DARWIN's DOUBT - The End of Darwinistic Materialism

[mal4mac]

Looks pretty simple to me - evidence that can be counted will conform to scientific investigation: physical, testable, measurable.

Anything supported by anecdotal evidence only can be safely ignored.

Doesn't that "do away with" most of history? Did Henry VIII actually exist? There is no "physical" Henry VIII in existence to test or measure, all we have are anecdotes.

Surely you have to have a sliding scale for belief, not just a binary switch. Markers on that scale from "most confident of existence" to "least", for me, might be "me, keyboard, Henry VIII, || Shakespeare, Jesus Christ, Buddha | , God, tooth fairy"

I believe in everything to the left of "||", and nothing to the right of '|'. Between || and | are guys I tend to believe existed, but might pause to doubt their existence, now and again.

[The Atheist]

That's scientism. There are all kinds of evidence we accept as evidence that doesn't follow the rigors of the scientific method, and there are things like history which require a completely different kind of investigation.

I can't agree at all, historical evidence is still physical and verifiable, and mal has a good example:

Doesn't that "do away with" most of history? Did Henry VIII actually exist? There is no "physical" Henry VIII in existence to test or measure, all we have are anecdotes.

No, we do not just have anecdotes. There are thousands of pieces of physical evidence that show Henry 8 existed and was King of England, and we even know where he was buried.

Surely you have to have a sliding scale for belief, not just a binary switch.

Obviously, some things go in the "not sure" category, and Morpheus' quantum mechanics are a good example. I don't have a problem with not knowing.

[MorpheusSandman]

I can't agree at all, historical evidence is still physical and verifiable, and mal has a good example:

Yeah, some historical evidence is, but are you really suggesting we don't ever rely on anecdotal evidence in trying to piece together history? We don't always have access to such hard, physical evidence. However, even outside history, has there never been a time you've had a friend tell you a story and you believed it without asking for more evidence? You may say "well, yeah, but those stories weren't making extraordinary claims that required such evidence," but then I'd say that the entire notion of the "extraordinary claim" is rife with epistemological problems such as what exactly constitutes one and how we know one without appealing to personal experience, social norms, anecdotes, etc.

[The Atheist]

Yeah, some historical evidence is, but are you really suggesting we don't ever rely on anecdotal evidence in trying to piece together history?

Not rely on, no. Take Socrates as an ideal example; did he live, or was he a fictional character? We don't know and never will, but it doesn't actually matter, because what was said shaped the world, not who said it.

However, even outside history, has there never been a time you've had a friend tell you a story and you believed it without asking for more evidence? You may say "well, yeah, but those stories weren't making extraordinary claims that required such evidence," but then I'd say that the entire notion of the "extraordinary claim" is rife with epistemological problems such as what exactly constitutes one and how we know one without appealing to personal experience, social norms, anecdotes, etc.

That's not really compatible with the subject. If a friend tells me he's done a currency deal, I accept it without evidence because it is irrelevant to me and I know that his job is doing currency deals. Some things aren't worth having evidence of.

On the other hand, if he tells me he's caught a 20 kg kingfish and wants me to believe it, he'd better show me the fish.

I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases. Why should the burden of proof for dark energy be higher than that for water freezing at 0C? The evidence exists, or we are making educated guesses based upon what we know so far.

I actually came back in to add this very good list of unanswered (mostly) scientific questions:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...ons-in-science

[mal4mac]

Not rely on, no. Take Socrates as an ideal example; did he live, or was he a fictional character? We don't know and never will, but it doesn't actually matter, because what was said shaped the world, not who said it.

He lived! Boy did he live

This is clear from other writings and historical artifacts.

Socrates was not simply a character, or an invention, of Plato. In studying "the philosophy of Socrates" we can't say, for certain, that any philosophical views that Plato attributes to Socrates are actually those of the historical Socrates. That said, some (most?) scholars attribute the views expressed by the character Socrates in the early dialogues as almost certainly closer to the views of the historical Socrates than those expressed in the Republic and other, later dialogues. I believe these scholars, but I don't believe them as strongly as those who say "Plato's dialogues were written by Plato". Again we see the sliding scale of belief.

If a friend tells me he's done a currency deal, I accept it without evidence because it is irrelevant to me and I know that his job is doing currency deals. Some things aren't worth having evidence of.

What if he's using your money in the currency deal? If he's a good friend, you may accept the deal without evidence, you "believe in him". But your father is likely to insist that you get evidence!

On the other hand, if he tells me he's caught a 20 kg kingfish and wants me to believe it, he'd better show me the fish.

What if he's renowned for telling the truth? He might be upset if you question his honour. Shouldn't you believe him without evidence?

I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases. Why should the burden of proof for dark energy be higher than that for water freezing at 0C? The evidence exists, or we are making educated guesses based upon what we know so far.

What about claims that really matter? For instance, shouldn't you have extraordinary evidence, i.e., "beyond reasonable doubt", in a murder case?

[MorpheusSandman]

I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases.

Actually, one could argue that Bayes' Theorem supports that saying mathematically. If you have a proposition whose prior is set at, say, a 1% likelihood, then it DOES take some "extraordinary" evidence to get it from 1% to 99%. Of course, you may ask where we get our priors from to begin with, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Anyway, as you seem to agree regarding your friend's currency deal, there are things for which you accept far less evidence for before you assume its truthfulness. Well, the thing is that people naturally disagree over what those things are and how good any given evidence is. Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions, but we aren't very good at using the scientific method intuitively, and how many things do we come to believe before we even come to know about it? Nature handicaps us from the beginning, and even the most skeptical of us tend to acquire any number of erroneous beliefs because of a lack of vigilance.

[mal4mac]

Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions.

Can it? Then why is everyone still arguing about most of them? Like the "hard problem of consciousness", the mind-body problem, and "ultimate origins".

[cafolini]

Actually, one could argue that Bayes' Theorem supports that saying mathematically. If you have a proposition whose prior is set at, say, a 1% likelihood, then it DOES take some "extraordinary" evidence to get it from 1% to 99%. Of course, you may ask where we get our priors from to begin with, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Anyway, as you seem to agree regarding your friend's currency deal, there are things for which you accept far less evidence for before you assume its truthfulness. Well, the thing is that people naturally disagree over what those things are and how good any given evidence is. Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions, but we aren't very good at using the scientific method intuitively, and how many things do we come to believe before we even come to know about it? Nature handicaps us from the beginning, and even the most skeptical of us tend to acquire any number of erroneous beliefs because of a lack of vigilance.

Not a handicap at all. No lack of vigilance at all. No one is born knowing. So one believes until one finds out from science, or never finds out. Nature cannot be blamed.

[The Atheist]

He lived! Boy did he live

This is clear from other writings and historical artifacts.

I don't doubt it, but I also could not accept the proposition that we have definitive proof that he lived.

What if he's using your money in the currency deal? If he's a good friend, you may accept the deal without evidence, you "believe in him".

Not me; I'd have the paperwork every time.

But your father is likely to insist that you get evidence!

Apart from the fact that he's been dead for 30 years, he was far more likely to trust people on a handshake than me.

What if he's renowned for telling the truth? He might be upset if you question his honour. Shouldn't you believe him without evidence?

This is fishing we're talking about, not the nature of the universe. Any fisherman worth salting his bait will know for a certainty that evidence must be provided.

What about claims that really matter? For instance, shouldn't you have extraordinary evidence, i.e., "beyond reasonable doubt", in a murder case?

Beyond reasonable doubt is a long way from extraordinary evidence, which is lucky, because juries being made of humans means they're highly susceptible to screwing up. I know of at least a couple of murder cases where the evidence for the prosecution has consisted of reliable scientific evidence that has been completely ignored by juries. On the other hand, there are numerous examples of innocent people being executed or locked up on no believable evidence.

[The Atheist]

Actually, one could argue that Bayes' Theorem supports that saying mathematically. If you have a proposition whose prior is set at, say, a 1% likelihood, then it DOES take some "extraordinary" evidence to get it from 1% to 99%. Of course, you may ask where we get our priors from to begin with, but that's a whole other can of worms.

I think we're just giving different meanings to the phrase, because that claim may require an extraordinary amount of evidence, but there's nothing extraordinary about the evidence itself.

I think you're also using probabilities incorrectly, because if something has a 1% likelihood, then it is 99% unlikely to be proven, no matter how much evidence exists. If the evidence exists but we just haven't found it yet, then it's not a question of lacking probability at all.

Anyway, as you seem to agree regarding your friend's currency deal, there are things for which you accept far less evidence for before you assume its truthfulness.

No, it really is just that it is so irrelevant I have no need to waste time checking. Whether it's true or not is immaterial to me - much like Socrates' life & death. I conditionally accept the propositions on the basis that it doesn't matter, but in no way would I base anything on the assumption that it is really true and verifiable.

Those things do not meet the standard of evidence.

Well, the thing is that people naturally disagree over what those things are and how good any given evidence is.

Which is exactly why the rules of evidence must be constant. Like mathematics, evidence isn't a flexible concept. 2+2 will always equal 5.

Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions, but we aren't very good at using the scientific method intuitively, and how many things do we come to believe before we even come to know about it? Nature handicaps us from the beginning, and even the most skeptical of us tend to acquire any number of erroneous beliefs because of a lack of vigilance.

Here, I agree with you. Lots of the most fervent battles I've had have been against self-proclaimed skeptics who believe things for which no evidence exists. Love is probably top of the list.

[mal4mac]

Here, I agree with you. Lots of the most fervent battles I've had have been against self-proclaimed skeptics who believe things for which no evidence exists. Love is probably top of the list.

But isn't love a feeling? To deny it would be like denying tiredness.

[The Atheist]

It isn't the existence of love, but what it actually is that causes the argument.

I know of many, many mostly skeptical and rational people that think love is something more than the sum of its parts.

[MorpheusSandman]

Can it? Then why is everyone still arguing about most of them? Like the "hard problem of consciousness", the mind-body problem, and "ultimate origins".

Because a lot of time we invent unanswerable questions based on ill-defined terms with no singular referents. It would be like asking "Is a blorkendorker green?" and then complaining that science can't answer it. Just because we have a word like "consciousness" and create a "mind-body duality" doesn't mean they're actually coherent questions. See here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/

Not a handicap at all. No lack of vigilance at all. No one is born knowing. So one believes until one finds out from science, or never finds out. Nature cannot be blamed.

No one is "born knowing," but we are born with innate cognitive biases that lead us to believe we know all kinds of things that aren't true. If one becomes aware of those biases they can learn to be more vigilant about not picking up false beliefs, or, more accurately, any beliefs based on bad reasoning.

[MorpheusSandman]

I think we're just giving different meanings to the phrase, because that claim may require an extraordinary amount of evidence, but there's nothing extraordinary about the evidence itself.

No, it's not just about the amount. I agree we may disagree over what constitutes extraordinary, but I simply think of "extraordinary" as meaning "something that almost certainly wouldn't happen if the proposition was untrue," and the more unlikely something is to be true, the more unlikely that its confirming evidence would be encountered.

I think you're also using probabilities incorrectly, because if something has a 1% likelihood, then it is 99% unlikely to be proven, no matter how much evidence exists. If the evidence exists but we just haven't found it yet, then it's not a question of lacking probability at all.

I'm not quite sure why you think what you write here contradicts what I said. You're right that if something has a 1% chance of being true then it's 99% unlikely to be proven, hence how "extraordinary" it would be if we actually found evidence to prove it. I'm not sure what you mean by your second sentence; probability is always predicated on our combination of knowledge and ignorance of the world. As I explained to Callidore in the Big Bang thread, a coin-flip being 50/50 is only 50/50 because we know about the two sides of the coin and can't calculate the physics involved in the flip. If we could apply General Relativity to the flip immediately as the flip happened, the probability of the coin landing on the side it does would be 100/0, not 50/50. So probability is always an expression of our combined ignorance and knowledge.

No, it really is just that it is so irrelevant I have no need to waste time checking. Whether it's true or not is immaterial to me - much like Socrates' life & death. I conditionally accept the propositions on the basis that it doesn't matter, but in no way would I base anything on the assumption that it is really true and verifiable.

Again, I'm not sure where you think we're disagreeing. You think its truthfulness is irrelevant so you accept anecdotal evidence on the basis that "it doesn't matter." The basis you accept it on is really immaterial to my initial point. As for the last bit, would you not be willing to accept a bet on the basis that it was true? Let's say I offered a wager of $100 that your friend does what he does for a living. Would you accept that wager? If so, then you must admit that you have assumed the truthfulness of the proposition to at least more than a 50/50 degree based solely on anecdotal evidence. What would be the limits of that bet? Would you lay your $100 to my $50? Your $100 to my $10? How sure are you? All of a sudden, I'm giving you a good reason to care about the truthfulness of your assumptions and the evidence they're based on, which goes to show they were based on something, even though you never bothered to pursue it farther because it was "irrelevant."

One problem with the "irrelevant" argument, though, is that so many relevant beliefs can flow from the same place that irrelevant ones do. Yes, maybe your specific case is irrelevant, but can you really say you've never accepted any relevant propositions as being true on no better evidence? I can't say for sure I haven't. Human brains are not good at keeping up with their beliefs and what assumptions/bases they rest on.

Which is exactly why the rules of evidence must be constant. Like mathematics, evidence isn't a flexible concept. 2+2 will always equal 5.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "rules of evidence" being constant. What are the "rules for eye witness evidence?" Also, math isn't really "evidence" per say but a model of reality for which we can often construct tests that we consider to be evidence. But Godel had a little something to say about the completeness and consistency of mathematical models.

Love is probably top of the list.

Well, I'd say we have evidence that we feel something for other people that we call "love." As to what that feeling actually is and what causes it, that's another matter. This is what I've been arguing about with YesNo in the Big Bang thread, that feeling/experiences are evidence only for feelings and experiences, not the ontological assumptions we make based on them (IE, there's an inferential leap from saying "I feel love" to saying "love is X".)

[mal4mac]

Because a lot of time we invent unanswerable questions based on ill-defined terms with no singular referents.

How does that apply to the "hard problem of consciousness"? What's wrong with asking "What is Consciousness?"?

"It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does." - David Chalmers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_p..._consciousness