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Good morning world. Yes, it's Monday morning again and the 143rd week of blogging from The Git. Today is the mid-year examination in philosophy. It's a seen exam, where you choose one question from a list. Materials allowed -- one A4 page of handwritten notes, one side only. Here's what The Git wrote and will regurgitate later today:
In this essay, I propose to show that David Hume's argument about miracles does not have an adequate scientific basis by showing that Hume's definitions of miracles and science are inadequate. First, let's consider Hume's own words:
"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.
... There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior." (Emphasis mine)
From this we can derive the definition that a miracle is a violation of a law of nature. Hume gives the example: "The raising of a house or ship into the air is a visible miracle." This "miracle" was observed less than a decade after Hume's death at Annonay in France in 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers flew the world's first airship. Hume's argument is that we should not give full credence that this occurred if we only have second-hand accounts that such an event has happened. Today we take it as a commonplace that the raising of ships into the air for the purpose of travelling around the globe and the near reaches of space is not a miracle. Most of us rely not on testimony for our belief that such things take place, but our own experience.
Hume defines a law of nature as a uniform regularity. He gives the example: "The production of motion by impulse and gravity is an universal law, which has hitherto admitted of no exception." This example is drawn from physics where such a statement is more tenable than some of the other sciences. Hume is saying that every repetition of an experiment produces the same result, therefore a future repetition will also produce that result. Even in physics we know this to be untrue. We can cheerfully make blocks from wet powdered solids and watch them dry out to become bricks -- unless we happen to use a particular isotope of uranium whereupon the uranium atoms decide to become lead rather rapidly with the evolution of considerable heat and hard radiation.
Arthur C. Clarke rather famously said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Magic, like miracles, is an example of the supernatural. That is, we believe the laws of nature have been broken, or suspended. What the people of Hume's day would have perceived as magical or miraculous, we today take for granted as perfectly natural. Many of their miracles are today's perfectly ordinary technological accomplishments.
Hume's definition of science comes from the belief that by observing the present and the past, we can predict the future. Even the great Einstein fell into the same trap when he said in 1932: "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." This was conclusively disproved by the culmination of the Manhattan Project, when the US bombed the crap out of Nagasaki and Hiroshima with two distinctly different versions of the atomic bomb, proving that atoms can be shattered at will with technology.
My conclusion is that miracles as defined by Hume do not occur. If something has taken place, then by definition it is congruent with the laws of nature and not a miracle. If there is testimony that a miracle occurred when it did not, then that is a merely a falsehood. Most imagined miracles appear to be of the form of undiscovered future technology: bringing dead people back to life, visiting the moon, flying through the air, curing fatal diseases, stones falling from the sky and vehicles travelling faster than thirty miles per hour without asphyxiating the occupants have all been considered contrary to the laws of nature.
Many, if not most, scientists even to the present day share Hume's belief that in principle science can predict the future from the present and past, yet this belief itself flies in the face of past experience. In 1899 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin declared: "Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax." There are countless other examples and undoubtedly many of today's scientific predictions will be falsified by the end of this century.
What then would be a better and more workable definition of science? Karl Popper makes a valiant attempt in Conjectures and Refutations by pointing out that scientists make predictions about the future based on their theories and that the riskier the predictions, the better. He also notes, drawing his examples from quantum mechanics and relativity, that for any given set of observations there are multiple, non-overlapping theories that produce accurate predictions. This appears to be a statement that laws of nature do not exist waiting discovery. Rather, we invent useful new ideas we have about the world we inhabit. When an old idea is refuted, we invent a new one that overcomes the problem.
Popper dismisses a general belief about science: "It has often been said that scientific explanation is reduction of the unknown to the known. If pure science is meant, nothing could be further from the truth. It can be said without paradox that scientific explanation is, on the contrary, the reduction of the known to the unknown." That is, we expect a future outcome, unknown because it has not happened yet, based upon our past and present experiences and the past and present are all that we can know.
This does not even begin to address whole domains of science, particularly life science. Palaeontology and bench biology, for instance, make few if any predictions. Do we dismiss such endeavours as unscientific, or not real science? Stephen Jay Gould wrote:
"The main question raised by mass extinction has always been, 'Is there any pattern to who gets through and who doesn't -- and if so, what causes the pattern?'
… I need hardly say that if a mass extinction operates like a genuine lottery, with each group holding a ticket unrelated to its anatomical virtues, then contingency, and maximal range of possibilities in replaying life's tape, have been proven. We have some indications that true randomness may play a role. Some of the events are so profound, and the pool of survivors so restricted, that chance fluctuations in small samples may come into play."
Gould seems to be saying that life itself appears to be inherently unpredictable. So while some science is about prediction, clearly this is not a core requirement for science. My conclusion is that Hume's definition of science is inadequate and that what he gave for examples of miracles are unpredictable outcomes of scientific discovery and technological ingenuity. Moreover, far from revealing the laws of nature, what science actually reveals is the ingenuity of the human mind, our ability to produce solutions in some problem domain.
Thought for the day:
For the truly faithful, no miracle is necessary. For those who doubt, no miracle is sufficient.
Nancy Gibbs
Current Listening:
Moody Blues -- Days of Future Passed
Yesterday's examination went well. The Git finished with half an hour to spare. First task following that was to attempt to purchase some light globes. Not just any light globes, but the rather special sort that Mrs Git's lamps use: halogen light globes as in the illustration.
According to the man in the lighting shop where we purchased them, the justification for them costing several times the price of ordinary light globes (~$A12/$US7.80) is that they last twice as long. The Git pointed out that in fact they appear to last half as long as ordinary light globes and that we have been getting no more than six months out of them. The shop person replied that's what most of the customers were saying. The excuse for this is the parlous state of our electricity supply. If we had an electricity supply that didn't go over-voltage, we would experience twice the lifespan. A lot of fucking use that is! The other problem is that the globes are not widely available -- only from the fuckheads we purchased the lamps from.
Another annoyance today was that the bus The Git and The Boy Wonder expected to catch had already left several minutes before we arrived at the bus stop. The driver of the following bus said that was our fault as The Git's watch obviously had the incorrect time. The Git's birthday watch does indeed show the incorrect time. It's five seconds fast according to the atomic clock The Git's computer uses to keep accurate time. The Git never ceases to be amazed at the complete shit some people expect you to swallow.
-oOo-
Two days of intensive study for the geology exam on Thursday, followed by a welcome break until July 14 when Disorientation Week begins. Hopefully, the break will give me time to gather some thoughts and threads together to keep you, gentle readers, amused/bewildered/entertained/exasperated/shocked/annoyed [delete whichever is inapplicable].
Thought for the day:
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Elbert Hubbard
Current Listening:
Stevie Wonder -- Songs in the Key of Life
From Anthony J Campbell's website:
Religion Memes and Language
Abstract
In recent years skeptics have often applied Richard Dawkins's "memes" idea to religion. This does go some of the way towards providing a naturalistic explanation for religion but I think it over-emphasizes the importance of belief at the expense of narrative. Religions, I suggest, mostly begin with narrative; belief arises later and is, in a sense, a secondary development. It is probably our Christian heritage that leads us to attach undue importance to the role of belief. Narrative depends largely on language, and there are important similarities between religions and language in the way in which they are acquired. This way of looking at religion suggests an explanation for its seeming ubiquity in human culture and also for its persistence in our modern society.
...
Religion as narrative
Narrative is at the heart of probably every religion we know of. The Old Testament is not a philosophical treatise, it is mostly a huge collection of stories and it is on these that its power largely rests. The same is true of the New Testament. The narrative of Christ's life, death, and resurrection is intrinsic to Christianity, and Jesus himself used narrative in the form of parables to convey his meaning. Islam likewise begins with the narrative of Mohammed's reception of the Koran. Hinduism contains innumerable narratives of the deeds of the gods, and even Buddhism, probably the most "intellectual" among religions, starts with the narrative of the Buddha's quest for enlightenment. As religions develop they accumulate stories about the lives of their saints and prophets -- more narratives. New religions typically also start from a narrative: Mormonism, for example, begins with the story of Joseph Smith's discovery of the golden tablets on which were inscribed the Book of Mormon. In almost all traditional societies the process of initiating young people into the mysteries of the tribes seems to have consisted largely in telling them stories about the deeds of tribal gods and ancestors.
The meme theory usually concentrates on beliefs, but these, I suggest, are secondary not primary. The New Testament is not concerned with formulations of belief but tells us about things that Jesus said and did -- stories, in fact. Probably few people apart from religious professionals spend much time thinking about doctrinal statements such as the Nicene Creed or the Thirty-nine Articles. Statements of belief are not how most people encounter their religion as children; they generally meet it as narrative. My own introduction to Christianity by my father began with his telling me stories from the Old Testament and I should guess that something of the kind is the experience of many people who have had a Christian upbringing.
One reason why religions have such a strong hold on human societies is that they are based not primarily on intellectual beliefs but on narratives. Story-telling accesses the human psyche not at the intellectual but at the emotional level, where it is more powerful; probably the brain pathways are different for narrative response and belief formation. Human beings are story-telling by nature. Every society seems to have had its story-tellers, its oral epic poets, and the earliest literature that has come down to us (the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Gilgamesh epic) is narrative. Today we still enjoy narratives in the form of plays, films, and novels. (The death of the novel, like the death of religion, is constantly being foretold yet both novels and religions seemingly continue to thrive.)
...
Critics such as Dawkins and Blackmore regard religions as largely harmful, though Blackmore does allow that they have fostered a lot of art, literature, music, and architecture. On the debit side, as she says, they have been responsible for a huge amount of slaughter and suffering. It could be argued, however, that religion has merely been the pretext for such iniquities and that these things would have happened anyway for other reasons. And for some people, even including a number who favour a naturalistic account of religion, the meme theory is too sweeping, too dismissive of a huge amount of human experience. Many skeptics have found the idea of religion as a kind of psychic contagion by memes to be quite persuasive, but for people who were brought up in a religion -- even if they have now rejected it wholly or partially -- the meme explanation may seem to be not fully adequate to account for the "feel" of the thing. Meme transmission may perhaps explain something of the psychological force of a religious upbringing but the theory, as it stands, does not do full justice to experience. Those who think in this way may find the notion of religion as a symbiont having much in common with language to be more appealing. At any rate, most people even today seemingly find it psychologically difficult to live without something that passes for religion. Iris Murdoch saw this when she wrote: "God does not and cannot exist. But what leads us to conceive of him does exist and is constantly experienced and pictured".
The Git has in the past drawn parallels between religion and science and this seems to add weight to his thoughts. Much science appears to be of the nature of Just-So Stories. Dawkins' and Blackmore's criticism of religion being the cause of a huge amount of slaughter and suffering could equally be levelled against science. It was science that developed missiles, atomic bombs, biological and chemical weapons. The USians used science and technology to invade Iraq, not the voices in George Bush's head. Not to forget scientists like Josef Mengele and his infamous experiments on Jews sixty odd years ago. And let it not be forgotten that it was religion that invented science by demanding more accurate calendars for the better worship of God. Better calendars required more accurate astronomy and that begat telescopes, f=ma, more powerful mathematics and so on down to today.
Thought for the day:
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
G. K. Chesterton
Current Listening:
Otway and Barrett -- Deep and Meaningless
The geology examination went well on Thursday. There was only one question The Git couldn't answer and most were in what he had revised. One of the problems of geology is a bewildering plethora of terms. Often the same thing is described in quite different terms by different writers. The Git suspects that he knew the answer if the words used had been the ones he learnt. There's also a tendency for jargon to be used in our learning materials without a definition when it's introduced. Indurate for instance; that means harden. If you told the obliging young lady you're with: "You're making me indurate", likely she'd slap you and leave.
-oOo-
On Tuesday The Git wrote about the appalling lifespan of his quartz-halogen light globes. On Wednesday, one of them wasn't working. However, it hadn't blown. It appears that the contact with the socket is very loose on one fitting, quite loose on another and a firm fit on the third. The Git went into the lighting shop after the exam and asked to speak to the manager. He explained how to bend the arms of the fitting to make the contact better and offered to pay the electrician if The Git preferred him to do it. Eddie also gave The Git three extra globes for free and offered to replace the current three at no cost when they expire if The Git brings them in. My estimation of Lights'n'Lamps just went up by a very large amount.
-oOo-
Friday was a bit of a day of rest. The Git played Civilization: Call to Power, mowed some grass and generally futzed around. Today Denis comes to help with the cottage renovations, so it's time to dress and face the day.
Thought for the day:
No language is rude that can boast polite writers.
Aubrey Beardsley
Current Listening:
Yes -- Tales from Topographical Oceans
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