Top blogging of 2021

 Not all posts are from the past year, but these were the most popular by readership in the past year.

No. 1? Remains my calling out of Anthony Fauci for telling Platonic noble lies about mask-wearing or not, back in 2020. (He'd later tell other lies, first semi-noble, then totally mundane ones.

No. 2? My decade-ago calling out of the likes of Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer for engaging in libertarian pseudoscience pseudoskepticism.

No. 3? It's interesting it's trended this high, but it's a blog post of mine from last year about an Atlantic Monthly contributor, and (former?) regular Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, for the weirdness, if you will, of his story about when he stopped (for a while) being an "ambulance chaser" because his own wreck made him an ambulance needer. My piece covered "PTSD, journalism, accidents, existentialism." The first three were involved; the fourth was my angle of entry.

No. 4? Veering to critical religion — not critical exegesis of texts, but criticism of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and all the hypocritical dirtiness in its closure of Concordia University-Portland (with the denouement still ahead in the snarls of multiple lawsuits).

No. 5? My untangling of the "Young Hume" vs "Old Hume" on Pyrrhonism and more. Part of a serious of extended posts inspired by David Harris' critically acclaimed, yet actually somewhat spotty, recent biography.

No. 6? In which I told Jesus mythicists that Nazareth is real, and more to the point, was real 1st Century CE.

No. 7? The later semi-noble lies of Fauci got examined, in a psychological take on him and a sociological one on tribalist Democrats.

No. 8? A relatively recent one, showing how Harvey Whitehouse's ideas on the evolution of religion, by not being grounded in good philosophy of religion, jumped the shark. Sadly, it appears that the likes of a Scott Atran, by heading down a similar ev psych-based road, may also be "jumping."

No. 9? I pretty thoroughly deconstructed David Graeber's posthumously coauthored new book. (I even more thoroughly deconstructed its political angles at my main blog.)

No. 10? A philosophy and philosophy of science question is wrestled with: How do we define "life"?

Scientism, philosophy, and the Big Bang

 Regular readers of this blog and my main one both know that I like to comment at times on the issue of "scientism," which is, in a nutshell, certain scientists overblown claims for science, that it has explanatory power, or will at some day, and explanatory frameworks for many things that are rightly regarded as philosophical.

Aesthetics would be a great example.

"De gustibus non disputandum" Romans said 2,000 years ago, and it's just as true today.

Science has basically nothing to tell — certainly, hard sciences have basically nothing to tell — about why I think Mozart is overrated by many people. He IS and you shut up!

In some instances, the social sciences may indeed have some explanatory value, but even there, it's overblown. The hard sciences, though, are where scientism really hits the road.

And, last week, with Roger Penrose getting the Physics Nobel for his work on black holes, his naysayers on his anti-Big Bang ideas popped up.

I have little doubt Ethan Siegal knows cosmology well. Philosophy, including philosophy of science or more narrowly, philosophy of physics, )per the likes of Massimo Pigluicci postulating "philosophies of ..." for separate hard sciences at least) not so much, it would seem, per this anti-Penrose diatribe.

He says, near the end:

This presents a tremendous challenge for cosmology, and for science in general. In science, when we see some phenomena that our theories cannot explain, we have two options. 

1. We can attempt to devise a theoretical mechanism to explain those phenomena, while simultaneously maintaining all the successes of the prior theory and making novel predictions that are distinct from the prior theory’s predictions. 

2. Or we can simply assume that there is no explanation, and the Universe was simply born with the properties necessary to give us the Universe we observe. 

Only the first approach has scientific value, and therefore that’s the one that must be tried, even if it fails to yield fruit.

Uhh, wrong!

Accepting there is no explanation is itself of scientific value. It cuts down on possible pseudoscience; it allows scientific inquiry to be directed more productively, and other things.

And, in terms of philosophy of science, it leads to some epistemic humility. (That itself is something lacking in spades among many scientism practitioners.)

Siegal needs to read himself some early Wittgenstein and learn when to be silent.

Now, at times, explanations manifest themselves years or decades later. Planck's solving of the blackbox radiation problem, directly tied to Siegel's post, is one such answer.

BUT.

Even that is not guaranteed. Siegel acting like scientific answers are guaranteed is textbook scientism.

Meet Massimo Pigliucci

This is from a few weeks ago, but he wrote about it now being 30 years in the US for him.

A few thoughts I pull from that, having long followed him, and been stimulated by discussions philosophical and beyond on various websites and locations of his.

I've always thought of myself as a bit Europeanish, and his take on generalizations in temperament confirm that, in that I too have a sort of (muddled) optimism for the short term, but more worries about the longer term. I told him on Twitter that, per Yenta the Matchmaker's "oy we muddle," that Judaism (in Europe! I don't know about America) reflects similar ideas, or so it seems.

Many fellow Americans halfway confound me in this way, in fact. So does the attitude of "joining" as described first by de Tocqueville, even as Americans at the same time exulted about, and worked to further develop, "rugged individualism."

Back to other thoughts about Pigliucci.

One main point is his "seeking."

Raised Catholic, but apparently not too much more than a "C and E Catholic" (think about the top two religious days), he eventually moved to secular humanism. But, he wanted something "structured," so after moving more into philosophy, became what I'll call a Neo-Stoic. It's "neo" in the sense that surely for Massimo, and I think that for most devotees, it's been denatured of things like the Logos as a literal metaphysical entity.

I will confess that, 30 years ago, within Christianity, I had an eye for Stoicism. Today, things like behavioral psychology have shown me that human nature is far more irrational than Stoicism would have us believe. Quantum mechanics has shown the same about the universe lacking anything close to a quasi-logical structure, too. We've talked about this. I'm not the only one with a different take than him. But the talks have always been friendly.

It's also interesting to find that he was looking at Buddhism, too. I've noted strongly and repeatedly in these pages that Buddhism is, indeed, a religion. To make it not one takes a lot more denaturing than does Stoicism, and it's then arguable that what you have isn't Buddhism anymore. To be honest, Massimo, that one surprised me to the point of being semi-stunned.

Now, something that would call itself (neo) Stoicism could "denature" itself as much as what some people call (wrongly) Buddhism, by tossing out not only an actual Logos, but the idea of an ordered universe in general and a semi-rational humanity in particular. That said, I would no more call that Stoicism, even with a "neo," than I would call what Robert Wright, Stephen Batchelor and BuJews peddle Buddhism. You're really more in the vicinity of a personal psychology adapted from cognitive behavioral therapy or rational emotive therapy. Why not just call it such? (I could accept RET as a psychologically based "structure," but CBT comes off as ... too Stoic-like, especially without an "E"!)

Massimo did note back, via Twitter, that others than Wright (and Batchelor) for that matter, have made denaturing Buddhism a project. True. But, I think he may recall that I've carefully used adjectives, for sayings like "Buddhistic" or "Buddicizing" humanism or whatever. I haven't been fully accurate on parallels elsewhere, but Christian humanists don't claim to be peddling a truly non-religious philosophy of life, either. So, in that sense, I haven't been INaccurate on language either.

Finally, one small side note: A fair amount of people who believe in elements of pseudoscience aren't necessarily religious, or at least not driven primarily by religious considerations. Antivaxxerism comes immediately to mind.

In any case, the amateur semi-philosopher has appreciated the stimulations the professional has provided both inside and outside the realm of philosophy.

Was Thomas Kuhn all he cracked himself up to be?

Maybe, and maybe not.

I do like that Kuhn's paradigms and paradigm shifts note that science has always had its deductive as well as inductive sides. Good philosophers of science may note that good science has them work in tandem.

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris was a graduate student of Kuhn's for a year. He decades later wrote five New York Times Opinionator columns about the experience (here's the first) and eventually turned them into a book.

His central charge? Kuhn was a relativist rejecting the idea of objective truth.

New Atlantis hated what Morris wrote, in large part because it had the usual Errol Morris style. At the same time, it admitted that Kuhn himself snarled up some of his arguments about science and history.

Steven Poole in The Guardian flat-out claimed Morris got Kuhn wrong.

John Horgan, while saying he thought Morris overdid his killing of Kuhn, said that from personal experience, he found Kuhn "almost comically self-contradictory."

Horgan and Poole also disagree on Morris' interpretation of, and use of, Saul Kripke. Poole thinks Morris understands Kripke as poorly as he does Kuhn, while Horgan says he found Morris' interpretation enlightening.

Horgan finally does a twist on Morris by wondering if he wasn't actually a secret admirer of Kuhn.

==

This Venn diagram reflects about how much I think Kuhn
actually had to say about problems in science in general, and
even more, or less, what he had to say or not about scientism.

Beyond Morris, and with Horgan, my take is that Kuhn did bring new insights to philosophy of science, but that he was, from what I read, self-contradictory. That then said, per this commenter on Morris, perhaps the self-contradictory issue reflects science's messiness.

Plus, he own theory can easily be self-judoed.

And, for people who think he has crushed scientism? First, not in the mind of scientism aficionados, he hasn't. Second, to the degree he can be self-judoed, he hasn't in general. Because ... the next paradigm shift may be around the corner.

Per that and per Kuhn's Wiki page, I think the charge of relativism has some merit. Kuhn himself said "I am not a Kuhnian," but that sounds like the defensiveness behind his allegedly throwing an ashtray at Morris. His paradigm shift does raise questions of how much rational thought is involved with shifting to a new paradigm — or not.

Also, what both Kuhn and Morris (and Popper fans) seem to miss is that it ties back to the old Problem of Induction. Even more, given Kuhn basing his charges about problems with commensurability, or the incommensurability lack thereof, being based on issues with modal logic, Kripke and related, Kuhn connects to Nelson Goodman's New Riddle of Induction. Indeed, Goodman's original ideas later influenced Kripke.

A related issue is that Kuhn probably oversold the whole idea of paradigm shifts. New ways of thinking in science usually aren't as starkly incompatible as, say, classical and quantum mechanics.

Take Charles Darwin. Ideas of evolution had been floating in the biology world for decades. Darwin just thought of a specific mechanism — or two, counting sexual selection.

Per what I said about physics, I'm not sure there's been a revolutionary paradigm shift since quantum mechanics and general relativity. Dark matter and energy have been accepted without much fight, and string theory has yet to be proven, so neither qualifies.

Biology arguably has had paradigm shifts since Darwin. The acceptance of prions as semi-alive. The acceptance of the reality of epigenetics. These are both at least semi-major shifts, and contra dark matter, both have been fought-over.

Chemistry? Maybe high-temp superconductivity. I'm not sure.

In short?

Kuhnians shouldn't put him on a pedestal, because the paradigm beneath that will shift away. And, beyond that, there's arguably greater shifts in issues in philosophy directly or indirectly tied to philosophy of science than to science itself.

I once thought Kuhn was genius-like myself. Now, I think he should have viewed himself more skeptically.

Does AI engage in behavioralism? Chomsky says yes

Noam Chomsky, a long and persistent critic of artificial intelligence, says yes, or that it at least engages in the equivalent thereof, as related in this extended interview with the Atlantic.

If he is right, and I think he’s at least in the right ballpark, I think this arguably explains why AI, for all its self-touting, is the biggest research science and technology failure this side of peaceful fusion power. Indeed, progress on the two shares a remarkably similar arc.

Noam Chomsky/From The Atlantic

The interview is indeed worth a read. It’s in-depth, and as the Atlantic editor-reporter notes, it’s rare these days, because everybody wants to interview Chomsky on political topics, not scientific ones.

Beyond his “behaviorist” comments, he suggests AI researchers, and at least some people in fields such as his own cognitive science, are still doing research on mind and intelligence at what might be called the wrong level of abstraction. It brings to mind Dan Dennett’s comment (ironic at times, given Dennett) of “greedy reductionism.”

It also brings to mind Paul Davies’ book “The Eerie Silence,” which criticizes SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, for various blinders it may be wearing in its search.

Chomsky, in the interview, also veers at least a bit into his home turf of linguistics. As part of that, he doesn’t have a lot of good to say about Bayesian statistics.

He says there are better ways for us to try to understand the “noise” with which we are bombarded on a daily basis.

I have to agree from a different, folk-level point of view.

To me, Bayesian statistics seems like “the hip thing” for pop and semi-pop observers of human cultural sociology. All it needs is a new book by Malcolm Gladwell.

From there, he ties linguistics back to cognitive science. And, hits the nail on the head, in my opinion:

It's worth remembering that with regard to cognitive science, we're kind of pre-Galilean, just beginning to open up the subject.

He notes that, with the likes of Paracelsus, natural philosophy before Galileo, in the hands of the likes of Paracelsus, was quasi-experimental. It had certainly become more empirical than the philosophical speculation of the Greeks. But, things like the null hypothesis, or the idea of using any particular hypothesis to direct experimentation, weren’t fully there.

Chomsky goes on to question issues related to algorithms. Again, I broadly agree with him. In a more technical way, certainly, than me, he appears to question the issue of claiming that mental processes in general, and especially those that would give us what we would call an intelligent consciousness, can be reduced to, or framed in terms of, algorithms. Indeed, when asked about it, in relation to some particular research and mental modeling, he specifically rejects the need for algorithms.

It sounds like in both cognitive science and artificial intelligence, if not already, Chomsky could soon become about as controversial as he is on U.S. foreign policy.

But, don’t stop there. Chomsky, getting into his theories of language, and with a nod to Wittgenstein, argues that something analogous to language could be used as part of new attempts to understand bodily systems, such as, say, how the immune system works. It’s true that biology already talks about things such as “signaling,” but in the past, it’s seemed to use these words and phrases anthropomorphically, and Chomsky is saying, “take the next step.”

Anyway, I’m just scratching the surface of my analysis, both in terms of how much of the interview I’m analyzing and how much analysis I’m putting forth. Go read the full thing yourself.

Let me just add that he closes by saying something else I agree with, and that I read Steve Toulmin saying 15 years or so ago: Scientists still need philosophers of science challenging them, now perhaps more than ever.

Philosophy's the same by any name

I agree in part with Colin McGinn, that many people may have bad conceptions about philosophy. But, his idea of renaming the discipline will have little effect. As for the science-philosophy gap, that comes im large part, in many areas, from scientists believing they're too good to need the insight of philosophers, especially those pesky critters called philosophers of science.

Well, as something like Pop Ev Psych shows, noooooo, scientists often need a lot of philosophical help, even straightening out.

‘Healthy’ red wine data is bogus - Science, science and #scientism

An AP story has the details:

A University of Connecticut researcher known for his work on the benefits of red wine to heart health falsified his data in more than 100 instances, and nearly a dozen scientific journals are being warned of the potential problems after publishing his studies in recent years, officials said Wednesday.

UConn officials said their internal review found 145 instances over seven years in which Dr. Dipak Das fabricated and falsified data, and the U.S. Office of Research Integrity has launched an independent investigation of his work.

There’s no indication of the motive, but the university just turned down nearly $1 million in federal grants related to the fake research.

Meanwhile, at least one resveratrol seller is scurrying to distance itself from these findings.

It's not surprising.


First, even legitimate medical claims have a much lower margin of error for false positives, or p-value, than do natural sciences research. 5 percen vs. 0.01 percent is huge indeed.


But, that's secondary to the huge nature of the fraud, and the second half of the header for this post.


Scientism is obvious to those who know about.


For those who don't, it's a bit of hyperrationalism that says almost everything in your, my and Horatio's universe is understandable by scientific investigation. Some Gnu Atheists engage in it, notably Sam Harris. Some "professional skeptics" at least skirt its edges.


Other "professional skeptics," along with some scientists, don't go that far but are bad enough.


For them, Science with a capital-S is put forth instead of science.


I use the capital-S Science for a Platonic Idea of science, if you will. The professional skeptics and some scientists claim that science is not only the best endeavor of the human mind, but that it's on a plane all by itself. In situations such as the above, though, they're stuck. Was Das never a scientist? Or, rather, a Scientist? Like a lapsed Christian, was he once a Scientist, only to become a heretic?


And here, though Science doesn't have exactly the same take on scientific research as does scientism, the end result ... idealizing science some way, and even as a quasi-belief system, is the same.


The reality? Science is no less a human endeavor and no more one, as far as ethics of its practitioners, than any other. Beyond the laughable but mild problems of Gnu-style atheists, we've seen Nazi and Japanese medical experimentation, Soviet Lamarckianism at the hands of Lysenko and much more.


The idea of rational, ethical, human behavior is one we hope for in fields outside of science, anyway. We shouldn't expect science to do better at it than we do other fields.