This is why we need to keep a few philosophers around: they can succinctly name the logical fallacies committed by a certain cosmologist.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is why we need to keep a few philosophers around: they can succinctly name the logical fallacies committed by a certain cosmologist.
Makes sense to me. Davies is too much of a Platonist.
Is that all we’re good for, or do we also get a role as academic cannon fodder?
One doesn’t need to assume that there are laws in the universe, or structure, or order or how ye pleaseth to name it. No such assumption needed at all. All you need is to open your eyes( or what ever sensory organs you happen to have ) and observe. Only one thing needs to be assumed – that your mind works enough to compare consequences of your hypotheses with the real thing.
Otherwise, the idea that universe has some discoverable regularities is itself a testable hypothesis. Because, if it had not, you would be not capable to see any patterns in your sensory input, OR you would be not able to come up with any hypotheses, OR you would not be able to work out any predictions, OR all testing would go wrong. Or any from the above.
So, to try science, you don’t have to have any presuppositions about whether there are any “laws” in the universe at all. It is a conclusion, not a presupposition.
Tut,that is essentially the answer talks about, when he says that some will claim “that’s just the way it is.”
In other words, not really an answert at all, but psychologically satisfying.
What you are describing is a category of pragmatism, not “science” at all.
Could you tell me, please, where you see any “that’s just the way it is.” in my post ? I didn’t say anything like that at all.
…where do you see..
Ironic this, considering what John wrote:
What else dos a philosopher do but discuss words?
OK, and drink.
Bob
I have to agree with Davies on this one. As a scientist, you have to take it on faith that the laws of physics won’t change from one moment to the next. If you didn’t, nothing you did could possibly be validated.
Guy, how many times they didn’t change ? I guess, pretty many… How many times they did change ? Have they ever changed ? So, is there any need to take it on faith ?
Guy, that’s not a scientific assumption; it’s a human one. If we don’t assume that the past is at least some kind of guide to the future, you have no grounds for doing anything at all, even breathing.
The problem of induction is dwarfed by the problem of non-induction.
I was basing my comment on this paragraph, from the first page of the article referenced.
“All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.”
Doesn’t this make perfect sense anyone besides me and Davies?
You mean it isn’t? Bloody hell. Someone could have mentioned this earlier.
Firstly, it’s not a faith position, it’s a continually tested approach that seems to work OK so far.
Secondly, it’s not a uniquely scientific thing to assume that nature is in some way regular; it’s the precondition for any kind of rational thought. You make the same assumption every time you don’t step in front of a speeding vehicle.
I disagree. The assumption that the laws of physics don’t change is not an act of faith. In fact, that assumption is continually being tested by science. It is not faith that allows experiment to be validated. It is the replication of experiment that that validates the assumption, not the other way around. Making an assumption and subjecting it to experimental tests is not “faith” in any sense of the word. Believing your assumption to be the “inerrant word of God” with no other evidence is faith.
Let’s clarify one thing. Are you talking about some psychological needs of human scientists, or are you talking about some prerequisites of the scientific method ?
“Are you talking about some psychological needs of human scientists, or are you talking about some prerequisites of the scientific method?”
Having faith in the scientific method is a human need isn’t it?
Guy;
Both Stephen Wells and Dr Wilkins said it; assumptions are NOT faith. They are the starting point of *any* rational process.
Wells quotes Wilkins; “(assumptions are) the precondition for any kind of rational thought.”
The assumption of science (that nature has some kind of regularity to it) is no more an act of faith than you planning to go the the beach tomorrow based on the assumption the sun will rise in the morning.
I do find it strange the way so many people are arguing against positions Davies does not hold.
“Davies wants to argue something like this:
Premise: there are laws of the universe and we cannot explain the existence of laws
Premise: the assumption that laws are to be found is the basis for doing science
Conclusion: Ergo, science rests on an act of faith”
No, that is not Davies’ position. His position is that we are assuming that the laws are eternal and external to the Universe, not that we can’t explain them.
He is trying (albeit clumsily) to put forward the point that we are replacing one ‘eternal and external cause’ for the Universe (God) with another ‘fixed physical laws’. He wants to abandon that idea, and consider things in a more flexible way.
Guy, If you just were to assert that in science, like in any human activity, we really do need to think that there is a chance to succeed, otherwise we would not even try, you could have a point.
However the idea that making up some hypothesis and testing it, really requires any kind of belief in the success of the process is simply false. For example, I can test whether my notebook can levitate…. wait…. no it can not. I lifted it 5cm above my bed and it didn’t levitate. So, apparently, it is possible to produce hypotheses and test them even without believing they will succeed.
Speaking as the in-house rhetorician, it looks as though people (including Davies) are getting hung up on the meaning of the word “rational.” In the sense that Davies may be trying to use the word (oh, the problems with auctorial intent!), he seems to be approaching it from the vernacular meaning of the term, which is closer in sense to “logical” or “predictable” than the precise meaning of the term, which is closer in meaning to “reasonable” than anything else.
Is the universe predictable? Mostly. People in the sciences are basically in the business of making predictions about the behaviour of the universe; the rest of us do it as a matter of day-to-day life, and our predictions are more mundane.
However, if Davies really meant “predictable,” he should have bloody said “predictable,” since, to be precise about it, the universe isn’t (as far as I know) “rational” by any means.
People here (especially on the apologetics side) also seem to be trying to confuse the meaning of the word “faith,” too. For most people, it’s an article of faith that the sun will (appear to) rise in the morning, but it’s not a blind faith; they have direct experiential and second-hand evidence that the phenomenon has been going on for a long time. These people making claims about invisible, indetectable beings, well, that’s a matter of blind faith, that is, believing something despite a lack of evidence for it (as opposed to because of evidence for it). It’s also in the interest of everyone writing apologetics to pollute the semantic environment around that term quite heavily, so watch for it and don’t get played.
(FWIW, the creationists do the same thing with the meaning of “evolution” if you don’t nail down your definitions with big honkin’ railway spikes right at the outset. One minute you’re discussing speciation through natural selection, and the next, the idiot has done a Gish Gallop into abiogenesis and cosmology, which are basically irrelevant. Mind your language; neatness counts.)
steve99:
So? I personally have never met anyone who personifies “fixed physical laws” (except in explicitly figurative ways) or imbues them with the sort of conscious will that theists see in God. So if your interpretation is truly what Davies means, I say he’s offering us a strawman.
And BTW, what scientist believes that physical law is external to the universe? Order is (apparently, based on the evidence available so far) an inherent property of the universe; physical laws are human constructs intended to describe and explain the inherent order of the universe: Where in that do you find anything “eternal and external”?
“So? I personally have never met anyone who personifies “fixed physical laws” (except in explicitly figurative ways) or imbues them with the sort of conscious will that theists see in God.”
That isn’t the point. It is far better to assume the simpler case, and replace “God” with “laws”, but you are still assuming some kind of “independent, timeless” infrastructure. Davies wants to take us further along the road of abandoning assumptions.
“And BTW, what scientist believes that physical law is external to the universe?”
Most physicists. For example, some claim that the Universe arose because of existing (or, rather, timeless) physical laws and principles (such as string theory): We did not get the Universe then String Theory, the Universe arose because of String Theory.
I’m afraid that any hypothesis is an act of (tentative) assumption about some kind of “infrastructure”, so. what would we be left with after we abandon any hypotheses.
this is a straw man, methinks, because, well, because “because ” implies causality, and you can not have causality without time. So, timeless causality is an oxymoron and no physicist would use it ( or would use it only in a metaphorical sense )
“I’m afraid that any hypothesis is an act of (tentative) assumption about some kind of “infrastructure”, so. what would we be left with after we abandon any hypotheses.”
Perhaps, yes, but should that stop us from trying to reduce assumptions about that infrastructure, even if, in the end, there is no final answer? I hope not.
“this is a straw man, methinks, because, well, because “because ” implies causality, and you can not have causality without time. So, timeless causality is an oxymoron and no physicist would use it ( or would use it only in a metaphorical sense )”
Well, they would not use the word ‘causality’, but this is certainly not a straw man argument. Theoretical physicists do discuss the nature of such timeless foundations. Just pick up a recent book by the excellent Brian Greene and you are likely to find a summary of such discussions.
Huh? “God” denotes (to those who believe it denotes anything at all) a (or, to the faithful, the) cause of the physical universe; “laws” denotes descriptions of phenomena within the physical universe. How could you even begin to replace one with the other? Davies is apparently trying equate scientists’ “faith” in laws with theists’ faith in in a divine creator who is explicitly external to his (its?) creation; I think it’s a fundamentally false comparison.
Really? I’m neither qualified nor disposed to comment on string theorists and other cosmologists peering into the origins of the universe. But I’m pretty sure there’s no significant population of physicists who believe Newton’s Laws have some reality independent of and external to the physical universe, or that they cause the phenomena they describe. In fact, they’re not even “eternal” as descriptions: As time has passed and the range of phenomena we can observe and measure has grown, our understanding of exactly what Newton’s Laws describe, and how accurately, has changed.
Nobody says about God, “well, he explains human-scale things reasonably well, but when we get to extremes of size, mass, or velocity we need to use a different explanation.” Instead, the faithful say “The world is as it is because God wants it that way; if it looks different to you, your eyes are lying.” It’s entirely beyond me how that is meaningfully comparable to a scientist’s view of physical laws.
The enthymeme judgement in lieu of a standard existential fallacy is correct given that Davies claims existence for laws in premise #1.
This claim of existence for a natural law doubles as the primary weakness of his argument. Simply stated, premise 1 is false. Natural laws have no existence, which reminds me of a similar issue some time back:
“When you talk about laws in nature it shows some order or design,” said Lawrence Hughes, who has taught at the academy for 16 years. “The laws of nature don’t support change from one organism to another organism.”
Laws are simply a convention for categorizing our repeated experience or observation. They have no being–that we can demonstrate anyway–and thus can never be properly said to cause anything.
Now, as you folks consistently point out, it is possible for people to possess faith in nothing (read irrationality, false conceptions, myths, perhaps), but from context it is apparent that is not what Davies’s argument intends.
Incidentally, premise 2 is false as well, which has been adequately addressed already.
I’m a philosopher. Many philosophers make a great contribution. They deal with hard issues that affect the choices people make. For example, they deal with ethics. And some philosophers help some people understand under what conditions claims are justified,
I, on behalf of philosophers everywhere, apologize for Descartes et.al. and the creation of the abomination known today as ‘metaphysics’.
Sorry…
No. As a scientist, you have to formulate your laws so that they don’t change from one moment or place to the next. Scientific laws aren’t axioms. Nor would most scientists consider themselves to be in the business of verifying or validating anything.
Homework, more homework.
Also, Carnap, Quine, and Rescher have good things to say, but I’m tired of reposting them here.
“Huh? “God” denotes (to those who believe it denotes anything at all) a (or, to the faithful, the) cause of the physical universe; “laws” denotes descriptions of phenomena within the physical universe.”
No, it does not denote that.
“Really? I’m neither qualified nor disposed to comment on string theorists and other cosmologists peering into the origins of the universe.”
They why are you commenting?
“But I’m pretty sure there’s no significant population of physicists who believe Newton’s Laws have some reality independent of and external to the physical universe, or that they cause the phenomena they describe. In fact, they’re not even “eternal” as descriptions: As time has passed and the range of phenomena we can observe and measure has grown, our understanding of exactly what Newton’s Laws describe, and how accurately, has changed.”
Yes, there is a significant population of physicists who believe exactly that. If they did not, then they would not assume that our Universe was as a result of such laws.
Physicists use terms such as “The String Theory Landscape” for a range of universes. If that does not mean “external”, then what does?
“Nobody says about God, “well, he explains human-scale things reasonably well, but when we get to extremes of size, mass, or velocity we need to use a different explanation.” Instead, the faithful say “The world is as it is because God wants it that way; if it looks different to you, your eyes are lying.” It’s entirely beyond me how that is meaningfully comparable to a scientist’s view of physical laws.”
Scientists aren’t saying about string theory “it explains things on a human scale, but when we get to extremes, we need to use a different explanation”. They are expecting it to be fundamental, and by fundamental, that means beyond our Universe.
… We philosophers do quite a lot more than just NAME the fallacies! :)
Without Gottlob Frege and Boole and the development of modern symbolic logic, we wouldn’t have computers!
We need us philosophers to develop moral theory properly (metaethics is getting somewhere these days, but you’d have to be in the field to know… “Ethics are innate” isn’t a good answer in philosophy.. at least, not a complete one…)
But I do agree, one extremely useful aspect of philosophy is its logical rigour, and ability to critique (say, philosophy of science sorts of things…)
In any case… I do this all the time.
The Argument from Intelligent Design (Paley’s) is just a very subtle version of the fallacy of composition, for example :)
You also make them?
Don’t worry, I’m just poking Wilkins. I have to do that now and then to keep him awake.
There is also a perfectly good sense of “law” which is not a linguistic item at all – the latter being law statements.
Of course, on a naturalistic conception, these are the objective patterns of being and becoming, not imposed from without Platonistically.
steve99, you provide observable evidence that suggests continuing my exchange with you beyond this one last post will be fruitless:
Since your response isn’t even clear about which clause of my statement you’re responding to, nevermind what your objection is, how could I possibly formulate a meaningful reply?
Perhaps because I believed the subject of the discussion was broader than just string theory? Davies seemed to be broadly equating scientists’ “faith” in physical laws with theists’ faith in God; that was the premise I was arguing against. If you can only respond in terms of string theorists, perhaps you will show that string theory itself is more similar to religion than science — you wouldn’t be the first to say so! ;^) — but string theorists are a fairly small subset of scientists generally, and in any case, as I’ve previously disclosed, I’m not qualified to discuss them.
However, it doesn’t take any special qualifications (beyond passing any decent high school science class) to understand that Newton’s laws, Ohm’s law, Boyle’s law, etc., etc., etc., are human constructs describing on relationships between observed phenomena, and that they’re useful in predicting future events. The laws themselves are not the same as the relationships they describe, anymore than the word “car” is a ton of metal, glass, rubber, and plastic… but even if you want to take it that way, those relationships exist within the universe, by any commonsense understanding of that expression (whether cosmologists would sign on for commonsense understandings is left as an exercise for the student).
Or to put it another way, Newton’s laws, along with a variety of other physical laws, are evident in the flight of every sparrow… but unlike the theists’ God, they are not sitting on high concerning themselves with whether or not each sparrow falls.
And since there seems to be precious little intersection between the portion of this conversation you are interested in and the portion I’m interested in, I’ll let that be my last word to you on this subject.
Davies seemed to be broadly equating scientists’ “faith” in physical laws with theists’ faith in God; that was the premise I was arguing against.
Ok.
However, it doesn’t take any special qualifications (beyond passing any decent high school science class) to understand that Newton’s laws, Ohm’s law, Boyle’s law, etc., etc., etc., are human constructs describing on relationships between observed phenomena, and that they’re useful in predicting future events.
I disagree. We know that many of the laws of physics are not human constructs; they are a result of fundamental symmetries in the universe. Any scientific species would discover their existence.
Or to put it another way, Newton’s laws, along with a variety of other physical laws, are evident in the flight of every sparrow… but unlike the theists’ God, they are not sitting on high concerning themselves with whether or not each sparrow falls.
But, you see, I don’t think anyone is claiming they do.
As I read things, all Davies is trying to do is say.. “Look, you do have a kind of faith about things in science, even though you may not realise it, at least you do if you are a physicist. To gain a deeper understanding of how laws originate, we need to give up that faith; to cut back on our assumptions.”
It have been astonished how so many have reacted to that statement. There has been a major outbreak of defensiveness, and straw-man-attacking, rather than addressing the issue, and attacking the true weakness of Davies’ arguments.
Science Friday had an podcast interview (a repeat) with Davies last
Friday. He speaks about his book.
http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/510221/16622990/npr_16622990.mp3
What crap! Does he have a clue how stupid he sounds?
Rich. If you call him stupid, then you also call some of the greatest physicists of the last century stupid. Davies is putting forward ideas of people like the great John Wheeler, the teacher of Richard Feynman, and the fellow who coined the phrase ‘black hole’.
One of the most important lessons of the past century or so in physics has been that our common-sense notions of ‘absurd’ just don’t work.
Steve,
Notice, I didn’t call him stupid. I said he sounds stupid… big difference. Did you listen to the podcast?
I agree that what he was talking about doesn’t match with “common
sense”. They are thorny issues that don’t always sound like science.