Despite my repudiation of the claim, Jerry Coyne continues to argue that I think that there are “ways of knowing” other than science. I have said, and will say again, if it’s any use, that the locution ‘way(s) of knowing’ is not clear. The point of using it seems to be to rule out certain claims to know, or to be able to establish some things as items of knowledge, and others as mere subjective suppositions, but no one, so far at least, has proposed a definition of what a “way” of knowing might be. In fact, as earlier commenters have pointed out, we know all sorts of things which do not obviously come within the ambit of science, stretch the meaning of the word ‘science’ in whatever way you please. Indeed, the argument that knowledge is confined to what can be confirmed scientifically, broadly construed, is merely a way of settling the disagreement over scientism by fiat. Let’s take some of the uses of the word ‘know’ that Tim Martin Harris suggested some weeks (or is it already months!) ago: knowing how to ride a bike, knowing how to play an instrument, knowing a language, knowing someone (as against not knowing them), knowing a character in a novel or in a play, knowing what it is like to be in an accident, or to have the special knowledge that only those who have been there can have, of fighting in a battle, say, or knowing what it is like to live in poverty, or being told that you have only two weeks to live. It does not seem to me that any of these describe “ways” of knowing, a such, though each of them, in a reasonable sense, may be said to delimit spheres or items or realms of knowledge that are very different and to the achievement of which very different types of experience are necessary. And nothing very useful regarding the nature or the limits of knowledge have been determined once we have done this.

First of all, it seems to me, we must try to understand why it is that some people want to restrict knowledge to the scientific “way of knowing,” whatever that is, and so far no one has given a very satisfactory definition of why people want to make this restriction, and what making it accomplishes. This is especially true if the qualification is added about the scientific way of knowing, broadly construed. This looks very much like an effort simply to stretch the meaning of the word ‘science’ in such a way that any claim to know will automatically be entered under the column labelled “Science.” And the advantage of doing so is presumably that science, given the remarkable and admirable achievements of science over the last four centuries or so, gives a special “cachet” to the claim to know. Thus, when neuroscientists bruit about the claim to have detected, in the brain, the moment of decision — as in the famous experiments by Libet (and successors), which have been taken to prove that we make decisions before we become conscious of them — it is taken as settling, once and for all, the very contested philosophical issue of free will, even though there is as yet no reason to identify brain events as detected by neuroscientists with conscious decision making. What would support this much desiderated identification? So far, the answer to that question is unclear, which hasn’t detained neuroscientists for very long in their rush to judgement. It’s a bit like those neuroscientific experiments designed to locate the centre of spirituality in the brain, by using nuns as experimental subjects, because they, it is apparently assumed, are — if anyone is — more likely to be having religious experiences than others who do not wear their religion on their sleeve. The presuppositions underlying these assumptions are obvious, but I have yet to see a justification for making them. This is not, to be frank, much more reliable than taking individuals’ introspective accounts of their experiences as somehow above question, but so long as the label “Scientific” can be applied to the results, we are somehow lulled into the questionable belief that the results are more reliable than asking people what their experiences are like.

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This is just to assure readers that I have not simply abandoned you to discuss amongst yourselves. So many questions have been raised by my last two posts (including a post by Jerry Coyne in response), and I am involved in some things that I need to continue to do — which is why I abandoned choiceindying.com briefly — that I need to reflect upon these questions a bit more seriously. I have to say that I am not the odd man out in respect of the question of scientism, since this has been dealt with by a number of top flight philosophers, and I am not sure the point has been well understood. So, back to the drawing board on that question. We will see what comes out in due course. I do need to say a couple things about Jerry’s response. First, I did not say, nor do I say, that the new atheism has been a failure. This is an important qualification. That does not mean that new atheists are always right, however, and it is worthwhile being self-critical about its achievements as well as about its shortcomings. Another thing that I want to stress is that my characterisation of some arguments against religion in terms of “Such-and-so, ergo Jesus,” is not in any way addressed to Jerry, though, now that he mentions it, he has said comparable things before. But it has been such a widespread characterisation of religious argumentation — sometimes justly so characterised — that it was the form in which it came to me. We can be too simplistic in our responses to religion, and, while it may be that not everyone needs to explore the arguments of philosophical theology in depth, it is something that has been done by many atheists, and this argumentation needs to be better known. What it does show is that sometimes atheist argument is lacking in sophistication, and it is important to know that there is very sophisticated atheist argumentation available, which is why I referred to Martin, Mackie and Nielsen. Flew’s God and Philosophy is also highly recommended. And of course there are many others. While I do not think much of Alvin Plantinga’s arguments, especially his idea of god being properly basic (in his language), it is important, notwithstanding, that atheists be alive to the real arguments of philosophical theology, because, as Flew found out (though I still think he was taken advantage of when he was at his weakest), it is always possible that considerations can arise which may lead one to change one’s mind. It may be thought impossible, since these arguments would not be scientific ones, that such should be the case, but I do still insist that there are realms of knowledge that are not beholden to the scientific method. That is one issue that I need to explore further.

One other thing, before I leave this short post to its own devices, is to point out that, in one instance, Jerry Coyne is simply wrong. Jerry says this:

Well, science can’t tell us what we ought to value, for that’s a subjective judgment. But it can help us determine what we do value, simply by surveying people or examining their behavior.

This still won’t get him to values, however. Indeed, he had just said something about Enlightenment values. Indeed, the answer, he suggests is

science combined with humanism, a humanism that comes from adopting Enlightenment values.

Of course, we know that, were we to examine what people value, many would not necessarily be seen adopting Enlightenment values; and, while I think there are good reasons for adopting Enlightenment values, I do think we need to show that they  are to be preferred to other values, religious values, the perfect society as Islam or Christianity envisage it, for example. I think these are things that we can know, in a fairly straightforward sense of knowing that is not at the same time scientific.

I should mention one other thing… (see, this is how things go for me!). Jerry mentions my remarks about the structure provided by the religions, mainly, the national churches of Scandinavia. I say this is something that is an aspect of Scandinavian culture, even when people don’t notice. It’s the background to a whole lot of things that people do, even though it may not be referred to by many people in Scandinavian society. All I am saying — and I want to stress this, lest there be a misunderstanding here — is that I am talking about the socio-cultural background to our activities. It’s a point made by Michel Onfray in his <I>Atheist Manifesto</I>. We don’t get away from the epistemology and ontology of religion simply by giving up our personal belief, because the epistemology and ontology of religion are deeply embedded in most cultures, whether we notice this or not. A completely godless culture is something completely unknown, so at least it is not obvious that the eradication of religion would bring about a better state of things than before. This is something that I hope we would be modest about, since it is really unexplored territory. But with that, I will leave things, and come back to these issues at a later date. I am trying to read through Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West and Said’s Orientalism. Whether this produces anything of value you will just have to wait and see.

Oh yes, and one thing more (added later): I do not speak in terms of “ways of knowing.” That, I think, is the wrong way to frame this issue. There are different methodologies, but these do not constitute ways of knowing. To know something we must be able to provide reasons or evidence for our beliefs. Sometimes the reasoning will be scientific, but at other times we may use different types of reasoning. In morality, for example (and this I understand imperfectly for now), there are ways of reasoning to fairly stable moral conclusions that depend upon providing reasons for action, which may have to take empirical aspects of being human into consideration, but are not determined by that evidence. But this is just a blank cheque for now.

I began writing this as a response on the previous post, but it kept getting longer and longer, and so, in the end, it needed to find more space in which to stretch its wings, and to breathe more freely. So, here it is as a post, though bearing the stamp of its lowly origin.

I won’t go into the detail of the arguments (or non-arguments) presented in this thread. That was not the focus of my concern, which remains even when everything said here has been said. Certainly, for example, to say that Mozart is a greater composer than Hummel requires evidence, and the people who would be the best judge of what constitutes evidence in this case would not be scientists, but experts in music, composition, direction, performance, and appreciation. I don’t think that a study of the structure of music as related to brain structure or response would tell us very much. I may be quite wrong about this, but I think there is more going on here than simply those things discoverable by science. And that is precisely my problem with what I am here calling “scientism.” It is, basically, a “faith” position, since it is not in fact based, and cannot, in the nature of the case, be based on empirical evidence, for it is, essentially, a meta-claim about such evidence, and the belief that only those beliefs based on the kind of evidence in question constitute knowledge.

With this doctrinaire position I disagree, and I disagree with it because it is too narrow an understanding of what we may know, as the result of which the new atheism seems to me increasingly to lack depth. Unwilling to acknowledge different fields of knowledge and their importance to the human project, it impoverishes the human project by making rational discussion about it impossible. Aesthetic and moral knowledge, for instance, are simply ruled out by fiat. It may be, in the end, that we will have to acknowledge that there is no such knowledge, but it won’t do to rule it out on the principle that science alone works. Of course science works, but so, I think, do philosophy, music and literary criticism, moral analysis, and so on. If I did not think so, it would be a bit foolish of me to continue to speak about the rights of those who are suffering intolerably to receive help in dying. I believe this is an objective right that people have that is not being recognised by those who oppose assisted dying, mainly on religious grounds. I see nothing in science that can support this claim, and it makes a mockery of most humanistic disciplines to suggest that all we can know is comprised of the propositions of science. I see no reason to believe that, and I don’t think anyone has satisfactorily explained why knowledge claims should be so limited. And while I think that Persto is quite right to try to defend the rationality of religious belief, which does not necessarily depend upon scientific evidence, I do think that, in the end, all such attempts fail. I will not go into detail here, but one of the central problems for religious argumentation is to delimit what it is that “arguments for the existence of god” set out to prove, for no one has, so far, given a reasonable account of what a god might be. Indeed, to the extent that philosophical theologians are thrown back upon the expedient of apophaticism, they effectively abandon the claim that such propositions (i) make any sense, (ii) provide enough content to give substance to the arguments for the existence of the indescribable and ineffable being at the heart of the religious project. This is my reason for pointing beyond the popular new atheists to the more substantial philosophical works in which the case for the existence of a god or gods is more carefully and comprehensively argued. There are all sorts of very sophisticated works that do this, and it is a pity that people should instead base themselves on much less sophisticated argumentation, about which questions have been justly raised. While it may be true, as Pinkagendist says, that

Every religion that has proposed a god thus far has failed miserably in proving the alleged divinity of their alleged god,

the miserable failure involved takes some showing, and cannot simply be dismissed carelessly as some people are wont to do.

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