” at all. That is, there are times in the spiritual life when the absence of God and consolation is overwhelming.

But this is not a basis upon which rewarding conversations between believers and unbelievers can flourish, and that for a very simple reason that Luhrmann does not seem to recognise. For, in religious contexts, such times of spiritual emptiness cannot be taken as true doubt, in which people seek for the truth about those things, religious answers to which they have now come to express doubt. Not at all. Doubt in religious contexts is the absence of a presence, and the task of the religious believer in such contexts is to work through to the point where belief once more is filled with meaning and purpose and a sense of the presence of God. This is very important to understand. In rational contexts, doubt is a springboard for further investigation. If I doubt that the moon is made of green cheese, then my task is clearly to find out what the moon is really made of. I do not work patiently with my doubts until I can go back to believing that the moon is made of green cheese after all. But that is precisely what doubt in religious contexts is about. It’s about finding a resolution to the doubt, and returning to faith; it is not about resolving the doubt by discovering more about the world. This is very clearly expressed in the gospel of John, where doubting Thomas pleads with the risen Jesus, not without considerable guilt, saying ”Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!” (Of course, the whole story is based upon a disagreement within a later church context for which “John” is writing.)

The point is that doubt and uncertainty on the spiritual journey is an expected stage through which the spiritual life must go. Doubt is a temptation that needs to be withstood, like the Slough of Despond in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. There are all sorts of devices used by the Devil to deflect one from one’s path to the heavenly city, and doubt or anxiety about belief is one of them, and any temptation in that direction is to be resisted. Luhrmann thinks that this doubt and uncertainty is a good basis upon which believers and unbelievers can reach across the divide towards each other and find things that they hold in common, so that, instead of the social division (or schismogenesis) that hampers relationships, the divisions can be healed. She herself knows, I think, that this is simply a mistake, for she says, so apparently disingenuously:

Many of my skeptical friends think of themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so. Yet these secular friends often hover on the edge of faith. They meditate. They keep journals. They go on retreats. They just don’t know what to do with their spiritual yearnings.

Now, I think it is doubtless true that some people who have left religion behind, feel a sense of loss, and do try to fill their lives with activities that can also be seen as religious (or spiritual) in some sense of the word. It helps to fill in the blanks after the ordering principle of religion is gone. Religions, after all, have means of “sanctifying” time, on a weekly basis, and through changing religious seasons throughout the year. This ordering of time helps people to achieve some structure in their lives so that their time, even time unrelated to their faith commitments, is used to best advantage. If you have to make time for religious obligations, you are likely to order the rest of your time as well, and when you leave religion behind, you will doubtless want to have the experience of living an ordered life as before. So doing things that are vaguely religious may be helpful. But this need not mean that you are hovering on the brink of faith. Indeed, quite likely just the reverse of this. You are trying to order your life in such a way that the need for faith no longer arises, just like when people give up cigarettes or alcohol, they need routines which distract them from addictions that are hard to break. This may be seen as hovering on the brink of addiction, or it may be seen as a way of breaking the cycle of addiction.

Luhrmann brings her article to a close by suggesting that

[w]e need to recognize something of what we share, and to carry on a conversation – and if we can keep the conversation going, we will, however slowly, move forward.

If we can’t, we’re in real trouble.

But this, I think, is all wrong. It’s not about carrying on a conversation, for nonbelievers are not on the same page with believers. There is no single direction in which to move forward. There is a great divide. All we can do is to insist again and again that the best way to carry on a conversation is to get straight in our minds that there are some beliefs that are based on reason or evidence, and some that are not. Religious believers who are trying to cure their disbelief by recapturing the original sense of the fulness of belief, without at the same time scrutinising their beliefs from the standpoint of reason and evidence, are being unfaithful to the truth. They simply must not be allowed to lapse back into faith without at least challenging their beliefs and the basis upon which they are being held. The more they fail to undertake some epistemological assessment, the less chance there is of a fruitful conversation, for believers and unbelievers are on completely different epistemological trajectories.

The signal to noise ratio in religious belief is far to low. Luhrmann seems to think that we can have a fruitful conversation without assessing the rational basis for belief. Such a conversation, however, would be pointless. She does not seem to understand that the division is between those who think that the ethics of belief are fundamental and those who think that belief is in some way, just as belief, never mind the evidence, of some value in itself (compare Dennett’s “belief in belief”). What religious believers who are going through the “dark night of the soul” are looking for is a way back into faith and the re-enchantment of the world. But if that is what they are seeking, there is no basis there for a conversation with those who believe that truth is more important than consolation. That is where the disagreement lies, and Luhrmann seems strangely out of touch with the genuine sources of the schismogenesis of which she speaks. In religion, doubt is always an element within faith. To nonbelievers, doubt is a reason to seek the truth. That’s a big divide. Luhrmann seems not to understand just how big.

Over at his website, Sean Carroll has called my attention to a paper by David Bourget and David J. Chalmers called “What do philosophers believe?” (free download here, reference below). I must admit I’ve only scanned the paper, but the interesting results (highlighted by Sean) reflect whether or not the philosophers agree with various viewpoints and claims.

The survey population is this:

Instead, we chose as a target group all regular faculty members in 99 leading departments of philosophy. These include the 86 Ph.D.-granting departments in Englishspeaking countries rated 1.9 or above in the Philosophical Gourmet Report. They also include ten departments in non-English-speaking countries (all from continental Europe) and three non-Ph-D.-granting departments. These thirteen departments were chosen in consultation with the editor of the Gourmet Report and a number of other philosophers, on the grounds of their having strength in analytic philosophy comparable to the other 86 departments. The overall list included 62 departments in the US, 18 in the UK, 10 in Europe outside the UK, 7 in Canada, and 5 in Australasia.

There were 1972 philosophers surveyed by email in 2009. Their viewpoints on thirty issues are as follows. The philosophers among you will understand the questions; I make no pretense to understanding most of the issues. I have, however, put the ones that most interested me in red.

1. A priori knowledge: yes 71.1%; no 18.4%; other 10.5%.

2. Abstract objects: Platonism 39.3%; nominalism 37.7%; other 23.0%.

3. Aesthetic value: objective 41.0%; subjective 34.5%; other 24.5%.

4. Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes 64.9%; no 27.1%; other 8.1%.

5. Epistemic justification: externalism 42.7%; internalism 26.4%; other 30.8%.

6. External world: non-skeptical realism 81.6%; skepticism 4.8%; idealism 4.3%; other 9.2%.

7. Free will: compatibilism 59.1%; libertarianism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; other 14.9%.

8. God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%.

9. Knowledge claims: contextualism 40.1%; invariantism 31.1%; relativism 2.9%; other 25.9%.

10. Knowledge: empiricism 35.0%; rationalism 27.8%; other 37.2%.

11. Laws of nature: non-Humean 57.1%; Humean 24.7%; other 18.2%.

12. Logic: classical 51.6%; non-classical 15.4%; other 33.1%.

13. Mental content: externalism 51.1%; internalism 20.0%; other 28.9%.

14. Meta-ethics: moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 27.7%; other 15.9%.

15. Metaphilosophy: naturalism 49.8%; non-naturalism 25.9%; other 24.3%.

16. Mind: physicalism 56.5%; non-physicalism 27.1%; other 16.4%.

17. Moral judgment: cognitivism 65.7%; non-cognitivism 17.0%; other 17.3%.

18. Moral motivation: internalism 34.9%; externalism 29.8%; other 35.3%.

19. Newcomb’s problem: two boxes 31.4%; one box 21.3%; other 47.4%.

20. Normative ethics: deontology 25.9%; consequentialism 23.6%; virtue ethics 18.2%; other 32.3%.

21. Perceptual experience: representationalism 31.5%; qualia theory 12.2%; disjunctivism 11.0%; sense-datum theory 3.1%; other 42.2%.

22. Personal identity: psychological view 33.6%; biological view 16.9%; further-fact view 12.2%; other 37.3%.

23. Politics: egalitarianism 34.8%; communitarianism 14.3%; libertarianism 9.9%; other 41.0%.

24. Proper names: Millian 34.5%; Fregean 28.7%; other 36.8%.

25. Science: scientific realism 75.1%; scientific anti-realism 11.6%; other 13.3%.

26. Teletransporter: survival 36.2%; death 31.1%; other 32.7%.

27. Time: B-theory 26.3%; A-theory 15.5%; other 58.2%.

28. Trolley problem: switch 68.2%; don’t switch 7.6%; other 24.2%.

29. Truth: correspondence 50.8%; deflationary 24.8%; epistemic 6.9%; other 17.5%.

30. Zombies: conceivable but not metaphysically possible 35.6%; metaphysically possible 23.3%; inconceivable 16.0%; other 25.1%.

59% compatibilists in free will, and only 12% seeing “no free will”? Really? These are the folks who have soothed themselves by replacing the old dualistic notion of free will with an updated one. That doesn’t make me happy. ‘

But the proportion of atheists, 72.8% as opposed to 14.6% theists, does.  Philosophers  have long known that their ranks are largely godless, but this is a striking confirmation.  I conclude that people whose job involves thinking and being rational have largely decided to discard god (though I’m still a bit irked about the compatibilism).

The 27% of people who see mind as largely non-physical is a disturbing figure. That goes against everything that neurobiology has told us, and shows that not all philosophers are on board with science.

I am a consequentialist with regard to ethics (someone who thinks ethical judgements should be tendered based on their consequences) rather then a deontologist (ethical judgements should be made based on adherence to rules), so I’m not wildly happy with the slightly higher percentage of the latter than the former.

As for the trolley problem, I’m glad to see that 68.2% of philosophers would switch the out-of-control trolley onto the other track, killing one person there rather than the five who would have died without the  switch, but I’m puzzled by the 7.6% who wouldn’t flip the switch? What’s the basis for that judgment? And what are the “other” solutions suggested by the remaining 24.2%. You either flip or don’t flip the switch, or you refuse to make a judgment (which, of course, is really a judgement since it results in five people dying). Perhaps they’re simply judging the morality of the action, and can’t reach a conclusion.

If you’re a philosopher, or know about these other issues, feel free to enlighten us and tender your own judgment.

___________

Bourget, D. and D. J. Chalmers. 2013. What do philosophers believe? Philosophical Studies (in press).

Guess what?

(Are you sitting for this?)

Not all parents who homeschool their children are Christian.

(I’ll give you a minute to digest that.)

It’s true! There are a lot of atheist parents who homeschool their children (for any number of reasons) but there’s a major problem with that: A lot of the material made for homeschooled kids is written from a Young Earth Creationist, the-Bible-must-be-true perspective, such as books from A Beka or BJU Press.

KellyAnne Kitchin and Jenn Gauthier have both dealt with that situation in their own lives and they want to make things easier for other parents like them. It’s true that secular textbook writers are out there, but their books can be expensive and, to quote KellyAnne, “used copies often command a much higher price” than used Christian textbooks.

So how do you fix the problem?

Their solution is to create an atheist lending library for other homeschooling secular parents:

Committed to raising free-thinking citizens of the world and helping other parents do the same, KellyAnne and Jennifer are looking to open a nation-wide lending library full of materials to lend out to homeschooling families for the school year.

…

Our project will benefit many families who don’t have access to secular school materials, or those families who cannot afford them.

Many new resources have become available in recent years but the cost for these new resources are high since most authors are self-publishing. Our lending library will make those resources more available.

Their goal is ambitious but it’s one of those projects that, once it gets rolling, it could have a huge impact.

Please consider donating to their campaign. Even if you don’t have kids, or even if you send your kids to a public school, this is a project worth supporting.

Science uses reason, experimentation, empiricism, replication, etc., to study reality. We aren't limited to studying natural phenomena unless you limit the definition of "natural" to that which can be studied by science, in which case the claim becomes a tautology. Science studies supernatural claims all the time – esp, psychic clairvoyance, ghosts, near-death-experiences, miracles, you name it.

If God exists, then either God has an empirically detectable effect on the physical world, or he is irrelevant to human nature. Claiming that God is somehow knowable through human experience and/or evidence and reason but is utterly undetectable to the tools of science is tacitly admitting that God doesn't matter and doesn't do anything, and the only thing worse for religion than a non-existent God is an irrelevant one.

Christians usually marry only one person for life. This is called monotony.

Remember when I asked which you would find more rage inducing—a patriarchal atheist or a patriarchal Christian? Well, I have a bit of an update. In that very short post—more a conversation starter than a post, really—I offered this quote from a male atheist named Jesse Powell:

When I look at the relentlessly deteriorating family situation so obvious in the world around us today my conclusion regarding the source of this disaster is that American family life is being destroyed because of our willful disobedience against the natural order of relations between men and women. To put it simply; men are to provide for and protect women and women have obligations to obey men. Each individual man in turn has an obligation to obey the social rules that men as a collective decide upon for the community.

Some of you invoked Poe’s Law, arguing that this must be a parody, and others suggested that he was perhaps a ruse created by patriarchal Christians. I can’t say for sure that Jesse Powell is not a parody or a ruse, but he has resurfaced on a site titled, strangely enough, the Feminine Mystique. The site’s byline is “A Voice for Women” and it endorses “Traditional Women’s Rights Activism.”

In his piece, titled “The Atheist Case for Patriarchy,” Powell begins by responding to my post, makes his case for patriarchy, and then finishes as follows:

Patriarchy is consistent with evolutionary theory, it is a perfectly sound and reasonable basis for organizing society, and it is supported by a vast amount of statistical evidence.  Feminism on the other hand is only supported by empty assertions and wishful thinking that men and women despite all their obvious differences are in fact functionally the same.  Patriarchy is completely rational and consistent with the atheist’s reliance upon logically defensible models of reality and supporting empirical evidence.  It is feminism that is irrational and dependent upon magical thinking and superstitious faith in “gender equality” to be maintained.  I don’t personally care about how much “rage” I generate among atheist feminists; as an atheist I only care about where the evidence leads and objective reality.  The evidence supports patriarchy, this is why I as an atheist support patriarchy; it is as simple as that.

And this, if I may say, is why my identity as a feminist is so much more important to me than my identity as an atheist: Though I have seen people try to make the case, I don’t think atheism automatically leads to feminism. There are plenty of atheists out there who claim to be using “logic” and “reason” in their “refutations” of feminism. Sure, the vast majority of them don’t go anywhere near as far as Powell does, but Powell’s use of evolutionary psychology to defend the male-leader/female-nurturer dichotomy and other aspects of patriarchy is, in my experience at least, disappointingly widespread among male atheists  This is a whole different blog post, but perhaps this is why I found that this statement by feminist blogger Melissa McEwan resonated with me strongly:

I would say I felt exactly as welcome in movement atheism as I did at my Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, but that would be a lie. No one at St. Peter’s ever called me a stupid c*** because I disagreed with them.

My experience hasn’t been as negative as Melissa’s, and I’ve known many atheist bloggers and activists, both female and male, who are as passionately feminist as I am. But I’m still keenly aware that atheist does not equal feminist, and also that atheism is all too often sexist, classist, and imperialist. Because of this, I’m simply not as comfortable among atheists as I am among feminists. But then, I also I don’t think that the disappearance of religion would mean the end of things like sexism, or classism, or imperialism, or that one has to fight religion as a whole (as opposed to fighting specific religious beliefs) to fight these things, so I would rather focus primarily on feminist issues anyway.

Feel free to talk about whatever you like in the comments—if you want to you can refute Powell’s piece, or you can talk about your own experiences with the nexus of atheism and feminism, etc.

Yesterday, I admonished you to read a Colorlines piece that details, in a step-by-step fashion, the way that majority spaces react when minority members speak up about discrimination. I put a particular emphasis on step three:

Step 3: Play the ‘Middle’ Between Rational and Frothing Racist

You know how mainstream news shows discuss global warming by pairing an actual scientist who points to decades of consistent research with an oil-company shill who says global warming can’t be real because Al Gore said something dumb once? And you know how the news anchor moderating the discussion gets to occupy the “rational” “middle” ground by saying “more research is probably needed”? You’re that guy now. Crackpots don’t get people fired, people who validate crackpots do, so get to work.

Let me get you started on your “common-sense” blog post, article or mainstream interview: “We can all agree that the behavior of these Internet trolls is unconscionable. However, let’s not discount their concerns because of a few bad apples…”

You’ve got some primo poli-sci Overton Window triangulation going on now! By assigning the Internet trolls one end of the alignment spectrum, you’ve successfully shifted the terms of the debate from, “What can be done about rampant unjust outcomes for women and people of color?” to “How many racial epithets is it OK to fit in a tweet?” Also, don’t moderate the comments on your blog post, even if they overtly threaten women and people of color. That would be, like, censorship.

The reason I highlighted this point, apart from my personal exasperation at the “tone” argument as a whole, is because I want to talk about something else I read yesterday.

Those of you who are familiar with the online atheist community are all-too-aware of the fact that atheist spaces are currently grappling with their own failures to attract women and people of colour. The problem mirrors one that the American Republican Party is having, and the people arguing against structural changes make many of the same arguments – that what is needed is merely a ‘pinkwash’ or a ‘brownwash’, rather than a concerted effort to change the culture. I have summarized my view of how we got to this position in a previous post, but the even summarier summary is that people began asking why women weren’t participating, but only some of those people accepted the answers they were given.

In response to what is (sincerely by some, ironically by others) being called the “deep rifts” within atheist communities, an Open Letter was drafted, and several high-profile secular groups signed it. It calls for, among other things, a détente between people on “both sides” of the “deep rift”, and a pledge to model more “constructive” standards of communication. I quote from that letter selectively:

Insults, slurs, expressions of hatred, and threats undermine our shared values of open and candid discussion because they move us away from an exchange of views supported with reasons.

(snip)

Unfortunately, the discussion of these issues has suffered from the same problems that plague online discussion in general—although arguably to a greater extent. Some blogs and comments actually exhibit hatred, including rape threats and insults denigrating women. Hatred has no place in our movement. We unequivocally and unreservedly condemn those who resort to communicating in such a vile and despicable manner.

(snip)

Any organization or individual engaged in blogging or administering a forum has an obligation to moderate comments. Slurs, threats, and so forth beget more of the same. Keeping our online spaces free of these elements creates a civil climate that makes it much easier for people to engage issues productively.

While these excerpted sections are far from the biggest problem I have with this letter, it is worth comparing it to the quoted section from the Colorlines piece: a focus on the extreme behaviour, coupled with a litany of admonishments to the discriminated-against party to “be more charitable” and “give the benefit of the doubt” and any other pearls of “common sense” wisdom that place the burden predominantly on the oppressed (while saying nothing about the oppressors except to demand that they be held to an identical standard for non-identical behaviours).

No mention, of course, of the fact that even those who do dispassionately describe the abuse are subject to the exact same level of vitriol – suggesting, perhaps, that there is no method of criticizing the majority that they will find acceptable. No mention, of course, of the fact that while “both sides” claim to be the target of slurs, the slurs that one side complains about are not slurs. No mention, of course, that only one “side” is having their credibility and worth as human being questioned. No mention, of course, that some anger is legitimate, and that some issues need to be evaluated on their merits rather than assuming that the “real” problem is bad behaviour.

No, for that, you’ll have to go to the top of that page and read what is a splendid takedown of the letter by Mary Ellen Sikes, President of the American Secular Census:

Let me state very clearly what I wish the Open Letter had said: Women who are harassed or cyberstalked are not being harassed or stalked over some failure of theirs to practice appropriate online discussion techniques. They aren’t being targeted because they see grouping patterns among their harassers (what the Open letter appears to condemn as “guilt by association.”) They aren’t singled out because they lack the patience to educate others. They are being victimized because their harassers have a pathological need for attention, a feeling of entitlement, or some other deficiency that leads them to attack other human beings. Harassment is the fault of harassers, and harassers bear the responsibility for stopping it.

The unfortunate truth ignored by the Open Letter is that there are good guys and bad guys in many of these situations, each group needs to be dealt with differently, and in the case of stalking and threats, only trained experts should be offering advice.

Their dissent is echoed by Kim Rippere, and the board of Secular Woman:

As a secular feminist organization committed to understanding and exposing societal constructs that contribute to the inequality of women and other oppressed groups, we have no desire to listen to, respect, or continuously debunk overtly sexist viewpoints. Just as most scientists are not interested in debating the beliefs of creationists, we are not interested in debating gender-biased, racist, homophobic, or trans*phobic beliefs.

Although the document contains reasonable recommendations for increasing effective communication, some of these techniques have been used to silence women (and other oppressed groups). When people express opinions that challenge sexism ingrained in social structures and conventions they receive a significant amount of pushback and harassment. Those of us working to challenge systemic sexism should be under no obligation to listen to or be more charitable to our opponents.

Perhaps because they represent entire organizations, or simply because they are more polite than I am, both of these letters are very diplomatic in their criticism of the open letter. I, however, represent nobody but myself, and have nothing either to lose or to gain in saying exactly what I think about this open letter: it sucks and I hate it.

I do not, for example, acknowledge the “good intentions” of the letter. I do not think the goal of the authors of the letter is to improve the situation for marginalized groups – I think it is to move the fighting out of the spotlight so they can return to ignoring the issue. I think they are tired of having to devote time and energy to an internal fight while the “real battle” is still “out there”. I think they honestly believe that there is blame to be shared around “both sides” of the issue. I think they see anger on “both sides”, and therefore assume that the problem is that everyone is angry, rather than recognizing that one side is angry because they’re being harmed, and the other is angry because they don’t like getting called on their bullshit.

This is the problem I have with this and any other proposed “civility pledge”. It presumes that “angry” and “correct” are non-overlapping states, and that all criticisms must be presented politely in order to be valid. It presumes that oppressors need merely to be cogently talked out of their oppressing behaviour, and that they will do so once the ‘perfect’ argument is presented to them (because, after all, we’re all reasonable people here, right?). It presumes that the problem lies on the surface, and that nothing more than superficial changes are needed to address it. It presumes that there is a “middle ground”, and that the role of organizations is to bring “both sides” to that place, rather than deciding what its values are, and fighting for them.

This open letter is merely a pledge to uphold the status quo, and to treat all anger as “counter-productive”. It beggars belief, in fact, to imagine that a similar letter would garner the support of these organizational leaders if the subject was how we talk about religion, rather than how we talk about feminism. I would be surprised indeed to see David Silverman, for example, proclaim the virtues of “dialing down the drama” when it comes to criticizing creationism or the World Trade Center memorial cross. Perhaps it is only when the people we are criticizing are “on our own team” that it becomes more important to preserve hurt feelings than it is to decry bad beliefs.

So while I wish the solution to the problem was as easy as writing an “open letter”, when the people writing the letter have not bothered to understand the problem, the only “open” thing I’m looking for is the door. Until there is a real effort to understand why there is a problem, rather than simply bemoaning the fact that there is a problem, no progress can be made. And as long as major organizations are insisting on chiding “both sides”, all the while assiduously affirming that they deplore the extremist behaviour, they are doing worse than not helping – by perpetuating a cycle designed to resist change, they’re fighting to preserve the status quo.

In closing, I would like to quote from a much better open letter – one that these secular leaders would do well to read carefully:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

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P.S. Rebecca Watson has also responded; Stephanie Zvan responds as well.

A commenter at the Skepchick piece rightly points out that this letter was apparently crafted without the input of a number of principal targets of misogynistic abuse. This is a basic, elementaryl failure to represent the needs and preferences of the very group this letter purports to address, which pretty well confirms my suspicion that the writers do not actually care about solving this problem.