Global Warming as Mass Neurosis
| July 1, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
A great article in the WSJ about Global Warming. I really like this quote:
If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.”
When I saw this a corollary came to mind immediately:
Even if things practically impossible for chance & necessity to conjure up remain evidence of neo-Darwinian evolution, what isn’t evidence of neo-Darwinian evolution? What we have here a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that neo-Darwinian evolution isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.
49 Responses to Global Warming as Mass Neurosis
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Frost –I think that if something happened it was actually a 1/1 chance that it was going to- but I confess that even this position, in a certain sense, is an ideal one.
Then everything that happens in the future has a 1/1 chance of happening, which would mean that everything has been predetermined.
Predestination is interesting but impractical.
And what if a coin lands on its edge? Do we get to read minds hee hee ?
I confess, I checked out some of the Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi.
tribune at 31,
no, because looking forward probabilities are only to me ratios that represent what we do know and what we do not- that is if we new all of the circumstances that went into a coin flip then we could know ahead of time exactly what was going to happen. This is called “times arrow” in that the future has the unique quality of mystery but the past ideally does not-
all was fine and well and my side had won the debate until Heisenberg discovered the uncertainty principle which showed that particles physics which makes up all things is in fact deeply unpredictable by nature.
The question though is of retrospective probabilities and Dave is right that the probability as it is defined never changes from the frame of reference it is deduced from in the past- but once an event has happened I think it is accurate to say that “the odds of it happening” not from the original ignorant frame of reference but I totality – is in fact 1/1. Otherwise you appeal to an idealistic universe that is inherently ruled by probabilities and that would make you a “chance worshiper.”
and tribune on the “edge of the coin notion”- you point out an excellent example of why the coin analogy is “ideal” or proverbial in that is does not and cannot accurately represent reality objectively as it actually is-
Stephen said
“This idea, popularized by Kant and institutionalized by skeptics, turns out to be misguided. In fact, the images in our mind really do provide a reasonable account of the corresponding realities outside the mind.”
This is misguided- yes you cannot question ALL that the mind infers- and I was doing no such thing- but illusion certainly does still exist- and it does not take a mental patient to show that the mind can construct things that do not exist in objective reality- to question this would actually be a better example of questioning you own mind’s perception.
Kant was right that the mind does and can perceive false things and that it is one of our duties in philosophy to distinguish between the two. This is where epistemology and ontology meet- in that what we can know is limited by what actually exists that we cannot know. Yet, if we can limit what we can know we can begin to reach higher planes of thought that point in directions towards what we MAY know. ID is largely about this as it aims for the highest common multiplier as opposed to the lowed common denominator route of DE.
There exists a world outside our own minds – but whether it is greater than our own minds is yet to be seen. Yet our minds can err when we are not guided by a religious adherence to pure reason.
As Gödel once said
“The World is rational”
and
“Reason does not err.”
TO think otherwise would be too undermine a possible understanding of the world and at the same time worsen the situation by holding that our reason “could” always be wrong.
That is inherently a philosophy that does not work and is thus unproductive.
and yes of course we could always be wrong about what we think but what good does that caveat really do us if we are seeking definite answers- that is answers we are to believe are true?
Frost — but once an event has happened I think it is accurate to say that “the odds of it happening” not from the original ignorant frame of reference but I totality – is in fact 1/1.
No, the odds of it having happened — not happening — is 1/1
What you are saying is everything that has happened had to have happened.
I can’t buy that. While I do believe in an omnipotent and omniscient God, I do believe we have the freedom to choose.
Your right – the odds of it having happened- but the problem isn’t with the original probability but which the concept of “what must be.” Going forward “nothing” absolutely must be- but looking backwards I don’t think you can argue that the past might not have been that way- because if so then you argue for a different past which does not exist- unless once again we live in a universe that is ruled by infinite probabilities and chance (of which we have no evidence of)
Like I said this is not a clear cut case- if something happens you cant say it might not have- because there is no way to change the past or go back and see if it could have been different. There is only one past so the idea of another is not coherent. The future is dialectical while the past is static- they are very different in this sense.
So to me it’s a hard call- it seems 1/1 but then there is “time’s arrow” and that gives life to free will and mechanical uncertainty- of which I am of course too very found of.
if something happens you cant say it might not have- because there is no way to change the past or go back and see if it could have been different. There is only one past so the idea of another is not coherent.
I agree with that completely.
Ultimately I think you are right Tribune! That is the first time I honestly fee; defeated on UD.
You can thank Heisenberg for that because outside of his determinacy smasher -I would not have agreed.
“The odds of nothing are 1/1 and that which has already happened is not predictable.” Yet, that which is yet to come does in fact have a certain probability- though I must say that I am not sure that probability exists out side of our own minds but it certainly exists within them and so it does really exist and functions regardless of whether it is or is not an ontological illusion.
My original point in my first post stands though. ID does not look at the probability of what has already happened. It appeals to synthetically look at the odds of X happening from the ideal perspective of before X happened. And so the fact that X happened is arbitrary from the odds that it would have happened. The only way you can test for randomness after the fact is to go back and see if it agrees with the data before the fact.
Which is a main reason why I agree Dembski and disagree Miller on this issue.
—–Frost: “Kant was right that the mind does and can perceive false things and that it is one of our duties in philosophy to distinguish between the two. This is where epistemology and ontology meet- in that what we can know is limited by what actually exists that we cannot know. “
Frost, with all due respect, the problem is not whether we can know everything, the problem is whether or not we can know anything.
Instead of probing deeply enough into Hume’s and Lock’s epistemologies to correct them, Kant bought into their unwarranted criticisms of realism and built up a whole edifice to correct a non-problem.
Thomas Reid, for example, saw Hume’s problem early on. He was a staunch defender of the common sense method in philosophy; his epistemology can be described as direct realism, i.e., the mind can acquire direct knowledge of the external world via the interaction of the sense organs and external objects, which are the causes of mental acts or events.
Mortimer Adler, twentieth century philosopher has made the same observation in different ways. Again, I commend to your reading Adler’s article, “Little Errors In The Beginning.” It can be found on the internet.
Kant argued that it is impossible to have direct knowledge of the external world. Can you imagine how much confusion and chaos followed from that error? He was a great moral philosopher and had many useful insights, but he blew it on this one. We are all still paying for it. Even to this day, liberal college professors and their cynical students sneer at the very idea of objective truth or anything resembling a reasoned defense of religion.
Stephen,
I don’t think Kant was necessarily wrong in thinking that we as human beings are limited by the imperfections and peculiarities of our sensous faculties especially when trying to understand outside objects as they actually are independent of us.
I also don’t think Kant was particularly great moral philosopher.
I don’t think we are paying for Kant’s critical philosophy either- I think we have gained the most from it- and it is the synthesis of the reality of the mind and the reality of the world that exists outside above and beyond the mind that gives us the best assessment of what we mean by philosophy.
Frost: Kant reduced objective truth to little more than subjective impressions. What could be more disastrous than such a notion? These days, if we suggest, for example, that the Christian religion might be true, the thought police meet us at the door to instruct us that truth is a personal thing and each of us has our own version of it. Even when we present a rational defense for it, our critics will respond with that mindless platitude that “your truth is fine for you, but my truth is something different. We all have our own personal truths.”
Kant is largely responsible for this way of thinking. He helped bury the medieval synthesis of faith and reason. As Peter Kreeft writes, “He described his philosophy as “clearing away the pretensions of reason to make room for faith” — as if faith and reason were enemies and not allies.”
“Kant thought religion could never be a matter of reason, evidence or argument, or even a matter of knowledge, but a matter of feeling, motive and attitude. He did the same thing with the natural moral law, declaring it to have no content, except for his famous “categorical imperative.” Thus, what Aquinas so nobly constructed, Kant deconstructed without even understanding the points at issue.
Indeed, while Kant denied that we can know that God, free will, and morality exist, he insisted that we would be better off if we “believe” that they exist. Imagine trying to build our constitution on a proposition like that. “We hold these truths to be arbitrary contrived……… that we are endowed by our imaginary creator with perceived rights………….
All the great philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas knew that truth was objective and that we attained it if our mind was in correspondence to reality. Since philosophy has gone off its rocker, thanks to Kant, we have descended into intellectual quicksand and it will take a long time to pull ourselves out of it. No wonder so many of our adversaries think that a design inference is only in our mind.
I agree that Kant was something less that a great moral philsopher and I probably should not have suggested otherwise. To imply that morality or religious truth cannot be known can hardly qualify as a useful contribution to ethics. Still, his “categorical imperative” is reminiscent of the golden rule so I will give him credit for that even if it is grounded in subjectivism and ultimately something that must be taken on faith.
So we want to recreate the old thought-world? Let’s count the costs.
Philosophy glorified intellect as “the good”; but if the goodness of intellect is found in its capacity to determine what is good, as the philosophers claimed—in judgment, or its qualitative force of resistance to divided values—then intellect is divided from sense, since no quality of resistance is found in sensuous existence per se.
Intellect is different from sensuous existence; on this everyone agrees—or at least everyone who wants to glorify intellect as “the good.” But how is it possible to overcome this difference and arrive at a substantive description of value?
The philosophers tried two tacks. Hume was the last in a long line of idealists who claimed they could obtain knowledge of what is good by drawing a bright line between intellect and sense; by glorifying intellect for its own sake and discounting the value of sensuous existence.
Hume, Descartes, Plato—they all believed that philosophers could obtain the good of happiness by clinging to pure intellect and its resistance to the dividedness of existence. Unfortunately pure resistance is pure negation. It leads to disembodied notions of value and is therefore of limited use to physical, living beings.
The others, including Kant and Thomas, followed Aristotle and his attempt to describe “the good” as a ratio of material and intellectual causes. The problem with this ratio is that it occurs purely in the mind and cannot be directly linked to sensuous values.
Kant tried to overcome the nothingness caused by Hume’s love of pure intellect by conceding that there is a difference between mind and the goodness of nature but claiming that it is possible to overcome this difference by learning more about the limits imposed by “transcendentals” on how we think about that goodness.
Essentially this is the same strategy Aristotle used. It is the only way that philosophy has identified to date of glorifying intellect and discounting materialism without losing the mooring of the goodness of nature and floating off into realms of pure thought.
Sense and intellect are divided in philosophy, which profoundly limits the ability of the philosophers to describe the good of happiness. This is why Western culture is now in thrall to the psychological state described by Nietzsche as nihilism, or the annihilation of philosophy and its concepts of the good.
Does someone know a better way?
http://jaytrott.com/
allanius: “Does someone know a better way.”
Yes, the best way is realistic epistemology. The nihilism you speak of is, in large measure, a result of a lost of faith in a rational universe. In the old days, we believed that we our rational minds apprehended a rational universe — that the two were in correspondence. Kant unncessarily destroyed that correspondence by misreading Hume and therefore created intellectual chaos.
Allanius:
I wouldn’t group the philosophers the way you do. Plato and Descartes were both “rationalists”, but in quite different senses, and Hume wasn’t a rationalist at all, but an empiricist.
The grouping of Kant with Aristotle and Thomas is even more bizarre. Kant presupposed the fundamental superiority of modern philosophy over ancient philosophy (note his tributes to Bacon, Rousseau and Hume), and is pretty far removed in every area of philosophy from Aristotle, and from Aquinas who was heavily Aristotelian.
We Greeks see the march of modern philosophy as mostly disastrous, with Kant as one of the darkest moments, though certainly Descartes got the whole thing off on the wrong foot.
In some respects, oddly enough, Wittgenstein is more Greek, in particular more Socratic and more Aristotelian, than most other modern thinkers. He is partly spoiled by the anti-metaphysical bent he got from Kant, but he does show some genuine philosophical possibilities. And interestingly enough, though not Christian, he shows a sympathetic understanding of religious thought in general and Christian thought in particular.
All the greatest and most wonderful Christian thinkers over two millennia — Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, William of Conches, Aquinas, More, Erasmus, Cudworth, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, etc. — are steeped in, or at least influenced by, Platonism or Aristotelianism. You have to ask why.
T.
—–Timaeus: “All the greatest and most wonderful Christian thinkers over two millennia — Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, William of Conches, Aquinas, More, Erasmus, Cudworth, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, etc. — are steeped in, or at least influenced by, Platonism or Aristotelianism. You have to ask why.”
Yes indeed. Philosophy and reason were much more wholesome before the investigator started intruding on the investigation. Decartes subjectivism was a bad enough distraction but it didn’t become a disaster until Kant and co. gave it respectability.
H’mm:
Pardon a couple of footnotes, with a conclusion/suggestion:
1] Probabilities:
In communication theory, we make an interesting observation on a priori and a posteriori probabilities of messages, once a message is in prospect and/or received. The probability of an event being actual, once perceived is an instance of the later.
So, we can have cases where the probability of an observed event having actually happened is less than 1.
2] Implications
The deeper significance in part comes out in a point deriving from Josiah Royce: Error exists.
This is undeniably true, so the truth exists. But also, that truth no 1 implies that we may be mistaken over the truth.
In praxis, we have very high confidence in certain experiences and inferences, much less so in others and as a practical matter we test and if required correct the latter by reference to the former. That is, we warrant the latter by reference to the former.
Thus, the valid form of objectivity as a criterion of truth.
And that brings us to . . .
3] Reasonable faith
We now see again that we cannot reason without trust and we should not trust without [good] reason.
That is, faith is not the enemy of reason, but its root. And, we have good reason to trust certain sources of information beyond what we can prove otherwise.
Thus, we see a base for a modest, humbly realistic epistemology, and for linked ethics and a lot of other good things.
Hope that helps . . .
Back on topic, much of the Global Warming alarmism is linked to a degree of trust in long-term complex computer simulations of the global weather/climate system — some of which are reality-challenged — that is perhaps less than well-warranted. But that does not mean that there are not real issues on what we are doing to our climate, and to our economies. So, prudent action in light of what is wise on a least regrets basis, is advisable. [For instance, as I just advised our local Gov't here in M'rat, we should take no action on initiatives solely on the basis of AGW projections, but where concerns over AGW have led to research, technological developments and opportunities that make sense on other bases -- e.g. energy security in a world where oil is economically volatile and politically high risk -- then we should take up the opportunities.]
Prudence and humble epistemological realism move us on beyond hype, mass hysteria and Plato’s Cave games.
(It would also do us a lot of good in dealing with the rising tide of national and internationalist political messianism. I am of that generation in Jamaica who were cured of any vulnerability to the blandishments of charismatic would-be political messiahs by my experience of the 1970′s.)
GEM of TKI
FWIW, Wittgenstein was buried as a Catholic.
For instance, as I just advised our local Gov’t here in M’rat, we should take no action on initiatives solely on the basis of AGW
The more efficient the energy source, the less work will be required to get the energy and this will — barring corruption, either gubmint OR corporate — translate to a wealthier community.
And there will be less CO2.
And this also applies to conservation — less energy for the same work is better for all.
Of course here, out of compassion for Ma Earth our greens (and their allies) want to rip down long-standing hydro-electric dams, increase the number of toll roads, inhibit telecommuting (just try suggesting it may be unwise to apply OSHA standards to home offices) and have prevented any new nuclear plants from being built her for nearly three decades.
Go figure.
tribune7 @47:
Yes, that’s true; but if you read the biographical account of his friends deciding what to do with his body, it’s clear that they all knew that he wasn’t a believer; he was buried as a Catholic on the strength of a remark he once made (about the appropriateness of burying another born-Catholic unbeliever with Catholic rites).
Nonetheless, though an unbeliever, Wittgenstein seemed to understand religion at a much deeper level than most practising religionists.
T.