Brian Alters, of McGill University, had a grant proposal turned down for an unusual reason.
In denying his request, the research council’s peer-review committee recently sent Mr. Alters a letter explaining he’d failed to “substantiate the premise” of his study.
It said he hadn’t provided “adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent-design theory, was correct.”
Oh, well…another researcher with a grant that hasn’t been funded, trying to rationalize his failure. We need to see the whole letter—surely he must have just lifted that sentence out of context, right? Let’s hear what the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has to say.
Janet Halliwell, the research council’s executive vice-president and a chemist by training, acknowledged yesterday that the “framing” of the committee’s comments to Mr. Alters left the letter “open to misinterpretation.”
OK, Ms Halliwell, I’m trying to be charitable. Explain how it was misinterpreted.
Ms. Halliwell said confidentiality obligations made it difficult for her to discuss Mr. Alters’ case in detail, but argued the professor had taken one line in the letter “out of context” and the rejection of his application shouldn’t indicate they were expressing “doubts about the theory of evolution.”
May I call you Janet? I bet Alters would be willing to waive confidentiality. Tell me, please, Janet, what the context was. You’re being awfully vague, and that one sentence from Alters is awfully damning.
However, Ms. Halliwell added there are phenomena that “may not be easily explained by current theories of evolution,” and the scientific world’s understanding of life “is not static. There’s an evolution in the theory of evolution.”
You tease! What exactly does that mean? Do you think evolution is “evolving” towards the nonsense of ID? Do you think there is good reason to believe evolutionary theory is incorrect? What justification do you think investigators need to make for evolution nowadays, and do you similarly expect chemists to throw a couple of pages of justification for atomic theory in their proposals? What justification can an investigator give that ID is correct?
I’m sorry, Janet. That exchange wasn’t particularly good for me, and I suspect you’re feeling frustrated, too. You’ve got to be more open and share more. I haven’t heard anything to justify your council’s strange demand that a grant proposal demonstrate that evolution is correct and ID isn’t.
I’m also sorry to see that the infection of ignorance rampant in the United States is spreading northward.
The story also made this week’s issue of Nature, with a nicely ironic conclusion:
Philip Sadler, a board member of the centre and director of science education at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is more philosophical. “If he was trying to answer the question as to whether all this popularization had had an impact, he just saved the government $40,000,” says Sadler. “He found the evidence without doing the study.”
That’s what we get for squeezing 90% of our population against the border. We get your news, your views, and now, apparently, your lunatic idiots.
*sigh*
So there’s our imports. Care to buy some lumber from us? We should really be exporting something.
Your top link (“grant proposal turned down”) is broken.
PZ
As John Harshman over on T.O. points out, this appears to be the result of postmodern doofussness. Seems the reviewers at the granting agency (Social Science and Humanities) may be uncomfortable with evolution as a social construct and, as such, did not reject the grant application because of scientific arguments. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more as this has generated more than a little interest amongst hosers.
Damn embarassing.
Yes, there are young-earth idiots up here as well. I have to humour my future uncle-in-law (devout baptist) about evolution. I’d love to be up front with him, but ironically, his farm hosts a most impressive, fossil-rich outcrop where I can find Cretaceous fish. I’d hate to cut myself off from access to it.
Here’s the story at the Ottawa Citizen.
I’m going to add this to my file on “where to flee when the US collapses into a Fundy reality-denying theocracy”.
Since when was it ever necessary to justify a well-accepted scientific theory on a grant application? This is simply ridiculous. What a maroon.
You know, the acronym SSHRC is pronounced “shirk”. Perhaps there’s a reason.
Alters is in the School of Education, right? I’d like to see the proposal. Was the research to be on the effects of teaching ID?
“There’s an evolution in the theory of evolution.” If by this little gem of wisdom Janet means that theories change over time, well, erff-derr! It does not therefore follow that there is intelligence in the dogma of intelligent design. I am so sick of these tit-for-tat analogies (“There are atheistic implications of evolution, so there are religious implications of ID,” etc. – Dembski).
This is another data point supporting the theory that we need a purge – all liberal arts people studying science should be Gitmo’d. Start again fresh.
Philip Sadler, a board member of the centre and director of science education at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is more philosophical. “If he was trying to answer the question as to whether all this popularization had had an impact, he just saved the government $40,000,” says Sadler. “He found the evidence without doing the study.”
And had the results noted even without ever formally submitting them for peer review even. Neat!
P.S. – I think it’s safe to say that the Ig Nobel nomination forms are definitely in the mail to Mr. Alters.
For those unaquainted with the post-modernist beef with evolution, which is at least as threatening as that from the various religious fundies (xtian, moslem, etc) because it comes from within the ‘intellectual’ culture, a good background article appeared in The Nation magazine in 1997:
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Ehrenreich.html
Unexpected author – Barbara Ehrenreich is most noted for her book NICKEL & DIMED – and venue, but the summary is vivid and well informed. It opens with memorable quotes, from “a recent interdisciplinary seminar on emotions”, some audience questions:
“the experimental method is the brainchild of white Victorian males”
“You believe in DNA?”
The wikipedia articles on post-structuralism, post-modernism, and structuralism and modernism provide more useful background though not directly touching on evolution.
And the parodies of post-modernist texts started by physicist Alan Sokal’s famous submittal of a nonsensical article to the literary journal Lingua Franca (which published it) has been continued by a random essay generator here:
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo
(This page includes links to Sokal.)
“adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent-design theory, was correct.”
No sane, informed person could read this and take away anything concerning evolution except that the writer of this quote mistakenly thinks that ID, a non-scientific renaming of creationism, and evolution are somehow comparable in terms of scientific merit. Such a person clearly underscores their own lack of understanding of science and, therefore, highlights they are thereby ill-equipped to make decision in these matters. No person of science should ever have to defend or justify matters of settled general science: gravity, atomic theory, germ theory and evolution.
I’ve read the Alters’ book, Defending Evolution, and it is wonderful piece of work. He’s an award-winning educator with a great deal to offer the world in the area of public understanding of science. It’s as though he’s being made to grovel by a profoundly uninformed church stooge, an exercise of the dehumanizing power of ignorance.
Sometimes I wonder if we should build three spaceships, tell those sorts of people that a giant space goat is attacking the Earth, load them up on one of them, hit the launch button, and sit back and enjoy the paradise that results.
Wonder where I got that idea? ;)
The application of evolution to social sciences (which is what this looks like, though your grant application seems to be broken so I can’t be certain) is a well known minefield that echoes Nazi social theories and the inevitable Social Darwinism. While the wording of the rejection out of context is somewhat damning, I think you’re stretching to assume that this rejection is related to religious objections without explcict reference to such an objection. There are other credible objections in the context of this field of study.
“For those unaquainted with the post-modernist beef with evolution, which is at least as threatening as that from the various religious fundies (xtian, moslem, etc) because it comes from within the ‘intellectual’ culture…”
And postmodernism is now being used by said religious fundies to advance their antiscience agenda. It’s quite an effective tool to influence (and distort) a layperson’s understanding of what science is. What better way to weaken scientific challenges to religious claims than to tell people that we all “create our own realities” and there is no such thing as an objective fact? Sounds so progressive and modern, you know…Of course the religious nuts’ true goal is for their version of “reality” to supersede everything else, but the crucial first step is to bring science down to the level of just another viewpoint, and postmodernism gives them the means to do this…as do the insincere and dishonest invocations of “fairness” and “balance.”
This is a real shame. I’m a doctoral student at McGill, and Dr. Alters (who is indeed in the Faculty of Education here) has been great about coming over to our undergrad evolution class and talking about his work. He also testified in the Dover trial – his research focus is on determining where all the strong resistance to evolution comes from, and how scientists can better educate their students.
“This is another data point supporting the theory that we need a purge – all liberal arts people studying science should be Gitmo’d. Start again fresh.”
They’re not really studying science; they’re playing with kooky ideas about science. If they actually did science they might have a different perspective.
That being said, there are nonscientists who manage to grasp the scientific method, and can easily tell the difference between science and pseudoscience. And in my experience they’re almost never products of a graduate program in cultural studies or the like.
Knock off the Ann Coulter-style eliminationism schtick, will ya. Some of us liberal arts types actually keep up with science by lurking at sites like this.
Speaking of eliminating 90% of the population… I can think of a few potential candidates off the top of my head.
The silver lining to this kind of situation is that it makes the mental defectives easier to identify.
Aw shit. We were counting on you Canadians to be the sane ones in North America!
Great, BronzeDog – can we now put you down as being objectively in favor of wiping out humanity through a disease contracted from an unsanitized payphone?
Boy, I’m so embarrassed for Canada now. Sigh.
As a previous poster mentioned, yup, this is Ig Nobel territory. But under which category?
Not that this justifies the idiotic decision in any way, but it is important to understand that this wasn’t a case of a biologist being denied a grant for a research proposal involving evolution, but for an educator being denied a grant for conducting a survey involving the spread of ID in Canada. While it is unfortunate for Dr. Alters, ignorant political influence on social science funding is nothing new.
The Barbara Ehrenreich item is, as usual very good. But I wouldn’t be so surprised that she’s knowledgable about these issues.
I’ve read her work in various venues for twenty years or so now-and in one of them I recall her mentioning that she holds a PhD in biology, but has really only used it for Planned Parenthood-type teaching to high schoolers and undergraduates.
The application of evolution to social sciences … is a well known minefield that echoes Nazi social theories and the inevitable Social Darwinism.
Inevitable? Current work by evolutionary primatologists includes C. Boehm’s HIERARCHY IN THE FOREST – which surveys how social coalitions in various primate species work to check the power of dominant individuals. And Franz De Waal’s many efforts to repopularize Darwin’s observation that several primate species have evolved distinct feelings of empathy, sympathy, and respect for those leaders whose reputation is based on fairness as much as on might.
From the wikipedia article which you cite on “Social Darwinism”:
‘the term is an anachronism, although it is still widely used by historians. In many ways it would be more proper to call it “Social Spencerism” instead of “Social Darwinism”. ‘
‘Darwin felt that ‘social instincts’ such as ‘sympathy’ and ‘moral sentiments’ also evolved through natural selection, and that these resulted in the strengthening of societies in which they occurred, so much so that he wrote about it in Descent of Man ‘
[ I’ll add that Darwin, a wealthy man, was a prominent supporter with both money and words of the Abolitionist movement against slavery. ]
The Barbara Ehrenreich item is, as usual very good. But I wouldn’t be so surprised…
Yeah, now that I’ve done a bit of googling I’m not so surprised anymore. Here’s a brief interview in which she explains how she became a writer:
http://lnf.uoregon.edu/notable/ehrenreich.html
Thwaite, I agree. What I’m saying is that the whole application is often poisoned by the past applications. It’s probably not appropriate and it’s occasionally stupid, but it’s distinct from religious reasoning and ID.
Thanks for sticking up for us liberal arts types, Madam Pomfrey! ;-)
Thanks, Talapus, you beat me to it.
Just ’cause we have degrees in things like medieval studies and archaeology doesn’t make us all a bunch of blithering moonbats. In fact, I trace my late-blooming interest in science to my exposure to postmodern “thought” via a series of woebegone literature courses. (“Gawain and the Green Knight” is a metanarrative about lesbian seduction. Really, it is.)
“Thanks for sticking up for us liberal arts types, Madam Pomfrey! ;-)”
You’re welcome…but I’m only sticking up for those of you who don’t buy into postmodernism. Unfortunately the “postmodern phonies” tend to dominate the humanities departments at my university.
Please let me offer a minor correction.
Sokal actually published the parody article in Social Text, and revealed the spoof in Lingua Franca.
OK, what gives?
I get the blue highlighting, but not the link?
Anyway, here it is:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/#papers
Re-reading the title of the post, I felt a little dirty.
“We didn’t know it was that contagious”
Kinda implies to me that Canada and the US had a big of fun, with less than maximal prophylaxis, and now it’s the next morning and the US is off to somewhere else, accidentally spreading a parasitic infection.
An odd metaphor for the IDiots. I’m not sure yet if I like the metaphor or not.
However, Ms. Halliwell added there are phenomena that “may not be easily explained by current theories of evolution,”
Yeah, phenomena like black holes and gravity and modernist art. But really, I am in the liberal arts and I feel a little put upon here. Scientists do often fail to realize that it is possible that there are things which cannot be explained by science; yes, as hard as it may be to believe, there may be things which cannot be objectively studied.
Even more than this, there needs to be discussion on the philosophy of science. Something which has been virtually completely neglected in the scientific circles in which I have travelled. I think that is more the issue here.
P.S. anyone who would deny the validity of experimentation on the grounds that it “is the brainchild of white Victorian males.” is an idiot.
Oh, and one more thing. Evolution has also been used by Anarchists, Kropotkin specifically, as illustration of the viability of their idea, which is where the idea of “mutual aid” in evolution came. So it has not always been used by the fascists.
A socially conservative government just took power in Ottawa, with a robust base in the Canada’s bible belt(s), so I can’t help but wonder if this emboldened some SSHRC committee members to take the IDiotarian line.
Sokal actually published the parody article in Social Text…
True. Mea culpa.
—
For the liberal arts types who’ve admitted reading this blog (welcome!) Sokal is harsh – his basic message can be construed as ‘if you’re not willing to learn science itself, you shouldn’t comment on it’. (Whereas Dawkins would have you learn science. Only.) The imaginative inquiring mind doesn’t take kindly to such strictures, and will continue to seek stories rather than statistics and fossil strata (and is quite capable of making up stories if it seems necessary).
Sokal and this cultural tension are discussed by Harvey Blume in a 12/2000 article in the Atlantic Monthly (only open to subscribers online at http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/crosscurrents/cc2000-12-21.htm ). Blume praises E.O. Wilson in CONSILIENCE for being more responsive to the need for intuitively comprehensive narratives. Perhaps. I’d add people like Antonia Byatt (ANGELS & INSECTS; ON HISTORIES & STORIES) for literature, and Stephen Baxter’s and Greg Bear’s science fiction. Others?
This doesn’t surprise me at all.
SSHRC is hugely frustrating, and it’s now a hoop that every Canadian academic has to jump through: as one of those sub-par, beta-issue humanities PhD’s, now an assistant professor, it’s not necessary for me to get SSHRC funding in order to research, write and publish on my subject. I’d be quite happy to leave the money to scientists who actually need large swathes of grant money to run labs, hire techs, buy equipment and run experiments. All my university needs is to 1) leave me alone 2) near a library 3) for an uninterupted period of time, the longer the better.
The problem is that my department’s funding is tied to my getting SSHRC grants, which means that my job is tied to my getting SSHRC grants, which means that I’m supposed to stop writing papers and editing things and devote my free time to writing elaborate grant proposals for SSHRC funding.
Indeed there are. We call them “things that don’t exist”. Science simply isn’t capable of studying nonexistent things at all. That doesn’t stop the liberal arts people, though.
Scientists understand the set of concepts you call “philosophy of science”. They understand them much better than you do. That’s *why* they don’t bother debating them, particularly with you.
The point of my whine, of course, is that as it is currently structured SSHRC funds both the sciences and the humanities very badly: people in the humanities are supposed to do critical work that mimics science, even at the cost of distorting what we do, and scientists are supposed to do experimental work that mimics critical work, at the cost of distorting what they do.
This wouldn’t be too bad if one could just ignore it, but one can’t. Bugger.
“Alan Sokal’s famous submittal of a nonsensical article to the literary journal Lingua Franca (which published it) . . .”
Lingua Franca was not a “literary journal” nor did it publish the Sokal spoof.” That honor goes to Social Text. Lingua Franca was a magazine dedicated to academic life & coverd the Sokal hoax.
Indeed there are. We call them “things that don’t exist”. Science simply isn’t capable of studying nonexistent things at all. That doesn’t stop the liberal arts people, though.
Scientists understand the set of concepts you call “philosophy of science”. They understand them much better than you do. That’s *why* they don’t bother debating them, particularly with you.
Art doesn’t exist? Political institutions don’t exist? Objectivity is not possible in all things existant.
As for the philosophy of science, nearly all advances in sciences have occured concurrently with advances in philosophy. You seem to have that confused with the methodology of science, which I do in fact understand, and explain to people on a regular basis. It is not as if I have not taken any science classes, I have taken quite a number, more than most in the liberal arts, I have just seen that there are aspects to our society which cannot be studied objectively.
We can’t even define “art”. People claim that some things are art, and some of claims are more commonly accepted than others.
There are patterns and regularities in the things that people often call art. Those can be studied. We can study the degree to which a work deviates from the social conception of ‘art’ at the time it was created. We can study how and why human beings find things pleasureable or interesting, and how that affects art.
To the degree that those things can be said to exist, they exist objectively. Things which do not exist objectively do not exist — that’s what existence means.
Presuming that this anecdote is correct, and presuming causation, what precisely is the causative link? It’s philosophy that is induced to change when science changes, rather in the same way that a barnacle’s velocity changes when the whale it’s attached to changes course.
We can’t even define “art”. People claim that some things are art, and some of claims are more commonly accepted than others.
There are patterns and regularities in the things that people often call art. Those can be studied. We can study the degree to which a work deviates from the social conception of ‘art’ at the time it was created. We can study how and why human beings find things pleasureable or interesting, and how that affects art.
To the degree that those things can be said to exist, they exist objectively. Things which do not exist objectively do not exist — that’s what existence means.
So anything which can only be considered subjective does not exist? That’s a pretty bold claim. Care to support it?
Presuming that this anecdote is correct, and presuming causation, what precisely is the causative link? It’s philosophy that is induced to change when science changes, rather in the same way that a barnacle’s velocity changes when the whale it’s attached to changes course.
Sorry, I accidentally implied that it was causal, didn’t mean to do that. I would say that these two have likely played symbiotic roles, sometimes science leading, sometimes philosophy, but that is based on my knowledge of the greek era only, I am not so up on current philosophy. Also, science was an outgrowth of philosophy originally. Logic grew out of philosophy as well and is necessary for the correct functioning of the scientific method.
Nice one, Molly! My lit-crit grad housemate in Santa Cruz spent an hour convincing us physics grads that the movie Alien was about conflicts in contemporary female sexuality. It held together very nicely.
I think I’ve found the problem.
In the Greek era, science as we know the concept did not exist. Here’s a thought: why don’t you go do some research about developments in our understanding of the natural world in the last few thousand years before opening your mouth and shoving your foot in?
Didn’t want to miss this:
It’s basic semantics and logic, you twit.
In the Greek era, science as we know the concept did not exist. Here’s a thought: why don’t you go do some research about developments in our understanding of the natural world in the last few thousand years before opening your mouth and shoving your foot in?
Why don’t you answer my question first? here it is again.
So anything which can only be considered subjective does not exist? That’s a pretty bold claim. Care to support it?
It’s basic semantics and logic, you twit.
Nice dismissive ad hominem attack.
BronzeDog: Sometimes I wonder if we should build three spaceships…
Wonder where I got that idea? ;)
It came from DNA…. ;-)
Utter and complete crap. The 19th century, for example, was a century of pitifully bad philosophy (mostly various kinds of idealist tripe) but great scientific progress.
By the way, I really wish the screwy comment system would get fixed so I could comment from work again. Pharyngula used to be one of my best gooofing-off tools. ;)
Utter and complete crap. The 19th century, for example, was a century of pitifully bad philosophy (mostly various kinds of idealist tripe) but great scientific progress.
And yet the 18th and 17th centuries had loads of groundbreaking philosophy.
Much of which was in fact strongly influenced or even inspired by scientific discoveries (eg. Newton—> Hume), so you had the arrow of causation in your correletion (such as it is) pointing backwards.
Originally I meant only to say that there was probably interplay between science and philosophy that caused them to push each other forward, not that there was a causative relationship. Sorry, thought I cleared that up before. Still think that, too. I admit I could be wrong though.
I’d say the relationship goes something like this: when philosophers take an interest in science and seriously follow developments in areas of science relevant to their philosophical interests (and that relevance can be very great in the case of something like the philosophy of mind), they do good and illuminating work. When they get too excited about just hearing themselves talk, not so much.
When they get too excited about just hearing themselves talk, not so much.
I think that goes for just about everyone. That’s probably the real reason we have this ID/Creationist problem today.
My bet is that the grant committee was just being diplomatic in not saying that they were rejecting the grant because the applicant wasn’t clear on how ID and natural selection are different.
Idiot. That’s an insult, not an ad hominem. There is a critical difference between the two, a difference that Internet pundits usually fail to comprehend.
Actually it was an ad hominem with the insinuation that I didn’t know anything about logic or semantics with an insult tacked on at the end.
If science developed from philosophy, why are there still philosophers?
Regardless of whether it was an ad hom. attack or not, the point at the beginning of the sentence remains unrefuted: it’s semantics. In other words, can we have some working definitions of terms, please? From everyone.
Here’s my confusion.
1. If something is “subjective” can it by definition not be studied objectively?
2. If the answer to 1. is “yes”, is it possible to learn anything at all about anything subjective?
Art, politics, and other extended-phenotype human behaviours obviously exist. My question is, why does it matter what YOUR beliefs are about these things if I want to study them? How do your beliefs impact reality and influence the phenomena I observe?
For example: you see a painting, and experience an emotional reaction to it (positive, I hope). I see the same painting, and also experience a similar emotional reaction (again, I like positive emotional reactions – let’s imagine I become slightly happier).
Of those phenomena, which cannot be studied objectively by a third person?
Indeed there are. We call them “things that don’t exist”.
You mean like mathematics?
Busy day–I just now followed thwaite’s link to the Ehrenreich article. Gasp! Gaa! Now I see what the issue is. My respect for Ehrenreich has skyrocketed. Yes, I had a postmodernist period (until I purged my system), but even amongst the dotty ideas foisted on me about writing and literature by professors who propped up their own lack of writing talent with gobs of ridiculous theory, there was still the explicit call to be children of the Englightenment, guided by Darwin et al (though I have since jettisoned Freud). Postmodernism is crap, plain crap, and it’s as dangerous as any religious creationism–it’s just another religion after all, really!
“If science developed from philosophy, why are there still philosophers?”
Even more pressing, what about pygmy or dwarf philosophers?
1. If something is “subjective” can it by definition not be studied objectively?
2. If the answer to 1. is “yes”, is it possible to learn anything at all about anything subjective?
1. Correct, this was my whole point, there are things which science cannot study and about which science can tell us nothing.
2. Yes, it is possible, but it will not be objective learning. It will be learning based on subjective criteria. I have no problem with the idea of basing some things on subjective knowledge and I think this may be the point of disagreement between us.
Art, politics, and other extended-phenotype human behaviours obviously exist. My question is, why does it matter what YOUR beliefs are about these things if I want to study them? How do your beliefs impact reality and influence the phenomena I observe?
It is not my my beliefs, or the beliefs of any specific person or people, which matter if you wish to study these phenomena. My point was only that there are thing which science cannot explain.
Maybe we just won’t agree here.
In this context it’s probably useful to remember that explain != explain away. I think science will eventually explain completely, in the specific sense that it will tell us everything that can in principle be learned by an objective observer about their origins and how they work, consciousness, love, music, etc. But because of their irreducible subjective component they can never be explained away (i.e. the reductions cannot be of an eliminative kind). This is basically Searle’s position, and I’m persuaded that he’s right.
Steve LaBonne, Can the perceived irreducibility of the irreducible subjective component be explained objectively?
Mathematics isn’t objective? Better tell that to the electrical engineers and computer scientists putting logic gates together in configurations that can solve arithmetic problems. Better send a note to Texas Instruments — they’re putting out a whole lot of calculating devices that just can’t work, because the math is subjective and therefore not able to be examined or expressed in an objective fashion.
And AoT, that’s still just an insult. Saying that your arguments are wrong because you’re an idiot is an ad hominem. Saying that *you’re* not listening to because you’re an idiot, and that your arguments are also wrong, is not. You’re not, you are, and they are, respectively.
It’s all about refusing to exercise judgment — we don’t need to take a good hard look at other cultures and then evaluate them, and we don’t need to look at our own culture and apply standards to it, everything is true and everyone must have prizes.
I don’t think it’s a religion. It is a set of social conventions, a collection of signals which demonstrate allegiance. Faith is not involved so much as an absence of thought.
To help dispel the semantic difficulties:
I’d say that something is objective if it can be made explicit and observable, and subjective if it is necessarily implicit and unobservable. In the strictest sense, nothing is subjective and everything objective, but in practice things are often beyond our capacity to express or observe. That capacity can be changed, though — and it is changing.
Mathematics isn’t objective?
Not by your definition. You defined “subjective” as “that which doesn’t exist”. Mathematics doesn’t exist (it is about as abstract as you can get), therefor, it’s “subjective”
You’ve tried to backpedal on your definition and gotten yourself in a bit of a muddle. Why don’t we start over.
I was watching the debate with disinterested amusment, until someone mentioned Searle.
I despise Searle, and his ideas.
They’re only valid if emergent properties have no objective reality (not true), and if you accept his claims that because he doesn’t think that something could be a mind, that it’s not a mind.
The Chinese Room argument is repeated so often, and yet doesn’t have a shred of reasoning behind it. Sure, the guy doing the symbol manipulation doesn’t think he understands Chinese … but so what? The emergent behaviour of his mind plus the symbol manipulation rules CREATES another mind – which does.
But, of course, Searle subscribes to reductionism and then uses the failure of reductionism to prove things… but if you can assume p and not p, you can prove ANYTHING, so what’s the point?
The fact is … no, you can’t reduce all things to their component parts. If you look at every atom of my body, you won’t find a single atom of “life”. That doesn’t mean I’m not alive, though – just that being “alive” is an emergent property coming from the connections between those atoms.
The same goes for minds, which is why Searle’s arguments are universally bullshit.
No, Graculus, he never claimed Mathematics doesn’t exist.
Mathematics is purely objective, in fact. There is no subjectivism whatsoever to it – otherwise, I would not be wrong if I said 2+2=1523.
I could be correct if I said 2+2=10, but that is not subjective – merely me leaving out the definition that my numerals mean base 4 today.
Also, Caledonian declared that all things which exist are objective.
This leaves open the possibility that there are things which do not exist but are still objective, which, by your definition of “exist” (a reasonable one, but not the only reasonable one), would include mathematics, which is definitely objective, but doesn’t, for some definitions of the word, exist.
Oh please. How ’bout a study to determine how many humanities people would in fact agree with the statement “DNA is a cultural construct with no empirically testable reality”? I’ll hazard a guess you won’t find many. I’m an historian – one of those liberal arts types thwaite seems to think are unusual to be reading this blog. Trust me, plenty of us do. “Post-modernism” is just a fancy way of bottling a very old idea – that words don’t always mean what you think they do. Whoopee – some people get way too excited about that, and that’s their problem. But seriously, a few of you of you sound to me like some whacky right-winger who has discovered a crazy class at Brown and decided that it is exemplary of all academe. Please. Look, every humanities prof I know would agree to the following two points: 1) People do indeed perceive their own realities; 2) There is however such a thing as an empirically testable reality (“As is, I will indeed always burn my hand if I put it on a hot stove”). I know you can find some whackos who say otherwise, but even they go the doctor when they get sick.
Oh dear, oh dear. The shame. I’ve served on such SSHRC committees (in philosophy). I can’t say I’ve always agreed with their decisions, but this one out-does any in my experience. Maybe a grant really wasn’t deserved (the competition is real & the funds limited, and even good scholars can write a weak application), but that one sentence reveals an nescience so deep and self-indulgent that I have no trust of the committee left in me. Not a healthy situation.
I think the PoMo reading must be right–I have heard rumours, and seen direct evidence, too, of various forms of cognitive relativism among education faculty members. The crucial sentence doesn’t really fit that reading very well by itself: Why ask for what you don’t believe is possible? But it is probably just a snide sceptical challenge…silly buggers.
Objectivity, by the way, is best approached in a non-metaphysical spirit. The things we think of as objective are the ones that are intersubjective (different observers reliably come to the same conclusions), that explain the different results observers get on other (relative) questions (consider 3 dimensional objects and different ‘points of view’ from which one might look at them). Mathematics is objective on this view because it involves procedures and methods that lead independent mathematicians to agree on what’s the right result of a calculation and what does (and doesn’t) constitute a proof. (Not everyone needs to agree, of course– some people obsessively misconstrue certain proofs (Godel is often a vicitm of this), and we can get differences over some range of cases, as with intuitionism vs. classical maths.) But this is just a start, of course…
No, Graculus, he never claimed Mathematics doesn’t exist.
No, he claimed that things that don’t exist are not objective.
Mathematics is purely objective,
If by “objective” you mean “based on observable phenomena”, then no, not really.
When did you last observe 2+2=4 ?
The problem is that the words “subjective” and “objective” carry different connotations in different fields. Let’s move away from those terms.
Mathematics is not concrete, its an abstract system.
Thank you, Theron. I heartily second that. Your wise and measured words have prevented me from making a regrettable joke about post-strawcturalists. Cheers…
I’d say that something is objective if it can be made explicit and observable, and subjective if it is necessarily implicit and unobservable. In the strictest sense, nothing is subjective and everything objective, but in practice things are often beyond our capacity to express or observe. That capacity can be changed, though — and it is changing.
I would agree to this with the caveat that I do not think that our capacity to express or observe will ever be able to reach the idealistic maximum of the fully objective. It is changing but I do not think, replace think with believe if you wish, that it will be possible for any human to think in a purely objective manner, nor create a purely objective system to explain all things.
No, he claimed that things that don’t exist are not objective.
Actually, he claimed that things which are not objective do not exist. The difference would be that there can be non-physical abstractions which are objective.
Originally I meant only to say that there was probably interplay between science and philosophy that caused them to push each other forward, not that there was a causative relationship.
Whey! I’m writing an essay on that topic this very moment. It’s a fascinating area, and a pity I only have 5k words to express it. Does technology autonomously instigate social change, or does it inevitably embody the inequalities and prejudices existent in the dominant culture? Who knows.
Either way, I heartily second Mr Brown’s comments – even if reality is out there somewhere, there’s always the problem of perception. No translation is flawless.
Let’s straighten some things out:
a) Mathematics exists. Well, it exists in two ways, as a human pursuit, and as the underlying order that is being studied. To say “mathematics doesn’t exist” is really quite silly.
b) Mathematics is objective. “Objective” does not mean “has a physical existence”. The nature of mathematical truth is completely independent of the observer (at least, if we restrict our attention to people living in this universe. It might well be that other universes have different mathematics, but that’s really not terribly interesting).
While I do not think a scientific, empirical approach is optimal in every intellectual endeavor, keeping an eye on ‘objectivity’ at all times seems to be a reasonable requirement for any serious pursuit.
Do not confuse the question of abstraction with the question of existence.
Rick
a) Mathematics exists. Well, it exists in two ways, as a human pursuit, and as the underlying order that is being studied. To say “mathematics doesn’t exist” is really quite silly.
Words like “exists” and “objective” imply that mathematics is a physical entity. I think it’s quite silly to make such blind assertions without either dealing with the semantics or thinking about the issues.
b) Mathematics is objective. “Objective” does not mean “has a physical existence”.
Actually, that is one of the main definitions. “Of or pertaining to an object.” “Outward; external; extrinsic.”
The nature of mathematical truth is completely independent of the observer
But that isn’t what “objective” means. Nor “exist”. “Exist” means “to have actual being”, and plenty of things that “exist” are relative and/or subjective.
I can’t talk about philosophy without beer; don’t know how you guys do it so early in the morning.
Caledonian: “a barnacle’s velocity changes when the whale it’s attached to changes course.”
*beauty*
There’s an evolution in the theory of evolution.
It’s too bad there isn’t much intelligent definition in the claims of ID.
Scientists do often fail to realize that it is possible that there are things which cannot be explained by science
OK, please enumerate for us next the set of all things that can’t be explained by religion. I’ll wait.
Theron:
A survey among ‘humanities people’ as to whether DNA is a cultural construct could be interesting. Know any funding sources?
The issue of ‘Social Text’ in which Sokal’s article appeared (a theme issue on “Science Wars”) apparently sold all of about 800 newstand copies. I’ve no data as to its subscriber base. So this post-mod journal wasn’t mass-media even among ‘intellectuals’ – but everything starts somewhere.
Ehrenreich’s article provides much more persuasive discussion of the post-mod influence.
And I’ve had some suggestive experience. I taught Darwin to Humanities students, and for an essay assignment had these older undergrads “compare & contrast” two differing perspectives on the need for any “Evolutionary Psychology” to privilege genetic analysis (‘privilege’ is a post-mod code word). One perspective was Linnda Caporael’s in a review published in The Annual Review of Psychology (a relatively mass-media pub for academics), in which she argued that instead of privileging genes, psychologists should instead ground their evolutionary analysis in the search for “recurrent assemblies of environmental components”. The other perspective was Helena Cronin’s concise summary of the necessity of the gene-centered view for understanding any biological adaptation, published in the Quarterly Review of Biology (I have .pdf files of each if anyone’s interested).
I was bemused to find that a large majority of the students’ papers favored Caporael’s analysis. Apparently there is something intuitively appealing in a rhetoric which portrays genes as privileged, with its implication that rejecting genetics is a path to freedom. I doubt that this intuition is limited to undergraduates.
Graculus: Objective also means “Of or relating to a noun or pronoun used in this case.” So?
I think it was painfully clear to everyone in this conversation (except possibly you, but I’m assuming you’re capable of reading comprehension and are merely choosing to troll) that “objective”, as used in the phrase “Objectively studied”, cannot possibly mean the definition I just gave, or the definition you gave.
The only plausible definitions in this context are #2 and #3b (per dictionary.com’s numbering), which state “having actual existance or reality” and “Based on observable phenomena”, respectively.
Mathematics possesses a reality, although it is an abstract one. Mathematics is very definitely based on observable phenomena.
Therefore, yes, Mathematics is objective.
Of course, that doesn’t matter to what Caledonian said, which was, despite your confusion on the issue, that things which are not objective do not exist.
He did not say that everything which is objective exists. He did not say that everything which does not exist is not objective, either. Both of those statements are also not logically equivalent to what he did say.
It would be accurate to say that his statement also means that anything which exists is objective – as that’s logically equivalent.
To claim that things exist which are subjective, it helps to provide examples. Otherwise, especially when you’ve been repeatedly asked to do so, people may reasonably assume you are trolling, lying, and/or wrong.
thwaite:
Interesting post. If I knew of funding, I might propose it to an enterprising grad student – but in what field? Hmm….
I am actually just finishing up Dawkins’ latest opus (Ancestor’s Tale) – and an opus it is – so in line with the theory that you always believe what you last read I am presently a true believer in a “genes first” approach. Evolutionary psychology though strikes me, as a layman, as inherently problematical, since the mind, unlike a gene, has some degree of free will (or so we pretend). Not my field though – maybe I should read the articles so I’d have half a clue what I’m talking about. What a concept! Wish our president would indulge in it once in a while….
The two articles about privileging genes that I mentioned in my prior post:
Caporael: http://online.sfsu.edu/~thwaite/Darwin/caporael.pdf
Cronin: http://online.sfsu.edu/~thwaite/Darwin/subCronin.html
“Free will” is a difficult topic, I “must” say. Nonetheless, non-human behaviors are adaptive and clearly evolved as heritable (genetic) traits, and the human brain/mind has also evolved and is probably adaptive. Our brain certainly is so metabolically expensive (2% of body weight but something like 20% of metabolic demands) that it’s hard to imagine it’s not somehow adaptive … but in Geoffry Miller’s THE MATING MIND the adaptive pressure is argued to be sexual selection, much like a peacock’s tail, rather than natural selection. His book can serve as an intro to Evolutionary Psych, though ideosyncratic. And Miller is at least as lucid a writer as Dawkins (a bit briefer too).
OK, please enumerate for us next the set of all things that can’t be explained by religion. I’ll wait.
Well, as an atheist the only thing I think that can be explained by religion is odd behavior, and not even all of that. There are options other than religion and science.
thwaite:
I have no doubt that much, probably all, of our basic psychology is determined by evolution. Where elese would it come from? What I was thinking about more precisely was the question of “self-domestication” – the idea that we have shaped our own evolution in the same way we have shaped the evolution of domestic animals. Though until quite recently, we could not conceptualize that that was in fact what we were doing, so free will may be irrelevant anyway. Our preference to mate with certain personality types over others could be strictly biologically determined, as any “cultural” causes could be themselves be firmly rooted in biology, which would make sexual selection strictly biological. As I said, not my field, so my musings are limited. Thanks for the articles – I’m off to a conference right now, but I’ll pursue them later.
To claim that things exist which are subjective, it helps to provide examples.
Well, either music doesn’t exist, or your decision on which CD to throw in the stereo is objective. Otherwise the examples are many, varied, utterly obvious and already mentioned in this thread.
BTW, I never, never, ever said that mathematics is “subjective”, I only pointed out that it is “not objective”. Before accusing someone of “misreading” it would help to make sure that you hadn’t constructed any strawmen of your own.
Now, please tell me how mathematics, an abstract, a priori, axiomatic system, is “based on objects”.
Hint: 2 oranges + 2 apples does NOT equal 4 kumquats.
Graculus, you’re misdefining objective. At this point, given that I clearly pointed out the definitions that were in use, I’m compelled to assume you’re a lying asshole troll.
As such, I have no need to respond to you.
I have no doubt that much, probably all, of our basic psychology is determined by evolution. Where elese would it come from?
Exo-genetic information. Culture, environment, etc.
As for something which is subjective that exists, how about time?
I would view time’s level of existance as pretty much equal to that of mathematics… although I’m not sure which that says more about.
I would also view time as being objective – there is a subjective PERCEPTION of time, but there’s also an objective time. (even if it’s relative to motion and blah blah blah – it rmeains objective, because while different people measure different things, if you measure someone’s velocity relative to you, you can calculate what they’ll measure, as long as their tool is accurate.)
Otherwise, clocks wouldn’t be very useful. ;)
(Also, to respond to the part of Graculus’s comment that isn’t a grotesque strawman…)
First: Subjective and Objective are antonyms. When they are being used to discuss the existance and/or nature of “things”, they mean “not the other one”. Really. They do.
Second: Music exists in an objective sense – this is why it can be recorded, and played back identically.
The enjoyment of music is subjective, almost by definition – which is why I enjoy classic rock, while my wife does not. But I cannot say that my enjoyment of classic rock is objective in any meaningful sense – it is not. It is subjective. The music itself is objective; anyone with functional ears will hear the same music, but not everyone will like it.
In other words: No, that’s not an example of something subjective that exists. You’re conflating the music and the quality of the music.
The music objectively exists – nobody reasonable denies this.
The quality of the music is a subjective thing – again, nobody reasonable denies this.
They’re two very different things, and the decision to play the music is based on the subjective one, while the nature music that plays afterwards is objective fact.
http://www.create.ab.ca/csaa.html
This is the Creation Science of A;berta Associations website. Alberta is in Canada. The gentleman who founded this organization headed up the Alberta Teachers Association in the early 70’s. Ummmm….How did I not know this? Especially when we have the Tyrell Museum here which is all bout dinosaurs and paleontology and science. You should see their take on their visit to Tyrell. I believe it is on a Summer Camp page.
So- we really are pretty messed up in Canada too. Which explains everything here….