Science: Do we believe or do we accept?

[Okiebug61]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

As you will. I regret that you choose not to expound on your interesting take on this matter. I think it would have been fascinating to get some insight into your take on humans as guinea pigs in physics or, for that matter, any of the historical sciences. Alas, I guess we'll never know.

Cheers
Aj

I am just too much of a free thinking hippy to even try to engage my brain in this type of discussion. You are a very intelligent and well spoken person and I think that's cool. Me I'm thinking about retirement and how I can make that happen 17 years early. :-)

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by honeybarbara

you might be really interested in a new BBC series put out called "watched over by machines of loving grace" that I loved. I agreed with a lot of the principle statements the writer of the series was making, but I didn't quite agree with the full conclusion at the end. But I really did empathise why he thought that way and it was and interesting take. here's the synopsis for the first episode:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011k45f

Several things leap to mind and I am going to have to watch this series. Hopefully the BBC will stream it.

This particularly caught me, "A series of films about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers."

This reminded me of the following:

“In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the
table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of
nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.”

(George Dyson -- Darwin Among the Machines)

Which then reminded me of this article, written 11 years ago by a very clever man named Bill Joy (he created Java) called "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us"

Cheers
Aj

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

I am just too much of a free thinking hippy to even try to engage my brain in this type of discussion. You are a very intelligent and well spoken person and I think that's cool. Me I'm thinking about retirement and how I can make that happen 17 years early. :-)

Okie please........I have no idea what a 'free thinking hippy' looks like or thinks. No one is asking you to express yourself in Aj's or my terms. We are asking you for clarification of what you said.

As to retirement......it is ever on my mind.....I face the 62 or 65 question in 3 years, not 17 years. However there are many things ever on my mind. I multi-task every day.

Frankly I think you are very capable of multi-tasking. I wish you would. I want to understand what you are saying. I don't at this point.

I spent years in the western medicine clinical trial world as a community representative. I could only represent the community when I understood what they were thinking. I don't understand what you mean by guinea pig. If you really think all western medicine is treating human beings as G-pigs, then I want to understand why you think that. I want to know how much you know about how the FDA and how clinical trial mechanisms work. I want to know your knowledge base and how you arrived at the G-pig conclusion.

And then there are the questions about how you define science and what you mean by saying science makes people G pigs.

Help me understand.....or not and I will draw my conclusions based on less that useful information.

[atomiczombie]

Ok I am finally back. As I said previously, I did some work on this back in the 90s during my college years. In 1997 I wrote a paper for a course on Ludvig Wittgenstein that speaks to the ideas brought up in this thread. I am going to copy it here in 2 parts because it is too long to fit in one post! lol

Religious Beliefs and Their Justification:
A Wittgensteinian Approach

It was not too long ago that I was talking with someone about my belief in God, and she said to me, “I just can’t believe that God exists––it just doesn’t seem probable.” This remark is representative of a certain kind of attitude among those who are ‘educated’ and feel they are too smart to fall into superstitious beliefs such as belief in the Christian God. It is framed in such a way as to suggest that the belief in God is based on evidence, and inadequate evidence at that. Degrees of probability are based on the amount of and/or quality of evidence.

To understand how Christian faith might be related to evidence and degrees of probability, it will be helpful to look at a specific claim in the New Testament of the Bible. St. Paul writes:

Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2) For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3) For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4) so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Are the claims that Paul makes in Romans 8 believed on the basis of inadequate evidence? Are these claims subject to degrees of probability? Is every believer someone who simply has not examined the evidence carefully enough and attributes more credibility to it than is warranted? If that is so, then Paul is really saying, “There is now, probably, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. All things considered, it is highly likely, that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. It is Jesus who, all the relevant data indicates, died, yes, was almost unquestionably raised and who we have the supporting evidence to assert with a high degree of probability indeed intercedes for us.”

It seems inappropriate to interpret Paul in this way. It is, of course, not the way Christians interpret Paul’s Epistles. It does not make any sense to attach degrees of probability to the claims that Paul is making, but must that mean that there is no such thing as “giving reasons” for these claims? Certainly not. What it does mean is that evidence and degrees of probability cannot be reasons why someone holds religious beliefs because those kinds of reasons have no relevance in the context in which religious beliefs arise.

This brings us to the question of what would qualify as reasons in a religious context. But before this question can be answered, we must deal with the larger question of how contexts influence the relevance of reasons. Some concepts from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein will be helpful in understanding how this kind of influence works.

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein pointed out the fact that language seems to be connected with the way we live and there is a certain constancy in the use of language among speakers which is connected with the context in which it is used. Constancy in the use of language suggests that there are implicit rules governing how language can be used if it is to be meaningful, just as there are rules which govern how a game can be played. This observation is what led Wittgenstein to describe the language that is tied up with the various activities of our lives, “language games.”

A language game is an activity where words and actions are interwoven according to certain implicit rules. Each language game is imbedded in and tied up with what Wittgenstein called a “form of life.” A form of life is a set of conventional activities that seem to go together. For example, reporting the news, giving a lecture, greeting a friend, telling a joke, making a confession, performing scientific research, being interviewed for a job, etc., are all examples of forms of life. The language people use in connection with and as a part of these and other such activities is the language game. Language games are part of life insofar as they are inextricably linked with the way we live. Wittgenstein introduced the concepts of language games and forms of life to help make clear how language works in connection with our lives.

Wittgenstein also said that the meaning of our language is connected with the context in which it is used. For example, generally speaking, if it is said that performing a certain act is “good,” it could also be said that it is an act that “should” or “ought” to be done. These concepts are loosely connected in what might be called the domain of moral concepts or discourse. Simply because the meaning of these words, when used in certain circumstances, has a moral sense does not mean that all other uses are derivations or corruptions. One could say, “A good way to avoid a sunburn is to wear sunscreen.” This use of the word “good” is perfectly meaningful, but not from a moral perspective because the word is not being used in a moral way. It might be called an “instrumental” or “prudential” use of the word “good.” In contrast, in a sentence such as, “It is good to help a neighbor in distress,” the word “good” does function in a moral way. The context in which it is used determines whether “good” is meant in the moral sense or in some other way.

We ask “What does ‘I am frightened’ really mean, what am I referring to when I say it?” And of course we find no answer, or one that is inadequate.
The question is: “In what sort of context does it occur?”


Here Wittgenstein is directing us to look for the meaning of a word or phrase in the context in which it is used. This understanding of meaning leaves open the possibility that the same words and phrases can have very different meanings depending on the context. The meaning of all our words and phrases is inextricably linked with the context in which they are used. “It is good to help a neighbor in distress.” If someone says this while having a discussion about whether to stop and assist an elderly person who has fallen in the street, then non-prudential moral reasons will be required if further support is needed, such as, “It wouldn’t be right to just walk on by. What if that were one of our grandparents?” Furthermore, if the comment about helping a neighbor is made in the context of a discussion about how to deal with depression during the holidays, then non-moral prudential reasons are what is called for, such as, “Helping others with their problems is a useful way to forget your own.”

What counts as a good reason for believing an assertion depends upon the meaning of that assertion, and the meaning depends upon the context in which it is made. This is what Wittgenstein was talking about when he said:

All testing, all confirmation [i.e., reason-giving] and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.

What Wittgenstein means here is that if one is looking for a context-free justification for, say, moral or religious actions and beliefs, such a search will be in vain. The meaning of a claim does not stand alone. It is connected with a ruled activity which is based on a certain constancy in language and practice (or as Wittgenstein put it, a system)––which is to say that it is rooted in the context of a form of life and the language game that goes with it. It is the context, with its implicit rules, which determines what will count as support for a claim.

The reason St. Paul gave for his claim, in Romans 8:1, that, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is in the next verse: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus had set you free from the law of sin and death.” Paul went further in his explanation in verses three and four. Here it can be seen that these assertions are part of a whole string of assertions that are related to each other logically and which Paul assumes his readers understand, such as the justice of God and its relation to human sin, what constitutes sin and its role in human nature, etc. This string of assertions which are logically related are what can be described as a religious system of reasoning, or a religious language game.

It may sound as if Paul’s claims in Romans 8 are circular since it is religious reasons which he gives in support of them. But religious claims which are supported by religious reasons are no more circular than are scientific claims which are grounded in scientific reasons. For example, it does not make sense to say, “Yes, there is a lot of scientific evidence to support the ‘Big Bang’ theory, but aside from that, why should I believe that the universe began with a big bang?”

Even though each reason appears to need support from yet another in Paul’s Epistle, that does not mean that this type of reason-giving is dubious or irrational or circular. For it would only be so if there were no implicit rules in the process of religious reason-giving which distinguish the relevant reasons from the irrelevant ones or make it possible for one reason to be better than another. If there were no such rules, one could make anything a reason for their beliefs. One could legitimately say, for example, “I believe Christ died for our sins because the moon is made of green cheese.” One reason could be just as good as the next––it would not matter. This is not the case for Paul. He would not accept just any reason as a good one for believing that Christ died for our sins.

[atomiczombie]

It can also be seen that religious reason-giving is not circular in the sense that circular arguments stand on reasons which are analytically contained in the very claim that these reasons are meant to support. But this is also not the case with Paul. His claim that “. . God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,” does not entail, i.e., is not part of the definition of “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

The tendency to assume that religious-reasoning is circular comes out of the mistaken notion that only non-religious reasons can legitimately support religious beliefs. This kind of mistake is often made with respect to moral reasoning as well. For example, someone who says, “I don’t get why people think they should do something just because it’s right” stands outside the moral language game and its corresponding forms of life and seeks a non-moral reason to justify moral actions and beliefs. What that person does not understand is that there is no grand, all encompassing, context-free system of reasoning that can be the ultimate ground of every context-dependent claim. Moral reasons are given for moral claims. Scientific reasons are offered as support for scientific claims. It is the same for religion. That is the way these kinds of discourse work. Religious reasons may not convince someone who stands outside the religious domain of discourse and the way of life that goes with it, but it does not stand to reason that there is, therefore, circularity or irrationality going on with respect to religious reasoning.

This is not to say that only religious reasons can support religious beliefs. Moral reasons can on occasion be used to support a religious assertion, e.g., “God does not take sides in human wars.” Moral considerations are relevant here and the implicit rules which make such considerations relevant are part of the religious context.

Systems of reasoning such as religion, morality and science do seem to over-lap in certain instances, and a great deal of confusion can arise around such an issue. One of the most obvious and concrete examples of this over-lap is the issue of Christianity and its relationship to historical knowledge.

Faith in a historical figure is at the heart of the Christian belief system. If a person does not have faith in this particular historical figure, then no matter what else that person believes, he or she is not a Christian. It is this characteristic of Christianity that points us to the question of what the role of historical knowledge is with respect to Christian faith. St. Paul wrote in Romans 8:34, “Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.” Once again, we are faced with the very same question with which we began: are religious claims such as those in Romans 8:34 to be believed on the basis of historical evidence, and if so, to what extent, and are they subject to degrees of probability? Historical knowledge seems to play a peculiar role in the Christian language game.

Wittgenstein was concerned enough with this issue to write:

Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin, which you can do only as the result of a life. Here you have a narrative, don’t take the same attitude to it as you take to other historical narratives! Make a quite different place in your life for it.

Faith does not follow from historical evidence in the sense that one amasses a certain amount of evidence and then, when the right amount is collected, the person is finally convinced. I think this is what Wittgenstein is trying to communicate here. He also says that historical plausibility is not the most important thing with respect to the New Testament:

God has four people recount the life of his incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies –– but might we not say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite averagely plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential decisive thing? So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due. I.e. what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best and most accurate historian; and therefore a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred. For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told. (Roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, –– because these might distract attention from what matters.)

He even goes so far as to say:

Queer as it sounds: The historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this: not, however, because it concerns ‘universal truths of reason’! Rather, because historical proof (the historical proof game) is irrelevant to belief. . . A believer’s relation to these narratives is neither the relation to historical truth (probability), nor yet that to a theory consisting of ‘truths of reason’.

I do not agree with Wittgenstein that, were the Gospels demonstrated to be false, belief would lose nothing. I think the narrative has to be historical to some extent––there must be some plausibility, at least in the sense that it is plausible to conclude that something happened. However, I do think it is interesting that he makes this point because it illustrates that there is a very different relationship to the historical in the believer’s language game than in other kinds of discourse.

I do agree with Wittgenstein that the believer’s relation to Biblical narratives is neither just a relation to a historical proof nor to purely theoretical considerations that can be logically deduced. Neither of those kinds of relations can lead someone to change their whole way of life, their world view. Historical knowledge, standing on its own, is a matter of indifference. It is the same with a theory. For, even if a person could be assured of having the most accurate historical account of the life of Jesus, to believe, as St. Paul said, that “There is . . now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is a further step from seeing such an account as simply a story of a strange religious fanatic named Jesus who lived two-thousand years ago and was killed for his controversial beliefs. This further step is the meaning which the believer assigns to the historical account; it is a contribution on the part of the believer which is not a logical inference, for a person who relied exclusively on pure reason would not come to such a conclusion. That is why, as Wittgenstein said, a “mediocre [biblical] account suffices” and is even to be preferred.

The contribution on the part of the believer is Faith. Christian Faith is as much a way of life as it is a kind of belief. Its relation to historical figures and events is that of a sort of jumping off point from which one makes a qualitative leap. This jumping off point is not the most important part, but nevertheless it is an essential part insofar as a there must be a jumping off point if there is to be any kind of leap at all.

What then should one reply to the person who says, “I just can’t believe that God exists––it just doesn’t seem probable”? What I said was: “I agree with you completely. Of course it isn’t probable.” This reply was not a refutation of her argument; it was a rejection of the kind of reason she gave for not believing. It was a way of telling her that she was confused about the kind of basis the belief in God’s existence has; that she was using irrelevant criteria as a basis upon which to make a judgment about whether God exists. The criteria that are associated with the concept of “probability” are not relevant to a belief in God’s existence. “I believe that God exists” is not exactly a judgment made on the basis of criteria. It is more like a declaration that “I accept religious criteria as having a role in my life.” Clearing away this confusion about criteria and what kind of basis is an appropriate one for belief in God clears the way for the qualitative leap of Faith.

So there is my paper. I used Christianity and the Romans text to illustrate my points because it was easy. I don't strictly speaking consider myself a Christian. If it sounds like I am defending Christianity, that wasn't my goal. I was challenging religious fundamentalist's views of science and empirical proofs and their misuse of those concepts, as much as atheist's and agnostic's empirical arguments against religious beliefs. I would say some things differently (particularly in the first paragraph, oy) if I wrote this paper today, but it does lay out some of my basic views on these matters.

[atomiczombie]

Wow did I kill this thread?

[Okiebug61]

[QUOTE=Toughy;367171]Okie please........I have no idea what a 'free thinking hippy' looks like or thinks. No one is asking you to express yourself in Aj's or my terms. We are asking you for clarification of what you said.

As to retirement......it is ever on my mind.....I face the 62 or 65 question in 3 years, not 17 years. However there are many things ever on my mind. I multi-task every day.

Frankly I think you are very capable of multi-tasking. I wish you would. I want to understand what you are saying. I don't at this point.

I spent years in the western medicine clinical trial world as a community representative. I could only represent the community when I understood what they were thinking. I don't understand what you mean by guinea pig. If you really think all western medicine is treating human beings as G-pigs, then I want to understand why you think that. I want to know how much you know about how the FDA and how clinical trial mechanisms work. I want to know your knowledge base and how you arrived at the G-pig conclusion.

And then there are the questions about how you define science and what you mean by saying science makes people G pigs.

Help me understand.....or not and I will draw my conclusions based on less that useful information.[/QUOTE

Toughy! I can't get involved in this discussion without becoming very mad about the FDA and their antics. I will say that I do not think "ALL" western medicine is bad and leave it at that.

Peace!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

Wow did I kill this thread?

I don't think you did.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

Toughy! I can't get involved in this discussion without becoming very mad about the FDA and their antics. I will say that I do not think "ALL" western medicine is bad and leave it at that.

Peace!

As you wish. But isn't it possible to have this discussion without really having to mention the FDA at all? Saying that science uses humans as guinea pigs doesn't just cover what goes on at the FDA. It covers cosmology, evolutionary biology, Newtonian Physics, astronomy--all of which are lumped in with whatever it is about the FDA that upsets you as 'science'. It's just an idea.

So, if you don't mind my asking. Should your statement that science uses humans as guinea pigs be understood to really be an attack on the FDA and not on, say, physics?

Cheers
Aj

[AtLast]

I might be stepping into some do-do here, but I have a bit of a sensitivity to blanket statements about the guinea-pig slant and slam. Not all scientific drug studies are made up of unsuspecting people at the hands of FDA regulation or lack of it.

There are many drug trials that fall into experimental lines (with legal sanctioning) that people, and I think rather heroic people done with full disclosure that can and do bring us significant data that does save lives as chemo therapies are developed.

My brother died in 1990 due to pancreatic cancer. At that time, the chances of having even 5 years of remission for this type of cancer due to the chemo therapies and radiation therapy then used was dismal. He did after exhausting the therapies available and FDA approved at the time, sign on to experimental trials of drugs and knew that he was really only giving researchers (his own oncologist) a way to actually see if their hypotheses about the drug’s effectiveness was at least heading the right direction. Yes, there was a “last-ditch” hope going on for my brother as there is for most people that enter into these studies- he figured a month or two more with his child was worth it. And yes, he felt that if this helped medical science to gain on this deadly and swiftly moving form of cancer, why not do this- he was dying anyway at the age of 47.

Today, this chemo regimen has become the leading therapy for pancreatic cancers and it is the very one that the Cancer Centers of America uses that we see all those media commercials of. What really is something to lose one’s temper over is that this drug regimen is extremely costly and it isn’t available to all pancreatic patients in the US. And we all know why this is.

Yes, I can get angry with the FDA and pharmaceutical companies, yet, I also see another side to things to this debate. I absolutely want the public to be protected against negligence in medicine and research, but I also want the minds that work on the sciences behind chemo therapies for all disease to be able to do this work. The fact is, every cut to the budgets of the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and the continued right-wing political barring of stem cell research in the US is what our real focus ought to be on. Not properly funding scientific research and allowing unconstitutional religious ideology to guide medical research is what really makes guinea-pig out of all of us.