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Brian Leiter’s rampage against Thomas Nagel

December 12, 2009 Posted by William Dembski under Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Science
33 Comments

Thomas Nagel . Brian Leiter

By any accounts, Thomas Nagel has proven himself a more nimble philosopher than the hamfisted Brian Leiter. That’s perhaps why Leiter simply can’t get over that Nagel liked Stephen Meyer’s SIGNATURE IN THE CELL (reported at UD here). For Leiter, when scholars of Nagel’s stature endorse books coming out of the rogue Discovery Institute, that endorsement itself constitutes an attack on liberal democracy, cultured discourse, science, etc. Leiter simply can’t let this go. Here are the posts to date on his blog:

leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/nagels-nonreply.html

leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/more-comments-from-philosophers-on-thomas-nagels-shameful-stunt.html

leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/thomas-nagel-jumps-the-shark.html

leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/09/nagel-wins-ba-3.html

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33 Responses to Brian Leiter’s rampage against Thomas Nagel

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  1. 31
    SeverskyDecember 16, 2009 at 8:52 pm

    thogan @ 29

    Recently, there was a neat illustration of an “advantage” provided by “science”–15,000 cancer deaths caused by science from C-T scans. The same argument could be applied to weapons and accidents resulting from physics, chemistry, and engineering.

    “Science” also has recommended removing tonsils, adenoids, and appendices because of a belief that they were vestigial. Good going there, “science.”

    Nobody is claiming science is perfect but its track record is better than any of the alternatives when it comes to gathering reliable data about the world and building robust theories to explain it.

    Yes, I’ve created a reductio ad absurdum. It’s consistent with your ridiculous attribution of one death to religion as being a valid complaint against all religion.

    The original issue was with the difficulties of distinguishing science from religion. The story of the girl who died needlessly from diabetes was intended as an illustration of the difference between the two. One would have offered the girl a much better chance of survival than the other.

    It was not intended as an attack on all religion.

  2. 32
    SeverskyDecember 16, 2009 at 9:10 pm

    Mung @ 30

    One has to wonder if “before there was science” there was only religion. If that’s the case, it looks like religion did discover diabetes.

    Before there was science in the modern sense, there were well-educated religious people who practiced what we would now call science, occasionally as some risk to themselves.

    He writes:

    As it is, you could say that she died from religion, not science.

    Most people would say neither. Most people would say she died of diabetes. Unless they have some axe to grind.

    Diabetes was the immediate cause of death but the reluctance of her family to seek known, effective treatments was clearly a major contributory factor at the very least.

    Now apparently her parents were praying for her. That seems to be a religious activity. So unless the argument is that it was her prayers that killed her, it hardly makes sense to say that religion caused her death. At the same time, science did not save her from dying. So I guess one could argue that yes, science did cause her death.

    Science could have saved her if it had been allowed. She died because she was denied effective treatments by the religious beliefs of her parents. That is not the fault of science.

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