pz vs. Dilbert, Take 2

[Clutch Munny]

I'm really not sure what "scientism" means, though I see the epithet hurled a fair bit.

[D. Scarlatti]

Scientism must be his religion.

[The Lone Ranger]

Don't hold back, davidm. Tell us what you really think.

Cheers,

Michael

[fragment]

Scientism's not really a word I'm inclined to use, but I've generally taken it to mean an unquestioning faith in some class of people who are portrayed as "scientists" and who have specialised access to esoteric knowledge and interpretation that is conferred by their membership of that group.

It's an attitude that ought to be anathema to anyone honestly engaged in the understanding, teaching and investigation of scientific knowledge, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist among the wider public - and even among some scientists, if only implicitly.

The fact is, to many people, science can seem as incomprehensible - and often as uninteresting - as medieval latin theological treatises. To such a person, saying something has been established as scientific fact can look very like asking them to accept or reject a statement of faith. I'd say that recent trends in rejecting scientific explanations stem, at least partly, from this appearance. IMO anyone who wants to combat scientific rejections in general should spend less time talking about the results of science than educating people on the nature of scientific inquiry and reasoning, and instilling a sense of curiosity about the universe.

I'm not aware of anything that PZ's written that can be accused of furthering this conception of scientism, but I'd be happy for davidm to point some out.

[Clutch Munny]

Thanks, fragment. Yes, given the rebuttals and invective that PZ has directed at people who are scientists -- Michael Behe, f'r instance -- his alleged scientism isn't very naturally seen as some "membership in the group of scientists makes you unquestionably trustworthy" thing.

[Ari]

I assumed that since scient-ology was a cult-religion then scient-ism was the practice of actual science.

Frag, I agree. It's amazing how many pseudo-science books are based around the "And things 'they' don't want you to know" attitude that it will make the reader able to knock supposed arrogant scientist down a peg.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

Thanks, fragment. Yes, given the rebuttals and invective that PZ has directed at people who are scientists -- Michael Behe, f'r instance -- his alleged scientism isn't very naturally seen as some "membership in the group of scientists makes you unquestionably trustworthy" thing.

Good point. I suppose one could stretch the religious analogy a bit further and suggest these are disputes between different sects of scientism.

On reflection, perhaps davidm's notion of scientism isn't supposed to be quite as religious as I've made out, but is more like a political ideology a la communism, libertarianism, etc. The McCarthy reference would make more sense in that context. I'm not quite sure what the nature of this ideology is supposed to be - perhaps the notion that scientific inquiry should be the bedrock of human societies; that its methods, objectives and results are necessarily good in a moral sense?

[seebs]

I understand it to be the belief that everything is well-suited to scientific inquiry.

As an obvious example, moral questions. So far as I can tell, science simply doesn't even pretend to address value judgements, and can't. If you have a given value judgement in mind, science can tell you how to pursue it. If you want to know the mechanisms by which people come to value judgements, science can offer at least plausible hypotheses.

But it can't answer the question of whether or not a value judgement is correct, and people who think it can or should, or people who think that this means that there's no such thing as value judgements, are exhibiting scientism in the sense used.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by seebs

I understand it to be the belief that everything is well-suited to scientific inquiry.

As an obvious example, moral questions. So far as I can tell, science simply doesn't even pretend to address value judgements, and can't. If you have a given value judgement in mind, science can tell you how to pursue it. If you want to know the mechanisms by which people come to value judgements, science can offer at least plausible hypotheses.

But it can't answer the question of whether or not a value judgement is correct, and people who think it can or should, or people who think that this means that there's no such thing as value judgements, are exhibiting scientism in the sense used.

Though it's become something like boilerplate, this idea is what I find dubious -- even clearly false, as it's worded.

Why should moral questions not be well-suited to scientific inquiry? Provided we don't mean "exhausted by experimental methods" or some similarly narrow conception of science or morality, that is.

Moral evaluations about culpability are very often influenced by empirical investigations -- measuring and clarifying the existence and extent of psychological disorders, for example. This is not some sort of category mistake; it's a responsible exercise of moral judgement. Moral questions about the harmfulness of an actions are crucially addressed by empirical methods of data collection and analysis, moreover. It is hardly scientism to demand a rigorous analysis of job-loss data in order to form a moral evaluation of an economic policy.

There's something appealing, perhaps, in the much weaker idea that science can't answer ultimate or foundational questions of morality. Maybe a good argument can be made here. But my suspicion is that no very deep contrast emerges with fields that nobody would be tempted to locate beyond the purview of science. Science doesn't tell us why we should care enough about organisms to treat them as worthy of a science unto themselves, for example; that's almost a constitutive assumption of the discipline of biology. And if there are ultimate or foundational questions to biology, it's equally unclear how existing scientific methods could resolve them in any straightforward manner. Yet I doubt anyone wants to say that it's scientism to suppose that biology is well-suited to scientific study.

[Clutch Munny]

Well, I found myself thinking about McCarthy and was reminded of this thread.

PZ and philosophers. I don't get it.

My comments and his reply are at the bottom of the page from the first link right now.

[viscousmemories]

That's some good reading.

[Clutch Munny]

It'll be a good thing, overall, if it has the side-effect of getting some people to download and read the Manson paper, which is a very clear and interesting article.

[davidm]

Interesting thread; I'm surprised you still haven't been swarmed by people accusing you of being a troll, an ID sympathizer, a Christian fundamentalist and a social conservative; nor yet has anyone tried, so far as I can tell, to dig up personal information about you and publicly post it. They must be having an off day on the blog from hell.

[D. Scarlatti]

It's unfortunate you even need to point out that distinction, between reading and endorsing, especially to the anti-ID people, who, by definition, need to wade through all sorts of crapulent verbiage without by any means endorsing it.

[Clutch Munny]

I could see a layperson maybe being surprised at the discovery that it's standard to acknowledge the people who read your manuscript, whether they said nice things or not. But a professor?

It's really frickin' weird.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by D. Scarlatti

It's unfortunate you even need to point out that distinction, between reading and endorsing, especially to the anti-ID people, who, by definition, need to wade through all sorts of crapulent verbiage without by any means endorsing it.